February 28, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, when people think of Butch Cassidy they often imagine Paul Newman’s characterization from the famous movie in 1969. But the real story of Butch Cassidy is the story of a western Godfather of sorts who brought the organization to a world of unorganized crime. Our regular contributor, Roger McGrath, is here to tell the story.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
When people think of Butch Cassidy, they often imagine Paul
Newman's character from the famous movie Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid, made in nineteen sixty nine with Robert Redford.
But the real story of Butch Cassidy is the story
(00:31):
of a Western godfather of sorts who brought organization to
a world of unorganized crime. You're to tell the story
is Roger McGrath. Roger is the author of Gunfighters, Homiman
and Vigilantes Violence on the Frontier.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Butch Cassidy, the last great outlaw of the American West,
is born Robert Leroy Parker in Beaver, Utah and Friday
the thirteenth in April eighteen sixty six to a family
of Mormon immigrants. He is the first of thirteen children
born to two of the earliest Mormon settlers, Maximillion and
(01:12):
Anne Parker. In eighteen seventy nine, Maximillion buys a homestead
in Circle Valley, and thirteen year old Robert le Roy
or Roy as he is called, is not old enough
to help support the family and is sent off to
work at a nearby ranch. Here's Tom Hatch, author of
The Last Outlaws.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
Bob Parker was the oldest of thirteen kids, and so
he became the surrogate father, and he would take care
of the kids. Bob was like a big kid himself,
and he was throughout his whole life. He was a
very gregarious man who made friends wherever he went because
of his personality. His mother homeschooled the kids, mostly on
(01:58):
the Bible. She would hold services there. He absolutely adored
his mother.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Heale force, wins and drouts make life on the Parker
homestead a struggle. Maximilian decides to homestead additional acreage in
the valley, but rites to the new property are contested
by another settler by Mormon custom, the dispute is mediated
by the local church bishop. The bishop awards the land
(02:26):
to the other settler, who has thought more faithful to
the church. Maximilian is furious. Young Roy is furious also.
He feels the Mormon religion has been used to cheat his.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Family out of their land.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Ray sets out to support his family by hurrying out again,
this time at Jim Marshall's Ranch. During Roy's second season
at Marshall's Ranch, he meets a man who would forever
alter the direction of his life all time. Cattile rustler
Mike Cassidy. Here's Hujah historian Ken Verduia.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Mike Cassidy.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
He's a well known horseman, and he's great with a revolver,
an excellent shot and marksman, and Cassidy takes a liking
to Little Bobby Parker teaches him how to really ride
a horse, teaches him how to handle a.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Revolver, how to become a good marksman.
Speaker 5 (03:26):
And more importantly, Mike Cassidy shows him how to cut corners.
There's big cattle operations, and they'll never miss it if
one or two or ten of the herd gets cut
away and goes to another place.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Consummer of eighteen eighty four. Rory Parker is eighteen years
old and full grown. Stands five foot nine, weighs one
hundred and sixty five pounds. He's described as friendly, good natured, loyal,
and generous. He also has an infectious grin and as
a natural leader. A ranch cowboy says Roy can ride
(04:02):
around a tree at full speed and put every bullet
from his revolver into a three hand circle. Mike Cassidy
has taught the kid will His wrestling soon becomes known
to the local authorities, though, and he leaves for the
gold mining boom town of Tell Your Ride, Colorado. Some
(04:23):
claim the town got its name from a quick pronunciation
of Hell.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
You're right.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
For a young man seeking adventure, Roy has gone to
the right place, rugged frontiersman, packed teller rides, famed saloons,
gambling halls, and houses of ill repute. Here's historians of
the Old West, Paul Hutton and Tom Hatch.
Speaker 6 (04:48):
Robert Parker goes to a world that couldn't be more different.
This is the wild boomtown world of the mining camp.
So a lot of gambling, a lot of drinking, prostitution,
a lot of young men heavily armed and fueled by alcohol.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
He went in there with a Mormon mind, and within
a week or two, I'm sure he'd been in every
saloon there, and he learned how to drink with the
best of them, and he gambled with the best of them.
And he didn't feel comfortable in Mormon country, but he
felt comfortable until Your Ride.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Rory Land's a grueling job running a back train of mules,
all in gold and silver ore from the mines to
the mills. He soon wearies of the drudgery.
Speaker 5 (05:35):
Going in the mines each and every day. Robert Parker
looks at that as a sucker's bet. You're coming out
bone where you could die down there and what have
you earned at the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
But on the corner is the San Miguel bank.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
Ry.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
With two of his new friends, elapsed Mormon named Matt
Warner and Warner's brother in law Tom McCarty, pulls his
first major criminal job, the robbery of the San Miguel
Valley Bank of Tillery Ride on June twenty fourth, eighteen
eighty nine. Now, most attempts at robbing banks in the
(06:17):
Old West feel miserably because of poor planning or no
planning at all. Roy is undeterred by the odds against him,
and for good reason.
Speaker 6 (06:28):
From the very beginning he had a methodology. He wasn't
just one of these wild writers like the movies make
so famous. He was very misonical, He was very careful.
He was very intelligent.
Speaker 5 (06:44):
Parker knew it's not just about where the money is,
but knowing when it will be at its peak?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
When will the cash arrive? Who handles the cash?
Speaker 5 (06:57):
How many people are in the building at the time
when the cash is at its peak? And more importantly
than that, how will I make my escape?
Speaker 1 (07:13):
And you've been listening to the story of Robert Parker,
sometimes called Roy, but as we've come to know him,
the story of Butch Cassidy, as told by doctor Roger McGrath.
When we come back, more of the story of Butch
Cassidy here on our American Stories. Lihabib here the host
(07:33):
of our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're
bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from
our big cities and small towns. But we truly can't
do the show without you. Our stories are free to
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love what you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories dot com
and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.
(07:56):
Go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and give And we
continue with our American Stories and the story of Butch
Cassidy as told by Roger McGrath. Let's pick up where
(08:17):
we last left off.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Roy Parker's accomplice, Tom McCarty is an old hand at
bank robbery, and he impresses upon Roy the importance of
not only planning each step of the robbery, but also
each step of the getaway. Several weeks before robbery, Rory
will train and hardened horses to be used in the getaway.
(08:42):
Blooded animals are selected, grain fit, and exercised rigorously. When
the first relay is reached, Rory switches to thorbreds able
to maintain a swift pace over a long distance. If necessary,
a second and a third relay of horses is used.
This masterstroke will become Roy Parker's signature technique. The robbery
(09:07):
of the bank can tell you right goes exactly as
plan and Ry and the others gallop out of town.
Here's ken for Doria and True West magazine contributor Tom Ross.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
And this is the genius of Robert Parker.
Speaker 5 (09:25):
He had planned the escape even better than he had
planned the whole gup.
