Volume 16 , Issue 7

Claims of Post 1908 Survival

Wikipedia states: "Cassidy's sister Lula Parker Betenson, that Butch returned alive to the United States and lived in anonymity for years. In her biography Butch Cassidy, My Brother, Betenson cites several instances of people familiar with Cassidy who encountered him long after 1908, and she relates a detailed impromptu family reunion of Butch, their brother Mark, their father Maxi, and Lula, in 1925."

In his Annals of the Former World, John McPhee repeats a story told to geologist David Love in the 1930's by Love's family doctor, Francis Smith, M.D., when Love was a doctoral student. Smith stated that he had just seen Cassidy who told him that his face had been altered by a surgeon in Paris, and that he showed Smith a repaired bullet wound that Smith recognized as work he had previously done on Cassidy.

In a 1960 interview with Josie Bassett, sister to Ann Bassett, Josie claims that Cassidy came to visit her in the 1920's after returning from South America and that Butch died in Johnnie, Nevada, about 15 years later.

Another interview with locals of Cassidy's hometown of Circleville, Utah also finds claims of Cassidy working in Nevada until his death.

There was conjecture that after a trip back to Europe, Cassidy returned to the United States, with the name William Phillips. Phillips went to Michigan, where he met and fell in love with Gertrude Livesay. The two were married in May, 1908. The happy couple moved to Arizona, where Phillips apparently made a little cash on the side by fighting with Pancho Villa in the Mexican Revolution, then north to Spokane, where he founded the Phillips Manufacturing Company and later worked for Riblet, who made chairlifts and tramways. But things went downhill, and Phillips was close to bankrupt. He embarked on a few desperate trips back to Utah and Wyoming in hopes of finding some buried caches, but he apparently was unsuccessful. He was diagnosed with cancer, and died on July 20, 1937.

Other reports suggest that an unearthed biography, Bandit Invincible: The Story of Butch Cassidy by William T. Phillip tells the story of how Cassidy, originally Robert LeRoy Parker, escaped from Bolivia (the book still says the sun set on Sundance that day), got plastic surgery in France, picked up a long-lost sweetheart in Wyoming, and settled down in Washington state.Some say the story of Cassidy faking his death is not plausible. That William Phillips and his wife knew Cassidy.

Read more: Did Butch Cassidy Survive? The Uncovered Manuscript says he died of Old Age.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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