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Etta Place
Etta Place (b. c. 1878, d. ?) was a companion of the American outlaws Robert LeRoy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy, and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, alias Sundance Kid. The three were members of the outlaw gang known as Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch. She was principally the companion of Longabaugh. Little is known about her; both her origin and her fate remain unknown.
In 1906 the Pinkerton Detective Agency described her as having "classic good looks, 27 or 28 years old, 5'4" to 5'5" [163–165 cm] in height, weighing between 110 and 115 lb [50 and 52 kg], with a medium build and brown hair."
Place's real name has been suggested to be Ethel Bishop. A woman by that name lived at a brothel at 212 Concho Street, around the corner from Madame Porter's in San Antonio, the brothel that the Wild Bunch is known to have frequented. On the 1900 census, Bishop's occupation was given as "unemployed music teacher". Born in West Virginia in September 1876, she was 23 at the time. The Ethel Bishop hypothesis combines the claim that she was a schoolteacher with the one that she was a prostitute.
Another conjecture is that she was a cattle rustler named Ann Bassett (1878–1956), who knew and ran with the Wild Bunch at the turn of the 20th century. Both Bassett and Place were attractive women, with similar facial features, body frame, and hair color. Bassett was born in 1878, the same year Place was thought to have been born.
Dr. Thomas G. Kyle of the Computer Research Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who performed many photographic comparisons for government intelligence agencies, conducted a series of tests on photographs of Etta Place and Ann Bassett. Both had the same scar or cowlick at the top of their forehead. Dr. Kyle concluded that there could be no reasonable doubt they were the same person. Historian Doris Karren Burton also investigated the lives of both women and published a book in 1992 claiming they were one and the same.
However, Bassett and Place's chronologies do not align. Several documents prove that Bassett was in Wyoming during much of the time when Place was in South America. Bassett was arrested and briefly incarcerated in Utah for rustling cattle in 1903, while Place was in South America with Longabaugh and Parker. Bassett also married her first husband in Utah that year, so could not have been in South America during that time.
A once-popular theory held that she was Eunice Gray, who for many years operated a brothel in Fort Worth, and later ran the Waco Hotel there until she died in a fire in January 1962. Gray once told Delbert Willis of the Fort Worth Press, "I've lived in Fort Worth since 1901. That is except for the time I had to high-tail it out of town. Went to South America for a few years ... until things settled down." Willis conceded that Gray never claimed to be Etta Place; he merely made that connection on his own, given the similarities in their ages, and the period in which Gray said she was in South America coinciding with Place's time there. Gray was described as a beautiful woman, and Willis believed that Place and Gray held a striking resemblance to one another, but no photographs of Gray from that period are available to compare with Place's.
In 2007, amateur genealogist Donna Donnell found Eunice Gray on a 1911 passenger list from Panama. Following that lead, she tracked down Gray's niece, who had two photographs of her; one was taken at her high-school graduation circa 1896, and another from sometime in the 1920s. Comparing those photos to Place's, both agreed that Eunice Gray was definitely not Etta Place.
Hub AI
Etta Place AI simulator
(@Etta Place_simulator)
Etta Place
Etta Place (b. c. 1878, d. ?) was a companion of the American outlaws Robert LeRoy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy, and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, alias Sundance Kid. The three were members of the outlaw gang known as Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch. She was principally the companion of Longabaugh. Little is known about her; both her origin and her fate remain unknown.
In 1906 the Pinkerton Detective Agency described her as having "classic good looks, 27 or 28 years old, 5'4" to 5'5" [163–165 cm] in height, weighing between 110 and 115 lb [50 and 52 kg], with a medium build and brown hair."
Place's real name has been suggested to be Ethel Bishop. A woman by that name lived at a brothel at 212 Concho Street, around the corner from Madame Porter's in San Antonio, the brothel that the Wild Bunch is known to have frequented. On the 1900 census, Bishop's occupation was given as "unemployed music teacher". Born in West Virginia in September 1876, she was 23 at the time. The Ethel Bishop hypothesis combines the claim that she was a schoolteacher with the one that she was a prostitute.
Another conjecture is that she was a cattle rustler named Ann Bassett (1878–1956), who knew and ran with the Wild Bunch at the turn of the 20th century. Both Bassett and Place were attractive women, with similar facial features, body frame, and hair color. Bassett was born in 1878, the same year Place was thought to have been born.
Dr. Thomas G. Kyle of the Computer Research Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who performed many photographic comparisons for government intelligence agencies, conducted a series of tests on photographs of Etta Place and Ann Bassett. Both had the same scar or cowlick at the top of their forehead. Dr. Kyle concluded that there could be no reasonable doubt they were the same person. Historian Doris Karren Burton also investigated the lives of both women and published a book in 1992 claiming they were one and the same.
However, Bassett and Place's chronologies do not align. Several documents prove that Bassett was in Wyoming during much of the time when Place was in South America. Bassett was arrested and briefly incarcerated in Utah for rustling cattle in 1903, while Place was in South America with Longabaugh and Parker. Bassett also married her first husband in Utah that year, so could not have been in South America during that time.
A once-popular theory held that she was Eunice Gray, who for many years operated a brothel in Fort Worth, and later ran the Waco Hotel there until she died in a fire in January 1962. Gray once told Delbert Willis of the Fort Worth Press, "I've lived in Fort Worth since 1901. That is except for the time I had to high-tail it out of town. Went to South America for a few years ... until things settled down." Willis conceded that Gray never claimed to be Etta Place; he merely made that connection on his own, given the similarities in their ages, and the period in which Gray said she was in South America coinciding with Place's time there. Gray was described as a beautiful woman, and Willis believed that Place and Gray held a striking resemblance to one another, but no photographs of Gray from that period are available to compare with Place's.
In 2007, amateur genealogist Donna Donnell found Eunice Gray on a 1911 passenger list from Panama. Following that lead, she tracked down Gray's niece, who had two photographs of her; one was taken at her high-school graduation circa 1896, and another from sometime in the 1920s. Comparing those photos to Place's, both agreed that Eunice Gray was definitely not Etta Place.
