Butch Cassidy: The Man Who Brought Organization to Unorganized Crime in the West

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. When people think of Butch Cassidy, they often imagine Paul Newman’s character from the famous movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, made in 1969 with Robert Redford. But the real story of Butch Cassidy is the story of a Western godfather of sorts who brought organization to a world of unorganized crime. You’re to tell the story is Roger McGrath. Roger is the author of Gunfighters, Homiman, and Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier.

Let’s take a listen.

Butch Cassidy, the last great outlaw of the American West, is born Robert Leroy Parker in Beaver, Utah, and Friday, the 13th, in April 1866 to a family of Mormon immigrants. He is the first of 13 children born to two of the earliest Mormon settlers, Maximillion and Anne Parker. In 1879, Maximillion buys a homestead in Circle Valley, and 13-year-old Robert LeRoy, or Roy as he is called, is not old enough to help support the family and is sent off to work at a nearby ranch. Here’s Tom Hatch, author of “The Last Outlaws.”

Bob Parker was the oldest of 13 kids, and so he became the surrogate father, and he would take care of the kids. Bob was like a big kid himself, and he was throughout his whole life. He was a very gregarious man who made friends wherever he went because of his personality. His mother homeschooled the kids, mostly on the Bible. She would hold services there. He absolutely adored his mother.

Heale force, winds, and droughts make life on the Parker homestead a struggle. Maximilian decides to homestead additional acreage in the valley, but rights to the new property are contested by another settler. By Mormon custom, the dispute is mediated by the local church bishop. The bishop awards the land to the other settler, who is thought more faithful to the church. Maximilian is furious. Young Roy is furious also. He feels the Mormon religion has been used to cheat his.

Family out of their land.

Roy sets out to support his family by hurrying out again, this time at Jim Marshall’s Ranch. During Roy’s second season at Marshall’s Ranch, he meets a man who would forever alter the direction of his life: an all-time cattle rustler, Mike Cassidy. Here’s Utah historian Ken Verduia.

Mike Cassidy.

He’s a well-known horseman, and he’s great with a revolver, an excellent shot and marksman, and Cassidy takes a liking to Little Bobby Parker, teaches him how to really ride a horse, teaches him how to handle a.

Revolver, how to become a good marksman.

And more importantly, Mike Cassidy shows him how to cut corners. There are big cattle operations, and they’ll never miss it if one, two, or ten of the herd gets cut away and goes to another place.

The summer of 1884, Roy Parker is 18 years old and full grown. Stands 5-foot-9, weighs 165 pounds. He’s described as friendly, good-natured, loyal, and generous. He also has an infectious grin and is a natural leader. A ranch cowboy says Roy can ride around a tree at full speed and put every bullet from his revolver into a three-hand circle. Mike Cassidy has taught the kid well. His rustling soon becomes known to the local authorities, though, and he leaves for the gold mining boomtown of Telluride, Colorado. Some claim the town got its name from a quick pronunciation of “Hell.”

You’re right.

For a young man seeking adventure, Roy has gone to the right place: rugged frontiersmen packed Telluride’s famed saloons, gambling halls, and houses of ill repute. Here are historians of the Old West, Paul Hutton and Tom Hatch.

Robert Parker goes to a world that couldn’t be more different. This is the wild boomtown world of the mining camp. So, a lot of gambling, a lot of drinking, prostitution, and a lot of young men heavily armed and fueled by alcohol.

He went in there with a Mormon mind, and within a week or two, I’m sure he’d been in every saloon there, and he learned how to drink with the best of them, and he gambled with the best of them. And he didn’t feel comfortable in Mormon country, but he felt comfortable in Telluride.

Roy lands a grueling job running a pack train of mules, all in gold and silver ore from the mines to the mills. He soon wearies of the drudgery.

Going in the mines each and every day. Robert Parker looks at that as a sucker’s bet. You’re coming out bone, where you could die down there, and what have you earned at the end of the day?

But on the corner is the San Miguel Bank.

Roy.

With two of his new friends, a lapsed Mormon named Matt Warner and Warner’s brother-in-law, Tom McCarty, pulls his first major criminal job, the robbery of the San Miguel Valley Bank of Telluride on June 24th, 1889. Now, most attempts at robbing banks in the Old West fail miserably because of poor planning or no planning at all. Roy is undeterred by the odds against him, and for good reason.

From the very beginning he had a methodology. He wasn’t just one of these wild riders like the movies make so famous. He was very methodical. He was very careful. He was very intelligent.

Parker knew it’s not just about where the money is, but knowing when it will be at its peak.

When will the cash arrive? Who handles the cash?

