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TV, Documentary American Experience 2014 Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid
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00:01Tonight, Butch Cassidy knew how to plan a robbery.
00:04He was very good at robbing trains and robbing banks.
00:08Forces are coming together against the wild bunch.
00:11Centralized information, undercover agents, mobile strike forces.
00:15The West had changed. The old days are over.
00:18Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on American Experience.
00:34Flash off, the clock is running.
00:36They have their schedule to disappear.
00:49Heavens is gone!
01:01Exclusive corporate funding for American Experience is provided by Liberty Mutual Insurance.
01:07Experience is also made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
01:11And by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.
01:46In the early morning hours of June 2nd, 1899, two men crept along a desolate stretch of train track outside
01:54Wilcox, Wyoming.
01:57The flyer is coming down the tracks.
02:02They're about ready to cross a wood trestle bridge.
02:06And we see a couple guys with a lantern shaking it back and forth to stop the train.
02:12Usually it meant a washed out track or damaged track ahead and the train should stop.
02:19Any engineer's right mind goes, we gotta lock up the brakes.
02:25The train stops before the trestle.
02:28The people on the train are nervous.
02:31We don't stop trains in the middle of the desert.
02:34But it just happened.
02:36The engineers thought that the bridge might have been washed out.
02:40Little did he know that these were robbers up on the tracks.
02:44They pull apart the passenger cars, separate them from the engine and the car which carries the safe.
02:55Unable to force their way in, the bandits packed the door with explosives instead.
03:01They had used too much dynamite.
03:06Blew the car sky high.
03:09It just demolished the car.
03:11It was just a bunch of twisted metal.
03:13The cash and the coins are thrown all over the windswept plane.
03:19Money, currency, coin, everywhere.
03:23In an instant, the holdup crew had made off with $50,000 in cash, banknotes and gold.
03:29In the most spectacular robbery the West had ever seen.
03:34In today's money, that's something over a million dollars.
03:38That's in one heist.
03:41In an era that saw cold-blooded killers like Jesse James and the Younger Brothers terrorize the West.
03:48This job had all the markings of a different kind of gang.
03:51A notorious group of men known as the Wild Bunch.
03:55They would visit havoc upon banks, railroads, mining companies.
04:01But they are really cut from a different cloth because they don't leave blood, mayhem and bodies in their wake.
04:09Their leader, Butch Cassidy, was a charismatic thief who had elevated bank and train robbery into an art form.
04:17The Wilcox robbery is classic.
04:20Butch Cassidy is what made Butch a rock star.
04:23He became a national celebrity.
04:26But the freewheeling world of Butch Cassidy and his sidekick,
04:30a moody Easterner with a fast gun known as the Sundance Kid,
04:33was based on a frontier order that was rapidly fading into myth.
04:39The West's being crisscrossed by rail lines.
04:42Mines are everywhere. Cities are exploding.
04:44And this era of open opportunity is drawing to a close at the end of the 19th century.
04:51The story of Butch and Sundance plays out as that curtain is coming down.
04:56The game is changing. The railroads don't care how much it costs.
05:01They don't care what trouble they have to go to.
05:04They're going to end the robbing.
05:10Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are the last of the wild riders of the West.
05:17And when they're gone, the Wild West is gone.
05:41Though he would one day be known as the most fearsome bad man of the West,
05:45Butch Cassidy was born Robert Leroy Parker in 1866 to a family of devout Mormons.
05:54His father, Maximilian, who was among the earliest Mormon settlers,
05:59could barely eke out a living from the parched earth of their homestead in southern Utah.
06:05He was often forced to take work far from home for months at a time.
06:10With his father gone, Robert's mother, Ann, a tough and deeply religious woman,
06:16looked to her eldest son to help raise their growing family.
06:20Bob Parker was the oldest of 13 kids.
06:24And so he became the surrogate father, and he would take care of the kids.
06:31Bob was like a big kid himself, and he was throughout his whole life.
06:34He was a very gregarious man who made friends wherever he went because of his personality.
06:41His mother homeschooled the kids, mostly on the Bible.
06:45She would hold services there.
06:47He absolutely adored his mother.
06:51His mother was very devout.
06:53The family was strict.
06:55There was a confirmed right and wrong.
06:57There were fundamental Christian values in the family.
07:02At the age of 13, Robert took a job on a nearby ranch to help earn money to support his
07:07family.
07:09It was there that he met a man who would forever alter the direction of his life.
07:14A small-time cattle rustler named Mike Cassidy, who taught him the finer points of how to survive as a
07:20cowboy.
07:22Mike Cassidy.
07:23He's a well-known horseman, and he's great with a revolver and excellent shot and marksman.
