Harry Alonzo Longabaugh (1867 – November 7, 1908), better known as the Sundance Kid, was an outlaw and member of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch in the American Old West. Longabaugh likely met Butch Cassidy (real name Robert Leroy Parker) after Parker was released from prison around 1896. Together with the other members of "The Wild Bunch" gang, they performed the longest string of successful train and bank robberies in American history.

After pursuing a career in crime for several years in the United States, the pressures of being pursued, notably by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, forced Longabaugh, his girlfriend Etta Place, and Cassidy to abandon the United States. The trio fled first to Argentina and then to Bolivia, where Parker and Longabaugh were probably killed in a shootout in November 1908.

Early life and career Longabaugh was born in Mont Clare, Pennsylvania in 1867, the son of Pennsylvania natives Josiah and Annie G. (née Place) Longabaugh. He was the youngest of five children (his older siblings were Ellwood, Samanna, Emma and Harvey). Longabaugh was of mostly English and German ancestry and was also part Welsh. At age 15, Longabaugh traveled westward on a covered wagon with his cousin George. In 1887, Longabaugh stole a gun, horse and saddle from a ranch in Sundance, Wyoming. While attempting to flee, he was captured by authorities and was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in jail by Judge William L. Maginnis. During this jail time, he adopted the nickname of the Sundance Kid. After his release, he went back to working as a ranch hand, and in 1891, as a 25-year-old, he worked at the Bar U Ranch in what is today Alberta, Canada, which was one of the largest commercial ranches of the time. Longabaugh was suspected in 1892 in a train robbery, then again in 1897 in a bank robbery along with five other men. He became associated with a group known as the "Wild Bunch," which included his famous partner Robert Leroy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy. Although Longabaugh was reportedly fast with a gun and was often referred to as a "gunfighter," he is not known to have killed anyone prior to a later shootout in Bolivia, where he and Parker were alleged to have been killed. He became better known than another outlaw member of the gang dubbed "Kid", Kid Curry (real name Harvey Logan), who killed numerous men while with the gang. The "Sundance Kid" was possibly mistaken for "Kid Curry"; many articles referred to "the Kid." Longabaugh did participate in a shootout with lawmen who trailed a gang led by George Curry to the Hole-in-the-Wall hideout in Wyoming and was thought to have wounded two lawmen in that shootout. With that exception, though, his verified involvement in shootouts is unknown. Longabaugh and Logan used a log cabin at what is now Old Trail Town in Cody, Wyoming

Sundance Kid and Etta Place before they headed to South America

Historically, the gang was for a time best known for their relatively low use of violence during the course of their robberies, relying heavily on intimidation and negotiation; nevertheless, if captured, they would have faced hanging. However, that portrayal of the gang is less than accurate and mostly a result of Hollywood portrayals depicting them as usually "nonviolent." In reality, several people were killed by members of the gang, including five law enforcement officers killed by Logan alone. "Wanted dead or alive" posters were posted throughout the country, with as much as a $30,000 reward for information leading to their capture or deaths.

They began hiding out at Hole-in-the-Wall, located near Kaycee, Wyoming. From there they could strike and retreat, with little fear of capture, since it was situated on high ground with a view in all directions of the surrounding territory. Pinkerton detectives led by Charlie Siringo, however, hounded the gang for a few years.

Parker and Longabaugh, evidently wanting to allow things to calm down a bit and looking for fresh robbing grounds, left the United States on February 20, 1901. Longabaugh sailed with his "wife" Etta Place and Parker aboard the British ship Herminius for Buenos Aires in Argentina.

Death

The facts concerning Longabaugh's death are not known for certain. On November 3, 1908, near San Vicente in southern Bolivia, a courier for the Aramayo Franke y Cia Silver Mine was conveying his company's payroll, worth about 15,000 Bolivian pesos, by mule, when he was attacked and robbed by two masked American bandits who were believed to be Longabaugh and Parker. The bandits then proceeded to the small mining town of San Vicente, where they lodged in a small boarding house owned by a local miner named Bonifacio Casasola.

When Casasola became suspicious of his two foreign lodgers (a mule they had in their possession was from the Aramayo Mine, and bore the mining company's brand), Casasola left his house and informed a nearby telegraph officer, who notified a small Bolivian Army cavalry unit (the Abaroa Regiment) stationed nearby. The unit dispatched three soldiers, under the command of Captain Justo Concha, to San Vicente, where they notified the local authorities. On the evening of 6 November, the lodging house was surrounded by a small group consisting of the local mayor and a number of his officials, along with the three soldiers from the Abaroa Regiment.

