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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s Escapades, and Other Lesser Known Historic Events

Khalid Elhassan January 21, 2020 33 min

William Carver - Butch Cassidy — Butch Cassidy, far right, The Sundance Kid, far left, and other members of the Wild Bunch gang. Wikimedia

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.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.