Digging Up Butch and Sundance

Book excerpt: Did Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid die in a Bolivian shootout in 1908? Or did the gentlemen outlaws survive to return to the United States and a new day, as some old-timers, relatives, and historians contend? Lawyer-turned-writer Anne Meadows sets out to solve the mystery of what really happened to them. Accompanied by her husband, historian Dan Buck, she tracks the outlaws and the enigmatic Etta Place through South America, where they fled in 1901. In Digging Up Butch and Sundance, Meadows and Buck rove the pampas of Argentina, deserts of Chile, and sierras of Bolivia; pore over faded newspapers and musty documents; exhume skeletons with the aid of forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow; and unearth eyewitness accounts of Butch and Sundance’s final holdup and the Bolivian shootout. While filling in the blanks in the Wild Bunch saga, Meadows explores the nature of truth and discovers how myths are made. This revised edition draws on newly discovered letters by the bandits and interviews by the Argentine police who investigated their activities. It also includes fresh information about William T. Phillips, who claimed to be Butch Cassidy.