Fateful Photo of Butch, Sundance Sells at $85,000

A turn-of the century photograph of “The Wild Bunch”--an ill-advised joke that robbed the Western gang of its anonymity--sold Monday for $85,000 at an auction.

A private collector who was not identified bought the photograph at the Swann Galleries auction house. The picture, which carries the imprint of the photographer, John Swartz of Fort Worth, was the most famous of the pieces auctioned from the personal collection of James D. Horan, an author and Western Americana expert who died in 1980.

The Wild Bunch portrait depicts five notorious outlaws wearing Derby hats--including Robert LeRoy Parker and Henry Longabaugh, a.k.a. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Also pictured are Ben Kilpatrick, alias the Tall Texan, William Carver and Harvey Logan, who went by the name Kid Curry.

As legend has it, the five robbed a Nevada bank in the early 1900s and, soon after, decided to buy new hats because their old ones were showing their wear.

They found the Derbies, far from Western style, and donned them for the portrait in jest. Then, in spite, they sent the photograph to the bank they had just robbed.

It turned out to be a fateful decision for the outlaws.

The portrait made its way to the Pinkerton Agency, where detectives copied it and issued duplicates to law enforcement officers across the country.

With their faces splashed throughout the West, the bandits lost the element of surprise that had been so useful in pillaging banks, trains and other targets.

With authorities gaining on them, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid--subjects of the 1969 film that detailed their lives--headed to South America.

It is believed that the two outlaws met their demise during an encounter with Bolivian soldiers in 1908.