Speaker 7 (09:31):
This is the first of his great escapades where they
wind up with big money. I mean, you walk away
from a bank with twenty thousand dollars and you're looking
at it what a cowboy might take him five or
ten years to make if he saved every penny.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
This is a serious crime.
Speaker 8 (09:47):
It's one thing to take a few cows or take
a couple of horses, but this is big time robbery.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
There's no going back. There's no going back.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Parker knows his deed will break the heart of his
pious mother and decides to deflect shame from his family.
He drops a family name and begins using the surname
Cassidy in honor of his mentor. He will later also
add the nickname Butch and become known to history as
(10:20):
Butch Cassidy. The steep canyons, an unforgiving terrain that make
up the fifteen hundred mile long stretch of wilderness that
runs from New Mexico to Montana, is known as the
Outlaw Trail. A series of hideouts on the trail are notorious,
with the names Robbers, Roost, Brown's Hole, and Hole in
(10:43):
the Wall.
Speaker 6 (10:48):
One of the benefits of being a Western outlaw is space.
The American West is vast. It's cut by canyons, mountain ranges,
river trails.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
A lot of.
Speaker 6 (11:04):
Places, there's only one way in, and so it's easy
to guard.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
It's easy to see who's.
Speaker 6 (11:09):
Coming, and so these become natural fortifications for the outlaw
bands to hide in and if you're a lawman, and
especially if you're just a civilian posse, you're not going
in there.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
It's suicide.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
In April eighteen ninety two, a couple of lawmen arrest
Butch for being in possession of three stolen horses. Now
Butch claims he purchased the horses fair and square, and
that seems to have been the case. However, the man
he had purchased them from had stolen the horses. In
(11:48):
July eighteen ninety four, is sentenced to two years in
the Wyoming State Penitentiary after serving eighteen months, which applies
for a pardon. William Richards, the governor of Wyoming, asks Cassidy,
will you give me your word that you're quit rustling.
(12:10):
Butch replies, can't do that, Governor, because if I gave
you my word, I only have to break it. I'm
in too deep now to quit the game. But I'll
promise you one thing. If you give me a pardon,
I'll keep out of Wyoming. Well, Cassidy's frankness wins over
(12:30):
Governor Richards. The governor signs the pardon, and in January
eighteen ninety six, Butch Cassidy walks out of the penitentiary
a free man. If Butch Cassidy was a minor outlaw
before he went to prison. Upon his release, he's determined
to make a name for himself. Butch begins to gather
(12:52):
together a group of outlaws who will become known as
the Wild Bunch. Among this band of strong personalities, Butch
is the clear leader. Here's Cassidy, bigrapher W. C.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Jamison. There was no job that he couldn't do.
Speaker 6 (13:10):
I think the others in the gang recognized his confidence,
recognized his leadership, and thought that with this guy, we're
going to be able to do some cool things.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Butch hand picks each member of the gang and expects
the best from those who ride with him. The core
members include William Ilsey, Leay Harvey, Kid Curry, Logan Ben,
the tall Texan Kilpatrick, will News Carver, and lastly, the
(13:44):
twenty one year old introvert Harry Logobah, the man known
to history as the Sun Dance Kid.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Sundance was born Harry Longebah up thirty miles north of Philadelphia,
and he grew up based on the canals. He would
work probably twenty hours a day sometimes and it would
walk twenty five miles each day. But Harry had dreams.
He paid one whole dollar for a library card, which
(14:14):
was quite a bit of money at that time to
a poor boy, and he read these pulp novels about
Jesse James and Buffalo Bill. This is where dreams of
the West came into his head.
Speaker 6 (14:29):
I think it's difficult to understand today the lure of
adventure that existed in the late nineteenth century, especially for
a young boy like Harry growing up in Pennsylvania. The
West offered everything that the society of the East seemed
to work against, and a lot of young men went
(14:51):
west in search of adventure.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
The twenty year old Longabot earns his nickname the Sundance
Kid after having served a year in the Sundance, Wyoming
jail for horse theft. In eighteen ninety two, Sundance Kid
and two accomplices rob a Great Northern Railroad train at Malta, Montana.
Accomplices are eventually captured, tried, and convicted, but the Sundance
(15:16):
Kid makes good his escape and is introduced to Butch
Cassidy on the Outlaw Trail.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Butch signed Sundance someone he could trust number one and
number two someone he could bounce his ideas off of,
and they would go nowhere else.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Butch Cassidy's first robbery following his release from the Wyoming
State Penitentiary occurs in August eighteen ninety six at Mountain Peelier, Idaho.
As usual, butch escaper is conducted with impeccable execution, a
breathtaking escape, and not a single dead body.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
But you understood one simple premise, didn't have to kill people.
Speaker 5 (16:02):
Some would go into a robbery and kill just silence voices.
Butch said, if my getaway is clean enough, I don't
have to silence voices.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
A station agent tries to telegraph price Utah the direction
the outlaws seemed to beheaded, but Cassidine Lay have cut
the wires. Cassidine Lay then escaped by a circuitous route
with fresh relays of horses, and eventually reached Brown's hole.
(16:36):
Some eight thousand dollars richer more than a quarter million today.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
And you've been listening to Roger McGrath tell the story
but Cassidy and later in the segment of the Sundance
Kid and how they got together and it had to
do in the end with Butch Cassidy's talent, his managerial talent,
his leadership talent, and mastering not just the art of
robbing a bank, but more importantly mastering the getaway. And
(17:03):
these were big time bank robberies. This was not nickel
and dimes stuff. And as we learned, once you're in,
it's hard to get out of this life. And that's
back then and still today. You choose a life of crime,
and the people around you become well a part of
that choice as well, and then your entire lifestyle is
that choice. And we learned that here in the nineteenth
(17:25):
century where to go for adventure was the wild West,
and that, indeed is where the Sun Dance Kid ended up.
He grew up in Philadelphia, of all places, but the
lure of adventure and the lure of that open country
and those dime store novels he read in the bookstore,
that's what got him to just pack his bags and
(17:47):
head west. When we come back more of the story
of Butch Cassidy, as told by doctor Roger McGrath here
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(18:09):
stories and the story of Butch Cassidy. You're again to
continue with His story is Roger McGrath.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
By eighteen ninety eight, news of the charismatic Cassidy and
his wild bunch begin to make headlines from San Francisco
to New York. But along with their success, as America
approaches the twentieth century, the once wild and free West
is being transformed. Thirty years of unprecedented expansion of fast
(18:40):
transportation and communication systems have connected a settled and civilized
East with the once wild and wooly American West. Powerful
railroad executives, mining barons, and cattle kings are tired of
being robbed by Western outlaws and turn into a powerful
(19:02):
ally to impose their own brand of law and order.
Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Here's historians of the American West,
Marshall Trimble and Andrew Nilson. They were a private detective agency.