When the three soldiers approached the house where the two bandits were staying, the bandits opened fire, killing one of the soldiers and wounding another. A gunfight then ensued. Around 2 a.m., during a lull in the firing, the police and soldiers heard a man screaming from inside the house. Soon, a single shot was heard from inside the house, after which the screaming stopped. Minutes later, another shot was heard.

The standoff continued, as locals kept the place surrounded until the next morning when, cautiously entering, they found two dead bodies, both with numerous bullet wounds to the arms and legs. One of the men had a bullet wound in the forehead and the other had a bullet hole in the temple. The local police report speculated, judging from the positions of the bodies, one bandit had probably shot his fatally wounded partner-in-crime to put him out of his misery, just before killing himself with his final bullet.

In the following investigation by the Tupiza police, the bandits were identified as the men who robbed the Aramayo payroll transport, but the Bolivian authorities did not know their real names, nor could they positively identify them. The bodies were buried at the small San Vicente cemetery, where they were buried close to the grave of a German miner named Gustav Zimmer. Although attempts have been made to find their unmarked graves, notably by the American forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow and his researchers in 1991, no remains with DNA matching the living relatives of Parker and Longabaugh have been discovered.

This uncertainty has led to many claims that one or both survived and eventually returned to the United States. One of these claims was that Longabaugh lived under the name of William Henry Long in the small town of Duchesne, Utah. Long died in 1936 and was buried in the town cemetery. His remains were exhumed in December 2008, and subjected to DNA testing. The results, though inconclusive, did not support the claim that he was Longabaugh.

In 1909, a woman asked Frank Aller (US Vice-Consul in Chile) for assistance in obtaining a death certificate for Longabaugh. No such certificate was issued and the woman's identity is unknown, but she was described as attractive, leading to speculation that she was Longabaugh's girlfriend Etta Place.

Aliases

    The Sundance Kid
    Frank Smith
    H.A. Brown
    Harry A. Place (his mother's maiden name was Annie Place)
    Harry Long
 

Robert Leroy Parker (April 13, 1866 – November 7, 1908), better known as Butch Cassidy, was a notorious American train robber, bank robber, and leader of the Wild Bunch gang in the American Old West. After pursuing a career in crime for several years in the United States, the pressures of being pursued, notably by the Pinkerton detective agency, forced him to flee with an accomplice, Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, known as the Sundance Kid, and Longabaugh's girlfriend, Etta Place. The trio fled first to Argentina and then to Bolivia, where Parker and Longabaugh were probably killed in a shootout in November 1908. Ancestry and early life Robert Leroy Parker was born on April 13, 1866, in Beaver, Utah, to Maximillian Parker and Ann Campbell Gillies, English immigrants who came to the Utah Territory in the late 1850s. Ann Gillies, the mother of Butch Cassidy, was born and lived on Tyneside, in the north east of England, before moving to America with her parents in the 1850s, where she married Butch's father, Maximilian Parker, in Utah. Maximillian Parker's parents, Robert and Ann (Hartley) Parker had lived in Victoria Road in Preston, Lancashire, England. Robert Parker's father Thomas Parker had entered into a business relationship with a cousin named John Dickens, father of the future novelist Charles Dickens. The enterprise failed, and both Dickens and Parker were committed to the Marshalsea prison in Southwark. Robert Parker grew up homeless and starving on the streets of London and Manchester, and according to family history, learned to beg and steal to support his mother. Robert Parker joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints while working as a master weaver in the woolen mills in the city of Manchester. In 1855 he took his wife and children to the United States, eventually joining a handcart company and arriving in Utah.

Fort Worth, Texas 1900

Life as a robber

1880–1887 — first incidents, becoming a robber

Butch Cassidy's first offense was minor. Around 1880, he journeyed to a clothier's shop in another town only to find the shop closed. He entered the shop and took a pair of jeans and some pie, leaving an IOU promising to pay on his next visit. However, the clothier pressed charges. He was acquitted at a jury trial.

He continued to work on ranches until 1884, when he moved to Telluride, Colorado, ostensibly to seek work, but perhaps to deliver stolen horses to buyers. He led a cowboy's life in Wyoming and Montana before returning to Telluride in 1887. There, he met Matt Warner, the owner of a race horse. The men raced the horse at various events, dividing the winnings between them.

1889–1895 — Early robberies, going to prison

On June 24, 1889, Cassidy, Warner and two of the McCarty Brothers robbed the San Miguel Valley Bank in Telluride in which they stole approximately $21,000, after which they fled to the Robbers Roost, a remote hideout in southeastern Utah. Cassidy purchased a ranch in 1890 near Dubois, Wyoming. This location is across the state from the notorious Hole-in-the-Wall, a natural geological formation which afforded outlaws much welcomed protection and cover, so it is possible that Cassidy's ranching, at which he was never economically successful, was in fact a façade for clandestine activities, perhaps with Hole-in-the-Wall outlaws. In early 1894, Cassidy became involved romantically with Old West outlaw and rancher Ann Bassett. Bassett's father, rancher Herb Bassett, did business with Cassidy, supplying him with fresh horses and beef. That same year, Cassidy was arrested at Lander, Wyoming, for stealing horses and possibly

The white building at right housed the San Miguel Valley Bank, site of Cassidy's first bank robbery in 1889.

