Etta Place walked into a New York City photo studio in 1901 -- and unknowingly walked into history.
There she stands, wearing her fine clothes and gold watch, her dark hair piled elegantly atop her head and her arm brushing the arm of a dapper gent known as the Sundance Kid.
The portrait of Etta with her outlaw boyfriend is one of the few scraps of physical evidence that this woman existed.
Before and after she turned up in the DeYoung Photo Studio on Broadway, Etta Place -- if that is even her real name -- lived a life now shrouded in mystery.
"As much as (historians) have looked for Etta, nobody has ever really pinned her down," says Leo Lyman, a retired historian in Leeds, Utah, who has researched the story of the woman who hung out with Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch in Utah, the West and South America.
Exactly where this woman was born, what she did before she rode with the Wild Bunch, and what happened to her after Butch and Sundance reportedly died in a 1908 shootout in Bolivia are all unknown.
What's in a name?
Some say Etta Place was born in New York, others say Ireland, Pennsylvania, Texas or even Utah, says Jan MacKell of Colorado in her 2009 book "Red Light Women of the Rocky Mountains" (University of New Mexico Press).
Maybe her father was an English earl, MacKell writes, or maybe her mother was a distant cousin of Sundance's mother. Others say Etta herself was a cousin of Butch Cassidy and that she grew up in Joseph, Utah.
Etta may not have been her real name -- she may have gone by Ethel, Eva or even Rita. Etta, however, was her name on wanted posters issued by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, which tracked Cassidy and his gang, MacKell says in her book.
Place was probably not her real last name, either, says Michael Rutter of Orem, who wrote about Etta in several books, including "Wild Bunch Women" (TwoDot, 2003) and "Upstairs Girls" (Farcountry, 2005).
Place was the maiden name of the mother of Harry Longabaugh, aka the Sundance Kid, Rutter explains -- and the Kid and Etta sometimes signed their names as "Mr. and Mrs. Harry Place."
We do know what Etta looked like, thanks to that 1901 photo and a description by the Pinkertons which noted her "classic good looks" -- 5 feet 4 inches to 5 feet 5 inches tall, 110 to 115 pounds, medium build, dark hair worn on top of her head.
"She was drop-dead gorgeous; she was a beautiful girl," Rutter says. But then, he quipped, the Wild Bunch boys "did not hang around ugly women."
'Liberated woman'
Some say Etta was a prostitute before she met up with the Wild Bunch. One theory is that she worked at a brothel in Texas. Another story, recounted by Rutter in "Wild Bunch Women," is that Butch rescued Etta from this brothel and sent her to live in Price, Utah, where she became a schoolteacher.
Several historians believe Etta was with Butch and Sundance by 1896, when the men stayed the winter at a cabin near Vernal. Some contend Etta had a romantic relationship with Cassidy at this time, before she linked up with Sundance.
Place had a lot of male friends, says Lyman, adding, "She really has no hang-ups on that. She's a liberated woman about 100 years before that was acceptable."
Lyman believes Etta Place was really Ann Bassett, the daughter of a rancher at Brown's Hole in northeastern Utah. This theory was proposed in 1992 by Utah author Doris Karren Burton, who found many similarities between the two women, including their age, education and polished skills as riders and gun handlers.
Burton's research also included computer analysis of photos of the women by an expert who compared their facial structure and concluded they were the same person, says Lyman, who plans to write about Place/Bassett for the Utah Historical Quarterly.
"It's so close it's absolutely convincing to me," he says, adding that Bassett passed away in 1956 in Leeds.
Others, however, say the whereabouts of Place and Bassett don't line up, says, Rutter, who teaches English at Brigham Young University in Provo.
"It's a wonderful story and it probably should be true -- but it isn't," he says.
Etta lives on
In 1901, Butch and Sundance decided to start a new life in South America. With Place, they first vacationed in New York City -- where the famous portrait of Etta and Sundance was shot -- before sailing to Argentina.
MacKell's book relates stories of folks in South America who remembered Etta's riding and shooting skills, and her habit of wearing pants and boots rather than dresses.
Place returned to the United States a few times, the last time, in 1905; she never went back to South America. Maybe she was pregnant or had an abortion, maybe she suffered from venereal disease, or perhaps she simply tired of the outlaw lifestyle, Rutter says.
Or Place may have gone to Denver for an operation for appendicitis, says Gerald Kolpan, the Pennsylvania author of "Etta: A Novel," released in March.
"That is the last record of her of any kind," Kolpan says, adding that he thinks chances are good Etta "died on the table" or from infection or complications following the surgery.
Although Sundance and Cassidy may have perished in a 1908 shootout, the stories about Place don't die.
Etta "sightings" have her teaching or back in prostitution in various American states, or marrying Sundance -- or another Wild Bunch outlaw -- and staying in South America.
The appeal of Etta's story is tied to our fascination with Butch Cassidy, a real "Robin Hood of the West," "the outlaw we love to love," Rutter says.
Etta Place's mystery gives her a certain mystique, Rutter adds: "I think if we knew more about her, we might not be as fascinated with her."
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