Posted on 08/15/2011 6:09:19 AM PDT by wagglebee
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Did Butch Cassidy, the notorious Old West outlaw who most historians believe perished in a 1908 shootout in Bolivia, actually survive that battle and live to old age, peacefully and anonymously, in Washington state? And did he pen an autobiography detailing his exploits while cleverly casting the book as biography under another name?
A rare books collector says he has obtained a manuscript with new evidence that may give credence to that theory. The 200-page manuscript, "Bandit Invincible: The Story of Butch Cassidy," which dates to 1934, is twice as long as a previously known but unpublished novella of the same title by William T. Phillips, a machinist who died in Spokane in 1937.
Utah book collector Brent Ashworth and Montana author Larry Pointer say the text contains the best evidence yet — with details only Cassidy could have known — that "Bandit Invincible" was not biography but autobiography, and that Phillips himself was the legendary outlaw.
Others aren't convinced.
"Total horse pucky," said Cassidy historian Dan Buck. "It doesn't bear a great deal of relationship to Butch Cassidy's real life, or Butch Cassidy's life as we know it."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I just saw a documentary on exactly this subject last week. Interesting stuff but the claims of the guy who said he was Cassidy were pretty much debunked. His sister’s account that he survived seemed a bit more credible.
I watched the Redford-Newman 1969 movie a few months ago via Netflix. It was a good movie. I had seen it years earlier on TV.
If not true, it should be... I'm not one to romanticize criminals, but with Butch Cassidy I'll make an exception...
Thanks that song will be stuck in my head all day unless someone mentions Its a small world after all
The Parker family (he was born Robert LeRoy Parker) maintained that he returned from Bolivia and they and others saw him on occasion. A sister wrote a book that included some details. There are further by people who had been acquainted with him. But beyond this hearsay, there’s little or no evidence to support the claim. I’ve often wondered myself if there is some truth behind it.
"We stopped one night at a ranch where the people were know to me. Originally, I had come to the place riding the grub-line with a cowboy who used to work on the ranch. We had stayed, told stories, and generally enjoyed ourselves, so I though we would stop by and say hello. My father who was a veterinarian, took time out to fix the teeth on a couple of horses at the ranch, and in the evening, as we sat on the porch, I happened to comment that an uncle of mine by marriage had known Butch Cassidy.
The rancher commented that Butch had been through no long before, driving a Dodge, and had swapped a couple of tires for a saddle.
Butch was supposed to have been killed in South America but a lot of people in Utah and Wyoming knew better."
Louis L'Amour continued on about how Butch was a very nice person and well liked and had never killed anyone in a holdup.
That's what Louis L'Amour had to say about it.
Yeah, I think the only reason for that nutty bicycle scene was they needed an excuse to play Raindrops, which won the oscar that year for best song.
Romanticizing them and not wanting to let them die.
How many sightings of Jesse James,
Elvis?
DB Cooper?
Many prefer the myths that they lived beyond, rather than their demises.
I was amused recently when I bought and saw “Cat Ballou”. Not for Jane (though she is okay here) but because it has them hiding out in ‘Hole-in-the-Wall’ which is anchored by an aging, obviously retired, and totally cynical Butch Cassidy. Guess they figured he survived, too, but no one ever remembers that now.
He is dead!
Yeah, there has been a lot of that over the years. Billy the Kid as well. I think the thing that makes this particular story interesting is most of the information comes from people who knew him before he left for Bolivia. Not just family or co-horts, but acquaintances and professional people he’d known.
“Who ARE those guys?”
lol....Good question.
lol....Good question.
The right ears don’t match.
There’s always some nut who claims he’s someone famous. My great-great grandmother ran a boarding house and said one of her boarders decided he was dying and confessed to her he was John Wilkes Booth. He gave her a pistol wrapped in a newspaper that had headines of the assasination and she buried it under the house. He recovered and soon moved away. Then there was some guy claiming to be Jesse James so my great-grandfather, a James relative, went to see what that was all about. He came back saying the guy knew a lot about Jesse and the family but it wasn’t him. Then there’s Brushy Bill Roberts who claimed he was Billy the Kid.
Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill you!
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