How many people are in the building at the time when the cash is at its peak? And more importantly than that, how will I make my escape?

And you’ve been listening to the story of Robert Parker, sometimes called Roy, but as we’ve come to know him, the story of Butch Cassidy, as told by Dr. Roger McGrath. When we come back, more of the story of Butch Cassidy here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib, here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we’re bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can’t do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. And we continue with Our American Stories and the story of Butch Cassidy as told by Roger McGrath. Let’s pick up where we last left off.

Roy Parker’s accomplice, Tom McCarty, is an old hand at bank robbery, and he impresses upon Roy the importance of not only planning each step of the robbery, but also each step of the getaway. Several weeks before robbery, Roy will train and hardened horses to be used in the getaway. Blooded animals are selected, grain-fed, and exercised rigorously. When the first relay is reached, Roy switches to Thoroughbreds able to maintain a swift pace over a long distance. If necessary, a second and a third relay of horses is used. This masterstroke will become Roy Parker’s signature technique. The robbery of the bank at Telluride goes exactly as planned, and Roy and the others gallop out of town. Here are Ken Verduia and “True West” magazine contributor Tom Ross.

And this is the genius of Robert Parker.

He had planned the escape even better than he had planned the whole job.

This is the first of his great escapades where they wind up with big money. I mean, you walk away from a bank with $20,000, and you’re looking at what a cowboy might take him five or 10 years to make if he saved every penny.

This is a serious crime.

It’s one thing to take a few cows or take a couple of horses, but this is big-time robbery.

There’s no going back. There’s no going back.

Parker knows his deed will break the heart of his pious mother and decides to deflect shame from his family. He drops a family name and begins using the surname Cassidy in honor of his mentor. He will later also add the nickname Butch and become known to history as Butch Cassidy. The steep canyons, an unforgiving terrain that make up the 1,500-mile-long stretch of wilderness that runs from New Mexico to Montana, is known as the Outlaw Trail. A series of hideouts on the trail are notorious, with the names Robbers’ Roost, Brown’s Hole, and Hole in the Wall.

One of the benefits of being a Western outlaw is space. The American West is vast. It’s cut by canyons, mountain ranges, and river trails.

A lot of.

Places. There’s only one way in, and so it’s easy to guard.

It’s easy to see who’s.

Coming, and so these become natural fortifications for the outlaw bands to hide in. And if you’re a lawman, and especially if you’re just a civilian posse, you’re not going in there.

It’s suicide.

In April 1892, a couple of lawmen arrest Butch for being in possession of 3 stolen horses. Now Butch claims he purchased the horses fair and square, and that seems to have been the case. However, the man he had purchased them from had stolen the horses. In July 1894, is sentenced to 2 years in the Wyoming State Penitentiary. After serving 18 months, which applies for a pardon. William Richards, the governor of Wyoming, asks Cassidy, “Will you give me your word that you’re quit rustling?” Butch replies, “Can’t do that, Governor, because if I gave you my word, I only have to break it. I’m in too deep now to quit the game. But I’ll promise you one thing: If you give me a pardon, I’ll keep out of Wyoming.” Well, Cassidy’s frankness wins over Governor Richards. The governor signs the pardon, and in January 1896, Butch Cassidy walks out of the penitentiary a free man. If Butch Cassidy was a minor outlaw before he went to prison. Upon his release, he was determined to make a name for himself. Butch begins to gather together a group of outlaws who will become known as the Wild Bunch. Among this band of strong personalities, Butch is the clear leader. Here’s Cassidy biographer W.C.

Jamison. There was no job that he couldn’t do.

I think the others in the gang recognized his confidence, recognized his leadership, and thought that with this guy, we’re going to be able to do some cool things.

Butch hand-picks each member of the gang and expects the best from those who ride with him. The core members include William Ilsley, Elzy Lay, Kid Curry, Logan Ben, the Tall Texan Kilpatrick, Will Carver, and lastly, the 21-year-old introvert Harry Longabaugh, the man known to history as the Sundance Kid.

Sundance was born Harry Longabaugh 30 miles north of Philadelphia, and he grew up based on the canals. He would work probably 20 hours a day sometimes, and he would walk 25 miles each day. But Harry had dreams. He paid $1 for a library card, which was quite a bit of money at that time to a poor boy, and he read these pulp novels about Jesse James and Buffalo Bill. This is where dreams of the West came into his head.

I think it’s difficult to understand today the lure of adventure that existed in the late 19th century, especially for a young boy like Harry growing up in Pennsylvania. The West offered everything that the society of the East seemed to work against, and a lot of young men went west in search of adventure.