07:30And Cassidy takes a liking to little Bobby Parker.
07:34He teaches him how to really ride a horse.
07:36He teaches him how to handle a revolver, how to become a good marksman.
07:40And more importantly, Mike Cassidy shows him how to cut corners.
07:43There's big cattle operations, and they'll never miss it if one or two or ten of the herd gets cut
07:50away and goes to another place.
07:53And Robert Parker watched Mike Cassidy acquire cattle and horses in that fashion.
08:02For Robert, Mike Cassidy was a man free from the poverty and religious confines that dominated his life.
08:11Cassidy filled his head with visions of a wider world, a world where adventure and greater paydays were within reach.
08:18And by the time he was 18, Robert was itching to strike out on his own.
08:25If you're Robert Leroy Parker, you look at your dad who played by the rules and lost, worked himself to
08:35the bone and had nothing to show for it.
08:39You look at Mike Cassidy, a man who cuts corners, takes a little here, takes a little there, lives by
08:45his wits, and is always getting ahead.
08:50And so, he rides in the direction, if you will, of Mike Cassidy.
08:54He rides away.
08:56Will he ever be back?
08:58He promises he will.
09:00But will he ever be back?
09:09In the summer of 1884, 18-year-old Robert Parker rode into the mining town of Telluride, Colorado.
09:17For a young man seeking adventure, he'd come to the right place.
09:22In the early 1880s, Telluride was booming.
09:26Gold fever was drawing men from across the West.
09:30Rugged frontiersmen who packed Telluride's famed saloons, gambling halls, and houses of ill repute.
09:38Robert Parker goes to a world that couldn't be more different.
09:41This is the wild, boomtown world of the mining camp.
09:45So, a lot of gambling, a lot of drinking, a lot of prostitution, a lot of young men, heavily armed
09:54and fueled by alcohol.
09:57He went in there with a Mormon mind, and within a week or two, I'm sure he'd been in every
10:03saloon there.
10:04And he learned how to drink with the best of them, and he gambled with the best of them.
10:08And he didn't feel comfortable in Mormon country, but he felt comfortable in Telluride.
10:15Young Robert Parker soon grew dismayed with life as a miner.
10:19By the time he rode into Telluride, many of the major claims had already been staked.
10:26Parker was resigned to take a grueling job, hauling gold and silver ore by mule down from the mountains.
10:36To find yourself, you know, almost like ants moving through this mountainside and just moving dirt and moving stone for
10:45someone else and for someone else's wealth.
10:48I think probably graded on someone like Parker.
10:53Going in the mines each and every day, Robert Parker looks at that as a sucker's bet.
11:01You're coming out bone-weary, you could die down there, and what have you earned at the end of the
11:06day?
11:07But on the corner is the San Miguel Bank.
11:13With the riches being hauled out of the hills ringing Telluride, Parker was sure the local bank was well stocked
11:20with tinder.
11:21For Parker and his two new friends, a lapsed Mormon named Matt Warner, and his ornery brother-in-law, Tom
11:28McCarty, the bank was an auspicious target.
11:33But even in the isolated towns of the West, bank robberies were rarely successful.
11:39Most were ill-planned, played out at the spur of the moment after too many hours at the saloon.
11:46No sooner had the robbers cleaned out a safe than the townspeople amassed to gun them down.
11:53Parker was undeterred by the foreboding odds.
11:58From the very beginning, he had a methodology.
12:02He wasn't just one of these wild riders, like the movies make so famous.
12:07He was very methodical, he was very careful, and he was very intelligent.
12:14Parker knew it's not just about where the money is, but knowing when it will be at its peak.
12:22When will the cash arrive?
12:25Who handles the cash?
12:27How many people are in the building at the time when the cash is at its peak?
12:35And more importantly than that, how will I make my escape?
12:42Just after noon on June 24th, 1889,
12:46Parker and his cohort saddled up alongside the San Miguel Valley Bank.
12:52They waited until a cashier left, leaving only a single teller inside.
12:57Warner and Parker casually entered the bank and demanded the cash.
13:03They walk out and they ride like hell.
13:07No one even knows the bank has been robbed.
13:11By the time a posse was assembled, it was too late.
13:15Parker's master's group, and what would become his signature technique,
13:19was to set up a series of horse relays along the exit route,
13:23where the outlaws could trade their played out mounts for fresh ones.
13:28He figured no posse, no matter how determined, could keep pace with bandits and constant supply of steady horsepower.
13:36He's been working days and weeks in advance.
13:40He's been storing fresh horses, building alliances with people along the way.
13:45This is extraordinary planning.
13:47And this is the genius of Robert Parker.
