Butch Cassidy (1866-1908) and the Sundance Kid (1870-1908)

Born Robert Leroy Parker in Beaver, Utah, Butch Cassidy adopted the name of a local ranch hand and began a life of crime by 1884. Starting out as a cattle rustler, he is said to have robbed his first train in Telluride, Colorado, around 1887 and tried his first bank robbery in 1889. Soon after, Cassidy acquired a reputation as a kind of Robin Hood who fought for settlers' rights and harassed the cattle barons of the American West. Cassidy and his gang, known as the "Wild Bunch," pursued their thievery in Utah, Idaho, South Dakota, Wyoming, New Mexico, and Nevada. It was said that the Wild Bunch got their name from their habit of celebrating after successful robberies and that its members preferred to shoot horses out from under their pursuers rather than killing the riders.

In 1900 Cassidy and his gang met up with Harry Longbaugh, who went by the alias Sundance Kid. Longbaugh had served eighteen months in prison for livestock theft in Sundance, Wyoming, but his stint there failed to dissuade him from pursuing a career in crime. Upon his release, he chose bank robbery as his avocation.

By 1902 the gang had disbanded, and Butch and Sundance left the United States for South America. After robbing a Bolivian mining company's payroll, the two were cornered in San Vicente in 1908 and killed in a shootout with Bolivian soldiers. However, some surviving family members of Robert Leroy Parker claim to have seen him in later years.