Edwin Alonzo Boyd

by Brian Vallee

  While Boyd and Willie Jackson were settling in for a night’s sleep in a comfortable bed, Lennie Jackson and Ann Roberts were spending the night together at a tourist camp east of Oshawa. “When we stopped outside of Oshawa on the night of his escape, I noticed that he was in possession of a long-barrelled revolver tucked in the waist band of his trousers,” said Roberts. “I didn’t question him as to where he got the revolver or whether or not it was loaded.” They spent the night in Oshawa and didn’t leave until after six the next night, when it was dark. From there, they drove to Kingston and another tourist camp. The next morning they continued to Montreal, where they found a room at Castle Tourist on Mountain Street. He went in with her to arrange the room, then left for a short time, returning without the car.

  Boyd made no attempt to contact his wife or relatives in the days immediately after his escape, believing the police would likely have them under surveillance. Boyd’s assumptions were correct: detectives Dolph Payne and Barry Lorimer filed a report the day after the jail break stating that the homes of Boyd’s brother Norman (60 London Street), his friend Frank Lamb (360 Harbord Street), and another friend were all under observation. So was the Pickering house.

  “Norman Boyd was followed in his automobile license 85-F-37 all through the downtown district and finally to his garage,” said the report. “He was then taken to No. 11 Station and questioned. We believe at present he doesn’t know where his brother Edwin is.” The detectives added that Lamb, Boyd’s friend from judo, had been out to visit Dorreen in Pickering the day before the jail break. They recommended that Lamb’s home be kept under surveillance but “not be searched as it may prove to be a contact point.”

  Boyd says his brothers and other relatives were ready to open their doors to him “but I didn’t want to put any pressure on them, so I kept away.”

  Payne and Lorimer also visited Howard Gault at the Don Jail. He told them he had no idea where Boyd might be, although Boyd once told him that if he did escape he would immediately “pull a quick job in Mimico, Ontario, and then clear out.” On the basis of that information, the banks in Mimico were alerted and police patrols beefed up during banking hours. The detectives also suggested that Boyd’s fingerprints be forwarded to Washington and Ottawa “as there is some suggestion that Boyd might attempt to join the American Army.”

  Dorreen Boyd remembers detectives arriving at her Pickering home the night of her husband’s escape from the Don.

  “Have you seen your husband?” one of them asked.

  “No,” she replied coldly. “I don’t know where he is.”

  “Well, your neighbours say he’s been around.”

  “I don’t care what they say. I haven’t seen him.”

  They turned to eleven-year-old Anthony.

  “Have you seen your father?”

  “I haven’t seen him for a long time.”

  “Oh, you must have seen your father.”

  “I haven’t seen him,” answered the boy, a hint of anger in his voice.

  “They kept asking until finally Anthony just shut up and didn’t say a word when they spoke to him,” says Dorreen. “And then they went away. They looked through the whole house.”

  Detective Jack Gillespie would not find out for several months, but Edwin Alonzo Boyd and Willie Jackson were hiding right under his nose. “I used to drive up Sorauren Avenue,” he said. “It was a two-way street then and I’d make a U-turn and drop in to visit my aunt. She lived at number 6, just north of Queen Street, and they were just up the street at number 27.”

  Boyd and Willie Jackson were fairly safe hiding out with the Lessos, but Boyd was soon bored and devised a way to break the monotony. “I figured Willie and I could dress up as women and walk around after dark and nobody would bother us. I’d been going to the movies all my life and I always had tremendous admiration for people who could disguise themselves and play different roles. Willie couldn’t see putting on woman’s clothes, but I dressed up with a long skirt that came down enough to cover my shoes. Willie thought it was great to take me by the arm and walk down the street as a couple. I smoked a bit then, and we’d go into a store and buy cigarettes or sit in a restaurant and have a meal. The disguise was terrific. I didn’t have a wig, so I just used a kerchief and put on a little lipstick.”

  Boyd still laughs at the memory. “I enjoyed it,” he says. “When I spoke, I softened my voice and raised it a tiny bit to sound less like a man.” Using make-up and disguising himself was nothing new for Boyd, but he would rather have been using those skills to rob a bank.

