Thursday Oct 24, 2024

Tom Clavin - BANDIT HEAVEN: The Hole-in-the-WallGangs and the Final Chapter of the Wild West

BANDIT HEAVEN byTom Clavin

Talking Points

· Fall 2024 is the 55^th anniversary of the film Butch Cassidy and the Sun dance Kid, which premiered in September 1969. As iconic as the movie is, it tells only a fraction of the story, though Butch Cassidy(Robert LeRoy Parker) and the Sun dance Kid (Harry Longabaugh) really were as handsome and charismatic as portrayed by Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

· Bandit Heaven tells the wider story of the Wild Bunch and the variousHole-in-the-Wall Gangs, as opposed to the film’s narrow focus on the two main characters. For over a decade, these bandits roamed the Outlaw Trail, from the Canadian to Mexican borders, through Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Nevada,and the Dakotas, outgunning and outrunning over matched lawmen.

· The colorful characters who didn’t make it into the movie included Harvey “Kid Curry” Logan, “Black Jack” Ketchum, “Dirty Dave”Rudabaugh, “Gunplay” Maxwell, Ben “Tall Texan” Kilpatrick, and George“Flatnose” Currie.

· Also colorful are the women who populate the story. Ethel(not Etta) Place, the companion of Butch and Sundance, and married the latter.‘Queen Anne’ Bassett, who with her equally beautiful sister, Josie, cut a swath through the Wild Bunch ranks. Annie Rogers, the steady girl of Kid Curry, who got him arrested.

· And then there are the legendary lawmen who finally put an end to Wild West lawlessness: Allan Pinkerton and his two sons who founded the world’s most famous detective agency. Joe Lefors, who relentlessly pursued Butch and Sundance (“Who are those guys?”). Tom Horn, who started out as alaw man then became a contract killer. And Charlie Siringo, the “cowboy detective,”the most successful of late-century lawmen.

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