Butch Cassidy

by W. C. Jameson

While living in Globe, it is entirely possible that Phillips joined a group of mercenaries organized to travel to Mexico and fight with the revolutionaries. The group of sharpshooters, called the Falange de los Extranjeros, was under the command of Captain Linderfelt, and each was paid six dollars per day. It was during this time that Henry Bowman claimed he encountered Butch Cassidy in Colonia Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.

  Apparently the dry, high-altitude southwestern climate of Globe was beneficial to the asthmatic Gertrude Phillips, for she appeared to regain her health. During the late summer of 1910, the two traveled throughout much of Wyoming and Montana, eventually arriving in Spokane, Washington, in late December. It was during this trip that Phillips visited Dan Hillman and probably looked up old friend and former Wild Buncher Tom O’Day. Concerning O’Day, Phillips wrote the following in a manuscript several years later:

  All of the members of the original Wild bunch . . . except two had been wiped out. The one who had been most sought [had] now become a man of mystery and the man who he first met upon the day he entered the Hole in the wall, Tom O’day. O’day is yet living.

  Indeed, according to the results of Pointer’s research, Tom O’Day was, in fact, living at Lost Cabin, Wyoming, during the time Phillips claimed he came through.

  Shortly after arriving in Spokane, Phillips took a job with the Washington Water Power Company. Following subsequent employment stints with something called the American Stereotypewriter Company and a prospecting trip to Alaska, Phillips started the Phillips Manufacturing Company (PMC) in 1915. The business of PMC, according to Pointer, was “the development of adding and listing machines.” Pointer learned that the Burroughs Company was interested in Phillips’s adding machine, apparently inviting the inventor to their corporate offices to discuss the matter. Phillips and the Burroughs Company could not agree on a price for the invention, and the inventor broke off discussion. Months later, Burroughs initiated production of an adding machine strikingly similar to the one designed by Phillips.

  William and Gertrude Phillips were unable to have children, and in 1919 adopted a child, a boy named William Richard. They called him Billy.

  In 1925, the Riblet Tramway Company, which had consigned work to Phillips Manufacturing Company on several occasions, asked the inventor to travel to Bolivia to manage the construction of a tramway. Phillips turned Riblet down but told Gertrude and young Billy that he was going to South America. Instead, he used this opportunity to travel to Wyoming and Utah. It was during the year 1925 that Butch Cassidy reportedly visited his relatives and many of his friends in those states.

  Phillips eventually returned to Spokane and his business, which, at the time, was in solid, financial condition. Unfortunately, the Great Depression was approaching. One of Phillips’s principal sources of income was the Riblet Tramway Company, but in 1928 it suffered severe losses and cut back significantly on its consignments. As a result, Phillips was, for all intents and purposes, out of work. In January 1929, he sold one-third interest in his company to his lawyer, Gardner L. Farnham. The agreement stipulated that if Farnham was unsatisfied with the deal within one year, Phillips would pay him back and regain his share. After ten months, Farnham asked for his money, but Phillips was so broke he was unable to pay it. In May 1930, Phillips’s employees purchased the remaining shares. By June, Phillips offered to turn over the remaining one-third to them if they would assume all of his debts. They did.

  Shortly afterward, Phillips returned to Wyoming, this time to hunt for stolen money reportedly buried by Butch Cassidy many years earlier. As far as is known, he never found any, and when he returned to Spokane, he was still broke. During the Depression years, Phillips worked at odd jobs where he could find them in Spokane, barely making enough money to keep food on the table. He was forced to sell his house and move into a more modest one in a less exclusive part of town.

  In 1934, Phillips returned to Wyoming. On this trip he was accompanied by Ellen Harris and her son, Ben Fitzharris. Mr. and Mrs. Harris, living in Hollywood, California, at the time, had been neighbors and good friends of the Phillips family in Spokane. Mrs. Harris and Ben rendezvoused with Phillips in Salt Lake City and drove with him to Wyoming. Young Fitzharris had been told by his parents that Phillips was Butch Cassidy, but it made little impression on him at the time. On arriving in Wyoming and meeting so many of Cassidy’s friends and listening to their stories, he quickly became convinced that the old man who was his traveling companion was indeed the former outlaw.

