Short Resume:

Rewind to the Wild Wild West: a place where the long arm of the law was infinitely shorter than what people were led to believe, where outlaw cowboys roamed free and made the law by the power invested in them by their guns. A place where one of the greatest men (by some) and the vilest of bandits (by most) lived a life of evil deeds, outside of that day's society, being shunned by all those so-called high class representatives and protected by ranchers and inn-keepers with no moral standards. A legend. A man larger than life, whose existence is still considered by today's audience the perfect romantic expression of bygone times. Enter Butch Cassidy, the fastest gun in the West, the bank robber, the killer... the Myth.

Robert LeRoy Parker (as he was known as a child) was born into a family of Mormon ranchers. When his father went bankrupt, Rob sought a job for himself as a butcher in Rock Springs, Wyoming, a short period of time that would prove essential for him for two reasons: it was from here that he would get stuck with the name 'Butch' and, also now, he would meet his teen idol, Mike Cassidy, a horse thief, from whom he would later borrow the name... and choice of profession.

Butch had his first brush-off with the law at the tender age of 14. From then on, he would gradually initiate himself in the art of stealing and robbing. Because he was not just a petty thief - Butch Cassidy became one of the most feared bandits and most experienced and skilled robbers of all time. Everything that he did (be it robbing a train or a bank or facing his pursuers in a shootout), Butch did it with style and according to a well-devised plan. Nothing was left to chance because there was too much at stake (and we're not necessarily talking about the loot).

After a short time of working solo, Butch founded the famous Wild Bunch (along with the Sundance Kid), traveled all across the US and even ventured to foreign land, to England, Argentina, Chile and Bolivia. If he hadn't spent all the money he took from banks or trains on his never-successful ranches, he would probably have been one of the wealthiest people in the US. Just like most parts of his life, his time and place of death remain shrouded in mystery: some claim he shot Sundance Kid to death in Bolivia and then took his own life, while others (including his sister) state that he framed the whole episode to be able to start afresh. Then again, there are a couple of researchers who say that Butch Cassidy was like a western version of Robin Hood...

Truth is, there is not enough information available to get to know who or how he really was. All we have is a history of his most famous and best known robberies, lots of speculation and his never-fading mythical persona. And the fact that, today, he would have been 141 years old.

Biography:

Robert LeRoy Parker, a.k.a. Butch Cassidy, a.k.a. Lowe Maxwell, a.k.a. James 'Santiago' Maxwell, a.k.a. James Ryan, a.k.a. William Phillips, since our outlaw had used, at one time or another, all of these aliases, was born in Beaver, Utah, to Mormon parents. Maximillian Parker and Ann Campbell Gillies were ranchers of moderate wealth but the fact that they had 13 children definitely did not help them make a profit out of their small cattle ranch. When Maximillian went bankrupt, Robert (that is, Butch Cassidy) went to work in other towns, so as to help his parents the best way he knew how. He was 14 - and, at the same age, he committed his first felony, even if he hadn't meant it to turn out this way. Being in a desperate need for a pair of new overalls, Robert traveled to a town a couple of miles away, only to find the clothier's shop closed. He broke in, took a pair of jeans and left an IOU, in the idea that he would return later to pay for it. But the owner took the personal information from the IOU and filed a complaint against him; luckily for him, the constable thought he was too young to have meant any harm and let him go with only a warning.

At about the same time, young Rob befriended a petty horse thief, Mike Cassidy, who was also the one who initiated him in the 'art' of stealing and rustling cattle. Later, Robert LeRoy would take his name in his honor, along with that of 'Butch', from his temporary job as a butcher (there are some who claim he came up with the idea of calling himself that after the name of a gun with long bullets and a very powerful kick upon firing). From 1880 until 1887, he would often do odd jobs under various ranchers, while working on his deceiving skills. His first presumed robbery took place in 1887, when he and two other accomplices tried to hold up a train that carried a safe supposedly filled with money - because they didn't have the combination to it, they walked away with a mere $150.

