Etta Place

According to the Pinkerton Detective Agency, Etta Place had classic good looks, was 5'4" to 5'5" in height and weighed between 110 lb and 115 lb, with a medium build and brown hair. A Pinkerton memorandum dated 1906 noted she was 27 to 28 years old, placing her birth around 1878. This is confirmed by a hospital staff record from Denver, where she received treatment in May 1900, which reports her age as "22 or 23," again putting her birth year around 1878.

She is best known as the companion of American outlaws Butch Cassidy (Robert LeRoy Parker) and the Sundance Kid (Harry Alonzo Longabaugh), both members of the outlaw gang known as the Wild Bunch.

Principally the companion of Longabaugh, little is known about her because both her origin and her fate remain shrouded in mystery. Even her real name is a mystery; "Place" was the maiden surname of Longabaugh's mother (Annie Place) and she is recorded in various sources as Mrs. Harry Longabaugh or Mrs. Harry A. Place. In the one instance where she is known to have signed her name, she did so as "Mrs. Ethel Place". Because Longabaugh's mother was a Place, some rumors suggest that she and Longabaugh were first cousins.

The Pinkertons called her "Ethel", "Ethal", "Eva" and "Rita" before finally settling on "Etta" for their wanted posters. Her name may have become "Etta" after she moved to South America, where Spanish speakers could not pronounce "Ethel".

Those who met Place claimed the first thing they noticed about her was that she was strikingly pretty, with a very nice smile and that she was cordial, refined and an excellent shot with a rifle. She was said to have spoken in an educated manner, and she indicated she was originally from the East Coast, although she never revealed an exact location.

Eyewitnesses indicated, years afterward, that Place was one of only five women known to have ever been allowed into the Wild Bunch hideout at Robbers Roost in southern Utah, the other four having been Will Carver's girlfriend Josie Bassett, who also was involved with Parker for a time; Josie's sister and Parker's longtime girlfriend Ann Bassett; Elzy Lay's girlfriend Maude Davis; and gang member Laura Bullion.

She was speculated to have once married a schoolteacher, and at least one person claimed Place said she was a teacher who abandoned her husband and two children to be with Longabaugh.

The claim that Place met the gang while working as a prostitute is also widely believed; some claim that she was originally Parker's lover and became involved with Longabaugh later, having met both while working in the brothel of Madame Fannie Porter in San Antonio, which was frequented by members of the Wild Bunch gang. In fact, through Madame Porter's, several gang members met girlfriends who later traveled with them, including Kid Curry and prostitute Della Moore and Will Carver and Lillie Davis. Wild Bunch female gang member Laura Bullion is believed to have worked at the brothel from time to time.

Longabaugh is on the lower left; Parker is on the lower right.
This photo, taken ca. 1901, helped Pinkerton detectives to
identify members of the Wild Bunch.

Timeline generally accepted by historians:

• 1899-1900: Place was living in Texas and being courted by Harry A. Longabaugh, aka the Sundance Kid. Some stories claim Place was a housekeeper or possibly a prostitute in Fannie Porter's sporting house during this time.
• December 1900: Place and Longabaugh reportedly marry, with him using the alias of Harry A. Place, shortly after he is photographed in the famous Fort Worth Five photo. However, there are no marriage records to prove this.
• January 1901: Longabaugh and Place visit his family in Mont Clare, Pennsylvania.
• February 1901: Longabaugh and Place visit New York City, and Tiffany's Jewelers where they purchase a lapel watch and stickpin and posed for the now-famous DeYoung portrait at a studio in Union Square on Broadway. It is one of only two known images of her.
• February 20, 1901: Longabaugh and Place board the RMS Herminius bound for Buenos Aires, Argentina. Parker is with them and posing as "James Ryan" herfictional brother. There they settled on a ranch which they purchased near Cholila in the Chubut Province of west-central Argentina.
• March 3, 1902: Longabaugh and Place sail on the ship S.S. Soldier Prince from Argentina to New York City. Pinkerton detectives find evidence that Place was homesick and wanting to visit her family, but were unable to identify who her family was.
• April 2, 1902: Longabaugh and Place register at Mrs. Thompson's Boarding House in New York City, and visit members of his family in Atlantic City, New Jersey, then visit Coney Island. They also possibly traveled to a Dr. Pierce's Invalid Hotel in Buffalo, New York, for unspecified medical treatment. They then traveled west, where again they sought medical treatment, this time in Denver, Colorado. 
• July 10, 1902: Place and Longabaugh pose as stewards, and sail on the steamer Honorius back to Argentina.
• August 9, 1902: Place registers them at the Hotel Europa in Buenos Aires.
• August 15, 2902: Place and Longabaugh return to their ranch aboard the steamer SS Chubut.
• Early to late 1903: Parker's former lover Ann Bassett marries a rancher by the name of Henry Bernard, and shortly thereafter is arrested for rustling.
• Summer 1904: Place and Longabaugh sail again to the U.S. where the Pinkerton Detective Agency traced them Fort Worth, Texas and to the St. Louis World Fair, but failed to arrest them before they returned to Argentina.
• December 19, 1904: Place took part, along with Longabaugh, Parker and an unknown male, in the robbery of the Banco de la Nacion in Villa Mercedes, 400 miles west of Buenos Aires. Pursued by armed lawmen, they crossed the Pampas and the Andes and again into Chile.
• May 1, 1905: The trio sell the Cholila ranch, as once again the law was beginning to catch up with them. The Pinkerton Agency had known their precise address for some months, but the rainy season prevented their assigned agent, Frank Dimaio, from traveling there and making an arrest. Governor Julio Lezana issued an arrest warrant, but before it could be executed, Sheriff Edward Humphreys, a Welsh Argentine who was friendly with Parker and enamored of Place, tipped them off. The trio fled north to San Carlos de Bariloche, where they embarked on the steamer Condor across Lake Nahuel Huapi and into Chile. 
• June 30, 1906: At Place's request, Longabaugh accompanied her from Valparaiso, Chile, to San Francisco, California, where she apparently remained while he returned permanently to South America. 
• 1907: Place is living alone in San Francisco. There is no evidence that Longabaugh and Place ever saw one another again after leaving her there.
• July 31, 1909: A woman matching Place's description attempts to obtain a death certificate following Longabaugh's death in Bolivia so that she can settle his estate. She disappears from all historical records after that. With Longabaugh dead, Pinkerton's interest in her location wanes, and her trail goes cold.

There is still considerable debate over when Place's relationship with Longabaugh ended. Some claims indicate that she ended her relationship with Longabaugh and returned to the United States prior to his death. Other claims indicate that the two remained romantically involved, and that she simply tired of life in South America. By 1907, she was known to have been living in San Francisco, but after that, the trail runs cold.

After Longabaugh's death, some believe that she returned to New York City, while other theories indicate she moved back to Texas and started a new life there. A Pinkerton report indicates that a woman matching Place's description was killed in a shootout resulting from a domestic dispute with a man named Mateo Gebhart in Chubut, Argentina, in March 1922. Another report indicates she committed suicide in 1924 in Argentina, while yet another report indicates that she died of natural causes in 1966.

There have been various additional claims about her life after Longabaugh died. One claim is that she returned to her life as a schoolteacher, living the remainder of her life in Denver, Colorado, while another story claims she lived the remainder of her life teaching in Marion, Oregon. There are also various claims that she returned to prostitution, living out the remainder of her life in Texas, New York or California. However, none of these claims has any supporting evidence.