DAVID GREENE, Host: It turns out another larger-than-life character, Butch Cassidy, may not have had the fiery death of legend. In the movie "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," Paul Newman and Robert Redford played outlaws in the old American West. They robbed banks and held up trains.</s>PAUL NEWMAN: Unidentified Man (Actor): (as character) There ain't what I'd call a fortune in there, Butch.</s>PAUL NEWMAN: (As Butch Cassidy) Well, just so we come out ahead. That's the main thing.</s>RENEE MONTAGNE, Host: In the movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid eventually run off to Bolivia and wind up running head on into a hail of bullets.</s>DAVID GREENE, Host: But a newly discovered manuscript has some wondering if that's how it ended for the real Butch Cassidy. A rare book collector in Utah says the manuscript suggests Butch survived and led a secret life under the name William T. Phillips.</s>BRENT ASHWORTH: Turned out that William T. Phillips had tried to sell this story, "The Bandit Invincible," which was the story of Butch Cassidy.</s>RENEE MONTAGNE, Host: Brent Ashworth found Phillips' manuscript. He says it contains details no one but Butch could've known. And he's convinced that Phillips really was Butch.</s>BRENT ASHWORTH: That's yet, I guess, to be proven. But if Phillips is not Butch, he's certainly very, very close to him.</s>DAVID GREENE, Host: Some historians are unconvinced. Cassidy expert Dan Buck called the theory total horse-pucky.</s>DAVID GREENE, Host: This is NPR News.
The classic movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ends with Butch dying in a Bolivian shootout. But Brent Ashworth, a rare books dealer in Utah, recently found a manuscript, which he says might have been written by Butch Cassidy — who did not die in Bolivia, but went on to live a quiet life in Washington state.