Butch Cassidy recruited Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, also known as "The Sundance Kid", a native of Pennsylvania, into the Wild Bunch. In early 1897, Cassidy was joined at Robbers Roost by Ann Bassett, Elzy Lay, and Lay's girlfriend Maude Davis. The four hid there until early April, when Lay and Cassidy sent the women home so that the men could plan their next robbery. On April 22, 1897, in the mining town of Castle Gate, Utah, Cassidy and Lay ambushed a small group of men carrying the payroll of the Pleasant Valley Coal Company, stealing a sack containing $7,000 in gold, with which
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid says he wrote the story as an original screenplay because he did not want to do the research to make it authentic as a novel. Goldman later stated: The whole reason I wrote the ... thing, there is that famous line that Scott Fitzgerald wrote, who was one of my heroes, "There are no second acts in American lives." When I read about Cassidy and Longbaugh and the superposse coming after them—that's phenomenal material. They ran to South America and lived there for eight years and that was what thrilled me: they had a second act. They were more legendary