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Harry "The Sundance Kid" Longbaugh and Etta Place, New York, 1901, prior to emigrating to Argentina, This is the only known photograph of Place. Etta Place became a figure of legendary proportion for three reasons: 1) She was the companion of Butch and Sundance, 2) Hollywood made her famous by making a major motion picture about her and her two companions, 1969s "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", in which Katherine Ross played her character, and 3) She was a beautiful woman.
Facts regarding Etta are few. Eyewitnesses maintain she was the second woman to ride into the Butch and Sundance hideaway in southern Utah known as the Robbers Roost in the winter of 1896-97. She was allegedly 20 years old at the time. She was strikingly beautiful, an excellent horsewoman and an outstanding rifle shot. She was became Harry Longbaughs (the Sundance Kids) primary love interest, and went to South America with Sundance and Butch, returning to the U.S. three times during her tenure in Argentina and Bolivia.
Beyond that, no one seems to know for sure anything else about Etta Place. When and where she was born, where she grew up, what she did for a living, how many times if any, she married, how many children, if any, she might have had, when she left Sundance, where she lived following her return to the U.S. and when she died all remain a mystery.
Compounding the mystique of Etta Place is the fact five women are known to have used the name Etta Place as aliases. Three of the women who used the false Etta Place name journeyed to South America. Unknown to most movie buffs whose only knowledge of Butch, Sundance and Etta is based on Hollywoods version of the trio, is the fact that several members of the Wild Bunch, as Cassidys gang was known, fled to South America during the first decade of the 20th Century. Some historians place the number at more than one dozen. Most took women with them. Many died at the hands of South American authorities.
Etta was reportedly a "refined," highly educated woman of Eastern birth and rearing. She was also alleged to have been a prostitute with roots in Texas. Others maintain she was born and reared in Denver, Colorado. Some maintain she was a school teacher with music as her primary discipline.
Several historians believe Etta was married with two children when she deserted her family to seek a life of adventure with Longbough. Others state she was the Sundance Kids cousin (his mothers maiden name was Place) an that she knew him as a child and teenager. Another theory has Etta and Butch as cousins.
Some historians think Etta was initially Butch Cassidys mistress before falling in love with Sundance. Some think the many references to "the family of three" in letters written by Butch and Etta refer to the trio as a menage atrois, with Etta sharing herself equally with the two men.
Was her name really Etta Place? She signed it Ethel on several occasions. Some maintain her real last name was Thayne, while others believe it was Ingerfield.
Did she have two children from a marriage prior to meeting Butch and Sundance? Maybe yes and maybe no. Some historians believe she and Butch had a daughter in 1903. Most think not.
Did she die along side Butch and Sundance in the Bolivian shootout in 1908? Two males and one female were killed in a village saloon by soldiers that year, but "experts" differ as to what happened and to whom: - Some think Etta, Butch and Sundance died together.
- Some think all three survived and that the victims were other Americans known o be in the area who followed a similar bandit lifestyle.
- Some think Etta survived while Butch died.
- Some believe Etta and Butch escaped while Sundance died.
Did Etta Place actually go to South America with Butch and Sundance? Several individuals maintain that a twice-married Etta Place look-alike named Ann Bassett was the woman who accompanied the two outlaws to Argentina not Etta.
A small group of historians place the trio with Pancho Villas revolutionary army in Juarez, Mexico, in 1912, four years after their alleged deaths in Bolivia.
Why did Etta leave her Argentinean Ranch three times to return to the U.S.? Depending on your source, it was either to have an abortion, deliver a baby, cure a venereal disease, have her appendix taken out or to cure acute loneliness.
There is still considerable debate over the end of her relationship with Sundance. Etta appears to have disappeared after Sundance took her back to Denver on her third trip back to the U.S. in 1908. Did she remain in the Mile High City or did she finish her business there and return to South America? No one knows for sure. Some think she returned to New York, While others believe she began a new life in Texas.
A Pinkerton Detective Agency report has Etta being killed in a shootout with a man named Mateo Gebhart in Chubut, Argentina, in March 1922. Another report has her committing suicide in 1924, while yet another states she died a natural death in 1966.
Many historians believe Etta had a daughter named Bettie after her return to the United States. In late 1971, while laying on her deathbed, Bettie allegedly whispered to her husband, "Mother may still be living. She remarried and may have had other children."
None of this, however, is verifiable.
Believe what you will, the fact remains that Etta Place was a beautiful young woman who abandoned the conventional lifestyle of the time to seek lust, adventure, and maybe love with two of the Old Wests most romanticized outlaws.
Her legend lives on.
THE WILD BUNCH
Seated left to right- Harry A. Longabaugh, alias the Sundance Kid, Ben Kilpatrick, alias the Tall Texan, Robert Leroy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy; Standing- Will Carver,& Harvey Logan, alias Kid Curry; Photo taken in Fort Worth, Texas, 1901.
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