Butch Cassidy

Robert Leroy Parker is probably not a name most people know. However, Parker’s pseudonym, Butch Cassidy, is synonymous as one of the most notorious bank robbers in America’s history. Born in 1866, Parker would later team up with Harry Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid, and proceed to rob banks and trains with a group of outlaws known throughout the West as the Wild Bunch.

Butch Cassidy was the oldest of thirteen children. He was raised in Utah, and his family struggled financially. He left home as a teenager, hoping to find a way out of the poverty he had known as a child. He eventually found work on a ranch. He then met Mike Cassidy, a horse and cattle thief. For whatever reason, Robert Leroy Parker admired the older Cassidy and changed his name to Butch Cassidy.

Cassidy’s first major robbery occurred in 1889, when he and his gang stole over twenty thousand dollars from a bank in Colorado. Eventually he was caught and spent two years in jail. Sadly, after his release, he was not reformed, and he continued his life as a criminal. With his gang known as the Wild Bunch, he would embark on a successful string of train and bank robberies.

The Union Pacific Railroad, a frequent target of the gang, was desperate to have the band of outlaws stopped. They hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to track down and stop Butch Cassidy and his group of thieves. They eventually drove the robbers out of the United States and into South America. What happened to Butch Cassidy from there, no one actually knows. Some argue he changed his name yet again and went on to live a long life in South America. Others claim he died in a shootout, and still others say he came back to the United States to live. Although no one knows for sure what became of Butch Cassidy, he is remembered as one of the legendary outlaws of the West.