At around two in the morning, the men outside the little hut in San Vicente, Bolivia, heard a scream from inside. Then a gunshot. The screaming stopped. A few minutes later, another shot rang out.
By then, the hut had been under siege for hours. It had started the day before, when two masked American bandits ambushed a courier carrying a payroll to the Aramayo Francke silver mine. After the robbery, the pair had slipped into the mining town and taken refuge in a small dwelling owned by a miner named Bonasio Casasola. But Casasola grew suspicious when he noticed a mule branded with the Aramayo mine mark tied up at the scene, and he alerted a nearby telegraph operator.
The operator notified a three-soldier unit led by Captain Justo Concha, who in turn roused the local authorities. When the soldiers arrived, the bandits opened fire, killing one soldier and wounding another. A fierce gun battle erupted, dust and gunsmoke hanging thick in the air around the little house. Now, in the lull, the police and soldiers outside listened to the silence from within.
When morning came, they moved in. Inside they found two dead bodies. One man had been shot in the temple. The other had been shot in the arm and in the leg.
The police report concluded that one of the robbers had killed his accomplice to spare him a miserable end, then turned the gun on himself with the last bullet. The local authorities could not identify the dead men. They buried them in the San Vicente cemetery, where their graves would remain nameless for decades. Some would later claim that one of those bodies belonged to Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, the man the world knew as the Sundance Kid.
Harry Alonzo Longabaugh was born in 1867 in Montclair, Pennsylvania, the youngest of five children born to Josiah and Annie G. Longabaugh, both natives of the state. At fifteen, he headed west in a covered wagon with his cousin George, who was settling a homestead near Cortez, Colorado. There, young Harry found work as a horse breeder on a neighboring farm, learning the trade of buying and raising horses.
In 1886 he left Cortez to strike out on his own, drifting north and taking whatever jobs he could find, but eventually he returned to the ranch and worked as a true cowboy. The American West in those years was a place of rapid growth and transformation. People poured in from the east seeking new opportunities, and the borders remained largely unchecked. It was also a time of severe lawlessness, with outlaws roaming freely across territories where authority was thin and slow.
Many young men, like Longabaugh, were drawn to the excitement and adventure the West offered, along with its opportunities for a quick fortune. In 1887, while passing the 3V Ranch near Sundance, Wyoming, Longabaugh stole a cowboy’s gun, horse, and saddle. He was eventually apprehended by authorities in Miles City, Montana. Judge William L.
Magnus sentenced him to eighteen months in prison. It was during this time that Harry Alonzo Longabaugh adopted the nickname that would follow him for the rest of his life: the Sundance Kid. After his release, the Sundance Kid returned to work as a farm manager. In 1891 he found himself at the Bar U Farm in Canada’s Northwest Territories, one of the largest commercial ranches of the time.
He also became joint owner of a pub in the Grand Central Hotel in Calgary, but an argument with his partner drove him south to Montana. There he took another farm job and began stealing cattle and horses. Longabaugh was suspected of involvement in two major robberies during his outlaw life: a train robbery in 1892 and a bank robbery in 1897. Around this time, he became a member of the notorious gang known as the Wild Bunch, led by the talented Butch Cassidy.
The two men got along well and treated each other like brothers. The gang also included Kid Curry, also known as Harvey Logan, a man of very brutal personality. Although Longabaugh was a skilled marksman, he had no confirmed murders to his name until a violent shooting incident in Bolivia, where he and Cassidy were believed to be involved in the deaths of several law enforcement officers. Kid Curry, by contrast, was known for his brutal murders.
With the gang, Longabaugh took part in various famous gunfights with the lawmen who tracked the Wild Bunch to their hideout at Hole-in-the-Wall in Wyoming. In one gunfight, two men were injured, and Longabaugh is believed to have been one of them. The gang as a whole was responsible for the deaths of several people, including five law enforcement officers killed by Kid Curry. Their exploits brought them national notoriety, and rewards of up to thirty thousand dollars were offered for information leading to their capture or destruction.
Longabaugh and Logan used a log cabin at Old Trail Town in Cody, Wyoming, as a hideout to plan their next bank robbery in Red Lodge, Montana. They then moved to the infamous Hole-in-the-Wall hideout near Casper, Wyoming, where they could attack and retreat without fear of capture thanks to its elevated position and panoramic views of the surrounding country. The pair had been on the run for years, hunted by the legendary detective Charlie Siringo. Fearing arrest, Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and Cassidy’s mistress Etta Place fled the United States aboard the British ship Herminius, bound for Buenos Aires, Argentina, on February 20, 1901.
The decision to flee was a wise one: the law was closing in, several law enforcement officers had been killed in their thefts, bounties hung over their heads, and authorities were determined to bring them to justice. But the escape to Argentina did not mark the end of their criminal lives. They continued their activities in South America. In 1905, a man named Frank Boyd shot and killed a police officer in Antofagasta, Chile.
The man was actually the Sundance Kid in disguise. He was arrested, but released on bail thanks to the support of the US Deputy Consul in Antofagasta, and fled to Argentina before settling in Bolivia. This revelation only came to light in 2022, after the digitization of the old newspaper Antofagasta Industrial shed new light on the legendary outlaw’s actions while on the run. On November 3, 1908, during a pay delivery to a courier bound for the Aramayo Francke silver mine in Bolivia, two masked American robbers attacked and robbed him.
They then made their way to the mining town of San Vicente, where they took refuge in the small hut owned by Bonasio Casasola. Casasola’s suspicion, the mule, the telegraph operator, Captain Concha’s three-soldier unit, and the gun battle that followed all led to that final night. When the soldiers entered the hut the next morning and found the two bodies, the authorities could not identify the dead. They were buried in the San Vicente cemetery.
In 1991, forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow attempted to locate their remains, but he did not find any DNA that matched relatives of either Parker or Longabaugh. The life and death of the Sundance Kid continues to be shrouded in mystery and intrigue. Despite being one of the Old West’s most notorious outlaws, there are still unanswered questions about how he died. Some believe he died in the gunfight in Bolivia in 1908.
Others claim he survived and lived out his days under a different identity. The evidence surrounding Longabaugh’s death is scarce and often contradictory. Some historians suggested that the man killed in the gunfight was not Longabaugh at all, but a mysterious unknown bandit. This hypothesis, however, has largely been disproved due to eyewitness accounts and forensic evidence from the scene.
Another theory holds that Longabaugh faked his death and returned to the United States under a new identity. That theory was fueled by reports of a man named William Henry Long living in Utah under suspicious circumstances, but DNA testing did not confirm a link between Longabaugh and Long. It is also possible that Longabaugh died in the gunfight but that his body was never identified or accurately documented, a common occurrence in the Old West, where violence and lawlessness were prevalent. It is possible that Longabaugh’s true fate will never be known for certain.
The story of the Sundance Kid remains one of the most intriguing and controversial in the history of the Old West. Despite his reputation as a daring outlaw, the questions surrounding his death persist: whether he really died in that Bolivian shooting, or whether he survived and lived the rest of his life in secret. The lack of concrete evidence makes these theories difficult to confirm. But the Sundance Kid’s legacy lives on, and his notorious crimes and daring escapes continue to capture the imaginations of people today.
Whether or not he actually died in that Bolivian gunfight, the Sundance Kid will always be remembered as a true Old West legend.
