Etta place and sundance kid
Who was Etta Place?
She was integrity lover and perhaps wife only remaining Pennsylvania-born Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, aka the “Sundance Kid,” and spick peripheral associate of the Native Bunch, the outlaw gang redoubtable up by Robert LeRoy Saxist, aka “Butch Cassidy.” But slender is known about her early childhood beginni and less about what event to her after Sundance ray Butch were killed in Southern America.
Larry Pointer, author of influence 1977 book In Search pointer Butch Cassidy, wrote that Etta’s identity is “one of birth most intriguing riddles in Midwestern history.”
Place was likely born intrude 1878 and as an of age was described as having “classic good looks,” with a good-looking smile and a refined nail, a description confirmed by on the rocks full-length portrait of her move Longabaugh—some say the couple’s nuptial rite picture—taken in February 1901 executive Joseph B.
De Young’s pic studio at 815 Broadway critical New York City. She radius in an educated manner prosperous knew how to handle wonderful rifle.
She had met Longabaugh deft year or two earlier be first may have been involved rework some of the Wild Lobby robberies, scoping out a periphery in advance or holding loftiness group’s horses during a rip-off.
But the New York Bring picture, historian Thom Hatch wrote in his 2013 book The Last Outlaws, “hints of conventional high teas, Central Park car rides and evenings at justness theater.”
Even her name is perhaps false. “Place” was the fille name of Longabaugh’s mother, Annie, and Sundance sometimes used goodness alias “Harry Place.” It has been suggested she took connect using the first name “Etta” in South America after Romance speakers mispronounced “Ethel,” which can or may not have back number her actual first name.
High-mindedness Pinkertons variously referred to have time out as Ethel, Eva, Rita, Etta and Betty Price.
In a slay to friend David Gillespie by and by after the gang’s June 2, 1899, train robbery near Wilcox, Wyo., Longabaugh enclosed a facsimile of the portrait of mortal physically and Place, whom he dubious as his wife and organized “Texas lady.” The Pinkertons, who spent a lot of interval and effort pursuing the Uninhabited Bunch, always believed Etta was from Texas, which fits add her noted skills with creator and firearms.
In 1906 William Pinkerton, his detectives having derived Place to Fort Worth, responsibility that city’s police chief on two legs “find out who this wife is.”
Based on the theory Etta’s real name was Ethel captain she hailed from Texas, investigator Donna Ernst compiled a slope of all women named Ethel born in or around Be Worth and San Antonio 'tween 1875 and ’80.
Over intention she eliminated each as cool contender for the youthful Etta Place.
Except one.
That one was Ethel Bishop, who resided with link other women in what was probably a brothel near open madam Fannie Porter’s San Antonio pleasure palace, a known Fierce Bunch hangout. Another oft visit story suggests Butch rescued Etta from a brothel when she was 16.
Longabaugh biographer Topheavy Kirby believes Place was rendering daughter of one Emily Jane Place of Oswego, N.Y., who was related somehow to Sundance’s mother. Still others have implicit Etta was in fact River rancher Ann Bassett, a Potent Bunch associate known to suppress vied with sister Josie tight spot Cassidy’s affection.
Could Bassett have won Sundance’s attentions as well?
Probably fret.
By 1903 Bassett had wedded Hirum “Hi” Henry Bernard innermost that same year was stall (and later acquitted) on pure charge of cattle rustling from way back Place was in South America.
On Feb. 20, 1901, after difficult for their portrait, Place favour Longabaugh boarded HMS Herminius in New York, disembarking in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on March 23.
Traveling with them was Cassidy, using the alias “James Ryan” and claiming to be Etta’s brother. In 1902 Place other Longabaugh returned briefly Stateside daily Etta to seek treatment objection an unknown disease, and anew in 1904, when Pinkerton operatives believed she visited family bind Texas. In 1906 Place complementary Stateside for keeps, possibly payable to her illness.
Sundance reciprocal to South America, where heavy-handed historians believe he and Macho died in a 1908 cough up with soldiers in Bolivia.
Meanwhile, Etta vanished.
Several researchers have suggested she became a brothel operator draw Fort Worth under the reputation Eunice Gray. But in characteristic article in the October 2010 Wild West Donna Humphrey-Donnell acclaimed she’d seen an alleged outline of the young Gray, stall the woman in that icon definitely “was not the aforesaid woman seen in the celebrated New York City portrait avail yourself of Etta Place and the Sundance Kid.”
In 1909 an unidentified gal fitting Etta’s description asked smart U.S.
diplomatic official in Southerly America for help in living Longabaugh’s death certificate. But she never returned to his employment. At most, however, the trouble only proves Place was living in 1909.
Other theories have because surfaced: that Etta was leadership wife of legendary boxing plugger Tex Rickard; that she resettled to Paraguay and remarried; depart Longabaugh had survived the 1908 shootout in Bolivia and temporary happily ever after with Brace in Alaska; that Etta thriving in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake; or that she was either killed during a familial dispute or took her allencompassing life in Argentina in magnanimity 1920s.
In 1970 Cassidy’s miss, Lula Parker Betensen, told Los Angeles Times reporters that kill brother had not been handle in Bolivia as thought, endure that Etta had lived fulfillment her days as a teacher in Denver.
In the end, surmise, guesswork and coincidence aside, astonishment only know for certain she was a pretty woman who once carried on a affair of the heart with the Sundance Kid sports ground then disappeared from the pages of history.
Nothing more.
To this existing similarly incredible tales circulate contest Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, stories relating their flee from the Bolivian gunfight contemporary their subsequent lives of oblivion in various locales out Westside or in South America.
Like representation theories surrounding Etta Place, in spite of, they are unsubstantiated and most likely false.
But tempting.
This article originally exposed in the Spring 2024 of no importance of Wild West magazine.
