150
IN CONTEXT
LOCATION
Wyoming, Colorado,
Utah, USTHEME
Outlaw gangsBEFORE
1855 Thieves replace gold
worth £12,000 (about
£1 million today) on the
London–Folkestone train with
lead shot in “The Great Gold
Robbery”. The substitution is
discovered when the crates
arrive in Paris.1877 Sam Bass and his men
seize $60,000 (£1.1 million
today) in gold pieces from
a train travelling from San
Francisco in the Union Pacific
Big Springs Robbery.AFTER
1976 The Irish Republican
Socialist Party steals
£200,000 (£1.3 million) from a
mail train in Sallins, Ireland.NO MORE VILLAINOUS,
RUFFIANLY BAND WAS
EVER ORGANIZED
THE WILD BUNCH, 1889–1908
The women of the Wild Bunch
The Wild Bunch took care to
maintain good relations with the
ranchers who owned the lands
on which they lived. They were
also notably welcoming of
women. Josie and “Queen”
Ann Bassett were sisters who
worked on the family ranch
close to Robbers’ Roost. They
became romantically and
amicably involved with various
members of the Wild Bunch,
who protected the Bassett ranch
when it came under attack from
cowboys who wanted their land.One of the woman in the Wild
Bunch’s circle would become
a member in her own right:
Laura Bullion. She was a bank-
and train-robber who counted
the Sundance Kid and Ben
Kilpatrick – known in the gang
as “The Tall Texan” – among
her numerous lovers.
Historians have been
intrigued by the involvement
of women with outlaws,
particularly by the apparent
absence of ill-feeling as romantic
attachments came and went.A
lthough Butch Cassidy’s
“Wild Bunch” was
not as anarchic as its
nickname suggests, the collective
had none of the order of Cosa
Nostra or the Triads.
In 1866, Butch was born Robert
Leroy Parker to a Utah Mormon
family. He adopted “Cassidy” from
an older cowboy he worked for as a
teenager, and picked up “Butch”
during a brief stint at a butcher’s.
Cassidy committed his first
robbery with a small group of
friends in 1889. They went down to
the bars of Telluride, Colorado, oneSaturday and made off with $24,000
(£515,000 today) from the town’s
San Miguel Valley Bank on Monday.
Robber’s Roost was their hideout,
a crag in the rugged “Canyon
Country” of southeastern Utah.Train robbers
Cassidy and his comrades lay low
around the canyons for weeks or
months at a time, in crude cabins
and on ranches, before venturing
out to rob trains across the Western
states. The Wild Bunch were no
idealists, but there was a utopian
aura to their life of crime. Butch150-151_Butch_Cassidys_Wild_B.indd 150 12/12/2016 17:13
151
See also: The James-Younger Gang 24–25 ■ The Great Train Robbery 30–35ORGANIZED CRIME
Members of the Wild Bunch,
including Longabaugh (the Sundance
Kid) on the far left and Cassidy on
the far right, pose in a Texas
photographer’s studio in 1901.Sheriffs and deputies
he regards with pity
and contempt. He is a
power unto himself.
San Francisco Callclaimed that he never killed a man,
but an attack by gang members on
the Overland Flyer, a Union Pacific
train outside Wilcox, Wyoming, in
1899, certainly led to one death.The train was held up by two of the
Wild Bunch standing on the tracks.
The outlaws detached the main
part of the train and forced the
engineer to steam across a bridge
with the lead cars that held
valuables. After dynamiting the
bridge to block the line, the outlaws
took $30,000 (£585,000 today) in
cash and jewellery and rode away.
A posse led by Sheriff Josiah
Hazen traced them 120 km
(75 miles) to the Castle Creek
ravine. In a shootout, the sheriff
was killed by outlaw Harvey Logan.
The rest of the gang escaped.Wanted dead or alive
Working in groups of three or four,
the Wild Bunch kept robbing and
their notoriety skyrocketed. Stateauthorities and private detectives
wanted them dead or alive. Stray
gang members were caught in
shootouts and pursuits over a
series of jobs, and the Wild Bunch’s
numbers steadily dwindled.
In 1901, Cassidy fled to South
America along with Harry
Longabaugh – famously known
as “the Sundance Kid” – and
Longabaugh’s wife. Their last years
are shrouded in romantic mystery,
with reports of numerous heists
and a final, fatal shootout in
Bolivia on 4 November 1908. ■150-151_Butch_Cassidys_Wild_B.indd 151 13/12/2016 11:24