the old west was a wild and unpredictable time and place to live in cowboys gunslingers outlaws hidden treasures and peculiar celebrities gave the era a flavor of mystery and volatile curiosity the rumors were more prevalent than the truth in the saloons and the stories of the period turned into legends did butch cassidy and a sundance kid really perish in bolivia did jack the ripper start in the wild west before tormenting the streets of london and is sasquatch real okay we're not going to talk about sasquatch in this video welcome to nutty history let's look at
do some of the craziest unsolvable mysteries of the wild west viewer discretion is advised for this video as some of this video may be offensive or disturbing we the makers of this video in no way support or condone the actions of the subjects featured [Music] the christmas eve of 1885 was marred for the citizens of austin texas as two married women susan hancock and eula phillips were found deceased these two poor women were the last victims of a serial butcher who was later dubbed as the servant girl annihilator for specifically picking women who were working
as a servant sound familiar well if you are acquainted with myths and legends of victorian london then you are thinking on the same line as a lot of sleuths who tried to decode jack the ripper's identity austin incidents that happened three years before jack the ripper frightened london streets and the servant girl annihilator is still considered the city's most prolific criminal who was never caught austin was a young town back then with a population of only 23 000 residents and the incidents caused the city's boisterous nightlife to come to a halt and servant women everywhere
had to keep their eyes peeled and doors locked the year 1885 began and ended with unprecedented violence for the athens of the south as the annihilator claimed eight people seven women and one man between december 30th 1884 and christmas eve 1885. the spine tingling moniker is a bit misleading as only the first few to die were servant girls the horrible acts stopped as randomly as it started and investigators were left with nearly no clue despite most of these women being abducted from their homes and then put to death when similar incidents began to happen in
white chapel london british authorities arrived in austin and questioned many american cowboys possibly including the famed buffalo bill wild west show's buck taylor according to those who might have seen the culprit they described them as a white or dark complexion man or a yellow man wearing lamp black to conceal his skin color he was possibly wearing a mother hubbard style dress with a slouch hat or a hat and a white rag that covered the lower part of his face several theories exist about the real identity of the criminal but the truth is still ever elusive
[Music] according to historians legendary outlaws butch cassidy and the sundance kid met their maker in a dusty town of bolivia on november 6 1908 but not everybody wants to believe that the real events of the death of the notorious bandits are quite different from how they were depicted in the blockbuster movie of 1969 butch cassidy and the sundance kid well the way i figured we need to fight or give forget we go to jail i've been there already in the movie paul newman's butch cassidy and robert redford's the sundance kid went out in a blaze
of glory but the true events were much more docile after courier of the our mile frank and sia mining company was robbed by two yankees on november 4th 1908 a quartet of bolivian authorities cornered a pair of american suspects in the village called san vincente after the hold up americans fired at an approaching bolivian soldier the other side answered in kind the bolivian authorities breached the door of the concerned house and found two men who had succumbed to the attack one was identified as butch cassidy and the other is harry longabal also known as the
sundance kid moreover the courier who was robbed carlos pero also identified the dead as the men who robbed him now that is quite a leap as the men who robbed him were masked and he never saw any discernible feature except for their eyes a lot of hearsay was involved in the identification and there was no substantial proof that the two deceased outlaws were the famous gunslinging duo of the wild west the only supporting evidence was that the dead bore some resemblance to the legendary robbers but the bolivian authorities never bothered to take photographs of the
bodies before dumping them in unmarked graves the lack of conclusive evidence acted like smoke to the embers of rumors that the pair had once again eluded the long arm of the law despite the law putting the case of butch cassidy and the sundance kid to rest people kept reporting sightings of the duo for decades some saw them in south america and mexico and some swore to witness them living in the united states these embers turned into fire when cassidy's sister lula parker bettinson mentioned in her 1975 book butch cassidy my brother that the notorious outlaw
returned to the family ranch in circleville utah in 1925 when their father was not doing well and he and butch used to ride together in fact he started out a little wild and then he married and settled down he said whenever they say that bob ever killed a man he couldn't even kill a dog say nothing of a man and that is true of my family she also claimed that he attended a family wedding during the same visit and confessed to one of his friends that the bolivian story was planted she also asserted that cassidy
lived in the state of washington under an alias until he died in 1937. sundance was um he drank quite a lot for one thing butch didn't drink very little and he was he drank a lot and he was so quick with the trigger that butch was after him all the time for that investigator couple daniel buck and ann meadows along with the help of clyde snow hunted the trails of the infamous duo for decades for those who are not familiar with clyde snow he was the renowned forensic anthropologist who conclusively identified the remains of nazi
war criminal joseph mengele the trio found and unearthed the remains of set out laws who were taken down in san vincente in 1908 after a detailed forensic analysis and a comparison of dna to the relatives of cassidy and longaball snow found that there was no match with the concerned remains and if they did not die in bolivia then where were butch cassidy and a sundance kid all these years probably working as a greeter at walmart in colorado [Music] albert jennings fountain was a man of many talents he was an educated man from columbia college new
york he was also a union army veteran of the civil war a state senator and a lieutenant governor for texas a judge a district attorney and a journalist but he became a household name in the west when he decided to become a trial lawyer for billy the kid and ended up losing the case so yeah add all that up and you can guess the man made a lot of enemies the year was 1896 and mr fountain was in lincoln new mexico with his young son henry for the wrestling case against cattle baron oliver lee another
case where he ended up making more enemies mr fountain confessed that during his stay in lincoln for the trial he felt every eye was upon him and not in a good way he also received a note with threats written on it at the end of the trial that was enough for the fountains to feel insecure and start for home a journey of 150 miles to masilla according to newspapers two days later fountain's wagon was found empty on the trail along with bullet shells and henry's handkerchief famed sheriff pat garrett also offered his services in the
hunt for albert and henry fountain as well but got nowhere with the investigation a courier came forward testifying that he saw a group of riders chasing fountain's wagon but there were not enough trails to pick up and chase cattle baron oliver lee's hired hands were eventually tried before the case grew cold but with a lack of damage evidence they walked free years later james giller confessed in 1937 to be responsible for the disappearance of eight-year-old henry fountain convicted outlaw sam ketchum also claimed on his deathbed then he his brother tom blackjack ketchum took the lives
of the poor fountain father and son however the location he described in his confession turned out to be a bust as bodies were not there the fountain case remains one of the most famous cold cases in new mexico's history [Music] a true wild child at heart pearl heart was the second woman to rob a stagecoach and the first to survive while doing so after leaving her first husband pearl arrived in arizona and there she married a man named joe boot when the couple failed to make money in mining they turned to stagecoach robbery and would
have gotten away with it if they didn't get lost in the desert they were arrested and boot was sentenced to 30 years in prison but later escaped while pearl got five years during her prison term hart became some sort of celebrity as the public began to endorse everything newspapers offered about the tomboyish woman banded she began to get requests for autographs in prison which she gladly accepted and she also started to spread the gospel governor alexander brody pardoned her in 1902 after she inexplicably got pregnant in prison after spending 18 months in incarceration gee wondered
how that happened that's when life hit her like a truck she tried performing on stage as a lady bandit before being arrested in kansas city for buying stolen goods after that she vanished and some people claimed to have seen her in florence arizona in 1924 and dying in 1925 but there is no concrete proof of that some have claimed to have met her in the 1950s and even 1960s but what happened to her is still a mystery the wild west is full of many more such mysteries and we would need more videos to talk about
them tell us in the comments if you'd like to watch more videos about the wild west and thanks for watching yet another nutty history video if you enjoyed it like and share it [Music]
