Did Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid really die in Mexico, or did they live to visit their families?
Bob
? ? ?
Dear Bob,
I can safely say that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid did not die in Mexico, because in 1901 they and Etta Place left New York for Argentina. They are believed to have robbed banks there and in Chile, but in 1906 Etta decided she’d had enough of life on the run and returned to the United States. On November 3, 1908, two masked American bandits robbed a mule hauling 15,000 Bolivian pesos of a mining company’s payroll, but were soon found out and surrounded in the San Vicente boarding house where they were staying by three cavalry troopers, the local police chief, the mayor and several officials on the evening of November 6. Called upon to give themselves up, the suspects opened fire, killing a soldier and wounding another before retiring under a hail of counterfire. The siege continued until the next morning, when the Bolivians cautiously entered the boarding house and found both felons lying dead with multiple wounds to the arms and legs, one with a wound through the forehead and another shot in the temple. They concluded that one had shot the other to put him out of his misery and then shot himself rather than surrender. The Bolivians buried them, but never positively identified them by name, leaving the matter of whether Butch and Sundance made their last stand in Bolivia or eventually returned to the States under new aliases an issue that may never be definitively resolved.
Sincerely,
Jon Guttman
Research Director
World History Group
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