1896–1897 — Leaving prison and forming the Wild Bunch

Cassidy's mugshot from the Wyoming  Territorial Prison in 1894.

Upon his release he associated himself with a circle of criminals, most notably his closest friend Elzy Lay, Harvey "Kid Curry" Logan, Ben Kilpatrick, Harry Tracy, Will "News" Carver, Laura Bullion, and George Curry, who, together with others, formed a gang known as the Wild Bunch, and with this his criminal activity increased considerably. Although there is some controversy as to how violent the Wild Bunch may or may not have been, there is no definitive historical record of any member of The Wild Bunch being charged with murder. On August 13, 1896, Cassidy, Lay, Harvey Logan and Bob Meeks robbed the bank at Montpelier, Idaho, escaping with approximately $7,000. Shortly thereafter he recruited Harry Longabaugh, alias "The Sundance Kid", a native of Pennsylvania, into the Wild Bunch. In early 1897, Cassidy was joined at Robbers Roost by his off and on girlfriend Ann Bassett, Elzy Lay, and Lay's girlfriend Maude Davis. The four hid out there until early April, when Lay and Cassidy sent the women home so that they could plan their next robbery. On April 21, 1897, in the mining town of Castle Gate, Utah, Cassidy and Lay ambushed a small group of men carrying the payroll of the Pleasant Valley Coal Company from the railroad station to their office, stealing a sack containing $7,000 in gold, with which they again fled to the Robbers Roost. On June 2, 1899, the gang robbed a Union Pacific Overland Flyer near Wilcox, Wyoming, a robberythat

During one shootout with lawmen following that robbery, both Kid Curry and George Curry shot and killed Sheriff Joe Hazen. Noted killer for hire and contract employee of the Pinkerton Agency Tom Horn obtained information from explosives expert Bill Speck that revealed that they had shot Hazen, which Horn passed on to Pinkerton detective Charlie Siringo. The gang escaped into the Hole-In-The-Wall. Siringo was assigned the task of capturing the outlaw gang. He became friends with Elfie Landusky, who was by then going by the last name Curry alleging that Lonny Curry, Kid Curry's brother, had gotten her pregnant. Through her, Siringo intended to locate the gang.

On July 11, 1899, Lay and others were involved in a Colorado and Southern Railroad train robbery near Folsom, New Mexico, which Cassidy may have planned and may have been directly involved in, which led to a shootout with local law enforcers in which Lay, arguably Cassidy's best friend and closest confidante, killed Sheriff Edward Farr and posseman Henry Love, leading to his imprisonment for life in the New Mexico State Penitentiary.

The Wild Bunch would usually split up following a robbery, heading in different directions, and later reunite at a set location, such as the Hole-in-the-Wall hideout, "Robbers Roost", or Madame Fannie Porter's brothel, in San Antonio, Texas. The Hole-in-the-Wall hideout has been assembled at Old Trail Town in Cody, Wyoming. It was built in 1883 by Alexander Ghent.

Failed attempt at amnesty

Perhaps as a consequence of the loss of Lay, Cassidy appears to have approached Governor Heber Wells of Utah, which had joined the Union in 1896, to negotiate an amnesty. Wells appears to have declined, advising Cassidy to instead approach the Union Pacific Railroad to persuade them to drop their criminal complaints against him. This meeting never took place, however, possibly because of bad weather. The Union Pacific Railroad, under chairman E. H. Harriman, subsequently attempted to meet with Cassidy, through his old ally Matthew Warner, who had been released from prison. On August 29, 1900, however, Cassidy, Longabaugh and others robbed Union Pacific train No. 3 near Tipton, Wyoming, violating Cassidy's earlier promise to the governor of Wyoming not to offend again in that state, and effectively ending the prospects for amnesty.

Meanwhile, on February 28, 1900, lawmen attempted to arrest Kid Curry's brother, Lonny Curry, at his aunt's home. Lonny was killed in the shootout that followed, and his cousin Bob Lee was arrested for rustling and sent to prison in Wyoming. On March 28, Kid Curry and Bill Carver were pursued by a posse out of St. Johns, Apache County, Arizona, after being identified as passing notes possibly from the Wilcox, Wyoming, robbery. The posse caught up with them and engaged them in a shootout, during which Deputy Andrew Gibbons and Deputy Frank LeSueur were killed. Carver and Curry escaped. On April 17, George Curry was killed in a shootout with Grand County, Utah, Sheriff John Tyler and Deputy Sam Jenkins. On May 26, Kid Curry rode into Moab, Utah, and killed both Tyler and Jenkins in a brazen shootout, in retaliation for their killing of George Curry, and for the death of his brother Lonny.

