According to a Mrs. Jess Chamberlin of Arapahoe, Wyoming, Butch Cassidy joined her husband and father-in-law on a camping and fishing trip in 1933. During the trip, said Chamberlin, Cassidy searched for and found a cache of money he had buried almost fifty years earlier.
According to a man named William G. Johnson, Butch Cassidy, while visiting Lander in 1934, purchased some groceries from a Harry Baldwin who owned a store there. According to Pointer, after remaining in and around Lander for a while, Johnson said Cassidy left to return to “his home in Seattle, Washington, where he is known as William T. Phillips.” Johnson also commented that Cassidy was suffering from cancer of the stomach and was not expected to live much longer.
Larry Pointer wrote that Tacetta B. Walker, a Lander resident, was told in 1936 that Butch Cassidy had returned to the town to visit friends about two years earlier. Walker wrote that several Lander old-timers recognized the outlaw, and one old fellow stated that he talked about things only Butch Cassidy would know.
At one point during his visit, Cassidy encountered the son of a banker he had known years earlier. On seeing and recognizing Cassidy, the son embraced him. During their subsequent conversation, he called him “George” and “Cassidy.”
In 1934, Butch Cassidy also visited his old friend Eugenio Amoretti, the banker who helped him out with the Horse Creek Ranch he and Al Hainer started.
It is also believed that Cassidy visited his old girlfriend Dora Lamorreaux during his 1934 visit to Lander, but details of the encounter are unknown.
While in Lander, Cassidy asked his old friend Will Boyd to arrange a pack trip into the Wind River Mountains. This was done, and a comfortable camp was set up for an extended stay. Daily, Cassidy ranged far from camp and was occasionally observed digging around the stumps of old trees. It is believed by many he was searching for some loot he cached following one of his robberies.
While Cassidy was staying in the camp, Will Boyd decided to surprise him. Without telling anyone, he sent Roy Jones to bring Mary Boyd out to the camp. Mary and Cassidy were lovers at one time during the early 1890s, and it is believed they planned to get married. On arriving in camp, Mary, at the time a widow, and Cassidy recognized each other immediately, and they spent long hours together during the next few days reliving past times.
During the succeeding months, Mary Boyd received several letters from Cassidy, all postmarked from Spokane, Washington. In 1937, he sent her a ring set with a Mexican fire opal. The ring was inscribed:
Geo C to Mary B
When Boyd and Cassidy were lovers, the outlaw was using the name George.
Lula Parker Betenson claimed her brother passed away in 1937. One day that year, Maximillian Parker received a letter from a man named Jeff who informed him that his son, Robert LeRoy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy, had died of pneumonia. Jeff informed the family he had attended to arrangements for burial. The location of the gravesite remains a Parker family secret to this day.
During the late 1960s, Lula Parker Betenson began writing a book about the return of her brother. Some claim she was influenced by the popular 1969 movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Others insist she started her book before the movie was released. By 1970, her manuscript was still not published—she claimed she had been turned down by several publishers because she refused to reveal when and where Butch Cassidy had died and was buried.
Eventually, in 1975, an academic press—Brigham Young University Press in Provo, Utah—published the book. The publication remained popular for a long time and enjoyed decent sales for an academic press product. And, as normally happens when someone writes and publishes something that contradicts or conflicts with prevalent thought and the historical status quo, the book, Butch Cassidy, My Brother, generated considerable criticism.
The vast majority of Betenson’s detractors provided little in the way of substantial or even compelling commentary, but here and there some pertinent questions were raised relative to the accuracy of the contents of the book.
One of her principal detractors was Jim Dullenty who, around the time book came out, was the editor of a pulp magazine called True West that published material on things Western—outlaws, lawmen, lost mines, and so on. True West, while occasionally printing something that smacks of competent research, was never a credible historical publication, had no peer review process, and seldom troubled with fact checking. It was often sold in the “hobby” sections of some magazine racks, and the credibility and reliability of its content has often been questioned by qualified and credentialed researchers.
Dullenty, himself a man of some status in the field of Western outlaw research, openly expressed doubt about the accuracy and veracity of the Betenson book and claimed some of her own relatives manifested concern over the accuracy of the contents. According to Pointer, Dullenty was once quoted as stating that Betenson’s book was “worthless,” and that it “would have been better if she had not written it.” It must be pointed out here that Dullenty was, at the time, working on his own book about Butch Cassidy.
Regarding the Betenson book, a few have expressed the notion that the sister was simply trying to cash in on the growing popularity of the outlaws. Dan Buck, the husband of Ann Meadows, is quoted in Meadows’s book as saying, “Her claim that Butch told her Percy Seibert had deliberately misidentified the bodies so that his pals could come home without worrying about the Pinkertons proves she made the whole thing up.”
In truth, Betenson’s claim proves no such thing. It is difficult to imagine Buck making such a statement and causes one to question his own qualifications. Buck was also quoted as saying that Lula’s son, Mark Betenson, “told us Butch didn’t come back,” as if such a statement carried any credibility whatsoever. It has been suggested that Buck may have disclaimed Betenson’s book, in part, because she once offered some criticism relative to the notion that the exhumation process, in which he was involved, was not conducted correctly.
