This mug shot of Butch Cassidy was taken at Wyoming Territorial Prison in 1893. Born Robert Leroy Parker, Parker was a train robber, bank robber, and leader of the Wild Bunch gang in the west. Parker’s purchase of a stolen horse for five dollars from a rustler named Billy Nutcher led to his conviction in 1894 and incarceration at the Wyoming State Penitentiary’the former territorial prison’in Laramie, Wyo. By this time Roy had taken the name of George Cassidy, with a nickname’Butch,’ according to court and prison records. He was sentenced to two years. Judge Knight and others were impressed by his intelligence and charisma, and saw him as a potential threat. Yet Knight and Gov. William Richards organized an early release and pardon for Cassidy. Partly this may have been due to an error Knight made during the trial. Knight was quite frank in a letter to the governor, saying that he was’distressed’ that he had failed to tell the jury that it is a crime to buy stolen goods in Wyoming only if a person does so knowingly’and it’s not clear if Cassidy knew the horse he bought was stolen. Richards asked Knight to circulate a petition of Fremont County leaders vouching for Cassidy’s character, providing the governor with some political cover for this pardon. Cassidy was released early in 1896, after 18 months in prison.’The question is,’ Richards wrote to Knight,’will Cassidy do as we tell him to?’Cassidy did not. Within a few months he formed a gang, known as the Cassidy Gang or the Wild Bunch, and eventually became one of the most successful robbers of his era. He made allies of some ranchers supposedly by paying off their mortgages and spreading money liberally to the poor.