The 20-year-old Longabaugh earns his nickname the Sundance Kid after having served a year in the Sundance, Wyoming, jail for horse theft. In 1892, Sundance Kid and 2 accomplices rob a Great Northern Railroad train at Malta, Montana. Accomplices are eventually captured, tried, and convicted, but the Sundance Kid makes good his escape and is introduced to Butch Cassidy on the Outlaw Trail.

Butch signed Sundance, someone he could trust, number one, and number two, someone he could bounce his ideas off of, and they would go nowhere else.

Butch Cassidy’s first robbery following his release from the Wyoming State Penitentiary occurs in August 1896 at Montpelier, Idaho. As usual, Butch’s escape is conducted with impeccable execution, a breathtaking escape, and not a single dead body.

Butch understood one simple premise: didn’t have to kill people.

Some would go into a robbery and kill just to silence voices. Butch said, “If my getaway is clean enough, I don’t have to silence voices.”

A station agent tries to telegraph Price, Utah, the direction the outlaws seemed to be headed, but Cassidy and Lay have cut the wires.

Cassidy and Lay then escaped by a circuitous route with fresh relays of horses, and eventually reached Brown’s Hole. Some $8,000 richer—more than a quarter million today.

And you’ve been listening to Roger McGrath tell the story, Butch Cassidy, and later in the segment, the Sundance Kid, and how they got together. And it had to do in the end with Butch Cassidy’s talent, his managerial talent, his leadership talent, and mastering not just the art of robbing a bank, but more importantly, mastering the getaway. And these were big-time bank robberies. This was not nickels and dimes stuff. And as we learned, once you’re in, it’s hard to get out of this life. And that’s back then and still today. You choose a life of crime, and the people around you become a part of that choice as well, and then your entire lifestyle is that choice. And we learned that here in the 19th century where to go for adventure was the Wild West, and that, indeed, is where the Sundance Kid ended up. He grew up in Philadelphia, of all places, but the lure of adventure and the lure of that open country and those dime store novels he read in the bookstore, that’s what got him to just pack his bags and head west. When we come back, more of the story of Butch Cassidy, as told by Dr. Roger McGrath here on Our American Stories. And we continue with Our American Stories and the story of Butch Cassidy. Here again to continue with his story is Roger McGrath.

By 1898, news of the charismatic Cassidy and his Wild Bunch begin to make headlines from San Francisco to New York. But along with their success, as America approaches the 20th century, the once wild and free West is being transformed. Thirty years of unprecedented expansion of fast transportation and communication systems have connected a settled and civilized East with the once wild and wooly American West. Powerful railroad executives, mining barons, and cattle kings are tired of being robbed by Western outlaws and turn to a powerful ally to impose their own brand of law and order: Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Here are historians of the American West, Marshall Trimble and Andrew Nilson. They were a private detective agency.

Therefore, they weren’t bound by the laws of regular lawmen.

Bribery, deceit. Nothing is off the table for the Pinkertons, and they are just as, if not more, sophisticated than Butch Cassidy. They also have assembled a crew of diverse talents.

Founded 50 years earlier by Scottish immigrant Allan Pinkerton, the agency is America’s first private detective outfit for hire. Pinkerton’s logo, a simple unblinking eye underlined by the words “We never sleep,” adds a new term to the American lexicon: “private eye.”

The Pinkertons embodied the modern age. They brought everything together: memoranda, files, regional offices, photography.

Everything.

Butch’s Wild Bunch are now wanted dead or alive. But as usual, Butch’s planned ahead, keeping an attorney on retainer to protect him and his men. Douglas Preston is Butch Cassidy’s lawyer. Whenever any of the Wild Bunch gets in trouble, it is Preston who defends them, usually with success. Preston later becomes a state legislator and then the Attorney General of Wyoming. Preston says that once upon a time, during a saloon brawl, Cassidy saved his life, and in gratitude, he promised to defend Butch whenever the need should arise. After the Civil War, outlaws begin targeting trains, starting with the Reno Brothers in 1866 and followed by others such as Jesse James and Sam Bass. They made quick work of railroad express cars packed with money and lumbering through remote locations far from local posses.

Most train robberies were successful. Everybody knew that banks got a little more difficult. The trains were fairly easy to rob because they hadn’t put armed messengers on them. They hadn’t taken any precautions whatsoever with security.

Butch and his train robbers’ syndicate pulled their first train robbery in the desolate countryside at Wilcox, Wyoming, in June 1899.

The flyer is coming down the tracks.

They’re about ready to cross a wood trestle bridge, and we see a couple.