  While Boyd was hiding out at the home of Suchan’s parents, the case against forty-three-year-old Howard Gault was reaching a conclusion in the courts. He pleaded guilty to two counts of bank robbery on November 14, and on November 20 he was sentenced to seven years at Kingston. Gault told the court he had no previous record and for eighteen months had worked for the city works department with Boyd. “I was contented, and I had a nice home,” said Gault. “Boyd often wisecracked: why don’t you go out and rob a bank?” Gault said he had not wanted to rob the first bank and had begged Boyd not to go through with it, but had agreed to go along after Boyd called him a coward.

  Gault said that after the first robbery he often saw Boyd’s truck parked outside his Madison Avenue home, and felt Boyd was watching him. He added that on the day he was caught robbing the Dominion Bank at Lawrence Avenue and Yonge Street, he had told Boyd he was ill and wanted no part of the crime.

  The magistrate, F.C. Gullen, said of Gault’s statement: “What the accused has said would have carried some weight had there been only one offence.”

  The court was told that after Boyd called Gault a coward before the first robbery, he again pressed Gault to join him, saying, “You’ll find out how simple it is.”

  20

  The Boyd Gang

  On Tuesday, November 20, the day Howard Gault was sent off to Kingston Penitentiary, Edwin Alonzo Boyd was in a familiar place – atop a counter with a revolver in his hand, demonstrating just how simple it was to rob a bank.

  The night before, a blue 1949 Ford sedan had been stolen from a lot at Vaughan Collegiate. Now, just before 10:30, Boyd, Suchan, and the two Jacksons pulled up in the same car around the corner from the Bank of Toronto at Dundas and Boustead. Seconds later they were in the bank, with Boyd shouting, “This is a hold-up!” as he leaped up on the counter.

  Maynard Elroy Copes, assistant accountant, turned when he heard the shouting and saw one gunman on the counter and another pushing manager Brian Branston from his office. The manager was forced to lie on the floor with nine of his employees while the bandits rifled the teller’s cages of $4,300. In the confusion, the bank employees could not be sure how many robbers there were. Most of them said three. The newspapers said five. After a thorough investigation, the Toronto police decided it was four.

  The Star’s Jocko Thomas wrote on the day of the robbery: “The gang is believed by police to have been led by Edwin Alonzo Boyd, master bank robber, who escaped with two other desperate criminals from the Don Jail two weeks ago.” The robbery had been conducted with “split-second timing.” The stolen car used in the robbery was recovered the next day in an enclosed industrial yard at the High Park Paving Company. No fingerprints were found on the vehicle.

  Thomas says that after the escape when the robberies started, he was the first to write of the group as “the Boyd Gang.” “It was because I knew of Boyd from those earlier robberies, and the editors liked it because ‘Boyd’ fit the headlines better than ‘Jackson’.”

  Boyd’s initial enthusiasm over the prospect of working with a gang of bank robbers who knew what they were doing quickly waned when it became apparent that there were major personality conflicts, particularly between himself and Steve Suchan. “Suchan was very jealous of the fact that Leonard Jackson wanted me to be in the gang with them,” says Boyd. “Suchan wanted to be the important one next to Len.” Besides Suchan’s proprietary feelings about Lennie Jac
kson, there was the considerable age difference between Boyd, who was then thirty-seven, and Suchan, who was twenty-three. “Lennie and Willie would listen to me, but not Suchan. He wouldn’t take orders or discuss anything with me and Willie. He thought we were interlopers who just happened to break out of the Don with Lennie. Lennie was a good solid guy, but he had too many things on his mind.”

  Boyd decided on a pragmatic approach: he would associate with Lennie and Suchan, and if it became intolerable he would leave. “I took them as they were. I didn’t try to like them or not like them. I just figured they were available if we wanted to rob a bank. They had their friends and their women, and that was plenty to keep them occupied.”

  Willie Jackson was the most carefree of the lot. He was elated after the Bank of Toronto robbery – his first – and was ready for more. He hadn’t been the least bit nervous and had actually enjoyed himself.

  Prior to the new gang’s first robbery, Boyd had been able to convince Lennie that it was less dangerous to rob banks in the city and its suburbs than in outlying communities, where roadblocks and long distances came into play.

