Butch Cassidy (21 page)

The two men embraced, and there was much hugging and backslapping. They visited for about thirty minutes and then climbed into the car and drove to town.

Betenson recalls that, when the Ford pulled up to the family house in Circleville, Maximillian Parker, the father, was sitting in the sun on a step just outside the kitchen door. He was eighty-one years old, possessed a shock of white hair, and “wore a thick, white mustache.” Betenson described her father as “a fine-looking man, straight and alert, and . . . dressed immaculately.”

The Ford pulled to a halt, and Mark stepped out from the passenger side, much to the surprise of the elder Parker. Mark had left for the ranch earlier that morning on horseback. As Mark stood by the car, grinning, the driver stepped out and rose to his full height. Old man Parker stared at him, wondering who he was.

Butch Cassidy remained next to the Ford, his heart beating heavily. For over four decades he had stayed away from his family for fear that his presence would bring them shame, that they would be ostracized by their neighbors because they had brought an outlaw into the world. He had not seen his family for over forty years, and this moment was filled with a certain terror for him. He wondered if he should simply get back in the car and drive away.

In spite of his fears, Cassidy grinned at his father, and Maxi Parker immediately recognized his first son. The two men embraced for a long time, and with tears in their eyes, they entered the house.

Lula Parker Betenson had been preparing dinner when Mark entered the kitchen and told her to fix an extra plate, that they had company. After setting out the plates and the food on the kitchen table, she stepped into the living room and eyed the stranger. On seeing her, the newcomer rose. As she studied his face, she thought he looked familiar but could not ever remember meeting him before. From his features, Lula deduced he must be a relative of some kind.

At that moment, the elder Parker said, “Lula, this is LeRoy.” Years later, Betenson related she was stunned that this was her famous brother standing before her. Though she was certain, as a result of family comments, that Butch Cassidy was still alive and was living in the United States, she never anticipated meeting him.

As the family sat in the living room and visited that evening, according to Betenson, Butch Cassidy spoke most of all about his late mother. His heart was heavy with regret for the pain and humiliation he believed he caused her. He felt certain he had disappointed her and broken her heart.

Cassidy described in detail that morning in 1884 when he left home and how his mother, holding Dash, the family dog, watched him ride away. He described the blue blanket she had given him and the food wrapped inside it. He told of riding past the poplar trees alongside the road and recalled how he helped his mother plant them after the family hauled them all the way from Beaver.

Later that evening, Cassidy related tales about South America, about how he and the Sundance Kid went down there to straighten out their lives and find honest work. He talked about the constant pursuit and persecution from the Pinkerton detectives. “When a man gets down,” Betenson quoted him, “they won’t let him up.”

Cassidy said that, sometime after the alleged gun battle at San Vicente, he and Longabaugh separated and planned on returning to the United States. They were going to rendezvous at a certain location, but Cassidy suffered a severe scorpion sting and his leg became so swollen he could not travel. For several weeks, his wound was treated by an Indian woman, and he missed the meeting with the Sundance Kid.

Eventually, Cassidy traveled northward, spending some time in Mexico working at various jobs. One afternoon he was relaxing in a local tavern when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Fearing he had been identified, he experienced a brief moment of fear. When he turned around, however, he looked into the face of Etta Place! She and Longabaugh happened to be staying in the same town, and she invited him to come and stay with them. After two days, Cassidy left the pair and had not seen them since.

After leaving Mexico, Cassidy said he traveled to Alaska where he trapped and prospected for a time. He found the weather unsuitable there and returned to warmer latitudes, eventually settling in the Pacific Northwest, where he remained for a while. He found the state of Washington agreed with him, fell in love with the region, and eventually decided to make it his permanent home. He told his family that, after visiting them, he would return to Washington where he intended to live out the rest of his life.

Cassidy remained with his family for two days. After leaving them, he traveled to other parts of the region, searched for, located, and spent another week visiting with his brothers. Finally, he left to return to the Pacific Northwest. He requested his family not tell anyone he was alive or that he had come to Utah to see them. They agreed to keep his visit a secret. After returning to Washington, he wrote a number of letters to his father. According to Betenson, Butch Cassidy never returned to Utah.

