The San Vicente Shootout

The Bolivian shootout in San Vicente serves as the defining moment for the legend of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Some believe the outlaws perished in the small Bolivian town, others believe they survived; others still believe they were never there in the first place. One thing is for certain the famed shootout is not the end of a legend, merely the beginning.

It all started when Carlos Peró, accompanied by his son and a servant, picked the weekly payroll of the Aramayo Mining Company in Tupiza on the morning of November 3, 1908. After the pickup, the three men headed north to make their delivery. Little did they know two bandits were hot on their trail. The trio stayed overnight in Salo before setting again shortly before dawn. Things went peacefully for Peró and company until 9:30 am when they encountered two armed and masked bandits.

Despite a three to two disadvantage, the outlaws took swift control of the situation, tying up Peró and his companions. The bandits then helped themselves to the Aramayo payroll, said to have totaled fifteen thousand in Bolivian currency. The robbers also took one of the mules in service by Peró. The latter acquisition would prove to be their undoing.

The bandits left Peró and his party tied up and fled the area. After some time, Peró was able to escape the ropes and walk to the nearest town to telegraph Aramayo officials. Posses were soon organized in search of the two armed gringos and the dark brown mule bearing the Aramayo brand, Q.

The two outlaws took a winding escape route in an attempt to throw any pursuers off their trail. By November 6, they found themselves in the mining town of San Vicente and planned to stay the night. They made arrangements to take shelter in the spare room of a local villager’s house; separated from the main house by a walled patio. A passing villager spotted the mule with the Aramayo brand and notified members of a posse who had arrived in town that afternoon. The posse set off to the adobe hut to investigate. 

As they entered the patio area, a shot rang out (believed to have been fired by Butch Cassidy). The bullet struck Victor Torres, who managed to fire back before stumbling to a nearby house where he died within minutes. The remainder of the posse fired shots as they retreated to nearby positions, beginning a stand-off that would last the night.

Sometime during the night the posse were said to have heard “three screams of desperation,” then gunshots and, finally, silence. The lawmen waited until morning before entering the hut, inside they found the two outlaws dead.

One of the outlaws bodies, said to be Butch Cassidy, was discovered stretched out on the floor with a bullet wound to his temple and another in his arm. Due to the temple wound, it is believed the bandit killed himself. The second outlaw’s body, believed to be that if the Sundance Kid, was positioned on a bench behind the door. He was shot once in the forehead and several times in the arm. It was determined that the first outlaw (Cassidy) shot his compatriot in the head before turning the gun on himself.

On November 7, 1908, Malcolm Roberts, the manager of the Aramayo Mining Co. was notified by Justo P. Concha of the Bolivian Army that the bandits had been killed and the payroll recovered. Peró later identified the two men as those who had robbed him days earlier.

Legend has long held that the outlaws used up their arsenal in the firefight before using the last two bullets on themselves. Reports uncovered by researchers Daniel Buck and Anne Meadows dispute this theory. Among the dead men’s effects were over 100 rounds of ammunition, a rifle and a handgun. This would indicate, had they chosen to do so, the outlaws could have provided much more of a fight than what transpired.

Also discovered in the possession of the dead bandits was the stolen Aramayo payroll, 7 cards with Enrique B. Hutcheon imprinted on them (not a known alias of either Cassidy or Sundance), a map of Bolivia with notations matching areas Cassidy and Sundance are said to have traveled, cash from various bank and other effects. Perhaps the most telling item discovered with the bodies was a Tiffany watch. Could this have been the watch Cassidy purchased in New York shortly before the outlaws left for South America?

In the early 1990’s Buck and Meadows exhumed a grave in the San Vicente cemetery believed to be that of the outlaws. When the body was brought to the United States for examination, it was discovered to have belonged to Gustav Zimmer, a German. A skull fragment brought back was determined to belong to a person of non-Caucasian decent.

This presents an interesting twist to the San Vicente legend. Early reports of the Aramayo robbery placed the identities of the robbers as an American and a Chilean. Buck and Meadows discovered multiple reports on the robbery with the descriptions varying between two American suspects to a mixed-ethnicity duo.

Despite all attempts to the contrary, there is no concrete evidence that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid died in the San Vicente shootout. There is a ton of circumstantial evidence that points to the two men being in San Vicente on that fateful day, but truth has a tendency to be much stranger than fiction.

There are several scenarios available as to the outlaws' fate.

• The bandits were indeed the robbers of the Aramayo payroll and died at San Vicente.

• The bandits were at Aramayo, and Sundance did indeed die, but Cassidy managed to escape by trading clothes with another man, leaving his body in place of his.

• The bandits were not at San Vicente to begin with and therefore never killed in South America.

There are numerous Cassidy sightings across the West long after his supposed death in San Vicente. Many of these sightings can be traced to William T. Phillips, a man who may, or may not have been, the famous outlaw. Cassidy’s own sister, Lula Parker Betenson, recalls her brother visiting the family in 1925. Other family members tell of a reunion with Cassidy sometime in 1930.

With a nearly equal amount of circumstantial evidence supporting the various theories, we will likely never know what really happened to the famous outlaws.

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