13:51He had planned the escape even better than he had planned the hold-up.
13:58This is the first of his great escapades where they wind up with big money.
14:03I mean, you walk away from a bank with $20,000, and you're looking at what a cowboy might take
14:08him five or ten years to make if he saved every penny.
14:12This is a serious crime.
14:14It's one thing to take a few cows or take a couple horses, but this is big-time robbery.
14:23There's no going back. There's no going back.
14:27Parker knew his criminal deed would break the heart of his pious mother and decided it was best to deflect
14:33shame from his family by changing his name.
14:37He would now honor the influence of his mentor and answer to Butch Cassidy.
14:50On the other side of the country, in the mill town of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, an introverted young boy by the
14:58name of Harry Longabaugh could only dream of an adventurous life on the open range.
15:05Raised in the gray and claustrophobic industrial world of the East, it must have seemed inconceivable that he would one
15:12day play a role in one of the West's greatest legends.
15:16Sundance was born Harry Longabaugh, about 30 miles north of Philadelphia, and he grew up basically on the canals.
15:24He would work probably 20 hours a day sometimes, and he would walk 25 miles each day.
15:32But Harry had dreams. He paid one whole dollar for a library card, which was quite a bit of money
15:38at that time to a poor boy.
15:41And he read these pulp novels about Jesse James and Buffalo Bill.
15:47This is where dreams of the West came into his head.
15:52I think it's difficult to understand today the lure of adventure that existed in the late 19th century, especially for
15:59a young boy like Harry growing up in Pennsylvania.
16:03The West offered everything that the society of the East seemed to work against.
16:11And a lot of young men went West in search of adventure.
16:18In 1882, at the age of 14, Longabaugh finally got his opportunity to realize his Western dreams after he landed
16:26a job on his cousin's ranch in Cortez, Colorado.
16:31Harry Longabaugh learned to be a cowboy.
16:34He also wanted to see what was over the next mountain, just like Butch did.
16:39So he took off and went to work for ranches in Wyoming and Montana and actually learned the trade as
16:45a wandering cowboy and was well respected.
16:50He would have been probably very happy his whole life working as a cowboy.
16:58Harry's cowboying days came to an abrupt halt in the winter of 1887.
17:03A devastating blizzard from the Canadian border all the way down to southern Colorado blanketed the Western Plains in up
17:11to 100 feet of snow.
17:14It was the most devastating blizzard in the history out here in the West.
17:19They found bodies of cattle just stacked up for miles.
17:26Ninety percent of the livestock in Wyoming and Montana perished.
17:32And along with it, 90 percent of the jobs for cowboys.
17:38He went to the Black Hills of South Dakota and tried to find work there and couldn't find work.
17:43He was just a poor guy who was down on his luck and just needed a break.
17:50With few options to earn a living, Harry turned to petty crime,
17:55eventually landing himself in jail for horse stealing outside of Sundance, Wyoming.
18:01A year later, 21-year-old Longaba emerged from his prison stint with a new nickname,
18:07the Sundance Kid.
18:09But he still had few legitimate job prospects.
18:13That's when he decided to dry his hand at what seemed like a sure thing.
18:21Since the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, trains had become attractive targets to would-be bandits.
18:31Outlaws like Jesse James and Sam Bass had made quick work of railroad express cars,
18:37usually packed with money and lumbering through remote locations far from local posses.
18:43Most train robberies were successful.
18:46Everybody knew that. Banks got a little more difficult.
18:49The trains were fairly easy to rob because they hadn't put armed messengers on them.
18:54They hadn't taken any precautions whatsoever with security.
19:00To Sundance and his partners, two other out-of-work cowboys,
19:04An ideal spot for a train robbery was Malta, Montana,
19:09an isolated cattle shipping depot along the Great Northern Railroad line.
19:15It was bone-chillingly cold in the early morning hours of November 29, 1892,
19:21when at 3 a.m., right on schedule, the Great Northern's number 23 pulled into Malta.
19:30Like a scene straight from one of his dime novels, Sundance and his accomplices slipped onto the train.
19:38There were two safes on the train, and one of them they didn't know the combination of.
19:45The other one was opened, and they basically found nothing.
19:53He didn't realize, I guess, that the banks were closed on Sunday.
19:58And so there were no express boxes passing through.
20:05Sundance and the men grabbed what little money they could find.
20:09All the while, their bandanas slipped from their faces, allowing the train crew to get a good look.
20:15Well, when they planned this robbery, they were probably drunk, to tell you the truth,
20:20because they did not plan it well.
20:24Butch Cassidy knew how to plan a robbery.
20:26These three guys sat there like the three stooges.
20:30They were decent enough to leave the passengers alone.