During Cassidy’s visit to his family, he told them he had led a completely honest life since 1909. He also stated that, after it was reported he had been killed in Bolivia, he wanted very badly to return home but was afraid of bringing shame to the family he loved so much.

Many of Cassidy’s relatives and friends knew he had not been killed in South America and that he was still alive during the 1920s and 1930s. They kept the secret. In letters to Lula Parker Betenson, and via interviews conducted by others, many of them recalled meeting and visiting with Cassidy during his return trips.

In a letter to Betenson, a man named W. H. Boedeker wrote that Butch Cassidy visited Dubois and Lander, Wyoming, in 1929. According to the letter, Boedeker’s father, Henry E. Boedeker, and Cassidy became acquainted during the late 1880s when the former was hauling lumber. The two, in fact, roomed together at Lander’s Cottage Home Hotel. It will also be remembered that, at the time Cassidy was arrested for horse theft, Lander constable Henry Boedeker was one of the lawmen who accompanied the prisoner to the jail at Laramie. According to W. H. Boedeker, he was operating the Frontier Cafe in Dubois in 1929 when three men entered the establishment and ordered meals. One of the men began asking Boedeker questions about his father and others who once lived in the area. Before the conversation was finished the man admitted to being Butch Cassidy.

According to a Mrs. Jess Chamberlin of Arapahoe, Wyoming, Butch Cassidy joined her husband and father-in-law on a camping and fishing trip in 1933. During the trip, said Chamberlin, Cassidy searched for and found a cache of money he had buried almost fifty years earlier.

According to a man named William G. Johnson, Butch Cassidy, while visiting Lander in 1934, purchased some groceries from a Harry Baldwin who owned a store there. According to Pointer, after remaining in and around Lander for a while, Johnson said Cassidy left to return to “his home in Seattle, Washington, where he is known as William T. Phillips.” Johnson also commented that Cassidy was suffering from cancer of the stomach and was not expected to live much longer.

Larry Pointer wrote that Tacetta B. Walker, a Lander resident, was told in 1936 that Butch Cassidy had returned to the town to visit friends about two years earlier. Walker wrote that several Lander old-timers recognized the outlaw, and one old fellow stated that he talked about things only Butch Cassidy would know.

At one point during his visit, Cassidy encountered the son of a banker he had known years earlier. On seeing and recognizing Cassidy, the son embraced him. During their subsequent conversation, he called him “George” and “Cassidy.”

In 1934, Butch Cassidy also visited his old friend Eugenio Amoretti, the banker who helped him out with the Horse Creek Ranch he and Al Hainer started.

It is also believed that Cassidy visited his old girlfriend Dora Lamorreaux during his 1934 visit to Lander, but details of the encounter are unknown.

While in Lander, Cassidy asked his old friend Will Boyd to arrange a pack trip into the Wind River Mountains. This was done, and a comfortable camp was set up for an extended stay. Daily, Cassidy ranged far from camp and was occasionally observed digging around the stumps of old trees. It is believed by many he was searching for some loot he cached following one of his robberies.

While Cassidy was staying in the camp, Will Boyd decided to surprise him. Without telling anyone, he sent Roy Jones to bring Mary Boyd out to the camp. Mary and Cassidy were lovers at one time during the early 1890s, and it is believed they planned to get married. On arriving in camp, Mary, at the time a widow, and Cassidy recognized each other immediately, and they spent long hours together during the next few days reliving past times.

During the succeeding months, Mary Boyd received several letters from Cassidy, all postmarked from Spokane, Washington. In 1937, he sent her a ring set with a Mexican fire opal. The ring was inscribed:

Geo C to Mary B

When Boyd and Cassidy were lovers, the outlaw was using the name George.

Lula Parker Betenson claimed her brother passed away in 1937. One day that year, Maximillian Parker received a letter from a man named Jeff who informed him that his son, Robert LeRoy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy, had died of pneumonia. Jeff informed the family he had attended to arrangements for burial. The location of the gravesite remains a Parker family secret to this day.