  Although the Bank of Toronto robbery had gone smoothly, they were disappointed with the amount of their take. Boyd was worried about supporting himself and his wife and three children. Lennie was so broke he had had to sell his car in Montreal, although he was probably bankrolled for a time by his criminal friends, and also by Suchan, who had shared in the profits of their earlier robberies. But now Suchan too was in need of new resources: he had expensive tastes and was also trying to juggle relationships with Mary Mitchell and Anna Camero. Only Willie Jackson seemed contented with his share of the first $4,300.

  One evening nine days after the Bank of Toronto robbery, in the Beaches neighbourhood of Toronto, Boyd hot-wired another blue Ford sedan, this one a 1950 model. He removed the licence plates, replacing them with plates stolen from a junked vehicle. The Ford was kept overnight in a rented garage. The Boyd Gang would use it the next morning in the biggest bank robbery in Toronto history up to that time.

  The target was the Royal Bank of Canada on Laird Drive in Leaside. Lennie Jackson had been thinking about that particular bank even before he went into the Don. It had been talked about on the street as easy and lucrative prey – if the timing was right. The right timing was Friday morning, when the bank had plenty of cash on hand to meet the payrolls of workers from the nearby industries: the CNR shops, a Frigidaire plant, and a sprinkling of smaller workplaces. Six years earlier, the bank had been robbed of $11,500 by five gunmen.

  It was a pleasant, sunny day with a light wind and temperatures slightly above 40°F when the Boyd Gang entered the bank shortly after 11 a.m. Two bank customers, John Lowes and Ernest Bluethner, were talking to accountant Cecil J. Young when they heard shouting and were confronted by Boyd, who jabbed a revolver in Lowes’ ribs and ordered all three men to face the wall. Boyd turned away, not noticing that Lowes and Bluethner were standing with their hands in the air. Lennie Jackson, who was standing by the front door with a Thompson sub-machine-gun, realized the men would be visible through the window and ordered them to lower their hands. “He immediately walked towards us, and struck Mr. Bluethner across the small of the back with the barrel of the gun,” Lowe told police later. By this time, Boyd and Willie Jackson were vaulting the bank counter. “Willie was in good shape, and he flew over the counter just the way I did,” says Boyd. There were no individual tellers’ cages, only drawers behind the counter.

  A bank stenographer, Mrs. Fred Bebe, was standing behind the counter when Boyd landed beside her. “Just keep quiet and you won’t get hurt,” he said.

  “He had a soft voice, but you could tell he meant business,” she told a Telegram reporter after it was all over. “He even smiled at me – the rat.”

  While Boyd and the Jacksons were taking control of the front of the bank, Suchan came through the rear entrance and into the office of the manager, Albert Hockley. A customer, George Sauriol, had just concluded an appointment with Hockley and was about to leave when the door opened in his face. He was confronted by a man with a revolver. “Get back! Get back!” shouted Suchan. “Keep your hands down – not up, and get out there against the wall with the others.” Hockley later told police that the gunman was wearing “a reddish-brown top-coat and a light grey fedora.” The surprise was complete, and Hockley had no chance to press the alarm on his desk. “They were very efficient and seemed to know their business.”

  Bette Campeau, a twenty-seven-year-old teller, was behind the counter cashing a cheque for a customer when she heard shouting and looked up to see Willie Jackson waving his hands in the air. He was wearing a grey overcoat and a grey fedora with the brim turned down all the way around. “I didn’t pay any attention,” said Campeau later. “I thought he was a drunken man acting crazy or something. He jumped on the counter and I looked up and he pointed a gun at me and said, ‘Move back to the wall.’ Then he jumped down beside me. I was just bewildered.” As she stood near the wall, she glanced back and saw Boyd wearing a brown overcoat and a fedora turned down at the front. He and Willie were carrying white pillowcases, which they began filling with cash from the counter drawers. Campeau and assistant accountant John Maclean overheard the bandits conversing calmly as they worked.

  “How are we doing?” asked Willie.

  “Not bad,” said Boyd.

  “Do you think we’re getting enough?”

  “Yeah, quite a lot. Looks like we did all right.”

