LAS VEGAS - New information has surfaced in one of the best-known crimes in Nevada history -- the stickup of a bank in Winnemucca back in 1900.
For decades, lawmen and writers believed the bandits had been none other than Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
More recently, historians determined the robbery must have been committed by someone other than Butch and Sundance, but who?
At a recent reunion of outlaw clans, the I-Team's George Knapp heard a startling new version of the tale.
Long before the 1969 hit movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were legends of the Old West, celebrities of sorts.
This is Winnemucca at the beginning of the 20th century, images preserved in old postcards. For 100 years, the town enthusiastically embraced the story that it was Butch, Sundance, and other members of the wild bunch who staged the daring robbery of the First National Bank, making off with a fortune in gold coins.
The tale has been retold many times in Western magazines and history books. For years, Winnemucca celebrated Butch Cassidy Days as a tourist attraction. but is the legend true?
According to Kim Brackett, the co-author of "The Chronicles of Tap," "He didn't have anything to do with that robbery."
Brackett and her husband, Chet, are ranchers from Idaho who co-authored a book that implicates a member of their own family as the true ringleader of the Winnemucca heist.
"What did surprise me was that my great-grandfather was involved in it," Chet Brackett said.
His great-granddad Ira Brackett was a master horseman whose talents proved invaluable to the heist. The ringleader, though, was a tough Texas cowboy named Tap Duncan, who in his later years, became a respected owner of the largest cattle ranch in the country, the Diamond Bar, just outside of Kingman. That ranch recently hosted a family reunion, the descendants of several Old West outlaws.
His great-granddad Ira Brackett was a master horseman whose talents proved invaluable to the heist. The ringleader, though, was a tough Texas cowboy named Tap Duncan, who in his later years, became a respected owner of the largest cattle ranch in the country, the Diamond Bar, just outside of Kingman. That ranch recently hosted a family reunion, the descendants of several Old West outlaws.
The head cashier at the bank was a politically ambitious man named George Nixon. The Bracketts say Nixon recruited the bandits to rob his own bank.
"So, he says, 'This is George Nixon, the banker, I've got a lot of things going for me, but I've got troubles at the bank. if something's not done, the bank's gonna go belly up. he says, if the bank's robbed, everything is covered and I can continue my political career,'" Brackett said. Nixon insisted that no one should be hurt in the robbery and no one was. Nixon went on to be elected a U.S. senator from Nevada.
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