20:33But you can be hung for this, and three guys are walking away with $8.33 each.
20:39It's almost as if the railroad pulled one on top of them.
20:44His accomplices went back to the town they'd been hanging around in before the holdup,
20:48and they were recognized, and they ratted Sundance out.
20:52Now, he took off.
20:54It was a huge cock-up, and they didn't make much money, but Sundance got away.
20:59Just days after the robbery, a wanted poster bearing a detailed description of Sundance
21:05offered a $500 reward for his capture.
21:09Now a wanted man, Sundance retreated to the safety of the desolate canyons
21:14and mountain valleys that ran across the west.
21:17A hostile landscape where few lawmen would dare to follow.
21:31One of the benefits of being a western outlaw is space.
21:37The American West is vast.
21:40It's cut by canyons, mountain ranges, river trails.
21:47A lot of places, there's only one way in, and so it's easy to guard.
21:51It's easy to see who's coming.
21:53And so these become natural fortifications for the outlaw bands to hide in.
21:59And if you're a lawman, especially if you're just a civilian posse,
22:04you're not going in there.
22:06It's suicide.
22:10The steep canyons and unforgiving terrain that made up a 1,500-mile stretch of wilderness
22:15that ran from northern Montana all the way to New Mexico
22:18was known as the Outlaw Trail.
22:21The hideouts there were notorious, with names like Robber's Roost,
22:26Hole in the Wall, and Browns Park in Colorado,
22:30a lush valley enclosed by formidable mountains.
22:34By 1890, Browns Park was home to a handful of western outlaws,
22:39including Butch Cassidy.
22:43I believe he had decided that a life of larceny was where he was going to be for the rest
22:49of his life,
22:50whether it was stealing horses, which he was very good at, or robbing trains or robbing banks.
22:55So he needed people around him.
22:58At some point, Sundance started hanging out in that area.
23:02They had a lot in common. They both loved horses, they were wranglers, they loved to drink, they loved to
23:08gamble,
23:08and they could talk larceny all day long.
23:11Butch and Sundance seem in many ways to be opposites.
23:15As outgoing and gregarious, happy-go-lucky as Butch is, Sundance is much more taciturn, he's much quieter,
23:22much more potentially dangerous.
23:25Butch saw in Sundance someone he could trust, number one, and number two, someone he could bounce his ideas off
23:33of,
23:33and they would go nowhere else.
23:37Before long, other desperados like Sundance were flocking to the methodical Cassidy,
23:43eager to embrace him as both a teacher and a leader.
23:48People had heard about Butch and his masterminding, probably of Telluride.
23:54These guys were more quick-draw, they were more of the henchman type.
23:59They weren't very good at planning a bank robbery or planning a train robbery.
24:04And so they needed someone.
24:07Cassidy, Sundance, and the rogues gallery of some 20 men that now made up the Wild Bunch,
24:12set off from the outlaw trail, targeting banks and mining companies that were springing up across the West.
24:20In August of 1896, Cassidy and gang members Bub Meeks and Elsie Lay knocked off the bank in Montpelier, Idaho.
24:30One year later, Sundance and five other men robbed the Butte County Bank in Belle Fouche, South Dakota.
24:37And Butch and his crew boldly held up the payroll of the Pleasant Valley Coal Company in Castlegate, Utah.
24:44Most of the hold-ups had the markings of a Butch Cassidy caper.
24:49Impeccable execution, breathless escapes, and not a single dead body.
24:55Butch understood one simple premise.
24:57He didn't have to kill people.
24:59Some would go into a robbery and kill just to silence voices.
25:06Butch said, if my getaway is clean enough, I don't have to silence voices.
25:13In between jobs, the Wild Bunch retreated to the isolated hideouts of the outlaw trail,
25:19where they openly enjoyed the spoils of their misdeeds.
25:23Drinking, gambling, and spending time with free-spirited women.
25:28They had allies in the locals, mostly family ranchers who were being pushed from their land by big-time corporate
25:35cattle barons.
25:36These ranchers were natural sympathizers with bandits who were making a living picking the pockets of moneyed businessmen.
25:44Along the outlaw trail, you have people that become the backbone of the Wild Bunch.
25:50They're the ones who provide the horses.
25:52They're the ones that offer a meal when they're on the run.
25:55These are the people that many times are able to keep their farms or their ranches because of a few
26:00$20 gold pieces that are dropped behind by Butch and Sundance as they make their way.
26:06Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid had everybody helping them.
26:12They're robbing the large mining companies and banks.
26:16So I think this endears them to the small rancher and the small farmer.
26:20And so what happens here is this mythology starts to build up and becomes almost larger than life.