Cassidy, Longabaugh, and Bill Carver traveled to Winnemucca, Nevada, where on September 19, 1900, they robbed the First National Bank of Winnemucca, Nevada of $32,640. In December, Cassidy posed in Fort Worth, Texas for the now-famous Fort Worth Five Photograph, which depicts Parker, Longabaugh, Harvey Logan (alias Kid Curry), Ben Kilpatrick and William Carver. The Pinkerton Detective Agency obtained a copy of the photograph and began to use it for its latest wanted posters. On July 3, 1901, Kid Curry and a group of men he had gathered robbed the Great Northern train near Wagner, Montana. This time, they took over $60,000 in cash. Again the gang split up, and gang member Will Carver was killed by one pursuing posse led by Sheriff Elijah Briant. On December 12, 1901, gang member Ben Kilpatrick was captured in Knoxville, Tennessee, along with Laura Bullion. On December 13, during a shootout with lawmen, Kid Curry killed Knoxville policemen William Dinwiddle and Robert Saylor, and escaped. Curry, despite being pursued by Pinkerton agents and other law enforcement officials, returned to Montana, where he shot and killed rancher James Winters, responsible for the killing of his brother Johnny years before.

December 1900 Cassidy is seated on the far right

Cassidy and Longabaugh then fled east to New York City, and on February 20, 1901, with Ethel "Etta" Place, Longabaugh's female companion, they departed to Buenos Aires, Argentina, aboard the British steamer Herminius, Cassidy posing as James Ryan, Place's fictional brother. There he settled with Longabaugh and Place in a four-room log cabin on a 15,000-acre (61 km2) ranch that they purchased on the east bank of the Rio Blanco near Cholila, Chubut province in west-central Argentina, near the Andes.
1905 and his last years — his biggest robbery, evading the law

On February 14, 1905, two English-speaking bandits, who may have been Cassidy and Longabaugh, held up the Banco de Tarapacá y Argentino in Río Gallegos, 700 miles (1,100 km) south of Cholila, near the Strait of Magellan. Escaping with a sum that would be worth at least US $100,000 today, the pair vanished north across the bleak Patagonian steppes.

On May 1, the trio sold the Cholila ranch because the law was beginning to catch up with them. The Pinkerton Agency had known their location for some time, but the rainy season had prevented their assigned agent, Frank Dimaio, from traveling there and making an arrest. Governor Julio Lezana had then issued an arrest warrant, but before it could be executed, Sheriff Edward Humphreys, a Welsh Argentine who was friendly with Cassidy and enamored of Etta Place, tipped them off.

The trio fled north to San Carlos de Bariloche where they embarked on the steamer Condor across Nahuel Huapí Lake and into Chile. However by the end of that year they were again back in Argentina; on December 19, Cassidy, Longabaugh, Place and an unknown male (possibly Harvey Logan) took part in the robbery of the Banco de la Nación branch in Villa Mercedes, 400 miles (640 km) west of Buenos Aires, taking 12,000 pesos. Pursued by armed lawmen, they crossed the Pampas and the Andes and again reached the safety of Chile.

On June 30, 1906, Etta Place decided that she had had enough of life on the run and was escorted back to San Francisco by Longabaugh. Cassidy, under the alias James "Santiago" Maxwell, obtained work at the Concordia Tin Mine in the Santa Vera Cruz range of the central Bolivian Andes, where he was joined by Longabaugh upon his return. Ironically, their main duties included guarding the company payroll. Still wanting to settle down as a respectable rancher, Cassidy, late in 1907, made an excursion with Longabaugh to Santa Cruz, a frontier town in Bolivia's eastern savannah.

Death

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The facts surrounding Butch Cassidy's death are uncertain. On November 3, 1908, near San Vicente in southern Bolivia, a courier for the Aramayo Franke and Cia Silver Mine was conveying his company's payroll, worth about 15,000 Bolivian pesos, by mule when he was attacked and robbed by two masked American bandits who were believed to be Cassidy and Longabaugh. The bandits then proceeded to the small mining town of San Vicente where they lodged in a small boarding house owned by a local resident miner named Bonifacio Casasola. When Casasola became suspicious of his two foreign lodgers, as well as a mule they had in their possession which was from the Aramayo Mine, identifiable from the mine company logo on the mule's left flank, Casasola left his house and notified a nearby telegraph officer who notified a small Bolivian Army cavalry unit stationed nearby, which was the Abaroa Regiment. The unit dispatched three soldiers, under the command of Captain Justo Concha, to San Vicente where they notified the local authorities. On the evening of November 6, the lodging house was surrounded by three soldiers, the police chief, the local mayor and some of his officials, who intended to arrest the Aramayo robbers.

