Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid: Seven Facts You Didn’t Know About The Outlaws

With the 50th annivesary of the famous movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on the horizon, here are a few facts that the movie got right, and the ones they got wrong.

Used with permission by The Denver Library.

Two outlaws from the old west would have gone off into obscurity if it hadn’t been for the October 1969 release of the Oscar winning movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Over the past fifty years, many researchers have spent their lives trying to learn the truth about these two interesting characters and Sundance’s wife, Etta Place. Surprisingly, with very little known about the outlaws when the movie was made, they got many facts right. But it may interest you to learn what was true and what wasn’t about these wily outlaws. Here are seven things you probably didn’t know about Butch, Sundance, and Etta.

Butch Cassidy, whose real name was Robert LeRoy Parker, was raised as a Mormon.

That’s right. Good ole’ Butch grew up in a devout Mormon household. Butch’s grandfather, also named Robert, his father, Maximilian, and their family were part of the group who walked across country with handcarts from the east to the Salt Lake Valley in 1856. They eventually settled in Circleville, Utah. After falling in with some shady deals, Butch left home in 1884 at the age of eighteen to seek his fortune.

The Sundance Kid grew up in Pennsylvania.

In the movie, the Sundance Kid, whose real name is Harry A. Longabaugh, told Butch he was from out east. That was certainly true. Harry grew up in a big family around Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. His family wasn’t well-to-do, and like many children in those days, thirteen-year-old Harry was farmed out to another family to work for room and board. At age fourteen, Harry was invited to move out west with his cousin’s family, and that was how he ended up in Colorado.

The Sundance Kid didn’t give himself that name.

In 1887, when Harry was just a young man, he was arrested for stealing a horse, saddle, and revolver. He was sentenced to eighteen months in prison but because he was under twenty-one years of age, he served his time in the jail in Sundance, Wyoming. It was the Sundance Gazette that named him “Kid Longabaugh” which eventually turned into the Sundance Kid.

Sundance wasn’t really Butch’s closest friend.

Hard to believe since their names are tied together for all eternity, but Sundance wasn’t Butch’s closest friend. After leaving home in 1884, Butch met William Ellsworth Lay—Elzy Lay—in the Brown’s Park area at the Bassett Ranch. The two hit it off as friends and through the years got into a heap of trouble together. In the summer of 1899, while Butch was working at the W S Ranch near Alma, New Mexico, Elzy went off with another gang to pull a train robbery. When the gang was surrounded by a posse, Elzy was shot twice but still escaped. Later, he was captured and charged with the murder of a sheriff and the robbery. He was sentenced to life in prison in October 1899 but was let out in December 1905 for good behavior. During that time, Butch and Sundance had forged a friendship that would go down in history.

Who was Etta Place?

Used with permission by The Denver Library.

Etta Place showed up in Sundance’s life the winter of 1896-97 when she stayed with him and Butch in Robbers Roost. Later, she was with the two outlaws as they played tourist in New York City in early 1901 and followed them to South America where the three built a ranch together in Argentina. No one knows her real name or her history. The Pinkertons thought she may have worked in a house of ill-repute in San Antonio, Texas, but in their notes admitted to not knowing if that was true. They did think she had family in Texas. Sometime around 1908, Etta disappeared. No one knows what became of her.

The outlaws did try to go straight in South America.

In the movie it shows the trio robbing banks and payrolls immediately upon their arrival in South America. That wasn’t true. The reason Butch, Sundance, and Etta traveled to South America was to start a ranch and go straight. Upon arriving in Buenos Aires in March 1901, they deposited money in the bank rather than stealing it. By fall of that year, they were homesteading land in the Cholila Valley in Argentina. There they stayed until 1905 when the Pinkertons began breathing down their necks. If the threesome had never been bothered by lawmen again, they probably would have remained on their ranch for the rest of their lives.

Did Butch and Sundance die in San Vincente, Bolivia?

The 1969 movie shows Butch and Sundance dying after a shootout with the Bolivian Army. Not only was that an exaggeration, but it probably wasn’t even the famous outlaws who died that day. After being chased away from making their livelihood on their ranch, Butch and Sundance did work for the Concordia Tin Mines near La Paz and more than likely returned to crime. But at that time, many North American outlaws had made their way south to pursue the heavy payrolls and busy banks. Two American outlaws were shot that day in November 1908 but there has never been any proof that they were Butch and Sundance. Butch’s sister, Lula Parker Betenson, claimed that Butch had visited the family in Circleville in 1925. Maybe Butch and Sundance returned to the states and lived out long, happy lives. No one will ever know.

About the Author:

Deanna Lynn Sletten writes women’s fiction and romance novels. Her latest novel, MISS ETTA, is a historical fiction novel about Etta Place and her outlaw companions, Butch and Sundance.