Butch Cassidy: Did the Outlaw Die in Bolivia or Eat Pie in Utah?

Most historical figures get one ending. Butch Cassidy got two. In one reality, he bleeds out in a Bolivian boarding house in 1908. In the other, he drives a Ford Model T up to his family's Utah kitchen in 1925 and eats a slice of blueberry pie.This episode unpacks the true story of Robert Leroy Parker, from devout Mormon upbringing to the Wild Bunch, and the relentless modernized system that hunted him across two continents. His life is a perfect microcosm of the death of the Wild West and the last moment in history when a person could simply walk off the map.His criminal mentorship began with cattle thief Mike Cassidy and an early career that included leaving a signed IOU after breaking in to steal jeans and a pieWyoming State Prison became an outlaw networking conference, and the connections he made there built the notorious Wild Bunch with the Sundance KidThe Pinkerton Detective Agency used telegraph wires to jump ahead of the gang at the speed of light, closing the frontier on an analog criminal enterpriseAfter fleeing to a 15,000-acre ranch in Patagonia, the pair ironically took jobs guarding a mining payroll before a branded stolen mule undid him in San VicenteBolivian authorities never identified the bodies, fueling a century of folklore; DNA tests in 1991, 2017, and at the family ranch all failed to confirm a match