  Young Fitzharris was dazzled by Phillips’s exhibitions of marksmanship with Colt revolvers. According to Pointer, Fitzharris was quoted as saying Phillips was an “honorable man and a very powerful character, not only physically, but mentally powerful.”

  It was during this trip that Phillips was encouraged to write down the story of his life. When he returned to Spokane following his journey to Wyoming and Utah, Phillips began penning a manuscript he titled “The Bandit Invincible.”

  After Phillips’s death, “The Bandit Invincible” was found. It is unclear whether the manuscript was intended to be a novel or a biography. According to Pointer, it was poorly organized, it was replete with misspellings, and there was no sense of order or chronology. A reading of numerous excerpts from the manuscript reveals no sense of composition style and a lack of intimacy with the construction and progress of such an undertaking. The manuscript also suggests a hurried attempt to record events of the past. Phillips wrote the manuscript, not as Butch Cassidy, but as a person who had known the outlaw from boyhood. For the most part, it was written as a third-person narrative, but in a couple of instances, Phillips slipped up and employed the first person.

  In the preface of “The Bandit Invincible,” Phillips wrote that much of what had been previously reported about Butch Cassidy had been conjecture and, for the most part, incorrect. He implied that he intended to tell the true story of the famous outlaw. In the first of what turned out to be many rationalizations of the outlaw’s misdeeds, Phillips wrote that “Cassidy did not rob for the lust of gain, nor was it his natural trend. He had as he thought, every good reason for his first holdup, and after the first, there was no place to stop.”

  In the manuscript, Phillips purposely changed the names of people and places, possibly, as Pointer suggested, to protect those who were still alive or maybe even descendants of friends. Despite the purposeful changes, the chronological inaccuracies, and even perhaps some purposely misleading information, the manuscript, according to Pointer, carried “more truth than recorded history itself.” Pointer claims “The Bandit Invincible” is “the last testament of a man who did wrong, who knew he did wrong, and who felt a need to tell others why he did wrong.” It was Cassidy’s way, suggests Pointer, to make peace with his maker.

  Pointer undertook the enormous task of attempting to verify as much of the manuscript as possible. He traveled thousands of miles, spent countless hours in libraries, courthouses, reading newspaper files, and interviewing anyone and everyone who might have some insight into the life and activities of Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch.

  Although the manuscript was written three to four decades after most of the events actually occurred, it contained descriptions of people and places that could only have been attained through personal experience. If William T. Phillips was not Butch Cassidy, he most certainly was with Cassidy when most of the events occurred, or at least not far behind him. Names and places included in the Phillips manuscript initially unknown to historians were researched and found to exist. If Phillips had not had firsthand experience, the only way he could have known certain specific details would have been to conduct thorough research in a number of small Wyoming newspapers that were in business during the late 1890s.

  For example, in “The Bandit Invincible” Phillips mentions two Lander lawmen from the mid-1890s named Grimmett and Baldwin, two names not commonly found in the various histories of Butch Cassidy. However, Pointer examined the Fremont County, Wyoming, Sheriff
’s Record Book and found that a Sheriff Orson Grimmett served as Fremont County sheriff between 1895 and 1897, and from 1899 to 1901. Research in the pages of an 1890s issue of the Lander newspaper, the Fremont Clipper, yielded information on the activities of one Deputy Jim Baldwin. Dogged research by Pointer even turned up a photograph of a Lander saloon that existed only during the 1890s, a saloon that was referred to by Phillips in the manuscript.

