Butch Cassidy (18 page)

Following the confrontation, continued Bellot, Captain Concha appeared, said he needed help, and requested he be assigned some men. Bellot went out and recruited some townsmen. As he was rounding up volunteers, Bellot claimed in his report he heard “three screams of desperation” from inside the room of the Americans. When the volunteers arrived, Captain Concha positioned them around the home. Following that, no more shots were fired save for one by the inspector around midnight.

According to Bellot, several men entered the room at 6:00 a.m. in the morning of the following day and found the two gringos dead, one in the doorway and the other on a bench.

According to Bellot, Concha’s role was limited to requesting backup and then standing around observing. The evidence, according to Meadows’s husband, Dan Buck, appears to suggest the two men in the room were essentially opposed by the Uyuni police inspector and one soldier. In other words, the two strangers lodging in the room faced at least two, and at the most four, potential adversaries. Captain Concha was apparently not directly involved in the alleged gun battle, and there were not, in spite of reports to the contrary, dozens of Bolivian soldiers involved.

The odds facing the two strangers at San Vicente that November 7 evening would surely not have been daunting to the likes of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, experienced outlaws who had been outnumbered numerous times during their bandit careers.

Ultimately, the account of Cleto Bellot, who was at the scene, varies considerably from that of Arthur Chapman, who was not. In truth, there is little consistency in any of the numerous reports.

Even more confusion is heaped upon the already contradictory accounts relative to the possessions of the dead men. As San Vicente officials inventoried and listed the belongings of the two, it was learned that the tall stranger had in his possession a Winchester carbine along with 121 cartridges. Elsewhere, 149 cartridges were reported. If true, how does one account for the stories that this same individual raced from the room into the courtyard in order to retrieve weapons and ammunition?

A second contradiction is that only one saddle was found, although Bellot earlier reported that both men were seen unsaddling their mules and placed their “saddles” on the floor of the courtyard.

Yet another problem arose. One of the men, the one many believe was Butch Cassidy, was initially identified as “Enrique B. Hutcheon” based on seven business cards bearing that name found on his person.

Who was Enrique B. Hutcheon? Did such a person exist, or could this have been a new alias for Cassidy? Some have suggested this was so, but there has been no supporting evidence. As a result of more research by Meadows, it was learned from the family of James “Santiago” Hutcheon, the man who employed Cassidy and Longabaugh shortly after the two left the Concordia Tin Mines, that Enrique B. Hutcheon “might have been James’ half-brother” but that Enrique denied any knowledge of his involvement in the Aramayo robbery or the incident at San Vicente. Since James Hutcheon was a well-respected businessman, it is likely the family would deny such a thing.

The notion has been advanced that Enrique B. Hutcheon was half Chilean. This observation is relevant in light of subsequent discoveries by Meadows. For years following the San Vicente incident, it was commonly related around the town that one of the strangers killed and buried in the cemetery was a Chilean. Furthermore, reports of a number of robberies that took place in South America that supposedly involved Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid revealed that at least one of the participants was a Chilean.

The Burial

Author Richard Patterson writes that, according to Victor Hampton, who worked in the mines near San Vicente during the 1920s, and who obtained his information from an Aramayo manager named Roberts, the two dead strangers were taken to an Indian cemetery not far away and buried on the same day they were found dead. This account, or versions of it, is the one popularly accepted relative to the disposition of the bodies of the victims. As with the robbery and the so-called shootout, even this event is fraught with contradiction.

Froilan Risso claimed the two strangers were buried in the village cemetery during the afternoon following their deaths. He stated the bodies were not placed in coffins but instead “flung into an open grave in the cemetery” (in Patterson’s
Butch Cassidy: A Biography
).

Risso led Meadows to the San Vicente cemetery and showed her the grave in which he claimed the two strangers were buried. Pointing to a “small, fissured, concrete monument wedged between two large and relatively new slabs,” he stated that “it used to have a cross on top and plaque engraved with words” (in
Digging Up Butch and Sundance
). Risso said the single grave contained both of the bandits. In spite of Risso’s description, another San Vicente resident claimed there never was any plaque.

