35. The Persistent Pinkertons
Despite his seemingly airtight alibi of being hundreds of miles away from the site of the Patagonia robbery, Butch Cassidy was arrested and locked up. In the meantime, his and the Sundance Kid’s well-heeled American victims had not given up on the effort to bring the duo to account. The Pinkerton Detective Agency had been on their trail ever since their Wild Bunch and Hole in the Wall Gang days, and it never stopped looking.
The Pinkertons left a few stones unturned in their search for Cassidy and Sundance, which went global after the duo vanished from NYC. Detectives searched for them around the world, distributed wanted posters throughout South America, and followed up on leads that took them to places as far-flung, far away, and far apart as Europe and Tahiti. In 1903, a Pinkerton agent stationed in Brazil named Francis DiMaio acted on a hunch, and sailed to Argentina in the hope of finding the fugitives in the American expat community there.