Speaker 9 (19:20):
Therefore they weren't bound by the laws of regular lawmen.
Speaker 10 (19:25):
Bribery, deceit. Nothing is off the table for the Pinkertons,
and they are just as, if not more sophisticated, than
Butch Cassidy. They also have assembled a crew of diverse talents.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Founded fifty years earlier by Scottish immigrant Allan Pinkerton The
agency is America's first private detective outfit for hire. Pinkerton's logo,
a simple unblinking eye underlined by the words we never sleep,
adds a new term to the American lexicon, private eye.
Speaker 11 (20:01):
The Pinkertons embodied the modern age. They brought everything together, memoranda, files,
regional offices, photography.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
Everything.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Butcher's wild Bunch and now wanted dead or alive. But
as usual, Butch's planned ahead, keeping an attorney on retainer
to protect him and his men. Douglas Preston is Butch
Cassidy's lawyer. Whenever any of the Wild Budge gets in trouble,
it is Preston who defends them, usually with success. Preston
(20:39):
later becomes a state legislator and then the Attorney General
of Wyoming. Preston says that once upon a time, during
a saloon brawl, Cassidy saved his life and ingratitude, he
promised to defend Butch whenever the need should arise. After
the Civil War, our outlaws begin targeting trains, starting with
(21:04):
the Reno Brothers in eighteen sixty six and followed by
others such as Jesse James and Sam Bass. Then a
quick work of railroad express cars back with money and
lumbering through remote locations far from local posseas.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Most train robberies were successful. Everybody knew that banks got
a little more difficult. The trains were fairly easy to
rob because they hadn't put armed messengers on them. They
hadn't taken any precautions whatsoever with security.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Bush and his train robbers syndicate both the first train
robbery in the desolate countryside at Wilcox, Wyoming in June
eighteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
The flyer is coming down the tracks.
Speaker 8 (21:51):
They're about ready to cross a wood trestle bridge, and
we see a couple guys with a lantern shaking it
back and forth.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Stop the train.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
Usually it meant a washed out track or damage track ahead,
and the train should stop.
Speaker 7 (22:08):
Any engineers right in mind those we got to lock
up the brakes.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
The train stops before the tressaw. The people on the
train are nervous.
Speaker 8 (22:20):
We don't stop trains in the middle of the desert.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
But it just happened.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
The engineer thought that the bridge might have been washed out.
Little did he know that these were robbers up on
the tracks.
Speaker 5 (22:34):
They pull apart passenger cars separate them from the engine
and the car which carries the sea Butcher.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
The boys then surround the express car and shout to
the messenger inside that opened the door. Ernest Woodcock replies,
come in and get me.
Speaker 9 (22:55):
Is it a dud?
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Butcher answers, my lobbing a stick.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Of dynamite under the car got a dog.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
The blast blows out one side of the car. Woodcock
has thrown the entire length of the car and knocked
groggy Harvey Logan jumps into the car and puts a
revolver to Woodcock's head, but yells at Logan let him alone.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
A man with his.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Nerve deserves not to be shot. The gang then blows
the safer part with still more dynamite, too much. In fact,
bonds and money are blown everywhere, and the outlaws have
to scurry about to gather together some thirty thousand dollars
in loot.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
Alright, boys, we're gonna go.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
That's around one million in today's money. It's the most
spectacular robbery the West has ever seen. A few hours later,
a special train is dispatched to the scene from Cheyenne,
one hundred and twenty miles away. The train carries railroad detectives,
(24:09):
Binkerton Detectives and a posse with horses lawman rendezvous at
Wilcox and then set out upon the trail of the
Wild Bunch. Here's his historian, David Eisenbach.
Speaker 9 (24:25):
If they could nail Butch Cassidy, no matter how much
money they and resources they devoted to this, the theme
of the agency would become so great that it would
pay off in the long run with other jobs that
they would get.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
And they would literally go to the ends of the
earth to do it.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
The Bankerton's put two of their best operatives, Charlie Seringo
and w O Sales, on the assignment. These pros don't
follow hood prints in the dirt. Instead, they begin methodically
tracking serial numbers on the banknotes stolen at Wilcox. Soon,
the stolen money begins a surface in towns across the region. Unintentionally,
(25:05):
the Wild Bunch members are illuminating in their own trail.
Speaker 8 (25:08):
Because of the dynamite blowing it up. A whole bunch
of the bills had cuts on the bottom, and so
they knew that if they got one of the bills
that had a cut in a certain way, it was
from this robbery.
Speaker 11 (25:20):
All of this stuff worked against these antiquated, horsepowered cowboys
who were trying to steal this money. You know, they're
up against serial numbers, no contest.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
One by one, the hideouts for the Wild Bunch had
been penetrated. More by nineteen hundred, several members the Wild
Bunch have been killed or captured. Thanks to a tip,
Butch nearly escapes captured by a Pinkerdon detective and aside,
it's time to call it quits.
Speaker 6 (25:56):
It's like a noose getting tighter and tighter, and smart
enough to understand this. He's smart enough to see that
now all of the Pinkerton's resources are focused on the
Wild Bunch and they're never going to give up.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
They won't stop.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
And you're listening to one heck of a story about
Butch cassidy as being told by doctor Roger McGrath, who
is a regular contributor here in Now American Stories. You
can also hear him and he's appeared on and a
number of History Channel documentaries as well. And my goodness,
what we learned is because he was born in eighteen
sixty six, well, Butch Cassidy was running up against a
(26:39):
new era and as the West, well got less Wild.
Over time, as transportation and moneyed interest and formal interests
started to make these towns more legitimate, it became more
and more difficult for Butch Cassidy to pull off his crimes.
And then we hear about the advent of the Pertains.
(27:00):
Of course, these kinds of resources and tools could not
be matched by Butch Cassidy and his gang, the Wild Bunch,
and by nineteen hundred, as McGrath said, the noose was
getting tighter for Butch. When we come back the final
part of this story, the story of Butch Cassidy and
the story of the Wild West becoming teamed here on
(27:24):
our American stories, and we continue with our American stories
and with the story of Butch Cassidy. Let's return to
Roger McGrath.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Working with the lawyer Douglas Preston, buch agrees to meet
with Union Pacific representatives to negotiate a truce. The railroad
will drop charges against him in exchange for him working
as a rare road express card to avoid any chance
of treachery. Butch asks that Preston bring the railroad officials
(28:08):
to the remote Lost Soldier stage station at the base
of Green Mountain in Wyoming. The railroad contingent who are
ready to make a deal. Well, that contingent is delayed
and root by a storm. And when the hour of
the rendezvous comes and goes without Preston and without the
Union Pacific representatives showing up, Butch is left alone and
(28:33):
thinking has been stood up, or worse, set up in
what would have been an historic meeting. Butch becomes impatient
and leaves behind an angry note, damn you, Preston, you
double across me. I waited all day, but you didn't
show up. Tell the up to go to hell and
(28:54):
you can go with them. As a result of what
Butch believes to be the Union Pacific's treachery, he decides
to strike against the railroad as soon as possible. On
a warm evening in August nineteen hundred, the boys stop
the Union Pacific at Tipton, Wyoming. Butch finds that the
(29:15):
messenger inside the express card is none other than the
clerk from the previous Wilcox robbery, Ernest Woodcock. Again, the
brave messenger refuses to open the door, seeing the wild
Bunch's dynamite, though the conductor convinces Woodcock to comply. This time,
(29:37):
the outlaws then dynamite the safe and take an estimated
fifty five thousand. Butch now thinks he should leave the
once wide open American West and try his luck in
South America. Here's historian Gerald Copan.