In fact, Betenson’s grandson, Bill Betenson, maintains Lula was telling the truth but that several members of the family did not want her to write the book because of a promise made to Maximillian Parker.
In spite of Betenson’s claim that her brother, Butch Cassidy, passed away in 1937, there were reports of additional appearances of the outlaw beyond that time.
Matt Warner and Butch Cassidy had been close friends for years. In conjunction with Murray E. King, Warner wrote in his biography The Last of the Bandit Riders (1940) that Cassidy and Longabaugh had indeed been killed by soldiers in San Vicente. It is likely that Warner was simply reporting what he heard, or perhaps what he read in Arthur Chapman’s exaggerated account. Although Warner expressed the belief that it was completely unlike Butch Cassidy to commit suicide, the old outlaw appeared resigned to the notion that his longtime friend had been killed in South America.
According to Warner’s daughter, Joyce, however, the old man changed his mind a short time before he died, insisting that Cassidy must have survived the encounter with the Bolivian soldiers. Joyce Warner related that her father believed up until the time of his death that his friend Butch Cassidy would come to visit him.
Joyce Warner related another rather provocative incident, one reported by writer Steve Lacy, an amazing tale that was published in 1982. She claimed that sometime in November 1939, almost a year after the death of her father, an elderly stranger came to her home asking for Warner. She told him her father had passed away. The visitor then asked her if Warner ever talked about a man named Butch Cassidy. The two engaged in conversation, and the stranger related accounts of his longtime friendship with Matt Warner, including how they once robbed a bank. The stranger’s version of the bank robbery was identical to the one her father related. He also told her of some of his adventures in South America.
After visiting with the man for a while, Joyce Warner looked him in the eye and said, “You’re Butch Cassidy, aren’t you?” The old man admitted he was.
Joyce
Warner also related that, for several months following the visit of the man she believed to be Butch Cassidy, she received letters from him. In 1941, she said, the letters stopped coming, and she presumed he had died.
Two issues of the Salt Lake City Tribune that appeared in October 1993 related another potential encounter with Butch Cassidy, this one occurring in 1941. In July of that year, a Utah state trooper named Merrill Johnson pulled over an elderly man for running a stop sign near Kanab. The old fellow was from out of state—the car bore California license plates—and Johnson simply wrote the driver a warning citation and allowed him to proceed on his way.
Trooper Johnson was living with his in-laws during this time, a family named Kitchen. That evening when Johnson returned home, he noticed the same car with the California plates that had been driven by the old man was parked nearby. When Johnson walked into the house, he was surprised to see the same old fellow visiting with his father-in-law, John Kitchen. Kitchen introduced the old-timer to Johnson as an “old friend of the family, Bob Parker—Butch Cassidy.” Johnson recalled during the conversation that evening that the old fellow talked quite a bit about his life in Bolivia. Kitchen and Cassidy had known each other years earlier in Utah.
The following day, Trooper Johnson drove the old man to Fredonia, Arizona, where he met with Bill Parker, whom he said was his brother. After driving him back to Kanab, the old man drove away, telling Kitchen he was on his way to Wyoming.
Merrill Johnson was not particularly well versed in Western outlaw history, and so the name Butch Cassidy did not leave him as impressed as some others would have been. Later, when Johnson was showed photographs of the outlaw Butch Cassidy, he stated there was no question they were images of the same man who visited father-in-law in 1941.
The accounts from people who claimed to have been contacted by Butch Cassidy years, decades, after he was supposedly killed in San Vicente, Bolivia, are numerous and compelling. What are the chances that Cassidy lived past 1908 and returned to the United States? Since no conclusive evidence exists that Cassidy was killed in San Vicente, or anywhere else for that matter, the possibility remains great.
It would be helpful to subject the post-1908 encounters with Butch Cassidy to close examination and attempt to provide some explanation. Consider the possibilities of what may have occurred:
The events involving the return of the outlaw Butch Cassidy were lies. Several researchers have contended that the alleged meetings and visits with Butch Cassidy during the first four decades of the 1900s were contrived, made up, and that those who reported such things had lied.
An imposter assumed a Butch Cassidy identity. Some have expressed the notion that someone posing as Butch Cassidy may have visited the Parker family and other Cassidy haunts and friends, passing himself off as the famous outlaw.
Butch Cassidy survived the South American experience and did, indeed, return to the United States. A number of researchers are convinced the outlaw Butch Cassidy did, in fact, live beyond 1908 and return to the United States, where he passed away as an old man.
Regarding the first possibility, it is difficult to believe, even for the most cynical, that dozens of people during a period of over three or more decades and separated by great expanses of geography could or would manufacture tales of encountering Butch Cassidy in the United States, meetings that exhibited some consistency relative to dates and places. While the chances that some of those who reported visits from Cassidy could have been exaggerated, many more were credible, honest individuals who stood nothing to gain from making up such a story. Even if only one of the dozens of those who claimed to have seen Cassidy was correct, that is enough to cause one to consider such a circumstance.
