Etta Place by D. J. Herda, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

The mystery began simply enough with her identity. Who was she? As a young woman, she took the name, "Place," from the maiden name of the mother of her lover, Harry Longabaugh (the Sundance Kid), and combined it with several first names, including "Mrs. Ethel Place." The Pinkertons knew her as "Ethel," "Ethal," "Eva," and "Rita" before finally settling on "Etta" for their wanted posters. After Sundance introduced her to Robert Parker (Butch Cassidy), the three joined the rest of their Wild Bunch gang and set off on a spree of bank, stagecoach, and train robberies. With the law hot on their heels, they rode up to Robber's Roost in southwestern Utah where they laid low until word reached local authorities of their whereabouts. On the run again, Place accompanied Longabaugh to New York City where they purchased a lapel watch and stickpin at Tiffany's before pausing to pose for the famed DeYoung portrait at a Union Square photo studio on Broadway. On February 20, 1901, she sailed with Butch and Sundance, posing as Etta's fictional brother "James Ryan," aboard the British ship, Herminius, for Buenos Aires. Settling there with the two outlaws on a ranch they purchased jointly near Cholila in the Chubut Province of west-central Argentina, they were granted 15, 000 acres of adjacent land to develop, 2, 500 of which belonged to Place, who had the distinction of being the first woman in Argentina to own real estate there. Thus began the next phase of her outlaw life. On December 19, 1904, Place, Longabaugh, Parker, and an unknown male robbed the Banco de la Nacion in Villa Mercedes, four hundred miles west of Buenos Aires. Pursued by armed federales, they crossed the Pampas and the Andes and returned to Chile, but Place had grown tired of life on the run and deeply lamented the loss of their ranch and the promise of stability it had held for her. In June 1906, Longabaugh accompanied her from Valparaiso, Chile, to San Francisco, where she sought medical aid and kissed him goodbye for the last time before he returned to South America and infamy. As for Etta Place, her mystery had only begun. And it would continue for another forty-six years before finally being resolved. | Etta Place by D. J. Herda, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters