BookBrains Press - Exploring Unsolved Mysteries

The Official Death Story and Its Problems According to the accepted historical narrative, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were cornered by Bolivian soldiers after robbing a mining company payroll near San Vicente. After a brief shootout that left one soldier dead, the outlaws were trapped in their room. When the firing ceased, both Yankees were found dead, Butch with bullet wounds to his temple and arm, and Sundance shot in the forehead and arm, apparently victims of a murder-suicide pact (Meadows and Buck 1997).  Artistic Interpretation of Butch Cassidy in Bolivia | BookBrains Press However, this account has significant problems. Despite the thousands of man-hours invested in the study of Butch Cassidy, the outlaw's life remains extremely elusive and disputable (Jameson 2012). The identification of the bodies was never definitively established, and when the supposed graves were exhumed in the early 1990s, DNA tests conducted by Clyde Snow, one of the nation's foremost foren...

 The Life and Legend of Butch Cassidy Few American outlaws have captured the public imagination quite like Butch Cassidy. Born Robert LeRoy Parker on April 13, 1866, in Beaver, Utah, to Latter-day Saint pioneer parents Annie Gillies and Maximilian Parker, he grew up in a loving family environment that seemed unlikely to produce one of the West's most notorious criminals (Barton 1994; Meares 2020). The eldest of thirteen children, Robert spent his early years playing harmonica during family "home evenings" when they would read Church doctrine and play games together (Meares 2020). Butch Cassidy Mugshot from the Wyoming State Prison in 1894 | Public Domain   When Robert was eight, his family homesteaded a large ranch outside of Circleville, Utah, where he became an expert cowboy and a playful older brother to his younger siblings (Meares 2020). While the Parker family was not the most devout members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, they may have been inv...

  American Authors Gone Missing Exploring the Mysterious Disappearances of Literary Voices Few figures in the American Southwest are as haunting as Everett Ruess, the young artist, writer, and adventurer who disappeared without a trace in 1934. At just twenty years old, Ruess had already carved out a remarkable path for himself, wandering alone through the deserts and canyons of the Southwest, chronicling his travels in evocative letters, journal entries, and artwork. His mysterious disappearance and the romantic, bohemian idealism of his life have since elevated him to the status of folk legend. Artistic Interpretation of Everett Ruess | BookBrains Press A Life in Search of Beauty Born in Oakland, California, in 1914 and raised in Los Angeles, Everett Ruess was the son of Christopher and Stella Ruess, both educators with strong artistic inclinations. From an early age, Everett showed a precocious talent for art and writing. As a child, he wrote essays and composed poe...

  American Authors Gone Missing Exploring the Mysterious Disappearances of Literary Voices Tenth and final in our series "Missing American Authors"  On a sweltering July afternoon in 1996, Susan Walsh stepped out of her Nutley, New Jersey, apartment to make a phone call and never returned. The 36-year-old journalist and single mother had told her estranged husband, Mark, that she'd be back in half an hour, leaving behind her wallet, pager, and, most importantly, her 11-year-old son, David (The Charley Project, 2015). What should have been a simple errand became one of journalism's most perplexing disappearances. This case would blur the lines between investigative reporting and the dangerous underworlds it sought to expose. Artistic Interpretation of Susan Walsh | BookBrains Press A Life Between Two Worlds Susan Walsh's story reads like a modern American tragedy, caught between aspiration and survival, between the pursuit of serious journalism and the ...