Speaker 12 (29:55):
Butch wants to go to a place that's more like
the western United time the States was, say, twenty years before,
where you don't have the pinkertons to worry about, and
where law enforcement isn't quite as effective.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Before he leaves, but Sundance and three of the core
members of the Wild Bunch, Rendezvous and the Roaring Candle
move down of Fort Worth, Texas to live it up
in Hill's half acre the red light district. Decked out
like the businessmen they are robbing, the five men commemorate
their adventure by posing for a group photograph. Ironically, for
(30:36):
the master planner, it will be this relatively new technological
innovation that will result in the biggest blunder of an
otherwise brilliant criminal career.
Speaker 6 (30:49):
The photographer put this photograph in his window as advertisement
for his skill. Unfortunately, a local lawman goes by, recognizes
one of the boys in the photo, and soon that
photo is circulated throughout the Pinkerton Detective Agency, and throughout
the West they made flyers with pictures of Butch, Cassidy,
(31:14):
the Sundance Kid, all the Wild Bunch. They plastered those
pictures up everywhere, and they had them in the hands
of all their operatives. Now, indeed, you couldn't escape the
Eye that Never slept, because it really had you.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Which splits up the game. And by February nineteen one, Cassidy, Sundance,
and his mysterious girlfriend, the Absolute Knock, get at a
place spend several weeks living the high life in the
modern metropolis of New York City. From there they leave
(31:53):
on a steamship for Argentina.
Speaker 6 (31:58):
It seemed like they had chance to start over, to
reinvent themselves.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
The old days are over.
Speaker 6 (32:09):
Butch and Sundance get out just in time.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Two years after Butch and Sundance leave for Argentina, Edwin
Porters The Great Train Robbery, one of the first motion pictures,
is captivating New York audiences in nineteen three.
Speaker 6 (32:27):
By nineteen oh three, the story of the Wild West,
the story of Butch and Sundance, has already become fodder
from mass entertainment. So famous is the Wild Bunch that
Buffalo Bill Cody in his Wild West show, which is
playing not only all across America, but to the Crown
the Heads of Europe, features one of their train robberies.
(32:51):
I mean, I think to the American public, Butch and
Sundance are gone.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
It's over.
Speaker 6 (32:56):
That's why they're making movies. It's a show. It's a
show now.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Winner of nineteen three Pinkerton informants in Pennsylvania intercept a
letter Sundance sins to his family.
Speaker 10 (33:09):
In South America. Butch Cassidy may have forgotten about the Pinkertons.
But the Pinkertons certainly had not forgotten about Butchcassidy. They
were still employing every tool and every method at their
disposal to bring him to justice. That included intercepting mail.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
I need to send a telegram to Argentina Putzcasidy has
been sided on the run from Urgentine authorities and Anita cash.
Butch and Sundance returned to what they know best. Along
with Eda Place. They take ten thousand from the National
bank in Central Argentina and twenty thousand from bank in
(33:46):
Rio guy Lagos. In nineteen seven, at a Place returns
to the United States for medical treatment, and Buts and
Sundance rob a mule train with a payroll for the
Alpoka mind in southern Bolivia. Within hours of the hest,
the telegraphic chires begin humming. Even in the wilds of
(34:07):
South America, the civilizing forces of westward expansion have caught
up with Butch and Sundance. Every town in the area
supplied with descriptions of what they call Bandito Hiaqui. Butch
makes a mistake of taking not only the gold but
also a big, silver.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Gray mule.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Some time later, Butch and Sundance right into the village
of San Vicenti, where a hotel owner recognizes the mule
and grows suspicious. While his wife prepares a mule for
Butch and Sundance, he rides to alert a nearby troop
of Bolivian cavalry.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
He led three people down to this home. One of
the soldiers went on to the patio drew his weapon.
Butch saw his silhouette through the window and pulled out
his sixth gun and shot the guy dead first person,
(35:13):
the only person that Butcher ever killed.
Speaker 6 (35:17):
Meanwhile, the word goes out and other residents of the town,
heavily armed, now come to surround the house.
Speaker 11 (35:25):
They're surrounded.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
They're not going anywhere.
Speaker 11 (35:27):
There's no way they're getting out of there.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
A shoot him const General Butch and Sundance that put
their winchesters in extra ammunition across the patio, and now
Sundance makes a dash for them. He miraculously gets to
the rifles and AMMO unscathed. Put On his return, Dash
is hit by several rounds and drops to the ground.
(35:53):
Butch runs out and drags him back to COVID. The
two continue fighting, but Sundance is fading fast and dies.
Butch has one round left. With that last bullet, he
shoots himself. Butch Cassidy, the one time Mormon boy named
(36:14):
Robert Leroy Parker, is dead at forty two years old.
That you are laid to rest in unmarked oblivion graves.
But there are some who believe these famous outlaws had
not yet met their end.
Speaker 6 (36:34):
Almost immediately stories began that they hadn't been killed in Bolivia.
We don't want the outlaws to die, We certainly don't
want them to die away.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Butch and Sundance died.
Speaker 6 (36:48):
As wild as they were, as bad as they were,
still represented something that Americans embrace that wild freedom and
when they're gone.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
A while West has gone.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks as
always to Roger McGrath, the author of Gunfighters, High Women,
and Vigilantes Violence on the Frontier. He's a US Marine,
former history professor at UCLA, and doctor. McGrath has appeared
on numerous History Channel documentaries. Were grateful to have him
(37:26):
as a regular contributor, a regular voice here in our
American Stories, and what a story he told here the
death of the West, at least to outlaws as the
legitimate types of businesses started to close in on the
wild bunch, the gangs and the criminals and outlaw mentality
(37:47):
that had governed much of the West before and in
the end these guys had no choice. Butch cassidy felt
like the Wild West had left him, so he was
looking for new frontiers shine his life of crime, going
to Argentina and ending up killing himself in Bolivia. The
Wild West Untamed. The story of Butch Cassidy is told
(38:11):
by Roger McGrath here on Our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
When people think of Butch Cassidy, they often imagine Paul
Newman's character from the famous movie Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid, made in nineteen sixty nine with Robert Redford.