26:29By 1898, news of Wild Bunch robberies began to make national headlines.
26:36Newspapers from San Francisco to New York were calling Butch the boss bad man of the West.
26:43Reporters painted sensationalized dime novel-worthy stories of Cassidy and his gang.
26:48It was said to include 500 men.
26:53Soon it seemed that there wasn't a crime west of the Mississippi that couldn't be pegged on Butch Cassidy and
27:00his roving band of desperados.
27:03The Wild Bunch became a mythical and dangerous cancer in the American West.
27:11They were everywhere. They were doing everything. And their legend grew dramatically before them.
27:24Just as Butch and Sundance started to have success in the robbing business, the once wild and free West was
27:30being transformed.
27:32Powerful railroad executives, mining barons, and cattle kings were determined to usher in their own brand of law and order.
27:42By the turn of the century, corporations growing tired of being robbed by Western outlaws had a powerful ally to
27:49turn to for help.
27:50The Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
27:55Founded 50 years earlier by Scottish immigrant Alan Pinkerton, the agency was America's first private detective outfit for hire.
28:04His logo, a single unblinking eye, underlined by the words, we never sleep, would add a new term to the
28:12American lexicon, private eye.
28:17Pinkerton pioneered the use of undercover agents and webs of informants.
28:22And during the Civil War, he was even tapped by Abraham Lincoln to run spy operations for the Union Army.
28:30Now, Alan Pinkerton's son, William, was heading the firm's Western operation, which was humming with business from the Bankers Association,
28:38railroads, and express car companies.
28:42The Pinkertons have over 2,000 full-time agents and 30,000 paid informants and part-time regulars.
28:51Their standing force is larger than the standing force of the United States Army at its time.
28:58And they get called out to bring justice to the American West.
29:05In place of local posses and small-town sheriffs, the Pinkertons brought to the West seasoned manhunters and the most
29:12modern detective techniques.
29:15They are methodical, and they're determined.
29:20Every scrap of information they get on an outlaw is documented and put in a file.
29:26What did he look like? Did he have a mustache?
29:28Where did he part his hair?
29:30What was he most commonly seen dressed in?
29:32And they keep this exhaustive, detailed, centrally located data bank, if you will, available.
29:39And their agents and officers are constantly on the telegraphs, sending back messages and receiving information on where the bad
29:48guys are.
29:50The Pinkertons embodied the modern age.
29:54They brought everything together.
29:57Memoranda, files, regional offices, photography, everything.
30:07The Pinkertons became the private police force for the railroad barons, for the mining barons, for the capitalists who were
30:18trying to bring their brand of order to the American West.
30:22They had their own private police force.
30:32As dawn broke on June 2nd, 1899, the telegraph machine at the Union Pacific Railroad office in Omaha came to
30:40life.
30:41The number one held up, mile west of Wilcox.
30:45Express car blown open.
30:47Contents gone.
30:51In the desolate countryside of Wyoming, Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch had struck again.
30:58With their signature precision, they had robbed the Union Pacific of over 50,000 in cash and banknotes, leaving only
31:05the hollowed-out wreckage of the express car in their wake.
31:11The Wilcox robbery is classic Butch Cassidy.
31:14It is considered one of the most flawless robberies that he has ever committed.
31:22This was such a dramatic and powerful scene that it caught the attention of the press and it especially caught
31:32the attention of the Union Pacific Railroad.
31:36The Union Pacific reaches a breaking point.
31:40This had become an overt, violent crime, very costly.
31:45Another one could be devastating to the reputation of the railroad.
31:50E.H. Harriman, who's chairman of the board, reaches out to the Pinkertons and says,
31:55I need my trains safe.
32:00Within 24 hours, over a hundred Pinkerton detectives, sheriffs, deputies and lawmen are in the field trying to find the
32:10Wild Bunch.
32:11That's a lot of men, a lot of finances, a lot of resources trying to find these guys.
32:19Rather than simply follow hoof prints in the dirt, Pinkerton agents began methodically tracking serial numbers on the banknotes stolen
32:26at Wilcox.
32:29Soon, the stolen paper began to surface in towns across the region.
32:34Unwittingly, the Wild Bunch members were illuminating their own trail.
32:39They're using national methods to go after the Wild Bunch.
32:43Publishing serial numbers of currency that had been stolen and sending it to banks, railroads, hotels, police departments.
32:53They were able to trace bills in different locations of where this money had been spent.
32:59They could begin to see patterns.
33:02Because of the dynamite blowing it up, a whole bunch of the bills had cuts on the bottom.
33:07And so they knew that if they got one of the bills that had a cut in a certain way,
33:11it was from this robbery.