When the three soldiers approached the house the bandits opened fire, killing one of the soldiers and wounding another. A gunfight then ensued. At around 2 a.m., during a lull in the firing, the police and soldiers heard a man screaming from inside the house. Soon, a single shot was heard from inside the house, whereupon the screaming stopped. Minutes later, another shot was heard.

The standoff continued as locals kept the place surrounded until the next morning when, cautiously entering, they found two dead bodies, both with numerous bullet wounds to the arms and legs. One of the men had a bullet wound in the forehead and the other had a bullet hole in the temple. The local police report speculated that, judging from the positions of the bodies, one bandit had probably shot his fatally wounded partner-in-crime to put him out of his misery, just before killing himself with his final bullet.

In the following investigation by the Tupiza police, the bandits were identified as the men who robbed the Aramayo payroll transport, but the Bolivian authorities didn't know their real names, nor could they positively identify them. The bodies were buried at the small San Vicente cemetery, where they were buried close to the grave of a German miner named Gustav Zimmer. Although attempts have been made to find their unmarked graves, notably by the American forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow and his researchers in 1991, no remains with DNA matching the living relatives of Cassidy and Longabaugh have yet been discovered.

Claims of post-1908 survival

However, there were claims, such as by Cassidy's sister Lula Parker Betenson, that he returned alive to the United States and lived in anonymity for years. In her biography Butch Cassidy, My Brother, Betenson cites several instances of people familiar with Cassidy who encountered him long after 1908, and she relates a detailed impromptu "family reunion" of Butch, their brother Mark, their father Maxi, and Lula, in 1925. In 1974 or 1975, Red Fenwick, a columnist at The Denver Post, told writer Ivan Goldman, then a reporter at the Post, that he was acquainted with Cassidy's physician. Fenwick said she was a person of absolute integrity. She told Fenwick that she had continued to treat Cassidy for many years after he supposedly was killed in Bolivia.

In his Annals of the Former World, John McPhee repeats a story told to geologist David Love in the 1930s by Love's family doctor, Francis Smith, M.D., when Love was a doctoral student. Smith stated that he had just seen Cassidy who told him that his face had been altered by a surgeon in Paris, and that he showed Smith a repaired bullet wound that Smith recognized as work he had previously done on Cassidy.

In an interview with Josie Bassett, sister to Ann Bassett, in 1960, she claims that Cassidy came to visit her in the 1920s "after returning from South America" and that "Butch died in Johnnie, Nevada, about 15 years ago." Another interview with locals of Cassidy's hometown of Circleville, Utah also finds claims of Cassidy working in Nevada until his death.

Western historian Charles Kelly closed the chapter "Is Butch Cassidy Dead?" in his 1938 book, Outlaw Trail, by observing that if Cassidy "is still alive, as these rumors claim, it seems exceedingly strange that he has not returned to Circleville, Utah, to visit his old father, Maximillian Parker, who died on July 28, 1938, at the age of 94 years." Kelly is thought to have interviewed Parker's father, but no known transcript of such an interview exists.
 

Etta Place (born circa 1878, date of death unknown) was a companion of the American outlaws Butch Cassidy (real name Robert LeRoy Parker) and the Sundance Kid (Harry Alonzo Longabaugh), both members of the outlaw gang known as the Wild Bunch. Principally the companion of Longabaugh, little is known about her; both her origin and her fate remain shrouded in mystery. Despite Longabaugh and Parker's fame, by the mid-20th century, it was the mysterious vanishing of Place that sparked the most interest. The Pinkerton Detective Agency described her in 1906 as having, "classic good looks, 27 or 28 years old, 5'4" to 5'5" in height, weighing between 110 lb and 115 lb, with a medium build and brown hair." Life with the Sundance Kid According to a Pinkerton Detective Agency memorandum dated July 29, 1902, she was "said ... to be from Texas", and in another Pinkerton document dated 1906, she is described as being "27 to 28 years old", placing her birth around 1878. This is confirmed by a hospital staff record from Denver, where she received treatment in May 1902, which reports her age as "23 or 24," again putting her birth year around 1878. Even her real name is a mystery; "Place" was the maiden surname of Longabaugh's mother (Annie Place) and she is recorded in various sources as Mrs. Harry Longabaugh or Mrs. Harry A. Place. In the one instance where she is known to have signed her name, she did so as "Mrs. Ethel Place".[citation needed] Because Longabaugh's mother was a Place, some rumors suggest that she and Longabaugh were first cousins The Pinkertons called her "Ethel", "Ethal", "Eva" and "Rita" before finally settling on "Etta" for their wanted posters Her name may have become "Etta" after she moved to South America, where Spanish speakers could not pronounce "Ethel".