But the real story of Butch Cassidy is the story
(00:31):
of a Western godfather of sorts who brought organization to
a world of unorganized crime. You're to tell the story
is Roger McGrath. Roger is the author of Gunfighters, Homiman
and Vigilantes Violence on the Frontier.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Butch Cassidy, the last great outlaw of the American West,
is born Robert Leroy Parker in Beaver, Utah and Friday
the thirteenth in April eighteen sixty six to a family
of Mormon immigrants. He is the first of thirteen children
born to two of the earliest Mormon settlers, Maximillion and
(01:12):
Anne Parker. In eighteen seventy nine, Maximillion buys a homestead
in Circle Valley, and thirteen year old Robert le Roy
or Roy as he is called, is not old enough
to help support the family and is sent off to
work at a nearby ranch. Here's Tom Hatch, author of
The Last Outlaws.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
Bob Parker was the oldest of thirteen kids, and so
he became the surrogate father, and he would take care
of the kids. Bob was like a big kid himself,
and he was throughout his whole life. He was a
very gregarious man who made friends wherever he went because
of his personality. His mother homeschooled the kids, mostly on
(01:58):
the Bible. She would hold services there. He absolutely adored
his mother.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Heale force, wins and drouts make life on the Parker
homestead a struggle. Maximilian decides to homestead additional acreage in
the valley, but rites to the new property are contested
by another settler by Mormon custom, the dispute is mediated
by the local church bishop. The bishop awards the land
(02:26):
to the other settler, who has thought more faithful to
the church. Maximilian is furious. Young Roy is furious also.
He feels the Mormon religion has been used to cheat his.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Family out of their land.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Ray sets out to support his family by hurrying out again,
this time at Jim Marshall's Ranch. During Roy's second season
at Marshall's Ranch, he meets a man who would forever
alter the direction of his life all time. Cattile rustler
Mike Cassidy. Here's Hujah historian Ken Verduia.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Mike Cassidy.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
He's a well known horseman, and he's great with a revolver,
an excellent shot and marksman, and Cassidy takes a liking
to Little Bobby Parker teaches him how to really ride
a horse, teaches him how to handle a.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Revolver, how to become a good marksman.
Speaker 5 (03:26):
And more importantly, Mike Cassidy shows him how to cut corners.
There's big cattle operations, and they'll never miss it if
one or two or ten of the herd gets cut
away and goes to another place.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Consummer of eighteen eighty four. Rory Parker is eighteen years
old and full grown. Stands five foot nine, weighs one
hundred and sixty five pounds. He's described as friendly, good natured, loyal,
and generous. He also has an infectious grin and as
a natural leader. A ranch cowboy says Roy can ride
(04:02):
around a tree at full speed and put every bullet
from his revolver into a three hand circle. Mike Cassidy
has taught the kid will His wrestling soon becomes known
to the local authorities, though, and he leaves for the
gold mining boom town of Tell Your Ride, Colorado. Some
(04:23):
claim the town got its name from a quick pronunciation
of Hell.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
You're right.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
For a young man seeking adventure, Roy has gone to
the right place, rugged frontiersman, packed teller rides, famed saloons,
gambling halls, and houses of ill repute. Here's historians of
the Old West, Paul Hutton and Tom Hatch.
Speaker 6 (04:48):
Robert Parker goes to a world that couldn't be more different.
This is the wild boomtown world of the mining camp.
So a lot of gambling, a lot of drinking, prostitution,
a lot of young men heavily armed and fueled by alcohol.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
He went in there with a Mormon mind, and within
a week or two, I'm sure he'd been in every
saloon there, and he learned how to drink with the
best of them, and he gambled with the best of them.
And he didn't feel comfortable in Mormon country, but he
felt comfortable until Your Ride.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Rory Land's a grueling job running a back train of mules,
all in gold and silver ore from the mines to
the mills. He soon wearies of the drudgery.
Speaker 5 (05:35):
Going in the mines each and every day. Robert Parker
looks at that as a sucker's bet. You're coming out
bone where you could die down there and what have
you earned at the end of the day.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
But on the corner is the San Miguel bank.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
Ry.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
With two of his new friends, elapsed Mormon named Matt
Warner and Warner's brother in law Tom McCarty, pulls his
first major criminal job, the robbery of the San Miguel
Valley Bank of Tillery Ride on June twenty fourth, eighteen
eighty nine. Now, most attempts at robbing banks in the
(06:17):
Old West feel miserably because of poor planning or no
planning at all. Roy is undeterred by the odds against him,
and for good reason.
Speaker 6 (06:28):
From the very beginning he had a methodology. He wasn't
just one of these wild writers like the movies make
so famous. He was very misonical, He was very careful.
He was very intelligent.
Speaker 5 (06:44):
Parker knew it's not just about where the money is,
but knowing when it will be at its peak?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
When will the cash arrive? Who handles the cash?
Speaker 5 (06:57):
How many people are in the building at the time
when the cash is at its peak? And more importantly
than that, how will I make my escape?
Speaker 1 (07:13):
And you've been listening to the story of Robert Parker,
sometimes called Roy, but as we've come to know him,
the story of Butch Cassidy, as told by doctor Roger McGrath.
When we come back, more of the story of Butch
Cassidy here on our American Stories. Lihabib here the host
(07:33):
of our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're
bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from
our big cities and small towns. But we truly can't
do the show without you. Our stories are free to
listen to, but they're not free to make. If you
love what you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories dot com
and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.
(07:56):
Go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and give And we
continue with our American Stories and the story of Butch
Cassidy as told by Roger McGrath. Let's pick up where
(08:17):
we last left off.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Roy Parker's accomplice, Tom McCarty is an old hand at
bank robbery, and he impresses upon Roy the importance of
not only planning each step of the robbery, but also
each step of the getaway. Several weeks before robbery, Rory
will train and hardened horses to be used in the getaway.
(08:42):
Blooded animals are selected, grain fit, and exercised rigorously. When
the first relay is reached, Rory switches to thorbreds able
to maintain a swift pace over a long distance. If necessary,
a second and a third relay of horses is used.
This masterstroke will become Roy Parker's signature technique. The robbery
(09:07):
of the bank can tell you right goes exactly as
plan and Ry and the others gallop out of town.
Here's ken for Doria and True West magazine contributor Tom Ross.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
And this is the genius of Robert Parker.
Speaker 5 (09:25):
He had planned the escape even better than he had
planned the whole gup.
Speaker 7 (09:31):
This is the first of his great escapades where they
wind up with big money. I mean, you walk away
from a bank with twenty thousand dollars and you're looking
at it what a cowboy might take him five or
ten years to make if he saved every penny.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
This is a serious crime.
