by Brian Vallee
Toronto writer and historian Mike Filey believes it was more than just the newspaper war that led to the banner headlines and the voracious public interest. “Toronto in the late forties and early fifties was not the Toronto it is today,” he says. “It was really nothing more than a large town. And when Edwin Alonzo Boyd started wandering into banks and pointing guns, it was almost unheard of – and that’s what got him the notoriety.”
Filey adds that in those days life was much simpler. There was a hockey team and a baseball team, “but there weren’t all the other attractions we have today. Restaurants were scarce, and if you wanted a good meal you went to a hotel. Sunnyside was the most excitement you could get during the summer, and travel to Europe was virtually unheard of for most people. So the Boyd Gang was a big-time event in a rather staid city where there was nothing going on on Sundays, and I’m not sure that people didn’t look forward to reading about his exploits.”
So the headlines continued stirring not only readers but also protagonists, such as the bankers and the police, who were caught in the fallout. The bankers complained that the police seemed unable to cope with the wave of robberies. The police suggested that the banks hire off-duty policemen to ensure security.
The police were also under attack for not controlling what was perceived to be a general rise in “hoodlumism.” John Innes, Toronto’s controller, had said a year earlier that the answer was to have more policemen pounding the beat. “I know that the force is hampered by a shortage of men and I’m not suggesting there is anything fundamentally wrong with our force, but I do believe that the trend of modern police methods has swung too far away from the ‘neighbourhood cop’ system.” Innes wanted to see funding to hire more auxiliary officers so that the regular constables would be able to work on beat patrol instead of traffic and parking enforcement.
“Every available cop should be ordered back on the street,” said Innes. “You can’t protect a neighbourhood by sitting in swivel chairs, and over-emphasis on radio-equipped squad cars has left big areas of the city without beat patrolmen.”
In July 1950, in the heat of a debate over the amalgamation of Toronto with some of its surrounding municipalities, Toronto’s police chief, John Chisholm, urged the formation of a Metro police force under one command operating throughout the 240-square-mile area of what would soon be called Metropolitan Toronto. Lack of such a force had rendered useless some Toronto drives against crime, he said. At the amalgamation hearings at Queen’s Park, he said that efficiency in police communications was moving backwards rather than forwards. “Before 1941, the Toronto force had a one-way radio system and all the suburban police were hooked into it,” he said. “After 1941, Toronto installed a two-way system and so did the surrounding municipalities. Now there are thirteen police radio systems operating on thirteen different frequencies and no one force can break in on the other to flash crime news. And there is confusion, duplication and waste.”
Jack Webster, now with the Toronto Police Museum, remembers as a young officer the difficulties created by so many different jurisdictions. “We didn’t go into any of those other municipalities unless it was hot pursuit,” he says. “You couldn’t go in and make your own arrests, and that was awkward. You had little places like Weston with eleven officers, Mimico with five officers, Leaside with nine officers, and East York with thirty-two. Then you had the larger ones like North York, Etobicoke, and Scarborough with about two hundred each. It didn’t change until January 1, 1957, when all the forces amalgamated into one.”
The Boyd Gang had less onerous matters to worry about as they sat around a table at the Suchans’ home on Sorauren Avenue after the robbery. They were almost giddy as they divided the Royal Bank’s $46,270 into four piles.
21
Goin’ South
Steve Suchan’s parents, Joseph and Elizabeth Lesso, sat around the table with their son, the two Jacksons, and Boyd as the loot from the Royal Bank was being counted and divided. Boyd noticed that Joseph Lesso was watching the cash expectantly. From time to time he would say something in Slovak to his son, who responded curtly.
“The old man seemed to be a nice guy, and I thought he should get his share, seeing that he was hiding us out,” says Boyd. “I asked Suchan about it and he said he would look after it, but I found out later he told his father he wasn’t getting a thing. I don’t think Suchan thought too much of the old man. Suchan’s way of thinking was to hang on to the money and push everybody else out of the way.”