As years went by, Butch continued to rob more banks and trains and saw his efforts crowned with success every time. The law caught up with him in Wyoming, where he had tried to put up a ranch, and he was sent to jail. But no bars could hold the now famous gunner: he pleaded with the governor of the state and was released after serving only a year and a half of his sentence, on the solid promise that he would never break the laws in that state. He lied, obviously.

The very next day as a free man, Butch associated himself with a bunch of notorious criminals, Elzy Lay, Harvey 'Kid Curry' Logan, Ben Kilpatrick, Harry Tracy, Will 'News' Carver, Laura Bullion, George Curry and Alonzo Longabaugh, also known as 'the Sundance Kid'. They came to be known as the Wild Bunch, a gang that was said to be non-violent but the truth is that they were, in fact, responsible for many killings. They were also famous for their break-ins and modus operandi: their biggest loot was of $65,000, when they attacked a bank in Montana in their trademark style. The Wild Bunch was so hard to catch because they would usually split ways after a crime and reunite weeks after that, at some secret hiding, which made it practically impossible for the sheriff's posse to pursue them.

In 1900, the unexpected happened: Butch Cassidy saw himself a victim of too much media exposure. His photo was on all the Most Wanted posters (along with a very generous reward for any useful information that might lead to him being apprehended), his name and particulars were common knowledge to almost everybody, his pursuers were coming hot on his heels and he saw himself forced to leave the US and head towards South America.

The Wild Bunch had disbanded and Butch only traveled with Sundance Kid now. Together, they moved to Argentina, where they tried yet again to set up a ranch and to make it profitable, but to no avail. Soon enough, they had to go back to their old tricks to compensate for how bad their cattle rearing was going. When the situation got too hot in Argentina, they moved to Chile and Bolivia but the noose was definitely tightening around their necks. They were finally trapped at an inn in San Vicente, southern Bolivia, where they also supposedly died. The posse, assembled with local gunners and US constables and bounty-hunters, surrounded the place, keeping it under fire the entire night.

At dawn, when they finally broke their way through, the pursuers found the dead bodies of two men, one shot in the forehead and the other in the temple, from where they concluded that Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid had killed themselves because they had realized there was no way they could have walked away alive from the heavy shootout. However, sources have come forward to contradict the suicide theory, bringing forth evidence that Cassidy died in 1937, of cancer, after living a quiet and uneventful life as a prosecutor under the alias William Phillips. One of those who stood by this alternative of the story was Butch's younger sister, Lula Parker, who even claimed that she had dinner with her brother after the 1908 incident, when her brother allegedly killed Sundance Kid and then shot himself.

But that is all part of the myth I was telling you in the beginning. For example, some researchers say that Butch's letters from abroad clearly point out that he was not a man who robbed people for the sake of making easy money, but because he was fighting against the huge cattle establishments that were gradually taking out the small, individual ranchers. He was like the Robin Hood of the West, taking from the rich and giving back to the poor. Of course, there is no evidence that Cassidy ever gave a single penny to any bankrupt rancher, but that doesn't seem to matter that much for said researchers...

We should never underestimate who Butch Cassidy really was. Attaching the attributes of villain or good-doer is of no relevance to his case because, first and foremost, he was a living legend, a man who proved that the infallible legal system was fallible if he really wanted it to be, who conned people his entire life, who lived off from what others worked hard to gain, who literally mocked the constables and their futile attempts at catching him, the outlaw. That is exactly why he has become a symbol of freedom, a figure to which the world still turns in admiration, a melancholic reminder of what being free really means. He was, above all, a man who saw himself overshadowed by his own persona and who eventually succumbed to it. The place and time of his death are unknown because people wanted him not to die such a nonsensical and unfit death - by taking his own life in a supreme act of desperation.

Butch Cassidy will probably be surprised to learn that, today, we are still making movies about his shady life and that his death has been as disputed as that of King Elvis Presley. He would be shocked to find out that we, a society governed by strict laws, where even the thought of going outside is scary, love him for what he was and what he stood for. And he would probably be very happy to know that we remembered his birthday...

Butch was a hero for some and the worst kind of criminal for most. Make yourself heard now and vote him IN or OUT, just as you see fit.