Speaker 8 (09:47):
It's one thing to take a few cows or take
a couple of horses, but this is big time robbery.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
There's no going back. There's no going back.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Parker knows his deed will break the heart of his
pious mother and decides to deflect shame from his family.
He drops a family name and begins using the surname
Cassidy in honor of his mentor. He will later also
add the nickname Butch and become known to history as
(10:20):
Butch Cassidy. The steep canyons, an unforgiving terrain that make
up the fifteen hundred mile long stretch of wilderness that
runs from New Mexico to Montana, is known as the
Outlaw Trail. A series of hideouts on the trail are notorious,
with the names Robbers, Roost, Brown's Hole, and Hole in
(10:43):
the Wall.
Speaker 6 (10:48):
One of the benefits of being a Western outlaw is space.
The American West is vast. It's cut by canyons, mountain ranges,
river trails.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
A lot of.
Speaker 6 (11:04):
Places, there's only one way in, and so it's easy
to guard.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
It's easy to see who's.
Speaker 6 (11:09):
Coming, and so these become natural fortifications for the outlaw
bands to hide in and if you're a lawman, and
especially if you're just a civilian posse, you're not going
in there.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
It's suicide.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
In April eighteen ninety two, a couple of lawmen arrest
Butch for being in possession of three stolen horses. Now
Butch claims he purchased the horses fair and square, and
that seems to have been the case. However, the man
he had purchased them from had stolen the horses. In
(11:48):
July eighteen ninety four, is sentenced to two years in
the Wyoming State Penitentiary after serving eighteen months, which applies
for a pardon. William Richards, the governor of Wyoming, asks Cassidy,
will you give me your word that you're quit rustling.
(12:10):
Butch replies, can't do that, Governor, because if I gave
you my word, I only have to break it. I'm
in too deep now to quit the game. But I'll
promise you one thing. If you give me a pardon,
I'll keep out of Wyoming. Well, Cassidy's frankness wins over
(12:30):
Governor Richards. The governor signs the pardon, and in January
eighteen ninety six, Butch Cassidy walks out of the penitentiary
a free man. If Butch Cassidy was a minor outlaw
before he went to prison. Upon his release, he's determined
to make a name for himself. Butch begins to gather
(12:52):
together a group of outlaws who will become known as
the Wild Bunch. Among this band of strong personalities, Butch
is the clear leader. Here's Cassidy, bigrapher W. C.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Jamison. There was no job that he couldn't do.
Speaker 6 (13:10):
I think the others in the gang recognized his confidence,
recognized his leadership, and thought that with this guy, we're
going to be able to do some cool things.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Butch hand picks each member of the gang and expects
the best from those who ride with him. The core
members include William Ilsey, Leay Harvey, Kid Curry, Logan Ben,
the tall Texan Kilpatrick, will News Carver, and lastly, the
(13:44):
twenty one year old introvert Harry Logobah, the man known
to history as the Sun Dance Kid.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
Sundance was born Harry Longebah up thirty miles north of Philadelphia,
and he grew up based on the canals. He would
work probably twenty hours a day sometimes and it would
walk twenty five miles each day. But Harry had dreams.
He paid one whole dollar for a library card, which
(14:14):
was quite a bit of money at that time to
a poor boy, and he read these pulp novels about
Jesse James and Buffalo Bill. This is where dreams of
the West came into his head.
Speaker 6 (14:29):
I think it's difficult to understand today the lure of
adventure that existed in the late nineteenth century, especially for
a young boy like Harry growing up in Pennsylvania. The
West offered everything that the society of the East seemed
to work against, and a lot of young men went
(14:51):
west in search of adventure.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
The twenty year old Longabot earns his nickname the Sundance
Kid after having served a year in the Sundance, Wyoming
jail for horse theft. In eighteen ninety two, Sundance Kid
and two accomplices rob a Great Northern Railroad train at Malta, Montana.
Accomplices are eventually captured, tried, and convicted, but the Sundance
(15:16):
Kid makes good his escape and is introduced to Butch
Cassidy on the Outlaw Trail.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
Butch signed Sundance someone he could trust number one and
number two someone he could bounce his ideas off of,
and they would go nowhere else.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Butch Cassidy's first robbery following his release from the Wyoming
State Penitentiary occurs in August eighteen ninety six at Mountain Peelier, Idaho.
As usual, butch escaper is conducted with impeccable execution, a
breathtaking escape, and not a single dead body.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
But you understood one simple premise, didn't have to kill people.
Speaker 5 (16:02):
Some would go into a robbery and kill just silence voices.
Butch said, if my getaway is clean enough, I don't
have to silence voices.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
A station agent tries to telegraph price Utah the direction
the outlaws seemed to beheaded, but Cassidine Lay have cut
the wires. Cassidine Lay then escaped by a circuitous route
with fresh relays of horses, and eventually reached Brown's hole.
(16:36):
Some eight thousand dollars richer more than a quarter million today.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
And you've been listening to Roger McGrath tell the story
but Cassidy and later in the segment of the Sundance
Kid and how they got together and it had to
do in the end with Butch Cassidy's talent, his managerial talent,
his leadership talent, and mastering not just the art of
robbing a bank, but more importantly mastering the getaway. And
(17:03):
these were big time bank robberies. This was not nickel
and dimes stuff. And as we learned, once you're in,
it's hard to get out of this life. And that's
back then and still today. You choose a life of crime,
and the people around you become well a part of
that choice as well, and then your entire lifestyle is
that choice. And we learned that here in the nineteenth
(17:25):
century where to go for adventure was the wild West,
and that, indeed is where the Sun Dance Kid ended up.
He grew up in Philadelphia, of all places, but the
lure of adventure and the lure of that open country
and those dime store novels he read in the bookstore,
that's what got him to just pack his bags and
(17:47):
head west. When we come back more of the story
of Butch Cassidy, as told by doctor Roger McGrath here
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(18:09):
stories and the story of Butch Cassidy. You're again to
continue with His story is Roger McGrath.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
By eighteen ninety eight, news of the charismatic Cassidy and
his wild bunch begin to make headlines from San Francisco
to New York. But along with their success, as America
approaches the twentieth century, the once wild and free West
is being transformed. Thirty years of unprecedented expansion of fast
(18:40):
transportation and communication systems have connected a settled and civilized
East with the once wild and wooly American West. Powerful
railroad executives, mining barons, and cattle kings are tired of
being robbed by Western outlaws and turn into a powerful
(19:02):
ally to impose their own brand of law and order.
Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Here's historians of the American West,
Marshall Trimble and Andrew Nilson. They were a private detective agency.
Speaker 9 (19:20):
Therefore they weren't bound by the laws of regular lawmen.