Ann Roberts was still in Montreal, and the night of the robbery Suchan and Lennie Jackson spent the night at Anna Camero’s house on Wright Avenue. Camero still knew Suchan as Val Lesso, and Jackson as his friend Freddie. This was the second time she had met Freddie. Two days later, the two men would leave for Montreal.
Boyd and Willie Jackson stayed on a few more days at the Lessos’ rooming house on Sorauren Avenue. With the guns from the Camp Borden break-in, and three or four bank guns Boyd had stashed in one of his rented garages, there was plenty of firepower to go around. Willie Jackson didn’t have much experience with guns and had become enamoured of the revolver Boyd had given him for the Leaside robbery. “He liked to have the gun right there where he could look at it,” says Boyd. “I gave him the gun I didn’t want – a big forty-five Smith & Wesson revolver – and he really liked it. The police had my Luger and I preferred something small – I think I was carrying a nine-millimetre Browning or something.”
Willie was like a kid at Christmas staring at the revolver and over and over again counting his share of the loot – $11,567. “He had never seen so much money,” says Boyd. “I told him it wasn’t important, that there was a lot more where that came from. But he slept with it under his pillow, with his gun right there.”
The next day, Joseph Lesso took Boyd aside and said he had a secure hiding place if he and Willie wanted to safely stash their money instead of carrying it around with them. Boyd thought it was a good idea – if the police were tipped off to their whereabouts at least the money would be safe. He asked Lesso to show him the hiding place. “It was down under the floor in one of the cupboards off the hall. You lifted a couple of boards, and there it was. It thought it was terrific because I didn’t want to have all that cash on me. Of course, I didn’t know that Suchan hadn’t given the old man anything.”
Boyd kept a wad of bills that would fit in his pockets – about $3,000 – and secreted the rest under the floor of the cupboard. He tried to convince Willie Jackson to do the same.
“The old man’s got a good spot,” Boyd told him. “My money’s in there. You should put yours in too. You don’t want to be carrying all that around with you all the time. If the police came tearing in after us, at least we’d still have our money.”
Willie was skeptical. “He just kind of looked sideways at me and shook his head,” laughs Boyd.
“My money is staying with me,” he declared.
Boyd reassured him, and Willie reluctantly agreed. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said.
The following day, Suchan stopped in for breakfast on his way to Montreal. His father wasn’t there, and his mother seemed agitated. They were talking heatedly in Slovak when Boyd came into the kitchen.
“Where’s your money?” asked Suchan.
“Your old man hid it under the cupboard floorboards in the hall.”
“You better go and see if it’s there.”
Boyd rushed to the hiding place and discovered that all the cash – about $17,000 – was missing. He stormed back to the kitchen. “It’s all gone!” he told Suchan.
“You shouldn’t have listened to him,” said Suchan, shaking his head. He explained that his father had mental problems, for which he had spent time in hospital. But he didn’t tell Boyd his father had been enraged at being left out of the spoils from the bank robbery. Boyd’s anger quickly passed. “When something like that happens, I just take it as part of life,” he says. He went into the bedroom to tell Willie about their
loss.
“The money’s gone,” he said.
“What!”
“The old man took off with our money.”
Willie grabbed his .45 and ran into the kitchen, where he pushed Elizabeth Lesso to the floor, sat on her chest, and held the gun to her face. “Where’s the money?” he demanded. “I’m going to jam this right down your throat if you don’t tell me! Where is it? And where’s your goddamned husband?”
“I … I don’t know,” said the terrified woman. “He went out through the front door early this morning.”
It took Boyd several minutes to get Willie calmed down. “Threatening her isn’t going to help anything,” he said. “She has no money. Her old man’s got it all. I told you, there’s more where that came from. If we don’t get it back, we’ll get some more.”
