39. The Flight of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Under mounting pressure from the authorities, and doggedly pursued by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, the Wild Bunch broke up. Butch Cassidy fled with the Sundance Kid, real name Harry Longabaugh (1867 – 1908) to NYC. There, they were joined by Sundance’s girlfriend, Ethel Place, and in February of 1901, the trio sailed to Rio de Janeiro. They spent several months in Brazil, before moving on to Argentina.
America’s most notorious outlaws had made a seemingly clean break. In Argentina, they bought a 15,000-acre ranch in the tiny settlement of Cholila, on the Rio Blanco near the Andes, and settled in to a life of prosperous ranchers. They escaped their past for the next six years, while managing to elude the world’s most powerful detectives. Eventually, that past – helped by their missteps – finally caught up with them.