During the late 1960s, Lula Parker Betenson began writing a book about the return of her brother. Some claim she was influenced by the popular 1969 movie
Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid
, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Others insist she started her book before the movie was released. By 1970, her manuscript was still not published—she claimed she had been turned down by several publishers because she refused to reveal when and where Butch Cassidy had died and was buried.

Eventually, in 1975, an academic press—Brigham Young University Press in Provo, Utah—published the book. The publication remained popular for a long time and enjoyed decent sales for an academic press product. And, as normally happens when someone writes and publishes something that contradicts or conflicts with prevalent thought and the historical status quo, the book,
Butch Cassidy, My Brother
, generated considerable criticism.

The vast majority of Betenson’s detractors provided little in the way of substantial or even compelling commentary, but here and there some pertinent questions were raised relative to the accuracy of the contents of the book.

One of her principal detractors was Jim Dullenty who, around the time book came out, was the editor of a pulp magazine called
True West
that published material on things Western—outlaws, lawmen, lost mines, and so on.
True West
, while occasionally printing something that smacks of competent research, was never a credible historical publication, had no peer review process, and seldom troubled with fact checking. It was often sold in the “hobby” sections of some magazine racks, and the credibility and reliability of its content has often been questioned by qualified and credentialed researchers.

Dullenty, himself a man of some status in the field of Western outlaw research, openly expressed doubt about the accuracy and veracity of the Betenson book and claimed some of her own relatives manifested concern over the accuracy of the contents. According to Pointer, Dullenty was once quoted as stating that Betenson’s book was “worthless,” and that it “would have been better if she had not written it.” It must be pointed out here that Dullenty was, at the time, working on his own book about Butch Cassidy.

Regarding the Betenson book, a few have expressed the notion that the sister was simply trying to cash in on the growing popularity of the outlaws. Dan Buck, the husband of Ann Meadows, is quoted in Meadows’s book as saying, “Her claim that Butch told her Percy Seibert had deliberately misidentified the bodies so that his pals could come home without worrying about the Pinkertons proves she made the whole thing up.”

In truth, Betenson’s claim proves no such thing. It is difficult to imagine Buck making such a statement and causes one to question his own qualifications. Buck was also quoted as saying that Lula’s son, Mark Betenson, “told us Butch didn’t come back,” as if such a statement carried any credibility whatsoever. It has been suggested that Buck may have disclaimed Betenson’s book, in part, because she once offered some criticism relative to the notion that the exhumation process, in which he was involved, was not conducted correctly.

In fact, Betenson’s grandson, Bill Betenson, maintains Lula was telling the truth but that several members of the family did not want her to write the book because of a promise made to Maximillian Parker.

In spite of Betenson’s claim that her brother, Butch Cassidy, passed away in 1937, there were reports of additional appearances of the outlaw beyond that time.

Matt Warner and Butch Cassidy had been close friends for years. In conjunction with Murray E. King, Warner wrote in his biography
The Last of the Bandit Riders
(1940) that Cassidy and Longabaugh had indeed been killed by soldiers in San Vicente. It is likely that Warner was simply reporting what he heard, or perhaps what he read in Arthur Chapman’s exaggerated account. Although Warner expressed the belief that it was completely unlike Butch Cassidy to commit suicide, the old outlaw appeared resigned to the notion that his longtime friend had been killed in South America.

According to Warner’s daughter, Joyce, however, the old man changed his mind a short time before he died, insisting that Cassidy must have survived the encounter with the Bolivian soldiers. Joyce Warner related that her father believed up until the time of his death that his friend Butch Cassidy would come to visit him.

Joyce Warner related another rather provocative incident, one reported by writer Steve Lacy, an amazing tale that was published in 1982. She claimed that sometime in November 1939, almost a year after the death of her father, an elderly stranger came to her home asking for Warner. She told him her father had passed away. The visitor then asked her if Warner ever talked about a man named Butch Cassidy. The two engaged in conversation, and the stranger related accounts of his longtime friendship with Matt Warner, including how they once robbed a bank. The stranger’s version of the bank robbery was identical to the one her father related. He also told her of some of his adventures in South America.