Butch Cassidy My Uncle

Lots of people wish they were related to a famous person. Bill Betenson is Butch Cassidy is his great-uncle. Bill's interest in Butch Cassidy was sparked when he was four years old and attended a private screening of the Paul Newman/Robert Redford movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with his great-grandmother, Lula Betenson, who wrote Butch Cassidy, My Brother. For over two decades Betenson has researched and studied the life and times of Butch Cassidy. Betenson utilized privileged family information and memorabilia, traveled to South America to conduct interviews and visit Butch Cassidy's ranch, and spent hours in dusty archives. Betenson offers up new information about this infamous outlaw's life and death.

Bill Betenson is the great-grandson of Butch Cassidy's younger sister Lula Parker Betenson who wrote Butch Cassidy, My Brother, published in 1975. Bill inherited not only Lula's family archives but also her interest in setting the record straight. His quest for answers has been a lifelong pursuit which has led him from dusty jail basements in the American West to Butch's ranch in Argentina and beyond. He's often said, "If I had to pick an outlaw to be related to, I would pick Butch."

This well-researched biography of the life—and controversial death—of Robert LeRoy Parker, a.k.a. Butch Cassidy, is a journey across the late-nineteenth-century American West as we follow Cassidy’s exploits in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, where he made his name as a surprisingly affable outlaw. More important, this book answers the question: Did Butch Cassidy, noted outlaw of the American West, survive his alleged death at the hands of Bolivian soldiers in 1908 and return to friends and family in the United States? The evidence suggesting he did is impressive and not easily dismissed, but how he lived and what identity he assumed are still debated.

"Biography about the exploits of outlaw Butch Cassidy during his time spent in Wyoming, written by his great-nephew W.J. "Bill" Betenson"--

The Old West was coming to an end. Two legendary outlaws refused to go with it. As leaders of the Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid executed the most daring bank and train robberies of their day. For several years at the end of the 1890s, the two friends, along with a revolving band of thieves, eluded law enforcement while stealing from the rich bankers and Eastern railroad corporations who exploited Western land…until they rode headlong into the twentieth century. In The Last Outlaws, Thom Hatch brings these memorable characters to life like never before. From their early holdup attempts to that fateful day in Bolivia, Hatch draws on a wealth of fresh research to go beyond the myth and provide a compelling new look at these legends of the Wild West. Includes Photographs

"For a century Butch Cassidy has been the subject of legends about his life and death, spawning a small industry of mythmakers and a major Hollywood film. Charles Leerhsen sorts out fact from fiction to find the real Butch Cassidy, who is far more complicated and fascinating than legend has it"--

He gained renown as the sidekick of Butch Cassidy, but the Sundance Kid—whose real name was Harry Alonzo Longabaugh—led a fuller life than history or Hollywood has allowed. A relative of Longabaugh through marriage, Donna B. Ernst has spent more than a quarter century researching his life. She now brings to print the most thorough account ever of one of the West’s most infamous outlaws, tracing his life from his childhood in Pennsylvania to his involvement with the Wild Bunch and, in 1908, to his reputed death by gunshot in Bolivia. Combining genealogical research, access to family records, and explorations in historical archives, Ernst details the Sundance Kid’s movements to paint a complete picture of the man. She recounts his homesteading days in Colorado, offers new information on his years as a cowboy in Wyoming and Canada, and cites newly uncovered records that substantiate both his outlaw activities and his attempts at self-reform. While taking readers on the wild chase that became Longabaugh’s life, outracing posses and Pinkertons, Ernst corrects inaccuracies in the historical record. She demonstrates that he could not have participated in the Belle Fourche bank heist or the Tipton train robbery and refutes speculations that Butch and Sundance managed to escape their fate in Bolivia. The Sundance Kid is enlivened by more than three dozen photographs, including family photos never before seen.