Last summer, Wyoming Governor Matt Mead received an odd present from an Arizona businessman named Jerry Nickle: a just-published book promoting the idea that the author’s great-grandfather William Henry Long was none other than the Sundance Kid, of Butch and Sundance fame. Even more surprising than the book was its delivery. Nickle and his co-author had borrowed horses in Cheyenne and rode along the sidewalk to see the governor.
Not only does Nickle claim that his great-grandfather Long was the famous Wild Bunch bandit—he also maintains that he and Butch Cassidy were not killed in Bolivia, as many believe. Nickle believes that his great-grandfather did not commit suicide, as his family long thought, but was murdered by fellow Wild Bunch member Matt Warner after an argument about a book Warner had planned to write that might have exposed Long as Sundance. Nickle’s enthusiasm is not dampened by the absence of any evidence linking his great-grandfather to the Wild Bunch, or any evidence that he had ever even claimed to be the famous outlaw. After DNA tests failed to establish a link between Long and the Sundance Kid’s actual family, Nickle turned to a new theory: his great-grandfather had stolen the identity of Harry Longabaugh, the man Western historians actually consider to be the Sundance Kid.
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