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SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia -- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid died not in a gunbattle with soldiers but in a suicide pact, according to a new play based on police archives from the Bolivian mining town where the legendary American outlaws met their end.

Director George Roy Hill dies at 81 12/27/2002 Associated Press NEW YORK - George Roy Hill, the independent-minded former Marine pilot who directed Paul Newman and Robert Redford in both "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Sting," died at his home Friday. He was 81. Hill died of complications from Parkinson's disease, said Hill's son, George Roy Hill III, and Edwin S. Brown, his business manager for 35 years. The Redford-Newman films brought Hill honors and awards as well as the distinction of being the only director to have two films among the all-time top 10 moneymakers...

Butch Cassidy is arguably one of the most infamous bandits of the Old West. His lucrative heists, daring schemes of tactical brilliance many years ahead of their time, wrested hundreds of thousands of dollars from banks, trains, and businesses—equivalent to multi-millions today. Only caught once on a charge of horse theft for which he served 18 months in jail, the wildly successful Cassidy earned himself such fame that pop culture today still knows his name. And he was a Mormon.A Mormon outlaw? It seems like it should be an oxymoron. Latter-day Saints take pride in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent,...

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 19, 2012 -- /PRNewswire/ -- On Sunday, September 30, 2012, California Auctioneers in Ventura, California, will auction off the Colt .45 SAA (Serial Number 158402) that belonged to Robert LeRoy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy, the legendary bank thief, train robber, and leader of the Wild Bunch Gang—the notorious Wyoming-based bandits that stalked the American West throughout the 1890s. His legacy as an icon of the American Old West was immortalized in the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Known as the "Amnesty Colt," this is the most documented of Cassidy's guns. Hunted by...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Did Butch Cassidy, the notorious Old West outlaw who most historians believe perished in a 1908 shootout in Bolivia, actually survive that battle and live to old age, peacefully and anonymously, in Washington state? And did he pen an autobiography detailing his exploits while cleverly casting the book as biography under another name? A rare books collector says he has obtained a manuscript with new evidence that may give credence to that theory. The 200-page manuscript, "Bandit Invincible: The Story of Butch Cassidy," which dates to 1934, is twice as long as a previously known but...

The red canyons and parched planes surrounding the new Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid Memorial Museum might make you think you're in the Old West. But the electrical wiring and a searing altitude headache tell you this is not California circa 1900, but high-up the mountains in present day Bolivia. Here in the tiny town of San Vicente (population 800), the world's most famous outlaws are supposed to have been gunned down 101 years ago, days after robbing the payroll of a Bolivian mine. Offing the bandits would seem to have been sufficient revenge but area residents still think the...

SAN VICENTE, Bolivia --On a November afternoon 99 years ago, two American outlaws straggled into this forlorn mining town, 14,500 feet above sea level, and sought lodging in an adobe hut. They didn't know that a posse in hot pursuit had already settled in another hut and soon would get word of the Americans' arrival. A shootout ensued. It ended when the wounded Americans made a desperate dash out of their hiding place, guns blazing, only to run into volleys of gunfire from Bolivian troops lying in wait. That, at any rate, is how Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid...

Let's trade some less "political" Hollywood mistakes. I can think of a few: 1) In the film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," the final shootout happens in a town with lots of trees. But the real San Vincentes in Bolivia is way above the treeline. And, whoever those 2 Americans were, they killed themselves after they were wounded (at least according to those who say they found the bodies). 2) a) In the movie "Patton"...Patton says "I read your book!" after he beats Rommel in command of a tank battle. But Rommel had never written a book on armor...

William Goldman liked to call himself a "storyteller", and he told them in almost every form: he wrote films and plays and musicals and novels and children's books and non-fiction; he wrote a very good insider's view of Hollywood (Adventures in the Screen Trade) and an even better one of Broadway (The Season). He was not equally partial to all these outlets. Goldman would have liked to have been a "great novelist", but seemed to intuit early on that it was not for him. He told me long ago in London, during a West End season that was an embarrassment...

I have been informed by friends of the family that William Goldman died last night. He was 87. Goldman, who twice won screenwriting Oscars for All The President’s Men and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, passed away last night in his Manhattan home, surrounded by family and friends. His health had been failing for some time, and over the summer his condition deteriorated. We will be following this and building out the story today, but I wanted to let Deadline readers know straight away. From his scripting work to his books like Adventures in the Screen Trade, Goldman is...