33:14All of this stuff worked against these antiquated, horse-powered cowboys who were trying to steal this money.
33:20You know, they're up against serial numbers.
33:24No contest.
33:27The first of the Wild Bunch to fall was Lonnie Logan, who had exchanged some of the stolen loot at
33:32a bank in Montana.
33:34He soon found his hideout surrounded by Pinkerton agents.
33:38When he tried to escape out the back door, he was promptly gunned down.
33:43So all these forces are coming together against the Wild Bunch.
33:49Centralized information, undercover agents, mobile strike forces.
33:53The world of Butch and Sundance is shrinking, shrinking, shrinking more rapidly than they can push back against it.
33:59They were being chased by a system, and this system was very sophisticated.
34:05And for the Pinkertons to be able to capture Butch and Sundance and advertise it would have been a major,
34:12major promotional feat for them.
34:14They would have gained client after client.
34:19Nine months after the Wilcox robbery, Pinkerton detective Frank Murray received word that the stolen banknotes were popping up around
34:27Alma, New Mexico.
34:28The money was now leading the Pinkertons right to the mastermind himself, Butch Cassidy.
34:35Hiding in plain sight, Butch was working as a cowboy at a local ranch.
34:40But before Murray could arrest him, Butch was tipped off and fled town.
34:45Just narrowly escaping capture.
34:48It's like a noose getting tighter and tighter.
34:51And Butch is smart enough to understand this.
34:54He's smart enough to see that now all of the Pinkertons' resources are focused on the Wild Bunch, and they're
35:02never going to give up.
35:04They won't stop.
35:10With the Pinkertons hot on their heels, Butch, Sundance, and the core of the Wild Bunch secretly rendezvoused in the
35:17roaring cattle town of Fort Worth, Texas.
35:22In its red light district known as Hell's Half Acre, thousands of cowboys flocked to saloons and bordellos.
35:29It was the perfect place for the gang to disappear and plan their next move.
35:36Decked out like the business moguls they'd been robbing, the Wild Bunch decided to pose for a picture.
35:42News Carver, Harvey Logan, Ben the Tall Texan, the Sundance Kid, and Butch Cassidy looked nothing like a band of
35:50desperados.
35:53Pitched forward in his seat, Sundance seemed tense and eager, while Butch sat back, donning a puckish smile.
36:02I think perhaps for Butch, it's almost a nostalgic photograph. I think he's done.
36:08I think Butch understood that the West had changed. There was no way to fight against the railroad, against the
36:14bankers, against the Pinkertons.
36:16It was time to move on.
36:19For Butch and Sundance, Fort Worth was the end of the trail.
36:23No matter how superlative their skills as outlaws, it seemed to be only a matter of time before they were
36:29brought down.
36:31Bounties for the Wild Bunch were growing by the day, and finding safe sanctuary on the outlaw trail was no
36:37longer a given.
36:40Butch Cassidy is getting fed up of alive on the run.
36:44He doesn't have any sense of home. He has no sense of roots.
36:47He has to live one night to the next, constantly looking out for the Pinkertons coming at him over his
36:53shoulder.
36:55The Wilcox robbery really started to get him thinking he had to get out of the business.
36:59It was only a matter of time before he was either going to be shot or captured and put in
37:04prison.
37:07As Butch and Sundance saw it, there was only one option if they wanted to remain free and alive.
37:13To flee the country.
37:16Butch wants to go to a place that's more like the Western United States was, say, 20 years before.
37:22Where you don't have the Pinkertons to worry about, and where law enforcement isn't quite as effective.
37:31In those days, Argentina was the land of opportunity.
37:35There was a lot of interaction between the American West and Argentina.
37:40Cattlemen going down there to buy cattle.
37:42There were settlers going down there.
37:45The New West was closing in on them.
37:48And so they wanted to go back to the Old West.
37:51And I think they saw in Argentina the Old West.
37:56Butch welcomed any member of the gang to travel with them.
38:00No one took him up on his offer.
38:03But if further proof was needed, the things had become too hot in the U.S.
38:07It wasn't long in coming.
38:10Soon after the flashbulb fired in that Fort Worth photo studio, the Wild Bunch was once again scattering for cover.
38:17The photographer put this photograph in his window as advertisement for his skill.
38:25Unfortunately, a local lawman goes by, recognizes one of the boys in the photo.
38:31And soon that photo is circulated throughout the Pinkerton Detective Agency and throughout the West.
38:39They made flyers with pictures of Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, all the Wild Bunch.
38:46They plastered those pictures up everywhere.
38:49And they had them in the hands of all their operatives.
38:52Now, indeed, you couldn't escape the eye that never slept, because it really had you.
