Though Butch Cassidy, outlaw, lives on in legend, no psychiatrist’s couch will ever lull him, no psychoanalyst ever probe from him the reasons why the man Robert LeRoy Parker became a fugitive form law and justice. Butch Cassidy is dead, and writers now theorize about the reasons for his disregard of the law. The question may forever remain unanswered.
But no other account will come nearer to revealing the truth about him than this one, told by his sister, Lula Parker Betenson. From her we learn about Butch’s hardy forebears, his childhood and young manhood, his leave-taking of his family, his poignant homecoming after many years of outlawry—and after as many years of penance.
Lula, concerned about conflicting and distorted accounts about Butch, tells us in her preface: “The stories became wilder and wilder. My brother was given credit for robberies which were committed at almost the same time but many hundreds of miles apart…He would certainly have needed wings—and we know he was no angel.” She reveals that her decision to break a forty-years’ sworn silence came after she read articles about Butch containing many distorted quotes from her.
“If I don’t preserve my story in print, as only our family knew it and not as others have frequently misquoted me, the facts will remain garbled and obscure.”
Here, then, from the last survivor of Butch Cassidy’s immediate family—Lula Parker Betenson—is his story: Butch Cassidy, My Brother.
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