AKA Harry Alonzo Longabaugh

Born: 19-Apr-1868
Birthplace: Phoenixville, PA
Died: c. 1908
Location of death: San Vicente, Bolivia
Cause of death: Justifiable Homicide

Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Criminal

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Outlaw and sidekick

Harry Longabaugh ran away from home the day after his 14th birthday, and became one of the most famous outlaws of the old West, the Sundance Kid. He took his nickname from the only town that ever jailed him, Sundance, Wyoming, where he was sentenced to eighteen months for horse thievery when he was 15 years old.

After being released from prison, Longabaugh went to Calgary, Alberta, where he worked as a cowboy before returning to crime. As his habit was to participate only in well-planned crimes, his criminal r�sum� remains largely unknown, but it is believed that he was one of three men who robbed a train in Montana in 1892, and one of five who held up a bank in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, in 1897. Longabaugh eventually joined up with Butch Cassidy's "Wild Bunch", and was almost certainly Cassidy's accomplice in the 1900 robbery of a bank in Winnemucca, Nevada. With a sizable haul from that crime, Longabaugh married his long-time girlfriend, Etta Place, and together these three fled from pursuing US Marshals, Pinkerton's agents, and detectives hired by Wells Fargo and the American Banking Association.

They settled in South America, where the general consensus is that Cassidy and Longabaugh were killed in a furious gun battle with police in San Vicente, Bolivia, in 1908 or '09. In 1993, however, the body buried as Longabaugh was exhumed in Bolivia, and DNA evidence established that it was not his corpse. Of course, he could have been killed in that gunfight and buried in a different grave, but alternate theories have Longabaugh killed in a 1911 bank robbery in Uruguay, or retiring under a different identity in Casper, Wyoming.

The best-known movie portrayal of Longabaugh was by Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He has also been played by played by Arthur Kennedy in Cheyenne (1947), Robert Ryan in Return of the Bad Men (1948), and William Katt in Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979), and by two future castaways on Gilligan's Island, Alan Hale, Jr. in The Three Outlaws (1956) and Russell Johnson in Badman's Country (1958).

Father: Josiah Longabaugh (b. 14-Jun-1822, d. 9-Aug-1893)
Mother: Annie Place Longabaugh (b. 27-Sep-1828, m. 11-Aug-1855, d. 18-May-1887)
Brother: Elwood Place Longabaugh (sailor, b. 21-Jun-1858, d. 11-May-1930)
Sister: Samanna Longabaugh Hallman (b. 22-Apr-1860, d. 1920)
Sister: Emma T. Longabaugh (dress shop owner, b. circa 1862, d. 23-Jan-1933)
Brother: Harvey Sylvester Longabaugh (farmer, b. 19-May-1865, d. Jan-1937)
Wife: Etta Place Longabaugh (criminal, b. circa 1878, m. 1901)

    Horse Theft Sundance, WY (1887)
    Armed Robbery train (1892)
    Bank Robbery 1897

Do you know something we don't?
Submit a correction or make a comment about this profile

Copyright ©2019 Soylent Communications