Linda Wunder Wall

Crossing Trails with the Elusive Outlaw Etta Place Linda Wunder Wall

The colorful trio of Old West outlaws, Butch Cassidy, The Sundance Kid, and Etta Place, has captured the imagination of many generations. Butch and Sundance were long ago identified as to their birth families, and background. Not so with Etta. This elusive woman has steadfastly remained a mystery. No one, for more than 100 years, has been able to show positive proof of Etta's identity, although rumors and stories abound. So, who was this fascinating woman? Where did she come from, and who was her family? Her family ties must have been very strong because they protected her identity, a loyalty that gave birth to one of the most intriguing mysteries of the Old West. This book invites you on a more recent "sighting" and "encounter" with Etta Place. It defies explanation, draws on your imagination, and leaves you perplexed, just as it does the author, Linda Wunder Wall. Both women traveled to Argentina-one in 1901 escaping capture aboard aship headed south, the other in 2014 on a cruise ship headed north along the Patagonian coastline. While these dates are more than a century apart, Argentina is where Etta Place and Linda Wall's trails mysteriously crossed. This is a post 2014 story of complete intrigue, crazy coincidences, hanging questions, and tantalizing trail markers, that to date lead to the same "dead end," of finding absolute "proof." Yet the trail continues and "Etta" periodically leaves just enough bits and pieces of circumstantial evidence along the way, to keep this author exploring how Etta factors into her maternal family tree. This is the wild, and often incomprehensible story, of the author's pursuit of Etta Place.