Harry Longabaugh and Etta Place

In February 1901, Etta Place accompanied Longabaugh to New York City, where at Tiffany's jewelers they purchased a lapel watch and stickpin, and posed for the now-famous DeYoung portrait at a studio in Union Square on Broadway. It is one of only two known images of her. On February 20, 1901, she sailed with him and Parker (who was now posing as "James Ryan," her fictional brother), aboard the British ship Herminius for Buenos Aires, Argentina.

There she settled with the two outlaws on a ranch which they purchased near Cholila in the Chubut Province of west-central Argentina. It comprised a four-room log cabin on the east bank of the Blanco River. Under a new 1884 law, they were granted 15,000 acres (61 km²) of adjacent land to develop, 2,500 of which belonged to Place herself, who has the distinction of being the first woman in Argentina to acquire land under the new act, as land ownership had previously been almost the exclusive preserve of men.

On March 3, 1902, she and Longabaugh returned to New York City on the SS Soldier Prince, probably to visit family and friends in the U.S. On April 2, they registered at a Mrs. Thompson's rooming house in New York City. They toured Coney Island and visited his family (originally from Mont Clare, Pennsylvania, but by then living in Atlantic City, New Jersey). They also possibly traveled to a Dr. Pierce's Invalid Hotel in Buffalo, New York, for unspecified medical treatment. They then traveled west, where again they sought medical treatment, this time in Denver, Colorado. They returned to Buenos Aires from New York on July 10, 1902, aboard the steamer Honorius, posing as stewards. On August 9, she was with Longabaugh at the Hotel Europa in Buenos Aires, and on the 15th she sailed with him aboard the steamer SS Chubut to return to their ranch.

In the summer of 1904, she made another visit with Longabaugh to the U.S., where the Pinkerton Detective Agency traced them to Fort Worth, Texas, and to the St. Louis World Fair, but failed to arrest them before they returned to Argentina. In early 1905, the trio sold the Cholila ranch, as once again the law was beginning to catch up with them. The Pinkerton Agency had known their precise address for some months, but the rainy season prevented their assigned agent, Frank Dimaio, from traveling there and making an arrest. Governor Julio Lezana issued an arrest warrant, but before it could be executed, Sheriff Edward Humphreys, a Welsh Argentine who was friendly with Parker and enamored of Place, tipped them off. The trio fled north to San Carlos de Bariloche, where they embarked on the steamer Condor across Lake Nahuel Huapi and into Chile.

By the end of that year, however, they were again back in Argentina; on December 19, 1904, Place took part, along with Longabaugh, Parker and an unknown male, in the robbery of the Banco de la Nacion in Villa Mercedes, 400 miles west of Buenos Aires. Pursued by armed lawmen, they crossed the Pampas and the Andes and again into Chile.

Place had long been tired of life on the run and deeply lamented the loss of their ranch. At her request, on June 30, 1906, Longabaugh accompanied her from Valparaiso, Chile, to San Francisco, California, where she apparently remained while he returned permanently to South America. There is no evidence that Longabaugh and Place ever saw one another again after that.
The mysteries of Etta Place

Those who had met Place claimed the first thing they noticed about her was that she was strikingly pretty, with a very nice smile, and she was cordial, refined and an excellent shot with a rifle. She was said to have spoken in an educated manner, and she indicated she was originally from the East Coast, although she never revealed an exact location.

Eyewitnesses indicated years afterward that Place was one of only five women known to have ever been allowed into the Wild Bunch hideout at Robbers Roost in southern Utah, the other four having been Will Carver's girlfriend Josie Bassett, who also was involved with Parker for a time; Josie's sister and Parker's longtime girlfriend Ann Bassett; Elzy Lay's girlfriend Maude Davis; and gang member Laura Bullion.

She was speculated to have once married a school teacher, and at least one person claimed Place herself was a teacher who abandoned her husband and two children to be with Longabaugh. The claim that she met the gang while working as a prostitute is also widely believed; some claim that Place was originally Parker's lover, and became involved with Longabaugh later, and that she met both while working in a brothel as a prostitute. Both of those claims are possible, as members of the Wild Bunch gang often alternated girlfriends.

It is possible that she met Parker and/or Longabaugh in the brothel of Madame Fannie Porter in San Antonio, which was frequented by members of the Wild Bunch gang. In fact, through Madame Porter's, several gang members met girlfriends who later traveled with them, including Kid Curry and prostitute Della Moore, and Will Carver and Lillie Davis. Wild Bunch female gang member Laura Bullion is believed to have worked at the brothel from time to time.