They wouldn’t get their money back. Winter was three weeks away in Toronto, and Joseph Lesso had boarded a plane for a Florida vacation that would last more than three months. On February 22, 1952, eleven weeks after his departure, he sent his wife a letter, in Slovak, from St. Petersburg. The letter read: “Well greetings from Florida, from your husband … Are you well? I am sending greetings also to my boy Valentine and to his friends. At the present time I am well. I feel better, but nobody can help my heart. I feel sad when I see families with children, playing on the sand. I am sending three pictures. Write me a few lines … I will be here for three more weeks, so be well and I will come to see you in a few weeks.”
One of the photographs Lesso sent back was of him with the movie star Roy Rogers. “His arm was around Roy Rogers’ shoulder,” says Boyd, “but it turned out to be just one of those cardboard cut-outs. It looked like the real thing, though.”
Boyd suggested to Suchan that since it was his father who had taken the money, what was left of the four shares should be divided among them. Suchan scoffed at the idea: “You shouldn’t have put your money in there.”
22
On the Lam
Steve Suchan, Lennie Jackson, and Lennie’s sister Mary Mitchell arrived in Montreal on December 3, 1951. Suchan had purchased a new Chrysler before the trip. He dropped Lennie off at Castle Tourist, the Mountain Street rooming house where Ann Roberts was waiting for him. Suchan and Mitchell went to the Berkley Hotel, where they registered as husband and wife under the names Victor J. Lenoff and Mary Lenoff. A few days later, using the same names, they moved into unit 330 at the Croydon Apartments, 3455 Côte de Neiges. Suchan signed a one-year lease at $145 per month.
The day after Lennie Jackson arrived back in Montreal, he set out to purchase a good used car, preferably another Oldsmobile. Assisting him was Montreal taxi driver Sidney Backman, a former travelling salesman whom Ann Roberts had met while on the road modelling. They visited several car dealers before Lennie settled on a navy-blue 1950 Oldsmobile. Jackson had the car he wanted, money in his pocket, and was with the woman he loved. For now his thoughts were of romance, not banks. He felt more secure living away from Toronto, but took steps to alter his appearance by growing a moustache and wearing black, horn-rimmed prescription glasses.
Boyd and Willie Jackson, no longer enamoured of their Lesso hideout, headed for Montreal a few days after the others, also taking rooms at the Berkley Hotel under false names. Even with the theft of three-quarters of his share of the robbery proceeds, Willie Jackson still had close to $3,000, and he was ready for a good time. He wasn’t interested in a fancy apartment or a new car. Restaurants and bars were another matter. It soon became obvious to Boyd that at the rate his three partners were spending money, it wouldn’t be long before they would have to rob another bank. They should have been keeping lower profiles and spending a lot less. “The only reason I was robbing banks was so I wouldn’t have to work for a living, but here they were throwing money around and showing off to their friends.”
A week before Christmas 1951, Willie Jackson was in a nightclub on St. Lawrence Boulevard in Montreal. He was in an expansive mood, turning on the charm and wit as he wooed a woman he had met a couple of nights before. As he downed drink after drink, what few inhibitions he had vanished like the smoke from his expensive cigar. The other patrons took notice as his voice rose and he flashed his roll of bills. He was breaking one of Boyd’s cardinal rules: Don’t draw attention to yourself. His suit jacket was unbuttoned so that whenever he leaned back he exposed the .45 revolver that was tucked into his belt. And on a visit to the washroom, to impress a stranger he purposely flashed the revolver and bragged about his “toughness.” The stranger was impressed enough to telephone the police, who swooped into the nightclub and arrested Willie, who didn’t resist. The revolver was fully loaded, and twenty bullets were found in his pockets.
He gave police the name he was using at the Berkley Hotel – William Gibson – but fingerprinting revealed his true identity. Willie survived a police line-up in connection with the recent armed holdup of a Montreal tobacconist, but was charged with carrying an offensive weapon. On December 20, a Toronto detective and two OPP officers arrived to ask Willie about Boyd and Lennie Jackson, and to return him to Toronto to face a charge of escaping from the Don Jail.