  There were fourteen employees in the bank and about a dozen customers, some of whom entered while the hold-up was in progress. Lennie Jackson, wearing a fawn-coloured overcoat, grey trousers, and a grey fedora, was there to greet them. “Lennie stood at the door with a machine-gun, looking like Pretty Boy Floyd,” laughs Boyd. “When anybody came in, he’d put the gun right against their chest and tell them to get over in the corner. He kept them under control while we were filling the pillowcases with cash.”

  W.J. Knox was the last customer to enter the bank during the robbery. “The first thing I saw was this man jumping the counter carrying a white pillowcase. I couldn’t understand what was happening. But then a man behind me growled out of the side of his mouth, ‘Turn around and stand still.’ He caught a glimpse of Lennie Jackson’s sub-machine-gun and did as he was told.

  Boyd knew this was the biggest haul of his bank-robbing career. The cash drawers were empty and his three minutes were up. “Let’s go!” he shouted as he and Willie vaulted the counter, their pillowcases bulging with cash.

  The gunmen sped away in their stolen Ford, leaving behind a stunned and confused bank staff. When the police arrived moments later, some witnesses said there were six robbers. Others said five, and still others said four. The police settled on five, and although Boyd’s brother Norman was not involved, one of the employees would later pick him out of a line-up as one of the robbers.

  The gang abandoned the stolen Ford on Pottery Road in the Don Valley, where they switched to another car. When the Telegram and the Star went to press that day, the bank was still trying to figure out its losses and could provide only an estimate – $30,000. The figure was used in banner headlines in both papers. The Telegram said there were six gunmen and the Star said there were five. Both papers named Edwin Alonzo Boyd as the probable leader of the gang. The Star again called him a “master bank robber” and said that the two men who had escaped with him from the Don Jail earlier in the month may have been accomplices. The Telegram, quoting a police source, said Boyd may have “imported boys from across the border” to assist in the robbery. The next morning the Royal Bank revealed the actual amount of their loss – $46,270.

  Two bank robberies within ten days, one of them the largest cash haul in the city’s history, set off a new round of finger-pointing among the politicians, the bankers, and the police. It was as if the city and surrounding towns had been under siege in the two years since Boyd began robbing banks. He certainly hadn’t been operating i
n a vacuum: even before Lennie Jackson and the Numbers Mob came along in early 1951, there had been many other robberies, perhaps inspired by the newspaper accounts of Boyd’s (then anonymous) heists.

  In a scene reminiscent of Bonnie and Clyde, thirty-two-year-old Joseph H. McAuliffe of North Bay, Ontario, had walked into the Langton branch of the Imperial Bank of Commerce on June 21, 1950. He was wearing a straw fedora and dark glasses and carrying a tommy gun. He herded the bank staff and customers into a vault and walked out with $22,575 in a paper shopping bag. Two Norfolk County tobacco farmers chased the getaway car along county back roads, until McAuliffe’s car ran into a ditch. He fired out the rear window, hitting his pursuers, and then casually walked to their car and fired several more shots at close range. Both men died, one with six bullets in the back, the other with two in the chest and one in the arm. After a four-day manhunt McAuliffe was captured in a shack near Staffordville, nine miles from the murder scene.

  Three weeks later the Acme Farmers Dairy at Walmer Road and MacPherson Avenue in Toronto was robbed of $21,000 by two armed men. Dairy driver Charles Tavignot jumped from his milk wagon and chased the robbers up a laneway, but gave up when they turned and fired, hitting him in the foot.

  On November 29, 1950, three gunmen masked with khaki handkerchiefs and wearing shabby clothes took $9,500 from the Canadian Bank of Commerce at Roncesvalles and Wright Avenues. One of the robbers vaulted the counter in Boyd style. The Telegram said the bandits “dressed like yokels but worked with city-slicker smoothness.”

  And so it went, robbery after robbery. The newspapers thrived on it and constantly tried to out-scoop each other. “Crime always sold newspapers,” says Jocko Thomas. “I knew that from my days selling newspapers at Bloor and Bathurst, when the guy who ran the corner told me, ‘Kid if you want to sell papers, cry out, “Read all about the big murder!” “And I did, even though usually there was no murder. I used to sell a lot of papers that way. And don’t forget the robberies were happening during the razzle-dazzle days of Toronto journalism when the Star and the Telegram were in an unbelievably fierce competition for circulation.”