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Etta Place | Ethel Place | Outlaw Woman |
 Etta Place | Ethel Place
1880 > 196?
Etta (or Ethel) Place was surely the most intriguing of all the Wild Bunch Gang.
Apart from the constant conjecture that surrounds the so say deaths in 1908 of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, this one person - more than the rest of the gang put together - has been responsible for so many different stories and conclusions.
Historically little is known about her. Nor, it would seem, did many care. Even the Pinkerton Agency, who had been chasing the Hole in the Wall gang for some 15 years, didn’t really start to pay Etta any attention until a memo dated October 24th 1904 (long after she had left the United States) mentions her by name, and then as Ethel Place.
So was she an Eastern educated school teacher, or prostitute from Fort Worth?
Given the dates available, school teacher is unlikely; but well educated she certainly seems to have been. The first real reference we have to Etta is following Butch Cassidy’s release from Wyoming Penitentiary on January 20th 1896. He and Etta spent the rest of the winter in Robbers Roost with Elza and Maud Lay. Many believe Etta was initially Butch Cassidy's mistress before she fell in love with Sundance. Some think the many references to "the family of three" in letters written by Butch and Etta refer to the trio as a ' menage a trois', with Etta sharing herself equally between the two men. |
 But what really propels this “mystery girl meets outlaw” story into folklore doesn’t happen for some six decades. The year was 1969. The blockbuster Oscar winning film of that year was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Paul Newman and Robert Redford took the respective leads while Etta played by Katherine Ross revealed to a huge audience the love, the life and adventures of Etta Place.
The next four years saw Etta, Butch and Sundance become close; it was the Hole in the Wall gangs’s zenith. The Wild Bunch accomplished much, and while many robberies were attributed to the gang, the ones they actually carried out netted them some $400000.00 - a vast sum by today's standard. It is said that it was Butch, always looking ahead, who took them to New York in order to sample a different, growing and more cosmopolitan America.
However, the turn of the century saw the Old West change. More civilised and with better communications, it was time for them to change too, or move on. On Feb 20th 1901 they left the United States. Married by then? Well, this photo of Etta and Sundance, taken January 1901 at the De Young studio in New York, certainly makes it look like they were - and proves that Etta was indeed a beautiful and stylish woman.
Sailing on the SS Herminus, for Buenos Aires, under the name of Mr and Mrs Harry A Place, they all settled in Cholila where they ranched and are known to have stayed for some four years. Here would seem a good point to clarify her name: most now believe Ethel's given name became Etta at this time - a result of Spanish inflection and pronunciation. |
 March 1902 saw Etta and Sundance return to New York on the SS Soldier Prince to see family and friends, returning in July that year on the Honorius, where they posed as stewards.
Again, in the summer of 1904, they visited Texas and the St Louis World's Fair. By May 1905, with the ranch sold, all three visited San Francisco and it seems to be around this time that they parted company. However, no reasons can be found for the split, and nobody really knows whether it happened at all and, if it did, where or if they met up again.
The facts of the San Vincente “shootout” in 1908 were far from clear then and are far from clear now. A small group of historians place the trio with the Pancho Villas revolutionary army in Juarez, Mexico, in 1912 - four years after their alleged deaths in Bolivia. A Pinkerton Detective Agency report has Etta being killed in a shootout with a man named Mateo Gebhart in Chubut, Argentina, in March 1922. Another report has her committing suicide in 1924, while yet another states she died a natural death in 1966. |
 By 1909 all records of Etta cease.
At around the same time a lovely woman of means who called herself Eunice Gray appeared in Fort Worth, Texas and began operating the Waco Hotel at 110 E. 15th St. No one ever said anything to her on the subject, but many Fort Worthians suspected Eunice Gray of being Etta Place.
Gray operated the hotel for 40 years and died in 1962 in a fire that destroyed her hotel. Documents salvaged from the fire indicated her age as 77. Her estate was valued at $90,000.
Wherever and whatever really happened ………. Her legend lives on. |
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