Monday, August 28, 2006

Butch Cassidy

- SUNDANCE: What's your idea this time?
- BUTCH: Bolivia!
- SUNDANCE: What's Bolivia?
(Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid)


Banda de Butch. él: sentado abajo a la derecha (nuestra derecha).


Robert LeRoy Parker was born in Beaver, Utah to Maximillian Parker and Ann Campbell Gillies, English Mormon and Scottish immigrants to the Utah Territory. His parents were residents of Victoria Road, Preston, Lancashire but fled England due to religious persecution for their Mormon faith. He grew up on his parent's ranch near Circleville, Utah, some 300 miles south of Salt Lake City, Utah.
Parker left home during his early teens when, while working at a local dairy farm, he fell in with Mike Cassidy, a horse thief and cattle rustler. He subsequently worked several ranches in addition to a brief stint as a butcher in
Rock Springs, Wyoming, whence he acquired for himself the nickname "Butch", (however a "Butch" is also the name given to a borrowed gun) to which he soon appended the surname Cassidy in honor of his old friend and mentor.

The facts surrounding Parker’s death are uncertain. On 3 November 1908 near San Vicente, in southern Bolivia, a courier for the Aramayo Franke y Cia Silver Mine was conveying his company’s payroll by mule when he was attacked and robbed by two American bandits. The bandits then proceeded to San Vicente where they lodged. Three nights later, on 6 November, their lodging house was surrounded by a small group comprising the local mayor and some of his officials, and two soldiers. A gunfight then ensued, during which, in a lull in the firing, a single shot inside the house was heard, followed by a man screaming, which in turn was followed by another single shot. The locals kept the place surrounded until the next morning when, cautiously entering, they found two dead bodies, both with numerous wounds to the arms and legs, one with a bullet hole in the forehead and the other with a hole in the temple. Both bodies, apparently suicides, were removed to the local San Vicente cemetery where they were buried close to the grave of a German miner named Gustav Zimmer. Although their unmarked grave has been sought in the 1990s, notably by the American forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow and his researchers in 1991, no remains with DNA matching them to the living relatives of Parker and Longabaugh have yet been discovered.

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