On examining the photograph, however, Bracken claimed the body identified by some as Cassidy was actually that of an outlaw named Tom Dilly.
Following the appearance of Arthur Chapman’s article in 1930, a number of Butch Cassidy’s friends stepped forward to dispute the assertion that the outlaw was dead. Many of them stated they had visited Cassidy during the years since the alleged San Vicente shootout.
Since the “deaths” of Cassidy and Longabaugh in 1908, dozens of reports surfaced either stating or implying they were still alive, several of them issued by the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. The two famous outlaws were reportedly seen not only in South America but also in Mexico and in the United States, time and again, and over a period of the next three decades.
As members of the Parker family went about their lives in Utah, they occasionally heard rumors that Butch Cassidy was still alive and had been seen in various locations in South America, as well as in the United States. Lula Parker Betenson claimed her father was certain Cassidy was alive, but the family never understood how he knew.
For the three decades following the incident at San Vicente, a man believed by many to be Butch Cassidy appeared on numerous occasions throughout parts of the American West. He visited extensively with members of the Parker family and with many known friends of Butch Cassidy. Who was this man? Was it really Butch Cassidy, or was the return of this famous outlaw merely a hoax? An examination of the events relating to his appearances offers some rather stunning revelations, as well as some compelling evidence that continues to baffle researchers.
The first recorded mention of seeing the outlaw Butch Cassidy in the United States following his departure to South America in 1901 actually occurred prior to his alleged death in San Vicente. The year was 1906, and the sighting occurred in Ogden, Utah.
According to Betenson, a young man named Pete Parker, who knew Cassidy well, used to deliver messages between the outlaw and his lawyer, Douglas A. Preston, when the outlaw was on the run in Wyoming and Utah. Betenson once received a letter from the son of Pete Parker in which an encounter between his father and Butch Cassidy was described.
Pete Parker arrived in Ogden one afternoon in 1906 to take a train that would carry him to college in Logan. Since the train was not leaving until the next morning, Parker checked into a hotel. On the way to his room, Parker noticed a man sitting in the lobby who looked familiar to him. Stunned, Parker suddenly realized it was Butch Cassidy. He and Cassidy spoke for approximately forty-five minutes, during which time the outlaw asked Parker about his parents and neighbors.
The following morning, Parker went down to the desk to check out and discovered that Cassidy had paid his hotel bill and left him a package containing two brand-new white shirts. In the pocket of one of the shirts was a $20 gold piece. Following the visit with Parker, Cassidy supposedly returned to the mines in Bolivia. If the incident is true, it verifies that Butch Cassidy returned to the United States for a time during his residence in South America, probably accompanying Harry Longabaugh and Etta Place during one of their trips.
Jim Gass and Butch Cassidy were boyhood friends in Circleville. Gass once told Cassidy’s sister, Lula Parker Betenson, about an incident wherein he and Butch once found a fawn pinned to the ground by a fallen log, one of its legs apparently broken. Gass suggested they shoot the fawn to put it out of its misery. Butch, however, was determined to save the animal. After freeing the deer from under the log, Butch splinted the leg and the fawn was able to walk.
Gass once said of Cassidy that he couldn’t kill a dog, let alone a man.
Sometime during the year 1908, Gass returned from a trip to California. He immediately went to visit Betenson and informed her he had seen her brother, Butch Cassidy, at the train station in Los Angeles. According to Gass, the two men spotted each other at the same time and both waved. Butch’s train pulled away before they could speak.
It was unclear whether Gass’s sighting of Cassidy occurred before or after the alleged San Vicente shootout.
The first clear sighting of Butch Cassidy after the San Vicente shooting occurred in Mexico. During the Mexican Revolution, an Anglo family named Bowman was living in Colonia Juárez, a Mormon colony in the Mexican state of Chihuahua located in the foothills of the Sierra Madres. Here, they became acquainted with Butch Cassidy in 1910. According to Betenson, Henry Bowman had been taken prisoner by the federal soldiers and was about to be executed when Cassidy interceded. Mrs. Bowman said Cassidy agreed to provide the federales some information on the whereabouts of Pancho Villa on the condition that Bowman be released. The Bowmans took a picture of Cassidy, and years later, the photograph was presented as a gift to Betenson.
