Sundance Kid

Longabaugh was born in Mont Clare, Pennsylvania, in 1867 to Pennsylvania natives Josiah and Annie G. (née Place) Longabaugh, the youngest of five children. At age 15, he traveled west in a covered wagon with his cousin George. In 1887, he stole a gun, horse, and saddle from a ranch in Sundance, Wyoming. He was captured by authorities and sentenced to 18 months in jail by Judge William L. Maginnis. He adopted the nickname Sundance Kid during this time in jail.[1] After his release, he went back to working as a ranch hand, and he worked at the Bar U Ranch in Alberta, Canada in 1891, which was one of the largest commercial ranches of the time.[2]

Longabaugh was suspected of taking part in a train robbery in 1892 and a bank robbery in 1897 with five other men. He became associated with a group known as the Wild Bunch, which included Robert Leroy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy.[1] Longabaugh was reportedly fast with a gun and was often referred to as a gunfighter, but he is not known to have killed anyone prior to a shootout in Bolivia in which Parker and he allegedly were killed. He became better known than Kid Curry, a member of his gang whose real name was Harvey Logan; Curry killed numerous men while with the gang. Longabaugh did participate in a shootout with lawmen who trailed a gang led by George Curry to the Hole-in-the-Wall hideout in Wyoming, and he was thought to have wounded two men in that shootout. Several people were killed by members of the gang, including five law enforcement officers killed by Logan. "Wanted dead or alive" posters were posted throughout the country, with rewards of as much as a $30,000 for information leading to their capture or deaths.[3]

Longabaugh and Logan used a log cabin at Old Trail Town in Cody, Wyoming, as a hide-out, as they planned to rob a bank in Red Lodge, Montana.[4] They then began hiding out at Hole-in-the-Wall, located near Kaycee, Wyoming. From there, they could strike and retreat with little fear of capture, since it was situated on high ground with a view of the surrounding territory in all directions. Pinkerton detectives led by Charlie Siringo, however, hounded the gang for a few years.[3] Parker, Longabaugh, and his consort Etta Place left the United States on February 20, 1901 aboard the British ship Herminius for Buenos Aires, Argentina.[3]

A courier was conveying the payroll for the Aramayo Franke y Cia silver mine on November 3, 1908, near San Vicente Canton, Bolivia, when he was attacked and robbed by two masked American bandits. The bandits then proceeded to the mining town of San Vicente, where they lodged in a small boarding house owned by Bonifacio Casasola, a miner. Casasola became suspicious of them because they had a mule from the Aramayo Mine, which bore the mining company's brand; he informed a nearby telegraph officer, who notified the Abaroa cavalry unit stationed nearby. The unit dispatched three soldiers under the command of Captain Justo Concha, and they notified the local authorities. The mayor, a number of his officials, and the three soldiers from the Abaroa regiment all surrounded the house on the evening of 6 November. The bandits then opened fire, killing one of the soldiers and wounding another and starting a gunfight. The police and soldiers heard a man screaming from inside the house around 2 am, during a lull in the firing. They heard a single shot from inside the house, after which the screaming stopped, then they heard another shot minutes later.

The soldiers entered the house the next morning and found two dead bodies, both with numerous bullet wounds to the arms and legs. One of the men had a bullet wound in the forehead and the other had a bullet wound in the temple. The police report surmised from the positions of the bodies that one bandit had shot his mortally wounded partner to put him out of his misery, before killing himself with his final bullet soon after. The Tupiza police investigation concluded that the dead men were the bandits who had robbed the Aramayo payroll transport, but the Bolivian authorities could not positively identify them. The bodies were buried at the San Vicente cemetery, where they were interred close to the grave of Gustav Zimmer, a German miner. American forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow and his researchers attempted to find the graves in 1991, but they did not find any remains with DNA matching the living relatives of Parker and Longabaugh.

Some have claimed that one or both men survived and returned to the United States. One of these claims was that Longabaugh lived under the name of William Henry Long in the small town of Duchesne, Utah. Long died in 1936, and his remains were exhumed in December 2008 and subjected to DNA testing.[5][6][7] Anthropologist John McCullough stated Long's remains did not match the DNA which they had gotten "from a distant relative of the Sundance Kid."[8]

• The Sundance Kid
• Frank Smith
• H. A. Brown
• Harry A. Place (his mother's maiden name was Annie Place)
• Enrique Place (in Argentina)
• Harry Long

• Arthur Kennedy portrayed the Sundance Kid in the 1947 film Cheyenne (later retitled The Wyoming Kid).
• Longabaugh was portrayed by Robert Ryan in the 1948 film Return of the Bad Men, although the film is inaccurate in a number of points, not least of which are the cold-blooded killings by the character and his death at the end of the movie.
• He was depicted as a character in the 1951 film The Texas Rangers played by Ian MacDonald. The fictional tale has real-life outlaws Sam Bass, John Wesley Hardin, Butch Cassidy and Dave Rudabaugh and him forming a gang, then squaring off against two convicts recruited by John B. Jones to bring them to justice.
• He was portrayed by Alan Hale, Jr. in the 1956 film The Three Outlaws, with Neville Brand as Butch Cassidy.[9]
• Scott Brady played him in the 1956 film The Maverick Queen.[10]
• Robert Redford played him in the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.[11] Redford named the Sundance Film Festival after the Sundance Kid.[12]
• Elizabeth Montgomery played his fugitive girlfriend in the 1974 film Mrs. Sundance.[13]
• William Katt portrayed the Sundance Kid and Tom Berenger played Butch in Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979).
• Padraic Delaney portrayed him in the 2011 film Blackthorn.[14]
• He is an antagonist in the video game Call of Juarez: Gunslinger (2013).[15]
• Harry Longbaugh (sic) is the main character in the novel Sundance, by David Fuller, published in 2014.[16]

• List of fugitives from justice who disappeared

• Ernst, Donna B. (2009). The Sundance Kid: The Life of Harry Alonzo Longabaugh. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-3982-1.
• Nickle, Jerry. (2014). Bringing Sundance Home: The Story of William Long aka Harry Longabaugh Until His Death in 1936.
• Clayton, John (2013). Stories from Montana's Enduring Frontier. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-1626190160. Pages 42–47 tell the story of Kid Curry and the failed attempt at a bank robbery in Red Lodge.

• Media related to Sundance Kid at Wikimedia Commons