39:07Two months had passed since the Fort Worth photo revealed their identities, and Butch and Sundance had managed to elude
39:14capture.
39:16By February 1901, they were making plans to board a steamer bound for Argentina.
39:23With time to spare before their ship set sail, the two men, posing as Wyoming cattle barons, disappeared into the
39:31chaotic metropolis of New York City.
39:36The trip to New York is a complete dichotomy.
39:41Here they had spent years ripping off mining companies, ripping off the railroad, ripping off banks.
39:47And where do they choose to flee?
39:50They flee to the belly of the beast.
39:53They take anonymity from New York City.
39:58It's perfect Butch Cassidy.
40:01How do you disappear?
40:03Disappear among them.
40:07While no other member of the Wild Bunch had heeded Butch and Sundance's call to flee the West,
40:12the famous outlaw duo were traveling with a third companion, Sundance's girlfriend, the mysterious Etta Place.
40:22Virtually everything about Etta Place is conjecture.
40:27Was that her name?
40:29Likely not.
40:31Was she a school teacher?
40:32Or was she a prostitute?
40:34Nobody really knows.
40:36One thing that seems certain is that the Sundance kid apparently believes that with Etta Place, there's a reason to
40:44live.
40:45There's a reason to think of tomorrow.
40:47There's a reason to flee.
40:51Flush with their ill-gotten gains, Butch, Sundance, and Etta lived the high life in a world unlike anything they
40:58had ever known.
41:00They could marvel at monuments of modernity, like the Brooklyn Bridge.
41:05Elevated trains rattled overhead, and electric lights illuminated street corners as they made their way to New York's famed restaurants
41:14and playhouses.
41:17Sundance and Etta, posing as husband and wife, even found time to visit DeYoung's photo studio, one of the finest
41:24in New York.
41:26They were a very well-mannered and soft-spoken couple, and DeYoung probably thought that they were cattle royalty from
41:35the West.
41:37They even go to Tiffany's, and a pendant watch is purchased for Etta.
41:44They must have had themselves a high old time.
41:50On February 20th, 1901, the trio sailed out of New York Harbor.
41:55As the Statue of Liberty faded from view, Butch and Sundance could look back on a decade on the run,
42:02and see that their own freedom was now within reach.
42:06It seemed like they had a chance to start over to reinvent themselves.
42:15The old days are over.
42:18Butch and Sundance get out just in time.
42:23As Butch and Sundance were making their exit, the last remnants of the Wild West were finally being reined in.
42:31After the Wilcox robbery, trains began to employ armed security,
42:36and the Union Pacific created lightning-fast cars stocked with armed manhunters.
42:42In just months, the Wild Bunch members who had decided to stay in America
42:48began to meet the end their leaders had foreseen.
42:52The Wild Bunch was still in operation, but they didn't have their mastermind to be able to plan their robberies,
42:59and they weren't going so well.
43:01And so these people went back to their life of crime.
43:07Harvey Logan was in on a robbery in Colorado, and was chased down,
43:13and ended up committing suicide rather than be taken.
43:17He had the tall Texan.
43:19He could have gone to South America also.
43:23Instead, he was beaten to death with a mallet on a train that he was trying to rob.
43:28So the Wild Bunch, one by one, ran into the arms of the law,
43:33and were dealt with either by death or by prison.
43:46Two years after Butch and Sundance disappeared from the scene,
43:51New York audiences were being captivated by Edwin Porter's film The Great Train Robber.
43:58It was one of the first motion pictures to tell a complete story.
44:02A western, inspired by the daring exploits of train robbers like Butch and Sundance.
44:10By 1903, the story of the Wild West, the story of Butch and Sundance,
44:14has already become fodder for mass entertainment.
44:19So famous is the Wild Bunch that Buffalo Bill Cody, in his Wild West show,
44:25which is playing not only all across America, but to the crown heads of Europe,
44:30features one of their train robberies.
44:34I mean, I think to the American public, Butch and Sundance are gone.
44:38It's over. That's why they're making movies. It's a show. It's a show now.
44:43For the bankers and railroad men, who had been the locusts of their crime spree,
44:48there was nothing romantic about the Wild Bunch.
44:51Even though Butch and Sundance hadn't pulled off a job in years,
44:54they had not been forgotten.
44:57Pinkerton agents continued to work the case, chasing down leads across the country.
45:03The all-seeing eye was not about to let the West's greatest living outlaws simply vanish.
45:10In the winter of 1903, Pinkerton informants in Pennsylvania intercepted a letter Sundance wrote to his family.
45:17And just like that, their cover was blown.
45:22Butch and Sundance were about as far away from Wyoming as you could get.