The Bowmans later moved to Texas and eventually raised horses on a farm not far from El Paso. According to Mrs. Bowman, Butch Cassidy arrived at the farm one day and remained a guest for several weeks. Finally, she said, he returned to Mexico.
Author Larry Pointer secured a revealing interview with Fred Hillman. Hillman, it will be recalled, was the young man Butch Cassidy frightened with a snake while he was working on his father’s ranch in Wyoming’s Big Horn Mountains; this was in 1897, following the Castle Gate payroll robbery. According to Hillman, he was returning to his house from working in the hay fields one afternoon when he spied a man standing under a tree in the front yard, apparently waiting for him. Hillman walked up to him, and the stranger smiled and asked how the hay crop was doing. After exchanging pleasantries for a few minutes, the stranger grinned at Hillman and asked, “Have you had any rattlesnakes tossed up on the hay rack with you lately?” (according to Pointer). At that point, Hillman realized he was talking with the man who worked for his father for a time, the ranch hand who befriended him when he was a thirteen-year-old youth, the man who taught him how to shoot, and the man who, it was later discovered, was the outlaw Butch Cassidy.
Joseph Claude Marsters worked as a horse wrangler for Cassidy and Longabaugh in South America and knew the two men well. In 1915, Marsters had a job riding bulls with a traveling Wild West show. During a performance in San Francisco, Marsters was walking back to the chute following a ride when a cowhand walked up to him and told him that his old boss thought his riding had improved since he had last seen him. The cowboy pointed to the “old boss” up in the stands, and when Marsters turned to look, he saw Butch Cassidy waving at him.
In 1922, a stranger drove a Model T Ford into John Taylor’s Rock Springs garage for some repairs. While Taylor was working on the car, the stranger asked him a lot of questions about current and past residents of the town. “He didn’t tell me who he was,” wrote Taylor, “but I recognized [Butch Cassidy]” (according to Pointer).
In 1924, Cassidy allegedly visited an old friend named Tom Welch near Green River, Wyoming. According to Welch, Cassidy was driving a Model T Ford and pulling behind it a small, two-wheeled trailer containing camping gear.
Tom Vernon was a well-known citizen of Baggs, Wyoming, often referred to as “Mayor,” although the town was too small to support such an office. As a young man, Vernon knew Butch Cassidy and often played music at Baggs dances attended by members of the Wild Bunch. According to Vernon, Butch Cassidy returned to Baggs “sometime in the twenties” and stayed with him for two days (in Patterson’s Butch Cassidy: A Biography). The two men relived a number of events and adventures from the old times. Vernon said he never had any doubt that the man who visited was Cassidy.
In 1925, according to writer Pointer, a visitor camped for several weeks in a grove of trees not far from the Charter Ranch near Jackson, Wyoming. According to Boyd Charter, the seventeen-year-old son of the owner, the stranger remained mostly to himself but eventually became acquainted with the boy. Pointer interviewed Boyd Charter in 1973 and learned that the youngster overheard his father tell a friend named Will Simpson that the man camped nearby was Butch Cassidy. Simpson was the prosecuting attorney who was, in part, responsible for Cassidy being sent to prison in 1894.
According
to Crawford MacKnight (a nephew of Ann Bassett), his family, including Ann, was camping in Nevada mining country some fifty miles east of Las Vegas. MacKnight said a man named “Masson” arrived at their camp one afternoon and spent a great deal of time visiting and talking with Ann. MacKnight said the man never told Ann who he was but commented that he had known her well when the two of them were much younger and living in Brown’s Park. He told her he had eaten many dinners at the Bassett home. All of a sudden, said MacKnight, Ann recognized “Masson” as Butch Cassidy. Later, Ann took some photographs of Cassidy. MacKnight claimed the photographs of “Masson” closely resembled images of Butch Cassidy.
Ann Bassett made a second trip to the region to visit Cassidy in 1928. Accompanying her was her niece, Edith Jensen, and her nephew and his wife, also named Edith.
