Who was Etta Place?
She was the mistress and possibly partner of Pennsylvania native Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, additionally known as the “Sundance Little one,” and a fringe decide throughout the Wild Bunch, the outlaw gang led by Robert LeRoy Parker, additionally known as “Butch Cassidy.” However, little is known about her origins and even a lot much less about what occurred to her after Sundance and Butch had been killed in South America.
Larry Pointer, author of the 1977 e-book Looking out for Butch CassidyHe wrote that Etta's id was “one of many very important fascinating mysteries in Western historic previous.”
Place was most likely born in 1878, and as an grownup she was described as “classically good-looking,” with a type smile and a refined demeanor, an overview confirmed by a full-length portrait of her and Longabaugh – some say that Wedding ceremony {photograph} of the couple – Taken in February 1901 at Joseph B. De Youthful's footage studio at 815 Broadway in New York Metropolis. She spoke educatedly and knew the best way to cope with a rifle.
She had met Longabaugh a 12 months or two earlier and may have been involved in among the many Wild Bunch's robberies, scouting out a monetary establishment prematurely or holding the group's horses all through a theft. Nevertheless the image of New York Metropolis, historian Thom Hatch wrote in his 2013 e-book The ultimate outlaws“Allusions to precise afternoon tea, carriage rides in Central Park and evenings on the theater.”
Even her establish could be improper. “Place” was the maiden establish of Longabaugh's mother, Annie, and Sundance usually used the pseudonym “Harry Place.” It has been really useful that she used the first establish “Etta” in South America after Spanish audio system mispronounced “Ethel”, which might or may not have been her exact first establish. The Pinkertons alternately often called them Ethel, Eva, Rita, Etta and Betty Worth.
In a letter to his good buddy David Gillespie shortly after the gang's follow theft on June 2, 1899, near Wilcox, Wyoming, Longabaugh included a duplicate of the portrait of himself and Place, whom he described as his partner and “Lady from Texas.” described. The Pinkertons, who spent a complete lot of time and effort monitoring the Wild Bunch, on a regular basis believed Etta was from Texas, which inserts collectively together with her acknowledged talents with horses and firearms. In 1906, after his investigators traced Place to Fort Worth, William Pinkerton requested that metropolis's police chief to “uncover out who this woman is.”
Based mostly totally on the concept that Etta's precise establish was Ethel and that she was from Texas, researcher Donna Ernst compiled an inventory of all girls named Ethel born in or spherical Fort Worth and San Antonio between 1875 and 1880. Over time she was eradicated as a candidate for the youthful Etta Place.
Apart from one.
This was Ethel Bishop, who lived with 4 completely different girls in a setting up that was most likely a brothel near the infamous Madame Fannie Porter's San Antonio pleasure palace, a acknowledged meeting place for the Wild Bunch. One different oft-repeated story is that Butch rescued Etta from a brothel when she was 16 years outdated. Longabaugh biographer Ed Kirby believes that Place was the daughter of 1 Emily Jane Place of Oswego, NY, who was someway related to Sundance's mother. Nonetheless others have really useful that Etta was really Colorado rancher Ann Bassett, a Wild Bunch employee who was acknowledged to have competed with Sister Josie for Cassidy's affections.
Might Bassett have moreover caught Sundance's consideration?
Probably not. By 1903, Bassett had married Hirum “Hiya” Henry Bernard and was arrested (and later acquitted) of cattle theft that exact same 12 months whereas Place was in South America.
On February 20, 1901, Place and Longabaugh boarded the HMS after posing for her portrait Herminius in New York and landed in Buenos Aires, Argentina on March twenty third. Touring with them was Cassidy, who posed beneath the pseudonym “James Ryan” and claimed to be Etta's brother. In 1902, Place and Longabaugh briefly returned to america to go to Etta for treatment for an unknown illness, and as soon as extra in 1904 when Pinkerton workers believed she was visiting her family in Texas. In 1906, in all probability attributable to her illness, Place returned to america for a preserve. Sundance returned to South America, the place most historians think about he and Butch died in a shootout with troopers in Bolivia in 1908.
Within the meantime, Etta has disappeared.
A variety of researchers have really useful that she turned a brothel operator in Fort Worth beneath the establish Eunice Gray. Nevertheless in an article in October 2010 Wild West Donna Humphrey-Donnell well-known that she had seen a purported portrait of youthful Gray and that the woman in that {photograph} was positively “not the an identical woman seen throughout the well-known New York portrait of Etta Place and the Sundance Little one.”
In 1909, an unknown woman matching Etta's description requested a U.S. diplomat in South America for help in buying Longabaugh's dying certificates. Nevertheless she in no way returned to his office. However, the incident solely proves that Place was nonetheless alive in 1909.
Since then, completely different theories have emerged: that Etta was the partner of legendary boxing promoter Tex Rickard; that she moved to Paraguay and remarried; that Longabaugh had survived the 1908 shootout in Bolivia and lived fortuitously ever after with Place in Alaska; that Etta died throughout the 1906 San Francisco earthquake; or that she was each killed all through a house dispute or took her private life in Argentina throughout the Twenties. In 1970, Cassidy's sister, Lula Parker, knowledgeable Betensen Los Angeles Cases Consistent with reporters, her brother had not been killed in Bolivia as believed and Etta had spent her time as a teacher in Denver.
In the long term, speculation, conjecture, and coincidence aside, all everyone knows for sure is that she was an exceptional woman who as quickly as romanced the Sundance Little one after which disappeared from the pages of historic previous.
No extra.
To these days, comparable unbelievable tales stream into about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Little one, tales about their escape from the capturing in Bolivia and their subsequent lives in anonymity in quite a few areas throughout the West or South America.
However, similar to the theories surrounding Etta Place, they’re unfounded and likely false.
Nevertheless tempting.
This textual content initially appeared throughout the Spring 2024 state of affairs of Wild West Journal.