On this day, April 13, in 1866, Wild West train robber Butch Cassidy was born in the Utah Territory.
He was born Robert Leroy Parker to a Mormon couple building Latter-day Saints communities out west. He adopted the alias George “Butch” Cassidy while working in a Wyoming butcher shop as a fugitive following his first major crime, a $20,000 bank robbery in Colorado in June 1889.
He later led a band of outlaws, known as the Wild Bunch, around the West. His most famous partner was Harry Longbaugh, known as the “Sundance Kid.” The gang’s specialty was holding up train cars.
The Wild Bunch disbanded by the end of the century, and in 1901, Cassidy and Longbaugh fled to South America.
– Emily Babay