Identity theories

Ethel Bishop

It has been suggested that Place's real name was Ethel Bishop, who lived at a similar establishment around the corner from Madame Porter's at 212 Concho Street. On the 1900 Census, Bishop's occupation was given as an unemployed music teacher. She was 23 then, born in West Virginia in September 1876. The Ethel Bishop hypothesis neatly combines the stories that she was a schoolteacher or that she was a prostitute in one person.

Ann Bassett

Another conjecture is that she was a cattle rustler named Ann Bassett (1878–1956) who knew and operated with the Wild Bunch at the turn of the 20th century. Both Bassett and Place were attractive women, with similar facial features, body frame, and hair color. Bassett was born in 1878, the same year Place was thought to have been born. Dr. Thomas G. Kyle of the Computer Research Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who performed many photographic comparisons for government intelligence agencies, conducted a series of tests on photographs of Etta Place and Ann Bassett. Both had the same scar or cowlick at the top of their forehead. Dr. Kyle concluded that there could be no reasonable doubt they were the same person. Historian Doris Karren Burton also investigated the lives of both women and published a book in 1992 claiming they were one and the same.

However, Bassett's and Place's chronologies do not align. Several documents prove that Bassett was in Utah during much of the time when Place was in South America. Bassett was arrested and briefly incarcerated in Utah for rustling cattle in 1903, while Place was in South America with Longabaugh and Parker. Bassett also married her first husband in Utah that year, and therefore could not have been in South America during that time.

Eunice Gray

A once-popular theory held that she was Eunice Gray, who for many years operated a bordello in Fort Worth, Texas, and later ran the Waco Hotel there until her death in a fire in January 1962. Gray once told Delbert Willis of the Fort Worth Press, "I've lived in Fort Worth since 1901. That is except for the time I had to high-tail it out of town. Went to South America for a few years ... until things settled down." Willis conceded that Gray never claimed to be Etta Place; he merely made that connection on his own, given the similarities in their ages, and the period in which Gray said she went to South America coinciding with Place's time there. Gray was described as a beautiful woman, and Willis believed that Place and Gray held a striking resemblance to one another, but there were no known photographs of Gray from that period to compare with Place's. Then, in 2007, amateur genealogist Donna Donnell found Eunice Gray on a 1911 passenger list from Panama. Following that lead, she tracked down Gray's niece, who had two photographs of her: one taken at her high-school graduation circa 1896, and another taken in the 1920s. Comparing those photos to Place's, both agreed that Eunice Gray was definitely not Etta Place.

Madaline Wilson

Yet another theory posits that Place was actually Madaline Wilson, a girl in Fannie Porter's brothel. Sleuther Tony Hays notes that of the five girls in Fannie’s “boarding house," all were born in or around 1878-80. One girl, twenty-two year old Wilson, appeared in the 1900 census records of Bexar County, Texas, immediately beneath Madame Porter's name. Like Porter, Wilson was listed as being of English birth, immigrating to the United States in 1884 at the age of six. Hays theorizes that Wilson changed her name, and that her British accent, tempered by sixteen years in America, might be described as “refined.” All traces of Wilson disappeared after the 1900 census, after Place and Longabaugh left town.

Life after Longabaugh

There is still considerable debate over when Place's relationship with Longabaugh ended. Some claims indicate that Place ended her relationship with Longabaugh and returned to the United States prior to his death. Other claims indicate that the two remained romantically involved, and that she simply tired of life in South America. By 1907, she was known to have been living in San Francisco, but after that, the trail runs cold.

After Longabaugh's death, some believe that she returned to New York City, while other theories indicate she moved back to Texas and started a new life there. A Pinkerton report indicates that a woman matching Place's description was killed in a shootout resulting from a domestic dispute with a man named Mateo Gebhart in Chubut, Argentina, in March 1922. Another report indicates she committed suicide in 1924 in Argentina, while yet another report indicates that she died of natural causes in 1966.

In 1909, a woman matching Place's description asked Frank Aller (US Vice-Consul in Antofagasta, Chile) for assistance in obtaining a death certificate for Longabaugh. No such certificate was issued and the woman's identity was never ascertained.

There have been various additional claims about her life after Longabaugh died. One claim is that she returned to her life as a schoolteacher, living the remainder of her life in Denver, Colorado, while another story claims she lived the remainder of her life teaching in Marion, Oregon. There are also various claims that she returned to prostitution, living out the remainder of her life in Texas, or New York, or California. However, none of these claims has any supporting evidence.