  Another example involved Phillips’s mention of a location he referred to only as “Lone Bear’s Village” near a bend in the Wind River. Subsequent research revealed that the Arapaho Indians, under a Chief Lone Bear, had been moved to the Wind River Reservation. “Only a person who had visited Lone Bear’s village before [1906],” wrote Pointer, “could have described the Arapaho camp.”

  As with the two above, there were many other examples that strongly supported the contention that William Phillips was extremely intimate with this area during the time it was frequented by the outlaw, Butch Cassidy.

  Concluding his examination and appraisal of the Phillips manuscript, Pointer determined it was “authentic . . . it is the autobiography of Butch Cassidy. The personal emotions and details from the outlaw’s life could have been related by none other.”

  Additionally, Phillips included in his manuscript details about the life and times of Butch Cassidy in between robberies and other commonly recorded events, details that are absent from the historical record.

  Many researchers are passionate about their belief that William T. Phillips and Butch Cassidy were one. Likewise, numerous skeptics are equally passionate about the notion that the two men could not have been the same.

  No absolute proof exists for either contention, and much of the evidence offered in support of the conflicting claims is arguable and carries with it cadres of supporters and detractors.

  For the contention that Butch Cassidy and William T. Phillips are the same man, we need an orderly and logical presentation of what is known, a critical evaluation of the evidence, and a deductive ratiocination based on that evidence.

  The following chapter offers an analysis of what is known about Butch Cassidy and William T. Phillips.

  Eighteen

  What Was the Fate of Butch Cassidy?

  Despite the thousands of man-hours invested in the study of Butch Cassidy, the outlaw’s life remains extremely cryptic and disputable. Even today, no one is entirely certain which train robberies and bank holdups Cassidy was involved in. It should be no surprise to anyone, therefore, that his death remains equally enigmatic and controversial.

  Determining what actually happened to the outlaw Butch Cassidy is extremely difficult for a number of reasons. First of all, with the passage of a century, records and accounts of the day pertaining to Cassidy and related events are incomplete, if they existed in detail at all. It is fortunate, as well as fine testimony to the patience and perseverance of some conscientious researchers and investigators, that we possess as much information and knowledge about Cassidy and his life and times as we do. But regardless of what has been found and archived, the record remains astonishingly incomplete.

  It is certainly easy to understand why the record is incomplete, particularly as it relates to his life from the time he fled from the United States to South America: Butch Cassidy was a wanted man intent on burying his past and pursuing a different kind of life. Purposely, he made his movements and activities throughout much of South America as secretive as possible. Save for employers and only a few acquaintances, he avoided and eluded any contact with the population at large. The reason is quite simple and quite apparent: while Butch Cassidy was on the run, he did not want to be found.

  Second, regardless of whether we are willing to admit it or not, the 1969 William Goldman film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid generated perceptions in the minds of the public that, though in most cases depart considerably from the truth, are nevertheless extremely difficult to dislodge. Even worse, many who presume to research and write about the history of Butch Cassidy, the Wild Bunch, and related topics, are often victims of these erroneous perceptions and are unable to distinguish truth from lore and fiction. As a result of their ultimate publications, many of these writers simply perpetuate and reinforce the popular, but often false, perceptions, rather than correcting them. This has been the case with numerous books and articles about American outlaws.

  Third, a lot of the so-called research conducted in, along with the subsequent writing about, the field of Western outlaw history in general, and that pertaining to Butch Cassidy in particular, is performed not by qualified and credentialed historians and investigators but by hobbyists and history buffs. While a number of these hobbyists are competent writers, experience has proven time and again that their research methodology, if it exists at all, is lacking or questionable. Far too often, research to many of these enthusiasts amounts to little more than collecting and repeating information that has already been published.

  The noted author Ramon Adams once stated,

  Nowhere has research been so inadequate or writing so careless as in the accounts of western outlaws and gunmen. Indeed, many chroniclers seem to delight in repeating early sensational and frequently untrue stories without any real attempt to investigate the facts.

  In case after case, particularly as it relates to Butch Cassidy, very little in the way of truly professional research and sophisticated investigative technique accompanied by inductive and deductive analysis is ever undertaken.