The second possibility—that someone assumed a Butch Cassidy identity and managed to fool Cassidy relatives and friends—is hardly worth considering. That someone posing as Cassidy, someone who looked remarkably like the outlaw, managed to pass himself off and succeed in fooling all of those people, most of whom knew Cassidy well or were related to him, and would certainly not be duped by an imposter, is not only highly unlikely but also preposterous.
The third possibility—that Butch Cassidy did return—likewise presents problems. While the evidence that such a thing happened is plentiful and, in many cases, complementary, there is no absolute and uncontested proof. All researchers have to rely on, for the most part, are eyewitness accounts and a few photographs. The photographs, while suggesting that Butch Cassidy did indeed return, do not represent hard, uncontested evidence. However plausible, however likely Butch Cassidy did return following his alleged death in San Vicente, Bolivia, it has never been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Into this mix of theory and speculation about the return of Butch Cassidy arrives a man named William T. Phillips, believed by many to be the final alias for the outlaw.
Seventten
Enter William T. Phillips
The last time Butch Cassidy was officially heard from was via a February 16, 1908, letter he wrote to Clement Rolla Glass in La Paz from the Concordia Tin Mines. Following that date, there exists no verification, or even substantial evidence, that Butch Cassidy remained in South America.
Three months later, a man named William T. Phillips appeared in the United States. Years later, when Phillips was investigated, it was discovered there existed no documents to prove that he ever existed prior to 1908. In other words, shortly after Cassidy disappeared, Phillips appeared.
Many of those who reported encounters with Butch Cassidy in the United States after he was allegedly killed in Bolivia stated that the outlaw often used the alias “William T. Phillips.”
So, who exactly was William T. Phillips? Where did he come from? Why is his life prior to May 1908 unaccounted? And, more importantly, could he possibly have been the outlaw Butch Cassidy?
Most of what is known about this rather enigmatic man whom many believe was the famous outlaw has come from the extensive research of two men—author Larry Pointer and magazine editor Jim Dullenty.
When Pointer was married in Lander, Wyoming, in 1972, one of the members of the wedding party was a man named Allan Robertson, a grandson of Dora Lamorreaux. Lamorreaux was one of Butch Cassidy’s sweethearts during the early 1890s. From Robertson’s father, Bill, Pointer heard a number of stories about Cassidy returning to Lander to visit friends during the 1930s, tales often related by the late Lamorreaux.
Intrigued by this information that severely contradicted generally accepted history, Pointer undertook a study of Butch Cassidy, all the while pondering the possibilities that the outlaw survived the Bolivian shootout and came back to the United States. During the course of his research, Pointer encountered James Dullenty, at the time a reporter for a Spokane, Washington, newspaper. Dullenty, who knew about William T. Phillips, had written a series of intriguing articles about him for his newspaper. Together, Pointer and Dullenty pursued additional research into the possibility Phillips could have been Butch Cassidy. Eventually, however, the two men fell into disagreement and went their separate ways, each of them independently pursuing their own research agenda, and both making significant contributions relative to William T. Phillips.
Logically, Pointer decided to begin investigating Phillips with his date and place of birth and trace him from that point on. Almost immediately, however, contradictions arose. When Phillips passed away in 1937, his death certificate placed his date of birth at June 22, 1865, in Michigan. His father was identified as L. J. Phillips and his mother Celia Mudge Phillips. Other Spokane records located by Pointer specifically identified Phillips’s place of birth as Sandusky, Michigan, and his father’s first name as Laddie. Given this beginning, Pointer made his way to Michigan to learn more.
Census records for Michigan during the middle of the nineteenth century were, relative to the times, comparatively up to date, complete, well ordered, and appropriately archived. Therefore, there should have been no trouble locating Phillips’s parents and his birth record. Accor
ding to the Michigan records, however, no such person as Laddie J. Phillips ever existed. A Celia Mudge was located, but her recorded date of birth would have placed her at only twelve years old when giving birth to William T. Phillips. Furthermore, the records show Celia Mudge was married in 1875 to one Hezekiah Snell. According to Pointer, descendants of the Mudge-Snell union never heard of William T. Phillips.
Further research into Phillips’s past yielded no information whatsoever. The first legitimate paperwork ever associated with the man known as William T. Phillips was dated May 14,1908—his marriage license. On that date, he was wed to Gertrude Livesay in Adrian, Michigan. Prior to that date, there is no evidence that Phillips ever existed under that name.
Phillips had come to Adrian, he told people, to get away from the hustle and bustle of Des Moines, Iowa, to relax a bit and see the country. While walking through the streets of Adrian, Phillips once related, he wandered into a church where he met his future wife, who was visiting from nearby Morenci where she lived.
Gertrude Livesay was described as “plain” and “sickly.” She suffered from chronic asthma and remained generally weak most of the time. She was thirty-two years old when she married Phillips. The wedding occurred following a rather brief courtship and in direct opposition of the wishes of her mother and sister. Gertrude’s father had been dead for five years at the time. On the marriage license, Phillips recorded his name as William Thadeus Phillips, his age as thirty-four, and his residence as Des Moines. He claimed he had been born in Michigan and his profession was “mechanical engineer.” Following a honeymoon in Colorado, the two moved to Globe, Arizona.
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