Author Richard Llewellyn claimed that while in Argentina he found indications that Place had moved to Paraguay following the death of Longabaugh, and that she had married a wealthy man. There also were rumors that Etta Place was in fact Edith Mae, wife of famous boxing promoter Tex Rickard, who retired to a ranch in Paraguay shortly after promoting the famous fight between Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries in 1910.

Author and researcher Larry Pointer, author of the 1977 book In Search of Butch Cassidy, wrote that Place's identity and fate are "one of the most intriguing riddles in western history. Leads develop only to dissolve into ambiguity".

Longabaugh's alleged son

Robert Harvey Longabaugh (February 21, 1901 – December 18, 1972), who claimed to be Harry Longabaugh's son, also claimed that Etta Place was actually Hazel Tyrone, a half-sister of his mother, Annie Marie Thayne. Robert Longabaugh claimed throughout his lifetime that his mother, Thayne, had been involved in a relationship with Harry Longabaugh, and that his mother was a schoolteacher in Marion, Oregon when she became romantically involved with him.

However, Longabaugh's claims are clouded and confusing, with dates that don't match up, as he often cited inconsistent facts and often changed his story. He claimed, for instance, that he was a pallbearer at Butch Cassidy/aka Parker's funeral years after Parker was killed in Bolivia, and that Parker was buried in Spokane, Washington, when it is commonly accepted that Parker and Longabaugh were buried in unmarked graves in the local cemetery in Bolivia.

Researchers have been unable to verify any of his claims. While there is some evidence that his mother once taught school, and also some indications that she was a prostitute, there is no evidence that she had a half-sister named Hazel Tyrone. Researcher Donna Ernst pointed out that Robert Longabaugh was possibly related to Harry Longabaugh, but it was unlikely he was Harry's son, and even less likely that he knew anything whatsoever about Etta Place.

The rest of Robert Longabaugh's stories appear to have been completely fabricated: there is no evidence that Harry Longabaugh was ever in the Oregon area during the timeframe when he allegedly began the affair. There is no mention of Annie Thayne in any reports about the gang from the day, and Pinkerton detectives, who have historically been the best source for the movements of gang members, have nothing indicating a relationship with any woman other than Etta Place after 1899.

Robert Longabaugh died in a fire in Missoula, Montana on December 18, 1972. His death certificate lists his father as being Harry Longabaugh, and his mother as being Annie Marie Thayne. There is no record of his birth certificate. No other documents show a connection to Longabaugh or Place.

Fact timelines generally accepted by historians

    1899-1900: Place was living in Texas and being courted by Harry A. Longabaugh, aka the Sundance Kid. Some stories claim Place was a 
     housekeeper or possibly a prostitute in Fannie Porter's sporting house during this time.
    December 1900: Place and Longabaugh reportedly marry, with him using the alias of Harry A. Place, shortly after he is photographed in the 
     famous Fort Worth Five photo. However, there are no marriage records to prove this.
    January 1901: Longabaugh and Place visit his family in Mont Clare, Pennsylvania.
    February 1901: Longabaugh and Place visit New York City, and Tiffany's Jewelers.
    February 20, 1901: Longabaugh and Place board the RMS Herminius bound for Buenos Aires, Argentina.
    March 3, 1902: Longabaugh and Place sail on the ship S.S. Soldier Prince from Argentina to New York City. Pinkerton detectives find evidence 
     that Place was homesick and wanting to visit her family, but were unable to identify who her family was.
    April 2, 1902: Longabaugh and Place register at Mrs. Thompson's Boarding House in New York City, and visit members of his family in 
     Atlantic City, New Jersey, then visit Coney Island.
    July 10, 1902: Place and Longabaugh pose as stewards, and sail on the steamer Honorius back to Argentina.
    August 9, 1902: Place registers them at the Hotel Europa in Buenos Aires.
    Early to late 1903: Parker's former lover Ann Bassett marries a rancher by the name of Henry Bernard, and shortly thereafter is arrested for 
     rustling.
    Summer 1904: Place and Longabaugh sail again to New York City, to visit her family. Once again Pinkerton detectives discover she is 
     homesick, but cannot discover the identity of her family.
    May 1, 1905: Place, Longabaugh, and Parker decide to sell their Cholila, Argentina Ranch and leave South America to avoid the law there. 
     Longabaugh and Place sail to San Francisco, where she remains, while he returns to South America.
    1907: Place is living alone in San Francisco, and there is no evidence she has seen Longabaugh since his departure two years prior.
    July 31, 1909: A woman matching Place's description attempts to obtain a death certificate following Longabaugh's death in Bolivia so that 
     she can settle his estate. She disappears from all historical records after that. With Longabaugh dead, Pinkerton's interest in her location 
     wanes, and her trail goes cold.