According to writer John Rolfe Burroughs, Josephine Bassett Morris met with Butch Cassidy near Rock Springs, Wyoming, sometime during the 1920s. It is alleged by a number of Cassidy researchers that Josephine Bassett was once Cassidy’s sweetheart. Josephine Bassett Morris moved to Rock Springs when her sons were old enough to attend high school.
One afternoon, Morris related, Butch Cassidy and Elzy Lay entered a Rock Springs saloon and visited with the bartender, a man named Bert Kraft, whom they had known years earlier. Kraft told the two men that Josephine was living nearby. At Cassidy’s insistence, Kraft called her and made arrangements for Cassidy and Lay to come to her home. Their visit extended well into the night as the three, according to Morris, relived old times.
According to writers Dick and Daun DeJournette, Josie Bassett Morris met with Cassidy two more times in 1928, once in Baggs, Wyoming, and once again in Johnnie, Nevada. Morris claimed Cassidy passed away sometime in the 1940s, in Johnnie.
Johnnie, Nevada, figures prominently in another Butch Cassidy story. Johnnie was the site of a rich gold mine, discovered sometime during the early 1900s. The Johnnie mine was an active producer of gold between 1908 and 1940, at which time it was finally shut down.
A number of stories emanated from the Johnnie mine, stories that Cassidy worked there for a time. Some of the stories claim he was a mining engineer, others say he was merely a night watchman. A few researchers concur with Josie Bassett Morris’s statement that Butch Cassidy died in the small town. Writer Edward M. Kirby investigated the potential Johnnie, Nevada, connection with Cassidy and, in the process, encountered a longtime resident named Fred Cook. Cook maintained Cassidy lived in Johnnie from 1930 to the mid-1940s. Cook even showed Kirby a gravesite he claimed was that of the outlaw. A wooden cross over the grave bore the name “Bill Kloth.”
A dramatic return of Butch Cassidy to his family was detailed by Lula Parker Betenson in her book, Butch Cassidy, My Brother. It occurred one day in 1925. Lula Parker was forty-one years old. The family was living in town, but on this day her brothers were all out in the field working with the stock and repairing fences.
Mark Parker, one of Butch Cassidy’s brothers, was working on a fence near the road when a brand-new black Ford described as a touring car pulled up. After a moment a man got out and stood by the car looking at Mark. Initially, Mark thought it was a cattle buyer named Fred Levi, a cousin, who had stopped by to talk about a purchase. As the man stepped into the field and approached Mark, however, he stopped working on the fence and stared into the face of the stranger. Suddenly, Mark realized it was his own long-lost brother, Robert LeRoy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy. Cassidy would have been fifty-nine years old.
The two men embraced, and there was much hugging and backslapping. They visited for about thirty minutes and then climbed into the car and drove to town.
Betenson recalls that, when the Ford pulled up to the family house in Circleville, Maximillian Parker, the father, was sitting in the sun on a step just outside the kitchen door. He was eighty-one years old, possessed a shock of white hair, and “wore a thick, white mustache.” Betenson described her father as “a fine-looking man, straight and alert, and . . . dressed immaculately.”
The Ford pulled to a halt, and Mark stepped out from the passenger side, much to the surprise of the elder Parker. Mark had left for the ranch earlier that morning on horseback. As Mark stood by the car, grinning, the driver stepped out and rose to his full height. Old man Parker stared at him, wondering who he was.
Butch Cassidy remained next to the Ford, his heart beating heavily. For over four decades he had stayed away from his family for fear that his presence would bring them shame, that they would be ostracized by their neighbors because they had brought an outlaw into the world. He had not seen his family for over forty years, and this moment was filled with a certain terror for him. He wondered if he should simply get back in the car and drive away.
In spite of his fears, Cassidy grinned at his father, and Maxi Parker immediately recognized his first son. The two men embraced for a long time, and with tears in their eyes, they entered the house.