A Dr. Oscar Llano Serpa stated he had evidence there was never any registration of the location of the so-called grave of the bandits, and as a result, today it would be “impossible to be certain of exactly where it is.”

Meadows was told by a cemetery guard that the locals did not bury outlaws, that the bodies would have been dragged out onto the plains and left for scavengers. Meadows, in fact, encountered more claims that the graves of the two outlaws were unmarked, but one Francisco Avila stated he had once seen a marker over the bandits’ graves in the San Vicente cemetery.

On November 20, Carlos Peró, along with his son Mariano and his servant Gil Gonzalez, came to San Vicente. They had been invited to identify the bodies of the two dead strangers as the pair who robbed the payroll. Shortly after the arrival of the trio, the bodies were exhumed. After examining them, Peró stated that he possessed “not a shred of doubt” that the payroll robbers and the victims were the same (in Meadows’s
Digging Up Butch and Sundance
). Peró expressed not a shred of doubt even though he admitted earlier that all he ever actually saw of the robbers were their eyes.

During an interview with the magistrate, Peró explained that he recognized both men, “as well as the hats they wore, with the exception of their clothing, which is different from what they wore [earlier].” Peró also stated that the mule taken from the bandits was the same as the one taken “from me at the scene of the robbery.”

Meadows expressed some concern with Peró’s statement, noting that the mule he identified was not at San Vicente at the time of his visit but rather at Uyuni. How was Peró able to identify the mule if it wasn’t there? This casts even more doubt on Peró’s entire statement and identification and generates some serious concerns over his already questionable credibility. Could Peró, in fact, have been looking at the cadavers of two men entirely different from those who robbed him two weeks earlier? Given the nuances of his testimony, it is probable.

A thorough evaluation of the newspaper accounts and testimony of participants and observers pertinent to the so-called San Vicente shootout reveal that they often differ dramatically, are quite inconsistent, and in several cases, even contradict one another. Given the already obvious confusion as to what actually happened, compounded by the passage of so much time, the truth of the San Vicente events remains muddled and quite elusive.

A summary examination of the evidence identifies the inconsistencies and confusion, and simply leads to additional questions and conundrums:

1. There exists no substantial evidence whatsoever that would lead one to believe conclusively the robbery of the Aramayo mine payroll was conducted by Butch Cassidy and Harry Longabaugh. The evidence that suggests those two men were involved in the robbery is circumstantial at best. Furthermore, after examining all of the statements by robbery victim Carlos Peró, it is easy to conclude that no one knows exactly what transpired during the robbery, since statements, explanations, and identifications attributed to the courier are conflicting and contradictory.
   
2. The two men who rode into San Vicente three days following the Aramayo holdup were wearing clothes markedly different from the garb worn by the robbers. It seems unlikely that two bandits, making haste to leave the scene of the crime far ahead of real and potential pursuit, would be carrying extra suits, especially expensive suits of cashmere—possible, perhaps, but not very likely.
   
3. Who exactly were Ray Walters and Frank Murray, the two men who resembled the Aramayo bandits and who were detained briefly by the Salo police before being released? Why were they not investigated? Could they have been aliases employed by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? This represents a major conundrum and could be significant to this case.
   
4. There is little or no agreement on which day the two strangers arrived in San Vicente. Some reports say November 6; others say November 7. The time of day they arrived is also in question. Furthermore, the day the so-called shootout took place has been identified by most as November 7 and by others as November 10.
   
5. There is no agreement on whether the South Americans involved in the so-called shootout were soldiers, police, or citizens, or combinations thereof. Furthermore, there is no agreement on how many Bolivians were involved in the confrontation—the numbers range from two to several dozen.
   
6. Based on different reports, there is no complete agreement on whether the strangers to San Vicente were killed during a gun battle, committed suicide, surrendered and were then shot, or escaped.
   
7. Reports also differ on whether a full-fledged gun battle was waged or only a few shots fired. Estimates range from three shots to hundreds.
   