Speaker 10 (19:25):
Bribery, deceit. Nothing is off the table for the Pinkertons,
and they are just as, if not more sophisticated, than
Butch Cassidy. They also have assembled a crew of diverse talents.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Founded fifty years earlier by Scottish immigrant Allan Pinkerton The
agency is America's first private detective outfit for hire. Pinkerton's logo,
a simple unblinking eye underlined by the words we never sleep,
adds a new term to the American lexicon, private eye.
Speaker 11 (20:01):
The Pinkertons embodied the modern age. They brought everything together, memoranda, files,
regional offices, photography.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
Everything.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Butcher's wild Bunch and now wanted dead or alive. But
as usual, Butch's planned ahead, keeping an attorney on retainer
to protect him and his men. Douglas Preston is Butch
Cassidy's lawyer. Whenever any of the Wild Budge gets in trouble,
it is Preston who defends them, usually with success. Preston
(20:39):
later becomes a state legislator and then the Attorney General
of Wyoming. Preston says that once upon a time, during
a saloon brawl, Cassidy saved his life and ingratitude, he
promised to defend Butch whenever the need should arise. After
the Civil War, our outlaws begin targeting trains, starting with
(21:04):
the Reno Brothers in eighteen sixty six and followed by
others such as Jesse James and Sam Bass. Then a
quick work of railroad express cars back with money and
lumbering through remote locations far from local posseas.
Speaker 4 (21:20):
Most train robberies were successful. Everybody knew that banks got
a little more difficult. The trains were fairly easy to
rob because they hadn't put armed messengers on them. They
hadn't taken any precautions whatsoever with security.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Bush and his train robbers syndicate both the first train
robbery in the desolate countryside at Wilcox, Wyoming in June
eighteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
The flyer is coming down the tracks.
Speaker 8 (21:51):
They're about ready to cross a wood trestle bridge, and
we see a couple guys with a lantern shaking it
back and forth.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Stop the train.
Speaker 5 (22:02):
Usually it meant a washed out track or damage track ahead,
and the train should stop.
Speaker 7 (22:08):
Any engineers right in mind those we got to lock
up the brakes.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
The train stops before the tressaw. The people on the
train are nervous.
Speaker 8 (22:20):
We don't stop trains in the middle of the desert.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
But it just happened.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
The engineer thought that the bridge might have been washed out.
Little did he know that these were robbers up on
the tracks.
Speaker 5 (22:34):
They pull apart passenger cars separate them from the engine
and the car which carries the sea Butcher.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
The boys then surround the express car and shout to
the messenger inside that opened the door. Ernest Woodcock replies,
come in and get me.
Speaker 9 (22:55):
Is it a dud?
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Butcher answers, my lobbing a stick.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Of dynamite under the car got a dog.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
The blast blows out one side of the car. Woodcock
has thrown the entire length of the car and knocked
groggy Harvey Logan jumps into the car and puts a
revolver to Woodcock's head, but yells at Logan let him alone.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
A man with his.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Nerve deserves not to be shot. The gang then blows
the safer part with still more dynamite, too much. In fact,
bonds and money are blown everywhere, and the outlaws have
to scurry about to gather together some thirty thousand dollars
in loot.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
Alright, boys, we're gonna go.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
That's around one million in today's money. It's the most
spectacular robbery the West has ever seen. A few hours later,
a special train is dispatched to the scene from Cheyenne,
one hundred and twenty miles away. The train carries railroad detectives,
(24:09):
Binkerton Detectives and a posse with horses lawman rendezvous at
Wilcox and then set out upon the trail of the
Wild Bunch. Here's his historian, David Eisenbach.
Speaker 9 (24:25):
If they could nail Butch Cassidy, no matter how much
money they and resources they devoted to this, the theme
of the agency would become so great that it would
pay off in the long run with other jobs that
they would get.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
And they would literally go to the ends of the
earth to do it.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
The Bankerton's put two of their best operatives, Charlie Seringo
and w O Sales, on the assignment. These pros don't
follow hood prints in the dirt. Instead, they begin methodically
tracking serial numbers on the banknotes stolen at Wilcox. Soon,
the stolen money begins a surface in towns across the region. Unintentionally,
(25:05):
the Wild Bunch members are illuminating in their own trail.
Speaker 8 (25:08):
Because of the dynamite blowing it up. A whole bunch
of the bills had cuts on the bottom, and so
they knew that if they got one of the bills
that had a cut in a certain way, it was
from this robbery.
Speaker 11 (25:20):
All of this stuff worked against these antiquated, horsepowered cowboys
who were trying to steal this money. You know, they're
up against serial numbers, no contest.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
One by one, the hideouts for the Wild Bunch had
been penetrated. More by nineteen hundred, several members the Wild
Bunch have been killed or captured. Thanks to a tip,
Butch nearly escapes captured by a Pinkerdon detective and aside,
it's time to call it quits.
Speaker 6 (25:56):
It's like a noose getting tighter and tighter, and smart
enough to understand this. He's smart enough to see that
now all of the Pinkerton's resources are focused on the
Wild Bunch and they're never going to give up.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
They won't stop.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
And you're listening to one heck of a story about
Butch cassidy as being told by doctor Roger McGrath, who
is a regular contributor here in Now American Stories. You
can also hear him and he's appeared on and a
number of History Channel documentaries as well. And my goodness,
what we learned is because he was born in eighteen
sixty six, well, Butch Cassidy was running up against a
(26:39):
new era and as the West, well got less Wild.
Over time, as transportation and moneyed interest and formal interests
started to make these towns more legitimate, it became more
and more difficult for Butch Cassidy to pull off his crimes.
And then we hear about the advent of the Pertains.
(27:00):
Of course, these kinds of resources and tools could not
be matched by Butch Cassidy and his gang, the Wild Bunch,
and by nineteen hundred, as McGrath said, the noose was
getting tighter for Butch. When we come back the final
part of this story, the story of Butch Cassidy and
the story of the Wild West becoming teamed here on
(27:24):
our American stories, and we continue with our American stories
and with the story of Butch Cassidy. Let's return to
Roger McGrath.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Working with the lawyer Douglas Preston, buch agrees to meet
with Union Pacific representatives to negotiate a truce. The railroad
will drop charges against him in exchange for him working
as a rare road express card to avoid any chance
of treachery. Butch asks that Preston bring the railroad officials
(28:08):
to the remote Lost Soldier stage station at the base
of Green Mountain in Wyoming. The railroad contingent who are
ready to make a deal. Well, that contingent is delayed
and root by a storm. And when the hour of
the rendezvous comes and goes without Preston and without the
Union Pacific representatives showing up, Butch is left alone and
(28:33):
thinking has been stood up, or worse, set up in
what would have been an historic meeting. Butch becomes impatient
and leaves behind an angry note, damn you, Preston, you
double across me. I waited all day, but you didn't
show up. Tell the up to go to hell and
(28:54):
you can go with them. As a result of what
Butch believes to be the Union Pacific's treachery, he decides
to strike against the railroad as soon as possible. On
a warm evening in August nineteen hundred, the boys stop
the Union Pacific at Tipton, Wyoming. Butch finds that the
(29:15):
messenger inside the express card is none other than the
clerk from the previous Wilcox robbery, Ernest Woodcock. Again, the
brave messenger refuses to open the door, seeing the wild
Bunch's dynamite, though the conductor convinces Woodcock to comply. This time,
(29:37):
the outlaws then dynamite the safe and take an estimated
fifty five thousand. Butch now thinks he should leave the
once wide open American West and try his luck in
South America. Here's historian Gerald Copan.