  There are several reasons for this. It has been suggested, and quite correctly, that the majority of competent and qualified historical researchers are employed by colleges and universities throughout the country. These individuals have been schooled in proper and effective research methodologies and, for the most part, can be regarded as experts in American history. Sadly, however, most colleges and universities do not regard Western outlaw history important enough to merit their time and attention. University scholars tend to pursue studies of a more universal orientation, and many academic institutions encourage or require their professors to devote their energies to matters perceived to be of greater import. Besides, studies in American outlaw history do not attract significant funding, and more and more university professors are under pressure to secure monies for their research activities.

  Call it elitist, if you will, but outlaw history is just not ranked very high in importance among many of the nation’s universities and their associated historians. Even those few qualified historians who do, in fact, spend some time pursuing outlaw studies too often know their subjects via the prevailing folklore and other discredited treatments. Additionally, legitimate professional and peer-reviewed publication outlets for such studies are rare.

  Unfortunately for truth, much of the attention given to outlaw history has fallen into the hands of the enthusiasts, hobbyists, and history buffs, all good people, but people who generally possess little or nothing in the way of qualifications or credentials and who have limited knowledge of correct research methodology and technique. However pure their motives, they are largely responsible, as a result of incomplete and incorrect research accompanied by very little, if any, investigation and often very poor reporting, for clouding the historical truth. Many of them simply do not recognize the differences between hearsay and fact.

  For most of them, the largest market for the publication of articles on their “research” is in pulp magazines that offer no peer review and questionable editing, and whose mission is less related to truth than it is to selling magazines. Another outlet for such writers has been the self-publishing or vanity publishing of books that have evaded all of the proper professional treatments any serious work demands and deserves. As a result, much of the so-called history of notable American outlaws such as Billy the Kid, Jesse James, and, of course, Butch Cassidy has evolved to a number of oft-repeated and unsubstantiated tales, and an absence of fact-checking, all of which help to further muddy the waters and cover the truth with an unnecessary sedime
nt of error.

  Poor chronicling and unsubstantiated research as it relates to Butch Cassidy began with Arthur Chapman’s 1930 account of the San Vicente shootout. In 1938, Charles Kelly followed with his book The Outlaw Trail, which relied heavily on Chapman’s version of events but contributed even more hearsay and lore disguised as fact. In 1941, George D. Hendricks released The Bad Man of the West, which perpetuated the growing mythology. James D. Horan included treatments of Butch Cassidy in four books, the first of which was published in 1949, the last in1976. Historian Frank Richard Prassel refers to Horan’s books as “less than entirely reliable” and containing “numerous assumptions.” Among a large number of amateur historians, the abovementioned books continue to be regarded as authoritative.

  Fourth, there exists in the field of Western outlaw and lawman history a passion for the status quo, a certain reverence for things and events as they have long been thought to occur. Anything that challenges the prevailing thought, or more precisely the collective thinking of a cadre of self-appointed “experts,” is commonly attacked, denigrated, and generally deemed unacceptable. Many of these so-called experts are not intimate with proper investigation techniques, are incapable of such themselves, and seem to resent it in others who choose not to align with them and other hobbyists and amateur outlaw historians.

  For example, in 1998, I presented contemporary findings relative to the controversy over whether Billy the Kid survived the alleged shooting by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, in 1881. Rather than enter into discussion or debate, Western lore enthusiasts who clung tightly to the historical status quo, many of whom were published in the aforementioned pulps, sent threatening letters and warnings. Because the status quo as it relates to the fate of Billy the Kid was threatened, those opposed to the premise bowed up and criticized the results of the study without ever once responding to an invitation to deliberate. The findings, all based on original research, competent investigation, state-of-the-art technology, and statistically valid analysis, were never responded to by the critics. When the hobbyists were invited to debate and have an opportunity to prove me in error on television, in newspapers, and in magazines, they never responded.