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A Book of Mormons Richard S. Van Wagoner and Steven C. Walker Copyright 1982, Signature Books |
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Butch Cassidy (1866-1937)
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Butch Cassidy was "King of the Wild Bunch." Photograph of Cassidy at age 27, taken as he entered the Wyoming Penitentiary, July 15, 1894, courtesy E. P. Samborn Collection. |
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Mormon Background 1866. April 13: Born Robert LeRoy Parker in Beaver, Utah, the eldest of thirteen children. He was baptized at the age of eight. Temple work was performed in his behalf by his brother-in-law in 1945.
1884. When the family moved to Circleville, Utah, near Bryce Canyon, young Parker was influenced by a local outlaw, Mike Cassidy. After his initial horse-stealing venture, Parker escaped to Telluride, Colorado.
When he was not robbing banks or trains, Parker worked as an ore packer in the Telluride mines, as a ranch hand, cowboy, and even as a butcher in Otto Schnauber's Meat Market in Rock Springs, Wyoming. This latter job, coupled with his outlaw mentor Mike Cassidy's last name, is apparently the source of his best-known alias—"Butch Cassidy." An excellent handler of horses, he won many horse-races in Telluride and later in Brown's Park on the Utah-Colorado border. As a ranch hand with the Eugene Amaretti outfit in Wind River, Wyoming, he was described as a "crack shot, and the best there was with a rope. … He could ride around a tree full speed and empty a six-gun into the tree, putting every shot within a three-inch circle."
1892. July 15: Arrested with Al Hainer on a horse-theft complaint. The arresting officer, Bob Calverly, reported: "I told him I had a warrant for him and he said: 'Well get to shooting,' and with that we pulled our guns. I put the barrel of my revolver almost to his stomach, but it missed three times, but owing to the fact that there was another man between us, he failed to hit me. The fourth time I snapped the gun it went off and the bullet hit him in the upper part of the forehead and felled him. I then had him and he made no further resistance." Cassidy was acquitted. 1893. While still in custody, Cassidy was tried and convicted on a second charge of horse-stealing and on July 15, 1894, was sentenced to two years of hard larbor in the Wyoming penitentiary—the only jail sentence he ever served. Prison description: "Height, 5'9"; Complexion, Light; Hair, Dark Flaxen; Eyes, Blue; Wife, No; Parents, Not Known; Children, No; Religion, None; Habits of Life, Intemperate; Education, Com. School; Relations Address, Not Known; Weight 165#; Marks, Scars; Features regular, small deep set eyes, 2 cut scars on back of head, small red scar under left eye, red mark on left side of back, small mole on calf of left leg, good build."
1896. Wyoming Governor W.A. Richards pardoned Cassidy on the promise that he would stop robbing Wyoming banks and rustling Wyoming cattle. As a "gentleman outlaw," Cassidy was a man of his word. He turned to robbing Wyoming trains and non-Wyoming banks.
In the five years after his pardon, Cassidy masterminded bank and train robberies in Montpelier, Idaho; Castle Gate, Utah; Folsom, New Mexico; Winnemucca, Nevada; and Wagner, Montana—robberies that netted over $270,000. His "Wild Bunch," perhaps the largest group of outlaws in the West, operated out of the Brown's Hole and Robbers Roost areas of Colorado and Utah. After the Winnemucca job, members of the gang escaped to Fort Worth, Texas, where they posed for a formal photograph which they sent to the Winnemucca Bank, "thanking them for their contribution." Butch told his family, "There were a lot of good friends, but Elzy Lay was the best, always dependable and level-headed. Sundance and I got along fine, but he liked his liquor too much and was too quick on the trigger." When his father asked if he had ever killed a man, Butch claimed, "No, thank God. But some of my boys had itchy trigger fingers. I tried to control 'em. I feel real bad about some posse men who got shot." |
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The Wild Bunch at Ft. Worth, Texas. Sitting, L-R: Harry Longbaugh, Ben Kilpatrick, Butch Cassidy, Standing, L-R: Bill Carver, Harvey Logan. Photograph by John Schwartz, winter 1900-01, courtesy Union Pacific Railroad.
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South American Rancher-Robber 1902. After a five-year crime spree, Cassidy, Harry Longbaugh (the Sundance Kid), and the Kid's girlfriend, Etta Place (described in Pinkerton Detective files as "a refined type"), embarked for Argentina. They bought "four square leagues" of land in Cholilo, Chubert Province, and established a large ranch with thirteen hundred head of sheep, five hundred head of cattle, and thirty-five horses. 1905. The three robbed the Bank of Loudres and Tarapaco at Rio Gallegos, Argentina, of 20,000 pesos and an undetermined amount of gold. They also successfully robbed the bank of Via Mercedes in San Luis in 1906. 1909. Mistakenly reported killed in a gun battle with Bolivian police and soldiers in San Vicente. The false reports were based on Arthur Chapman's poem, "Out Where the West Begins," which colorfully recounts that Cassidy and Sundance had robbed the payroll of the Aramayo Mines near Quechisla, Bolivia. Surrounded by police and Bolivian cavalry, Chapman claimed, the two decided to shoot their way out rather than be captured. Sundance was seriously wounded. After dragging him to cover, the "King of the Wild Bunch" fired a bullet into the Kid's head and a second into his own. According to this account, the outlaws killed twenty Bolivians and wounded forty more.
1908. After a year of working in the Concordia Tin Mines near Tres Cruces, Bolivia, Cassidy returned to the U.S. and settled in Michigan. As "William Thadeus Phillips," he married Gertrude Livesay in Morenci, Michigan. In 1919 they adopted a son, William Richard Phillips. 1912. Cassidy unsuccessfully hunted for gold in Alaska and eventually established the Phillips Manufacturing Company in Spokane, Washington. He developed an adding machine and invented parts for farm equipment, an automatic garage-door opener, and an automobile gas mileage indicator.
1930. He lost his business in the Depression and tried in vain to locate buried caches of money hidden during his outlaw days. According to his younger sister, Lula Betenson, Cassidy visited his father in Circleville, Utah, in 1925 and told him that he had tried to leave his life of crime on several early occasions, but "when a man gets down, they won't let him up. He never quits paying his price." 1934. Butch wrote The Bandit Invincible, the Story of Butch Cassidy. but failed to find a publisher for his life's story. This unpublished manuscript, along with an inscribed ring, Cassidy's marked guns, and other compelling evidence, welds the link between Butch Cassidy and William Phillips in Larry Pointer's book In Search of Butch Cassidy.
1937. July 20: Died of rectal cancer in Spokane at the age of seventy-one. He was cremated and his ashes scattered over the Little Spokane River.
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