21. The Mormon Kid Gone Bad
Robert Leroy Parker (1866 – 1908), better known as Butch Cassidy, was born in Utah to British immigrants who had arrived in the Beehive State as Mormon pioneers. He left home as a teen to work on a dairy farm, where he was mentored by a cattle rustler named Mike Cassidy, whose surname he adopted. A subsequent job as a butcher earned him the nickname “Butch”.
Cassidy’s first brush with the law occurred at age fourteen, when he entered a closed store and stole jeans and a pie, leaving behind an IOU. He was tried, but acquitted. By age eighteen, Cassidy had graduated to heavier duty stuff, working with horse thieves and delivering stolen animals to buyers. In 1889, Cassidy, with the help of three associates, robbed his first bank in Telluride, Colorado. He then fled to a remote Utah hideout known as Robbers Roost.