Lula Parker Betenson had been preparing dinner when Mark entered the kitchen and told her to fix an extra plate, that they had company. After setting out the plates and the food on the kitchen table, she stepped into the living room and eyed the stranger. On seeing her, the newcomer rose. As she studied his face, she thought he looked familiar but could not ever remember meeting him before. From his features, Lula deduced he must be a relative of some kind.
At that moment, the elder Parker said, “Lula, this is LeRoy.” Years later, Betenson related she was stunned that this was her famous brother standing before her. Though she was certain, as a result of family comments, that Butch Cassidy was still alive and was living in the United States, she never anticipated meeting him.
As the family sat in the living room and visited that evening, according to Betenson, Butch Cassidy spoke most of all about his late mother. His heart was heavy with regret for the pain and humiliation he believed he caused her. He felt certain he had disappointed her and broken her heart.
Cassidy described in detail that morning in 1884 when he left home and how his mother, holding Dash, the family dog, watched him ride away. He described the blue blanket she had given him and the food wrapped inside it. He told of riding past the poplar trees alongside the road and recalled how he helped his mother plant them after the family hauled them all the way from Beaver.
Later that evening, Cassidy related tales about South America, about how he and the Sundance Kid went down there to straighten out their lives and find honest work. He talked about the constant pursuit and persecution from the Pinkerton detectives. “When a man gets down,” Betenson quoted him, “they won’t let him up.”
Cassidy said that, sometime after the alleged gun battle at San Vicente, he and Longabaugh separated and planned on returning to the United States. They were going to rendezvous at a certain location, but Cassidy suffered a severe scorpion sting and his leg became so swollen he could not travel. For several weeks, his wound was treated by an Indian woman, and he missed the meeting with the Sundance Kid.
Eventually, Cassidy traveled northward, spending some time in Mexico working at various jobs. One afternoon he was relaxing in a local tavern when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Fearing he had been identified, he experienced a brief moment of fear. When he turned around, however, he looked into the face of Etta Place! She and Longabaugh happened to be staying in the same town, and she invited him to come and stay with them. After two days, Cassidy left the pair and had not seen them since.
After leaving Mexico, Cassidy said he traveled to Alaska where he trapped and prospected for a time. He found the weather unsuitable there and returned to warmer latitudes, eventually settling in the Pacific Northwest, where he remained for a while. He found the state of Washington agreed with him, fell in love with the region, and eventually decided to make it his permanent home. He told his family that, after visiting them, he would return to Washington where he intended to live out the rest of his life.
Cassidy remained with his family for two days. After leaving them, he trav
eled to other parts of the region, searched for, located, and spent another week visiting with his brothers. Finally, he left to return to the Pacific Northwest. He requested his family not tell anyone he was alive or that he had come to Utah to see them. They agreed to keep his visit a secret. After returning to Washington, he wrote a number of letters to his father. According to Betenson, Butch Cassidy never returned to Utah.
During Cassidy’s visit to his family, he told them he had led a completely honest life since 1909. He also stated that, after it was reported he had been killed in Bolivia, he wanted very badly to return home but was afraid of bringing shame to the family he loved so much.
Many of Cassidy’s relatives and friends knew he had not been killed in South America and that he was still alive during the 1920s and 1930s. They kept the secret. In letters to Lula Parker Betenson, and via interviews conducted by others, many of them recalled meeting and visiting with Cassidy during his return trips.
In a letter to Betenson, a man named W. H. Boedeker wrote that Butch Cassidy visited Dubois and Lander, Wyoming, in 1929. According to the letter, Boedeker’s father, Henry E. Boedeker, and Cassidy became acquainted during the late 1880s when the former was hauling lumber. The two, in fact, roomed together at Lander’s Cottage Home Hotel. It will also be remembered that, at the time Cassidy was arrested for horse theft, Lander constable Henry Boedeker was one of the lawmen who accompanied the prisoner to the jail at Laramie. According to W. H. Boedeker, he was operating the Frontier Cafe in Dubois in 1929 when three men entered the establishment and ordered meals. One of the men began asking Boedeker questions about his father and others who once lived in the area. Before the conversation was finished the man admitted to being Butch Cassidy.
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