Speaker 12 (29:55):
Butch wants to go to a place that's more like
the western United time the States was, say, twenty years before,
where you don't have the pinkertons to worry about, and
where law enforcement isn't quite as effective.
Speaker 3 (30:11):
Before he leaves, but Sundance and three of the core
members of the Wild Bunch, Rendezvous and the Roaring Candle
move down of Fort Worth, Texas to live it up
in Hill's half acre the red light district. Decked out
like the businessmen they are robbing, the five men commemorate
their adventure by posing for a group photograph. Ironically, for
(30:36):
the master planner, it will be this relatively new technological
innovation that will result in the biggest blunder of an
otherwise brilliant criminal career.
Speaker 6 (30:49):
The photographer put this photograph in his window as advertisement
for his skill. Unfortunately, a local lawman goes by, recognizes
one of the boys in the photo, and soon that
photo is circulated throughout the Pinkerton Detective Agency, and throughout
the West they made flyers with pictures of Butch, Cassidy,
(31:14):
the Sundance Kid, all the Wild Bunch. They plastered those
pictures up everywhere, and they had them in the hands
of all their operatives. Now, indeed, you couldn't escape the
Eye that Never slept, because it really had you.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Which splits up the game. And by February nineteen one, Cassidy, Sundance,
and his mysterious girlfriend, the Absolute Knock, get at a
place spend several weeks living the high life in the
modern metropolis of New York City. From there they leave
(31:53):
on a steamship for Argentina.
Speaker 6 (31:58):
It seemed like they had chance to start over, to
reinvent themselves.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
The old days are over.
Speaker 6 (32:09):
Butch and Sundance get out just in time.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Two years after Butch and Sundance leave for Argentina, Edwin
Porters The Great Train Robbery, one of the first motion pictures,
is captivating New York audiences in nineteen three.
Speaker 6 (32:27):
By nineteen oh three, the story of the Wild West,
the story of Butch and Sundance, has already become fodder
from mass entertainment. So famous is the Wild Bunch that
Buffalo Bill Cody in his Wild West show, which is
playing not only all across America, but to the Crown
the Heads of Europe, features one of their train robberies.
(32:51):
I mean, I think to the American public, Butch and
Sundance are gone.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
It's over.
Speaker 6 (32:56):
That's why they're making movies. It's a show. It's a
show now.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Winner of nineteen three Pinkerton informants in Pennsylvania intercept a
letter Sundance sins to his family.
Speaker 10 (33:09):
In South America. Butch Cassidy may have forgotten about the Pinkertons.
But the Pinkertons certainly had not forgotten about Butchcassidy. They
were still employing every tool and every method at their
disposal to bring him to justice. That included intercepting mail.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
I need to send a telegram to Argentina Putzcasidy has
been sided on the run from Urgentine authorities and Anita cash.
Butch and Sundance returned to what they know best. Along
with Eda Place. They take ten thousand from the National
bank in Central Argentina and twenty thousand from bank in
(33:46):
Rio guy Lagos. In nineteen seven, at a Place returns
to the United States for medical treatment, and Buts and
Sundance rob a mule train with a payroll for the
Alpoka mind in southern Bolivia. Within hours of the hest,
the telegraphic chires begin humming. Even in the wilds of
(34:07):
South America, the civilizing forces of westward expansion have caught
up with Butch and Sundance. Every town in the area
supplied with descriptions of what they call Bandito Hiaqui. Butch
makes a mistake of taking not only the gold but
also a big, silver.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Gray mule.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Some time later, Butch and Sundance right into the village
of San Vicenti, where a hotel owner recognizes the mule
and grows suspicious. While his wife prepares a mule for
Butch and Sundance, he rides to alert a nearby troop
of Bolivian cavalry.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
He led three people down to this home. One of
the soldiers went on to the patio drew his weapon.
Butch saw his silhouette through the window and pulled out
his sixth gun and shot the guy dead first person,
(35:13):
the only person that Butcher ever killed.
Speaker 6 (35:17):
Meanwhile, the word goes out and other residents of the town,
heavily armed, now come to surround the house.
Speaker 11 (35:25):
They're surrounded.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
They're not going anywhere.
Speaker 11 (35:27):
There's no way they're getting out of there.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
A shoot him const General Butch and Sundance that put
their winchesters in extra ammunition across the patio, and now
Sundance makes a dash for them. He miraculously gets to
the rifles and AMMO unscathed. Put On his return, Dash
is hit by several rounds and drops to the ground.
(35:53):
Butch runs out and drags him back to COVID. The
two continue fighting, but Sundance is fading fast and dies.
Butch has one round left. With that last bullet, he
shoots himself. Butch Cassidy, the one time Mormon boy named
(36:14):
Robert Leroy Parker, is dead at forty two years old.
That you are laid to rest in unmarked oblivion graves.
But there are some who believe these famous outlaws had
not yet met their end.
Speaker 6 (36:34):
Almost immediately stories began that they hadn't been killed in Bolivia.
We don't want the outlaws to die, We certainly don't
want them to die away.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Butch and Sundance died.
Speaker 6 (36:48):
As wild as they were, as bad as they were,
still represented something that Americans embrace that wild freedom and
when they're gone.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
A while West has gone.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks as
always to Roger McGrath, the author of Gunfighters, High Women,
and Vigilantes Violence on the Frontier. He's a US Marine,
former history professor at UCLA, and doctor. McGrath has appeared
on numerous History Channel documentaries. Were grateful to have him
(37:26):
as a regular contributor, a regular voice here in our
American Stories, and what a story he told here the
death of the West, at least to outlaws as the
legitimate types of businesses started to close in on the
wild bunch, the gangs and the criminals and outlaw mentality
(37:47):
that had governed much of the West before and in
the end these guys had no choice. Butch cassidy felt
like the Wild West had left him, so he was
looking for new frontiers shine his life of crime, going
to Argentina and ending up killing himself in Bolivia. The
Wild West Untamed. The story of Butch Cassidy is told
(38:11):
by Roger McGrath here on Our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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