45:27And yet, all it took was one letter being opened, and now they know where they are.
45:32Argentina.
45:35Butch and Sundance had arrived in Argentina two years earlier.
45:40And together with Etta, they settled into the quiet domestic life of ranchers,
45:44on a homestead in the remote region of Patagonia.
45:49They built a four-room ranch house out of split cypress trees,
45:52and purchased 300 head of cattle, 1,300 sheep, and 28 horses.
45:59All the evidence is that they're reformed.
46:02They're going to go straight.
46:05They made a lot of friends.
46:06They seem to be respectable members of the community down there.
46:10There's even a wonderful photograph taken of them with their dog in front of their ranch house.
46:16Everything seemed to be going well for them.
46:20And then the Pinkertons found them.
46:24And the Pinkertons began to distribute flyers with their pictures on it in Argentina,
46:30warning all the local law enforcement officials that these were notorious American outlaws.
46:38Word came down to the local constable, and he was ordered to arrest them.
46:44Butch and Sundance knew that their time was up, and they had to take off.
46:50The fact that you're being hounded, that they won't let you go,
46:56sort of pushes them, I think, back to the outlaw trail.
47:02Etta Place, the woman who had been a steady presence in the lives of Butch and Sundance
47:07ever since they decided to flee the country, abruptly disappeared from the scene.
47:14Etta simply vanishes.
47:16We don't know when she leaves, but she's gone from their lives.
47:21And when she leaves, their lives begin to spiral out of control.
47:30On the run from the Argentine authorities, and in need of cash,
47:34Butch and Sundance returned to what they knew best.
47:37They slipped across the border into Bolivia,
47:40where they carefully cased the country's banks and mines.
47:45On November 4th, 1908, they robbed two payroll guards from the Aramayo silver mine,
47:51and disappeared into the unforgiving Bolivian backcountry.
47:58It's unclear that they even really know a good escape route,
48:02and they're really heading into the unknown.
48:05This is a very different world from Wyoming.
48:08They don't have the support of the local population.
48:11They don't know all the trails.
48:13They barely speak the language.
48:16This is a dangerous game they're playing.
48:21Within hours of the heist, the telegraph lines began humming.
48:24Even in the wilds of Bolivia, technology had caught up with Butch and Sundance.
48:30Every town in the area was supplied with descriptions of the gringo bandits.
48:36Military patrols fanned out across the region, combing every road, ravine, and ranch.
48:43Butch and Sundance made their way north to the desolate mining town of San Vicente.
48:49There they took shelter in a house, while they planned their next move.
48:55The news of the payroll robbery has already reached the town, and the mayor of the town goes and informs
49:03the local military that these two Americans, strange Americans, are staying in town.
49:12Well, the captain of the guard sends an official back to question, these gringos.
49:20He led three people down to this home.
49:25One of the soldiers went onto the patio, drew his weapon.
49:30Butch saw his silhouette through the window, and pulled out his six gun.
49:38And shot the guy dead.
49:41The first person, the only person that Butch ever killed.
49:47Meanwhile, the word goes out, and other residents of the town, heavily armed, now come to surround the house.
49:55They're surrounded, they're not going anywhere. There's no way they're getting out of there.
50:03A quick, violent gun battle follows.
50:09The bullets go right through the adobe walls of the building.
50:18And then, all is quiet.
50:28It was morning before they dared to go inside.
50:36They carefully made their way in, and there were Butch and Sundance, dead.
50:44Sundance was laying against a wall, a bullet hole in his head.
50:51Butch also had a bullet hole in his head, and was laying on the floor next to Sundance.
50:59Butch killed Sundance, was a murder-suicide.
51:04He shot Sundance in the forehead, and then turned the gun on himself, shot himself in the temple.
51:13I think they realized that this was the end, and they were just tired of running.
51:23As Butch and Sundance were laid to rest in unmarked Bolivian graves, American newspapers were declaring an end to the
51:31Wild West.
51:34In a fitting epitaph, the Washington Post declared that the notorious gang known as the Wild Bunch had disappeared with
51:42the March of Civilization.
51:46But there were many who simply could not believe these famous Western outlaws had met their end.
51:54Almost immediately stories began that they hadn't been killed in Bolivia.
52:00We don't want the outlaws to die.
52:04We certainly don't want them to die the way Butch and Sundance died.
52:09As wild as they were, as bad as they were, still represented something that Americans embrace.
52:17That wild freedom.
52:19And when they're gone, the Wild West is gone.
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52:38And by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.
53:08There's more American Experience online at PBS.org, where you can find out how to join the discussion on Facebook
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53:16American Experience, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid is available on DVD.
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