Butch Cassidy Research Paper

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Butch Cassidy was born Robert LeRoy Parker on April 13, 1866, in Beaver, Utah. The oldest of thirteen children he was born into a poor Mormon family; who had moved from England with his grandparent’s to the mountains of Circleville. Butch had problems with the law at a very young age. Around 1884 Butch had snuck into a shop looking for a pair of jeans, he left an ‘I Owe You’ on the counter for the owner to see. However, this did not go over well and the owner did not wait for Robert to return later that evening to pay for the jeans, instead the owner called the police. Butch also got in to trouble because his father had lost some land in a property rights dispute this caused Butch to no longer looked up to his father as a role model. Butch …show more content…

Robert took on some odd jobs besides working on a farm or ranch, he took a job working at a butcher shop. When Robert got more into being an outlaw he did not want to bring shame upon his family and took upon the name “Butch Cassidy”. Robert got his first alias name of ‘Butcher’ from being a butcher in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and took the last name Cassidy from his old mentor. However soon after he dropped the ‘er’ at the end of butcher and was left with “Butch Cassidy” as his outlaw name. Shortly after Butch was serving a two-year jail sentence for rustling some cattle. Butch then sat in his cell for two years becoming a “master planner of the robbery of trains, banks, and mine payrolls came naturally for Cassidy” (Circleville, Utah). Butch was very well liked and never had a lack of companions who helped assist him with his plans. “After prison, Cassidy reunited with members of the Wild Bunch—a loose-knit band of men who started out at rustlers and horse thieves—and turned to robbing banks and trains. He and his fellow bandits developed a pattern for committing these crimes that involved doing reconnaissance on the place they planned to rob, as well as stashing supplies and extra horses along their intended getaway route. While Cassidy became notorious for pulling off holdups throughout the West in the 1890s, he wasn’t known for excessive gun …show more content…

Some of the members of the Wild Bunch Gang include: Harry Longbaugh (the Sundance Kid), Ben Kilpatrick, Harvey Logan, William Carver, George Curry, Laura Bullion, Elza Lay and Bob Meeks (Spartacus Educational). The gang is known for holding up trains and robbing banks. “One of the first major crimes attributed to Cassidy is the robbery of the San Miguel Valley Bank in Telluride, on June 24, 1889. Matt Warner, Tom McCarty and Butch Cassidy got away with $20,750 by thoroughly casing the joint first” (Circleville, Utah). “On April 21st, 1897 the train from Salt Lake City entered Castle Gate carrying the payroll for the Pleasant Valley Coal Company. Men carrying the money were making their way through town towards the company office when they were robbed of the $8,800 they were carrying and then fled to Robbers Roost, cutting telegraph wires along the trail to prevent the news of the robbery from spreading to lawmen along their escape route” (Circleville, Utah). Cassidy was not known for excessive gun violence. In fact, he told his gang members to not aim at the law officers when being chased down but instead aim at the horses they were riding. Cassidy also boasted himself by saying that he himself had never killed

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