Friday, May. 22, 2009

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had a knack for trains. Between 1896 and the early 1900s the duo, along with at least seven other members of the "Robbers Roost" gang, robbed dozens of trains including a June 2, 1899 hold-up in which thousands of dollars were taken from a Union Pacific railcar's safe. With authorities hot on their heels, Cassidy and Sundance (real names: Robert LeRoy Parker and Harry Longabaugh) escaped to South America and either died in a Bolivia shoot-out in 1909, a Uruguay shoot-out in 1911 or not at all — one version holds that they escaped to Alaska (or perhaps Nevada or Wyoming) and lived peacefully in obscurity until the 1930s. The Bolivia story is likely the most accurate; detectives from the Pinkerton Agency, charged with tracking down the outlaws, considered it the truth.

See the top 10 unsolved crimes.