8. The duration of the alleged gun battle is not agreed upon: estimates range from approximately one minute to over an hour. One researcher, Kerry Ross Boren, claims the gun battle never occurred at all. In support of Boren’s oft-challenged claim is a former Bolivian president, Rene Barrientos. Barrientos assigned an investigation team to study the events associated with the San Vicente incident: residents of the town were questioned, corpses were exhumed, and military and village records were examined. Barrientos concluded that the entire event was a fabrication.
   
9. The time of day given for when Casasolo’s room was entered and the dead strangers discovered is listed as 6:00 a.m. in one report and noon in another.
   
10. There has never been a positive and conclusive identification made of the two strangers killed in San Vicente. A September 30, 1910, document that originated in Tupiza stated that, in spite of an investigation, no one could learn the names of the two “North Americans” killed at San Vicente. A subsequent communication from the same source mentions that a death certificate for the two gringos does not exist. The initial identification of one of the dead men as Enrique B. Hutcheon, perhaps a half-Chilean, casts even more doubt on the likelihood that the strangers were Butch Cassidy and Harry Longabaugh. This information, coupled with news reports that one of the bandits in a series of holdups attributed to Cassidy and Longabaugh was identified as a Chilean, only adds to the already abundant confusion. Ultimately, the two dead men who were buried in the San Vicente cemetery were not identified. It was only twenty-two years later that, as a result of Arthur Chapman’s contrived article, most believed the two men were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
    
11. Long after the deaths of the strangers in San Vicente, newspapers in the area continued to carry reports that Butch Cassidy and Harry Longabaugh, probably accompanied by Harvey Logan, were still committing robberies in the area as late as 1910.
    
12. In 1914, the Pinkertons received an unverified report that Butch Cassidy had been arrested in Antofogasta, Chile, on a charge of murder. Given the above contradictions, it would be extremely difficult to conclude that Butch Cassidy met his end at the small South American village of San Vicente in November 1908.
    

There are other contradictions, ones related to the personality and recorded experiences of the outlaw Butch Cassidy, the way he operated relative to his profession of outlawry, and the manner in which he reacted and responded to pressure and pursuit from law enforcement authorities. Given what has been oft documented about this famous bandit, one can only conclude that the behavior of the San Vicente stranger some have identified as Cassidy was completely out of character for the outlaw. The reactions and response of the shorter of the two strangers exhibited a pattern of behavior quite the opposite of what one would come to expect from Butch Cassidy, as in the following examples:

1. According to witnesses, the stranger identified by some as Cassidy, on seeing the approach of a man toward the room in which he had taken temporary residence, pulled his revolver and shot and killed him. This purely contradicts the long-standing and well-documented behavior of Butch Cassidy. Not only did Cassidy never harm a robbery victim, but also he was known to chastise members of his gang for doing so. The notion that the real Butch Cassidy pulled a pistol and shot a man before even learning of his intentions is inconsistent, and to some, unthinkable.
   
2. It was likewise out of character for Cassidy, if indeed he was fleeing from a payroll robbery, to stop and spend the night in a town or village. Based on previous accounts of his robberies, the likelihood is greater that he would have traveled the back roads and stayed as far away from settlements as possible.
   
3. The statement of Cleto Bellot that the strangers placed their saddles and rifles on the patio and retired to their room, if true, strongly suggests these November visitors to San Vicente were not Cassidy and Longabaugh. Given their previous experiences with posses, and realizing they were most certainly being pursued, it would have been highly unlikely for them to have carelessly left their weapons so far away.
   
4. The notion that Cassidy shot his companion Longabaugh and then turned the gun on himself is far fetched. Not only is the killing of his friend and partner, as well as suicide, out of character for him, but also to have done so in the face of odds of four to two is ridiculous. After all, here is a man who confronted, fought, and outfoxed dozens, if not hundreds, of lawmen throughout much of America’s frontier West. Is this the kind of man who would kill himself when faced by four men, perhaps only one of which was a professional lawman? Hardly.