Three days after Christmas he was sentenced to two years for the escape. It would be tacked on to the seven years and twenty lashes, for robbery with violence, that he had been facing before the escape. He said he knew nothing of the whereabouts of Boyd or Lennie Jackson, and told the court he had nothing to do with the sawing of the bars at the Don Jail. “I saw the window open and I went out,” he said. “The others had gone.” Willie was sent directly to Kingston Penitentiary.
Boyd, Suchan, and Mary Mitchell left Montreal for Toronto the day after Willie’s arrest. Lennie Jackson and Ann Roberts had been talking about getting married, but she didn’t have her divorce papers, which were required under Quebec law. They decided to try their luck in the Maritimes. They made it as far as Edmundston, New Brunswick, staying in tourist cabins along the way, but returned to Montreal when they were told there would be at least a five-day waiting period. Roberts decided she would simply declare to Quebec authorities that she had never been married before. “I registered myself as a spinster, and in this way we obtained a marriage licence,” she would tell police later. On the licence application, Lennie listed his name as George Jackson Jr., and his occupation as hairdresser, and used the street and number of his mother’s house in Niagara Falls as his address.
Ann and Lennie spent Christmas together in Montreal and were married on January 2, 1952, at St. James the Apostle Anglican Church. Ann Roberts was now Ann Jackson. A week later they checked out of their room at Castle Tourist and drove west on a five-week honeymoon that took them as far as Swift Current, Alberta. “This journey was made in the Oldsmobile,” said Ann. “All during the tour Leonard carried the long-barrel revolver.”
Most of Jackson’s cash was gone by the time they returned to Montreal in early February. They took a room at 1519 Bishop Street while they looked for an apartment where they could do their own cooking. A week later they moved into a $12-a-week basement apartment in a small lowrise building at 1930 Lincoln Avenue just over a block from Suchan’s apartment. It was a single-room apartment with kitchen facilities available off the hall. Soon after, Ann discovered that she was pregnant. Like Suchan, Lennie was going to be a father.
A few days before Christmas, Suchan, Mary Mitchell, and Ed Boyd had checked into the Sunnyside Motor Hotel on Lakeshore Boulevard in Toronto. Mitchell, who knew the proprietors, booked and paid for adjoining rooms No. 50 and No. 48. Suchan used his Montreal alias, Victor J. Lenoff, and Boyd checked in under the name Thompson, his wife’s maiden name. He would stay at the Sunnyside three or four times over the next two months. On one occasion Boyd called a taxi to pick him up at the motel and was shocked when the driver who answered the call turned out to be his half-brother, Harold. “He took one look at me and nearly shit his pants,” says Boyd, laughing at the memory. “He was scared to death.”
“I don’t want to take you any
where,” said Harold.
“Look, all you have to do is drive me up to where the streetcars are,” said Boyd. Harold reluctantly agreed and drove him to Roncesvalles and Queen. “He took every side street he could find, and when I got out he took off like a bat out of hell.”
Anna Camero’s pregnancy was now well into the final month, and Steve Suchan managed to slip away from Mary Mitchell long enough to have dinner with her on Christmas Eve at her Wright Avenue home. Midway through the evening, Suchan told her he had to leave for a while but would return later. Instead, he returned to the motel to spend the rest of the night with Mary. Camero would not see him again until 1:30 a.m. on January 1, when he arrived on her doorstep to wish her a Happy New Year. “I was sick at this time, due to my pregnancy, and I told him not to come back,” she said later. Camero gave birth to a son at Mount Sinai Hospital on Saturday, January 12. Suchan arrived at the hospital after the birth and stayed for two hours. He visited every day and drove Camero and their baby home from the hospital on January 16. Four days later, Suchan and Mary Mitchell were back in their Montreal apartment.
On Christmas day, Dorreen and the three children joined Boyd at the Sunnyside Motor Hotel. There was no Christmas tree, but they exchanged gifts and had a turkey dinner. It had been almost two months since his escape from the Don, and Boyd felt it was safe enough to chance a visit to the house in Pickering. He was there for New Year’s Eve, and he and Dorreen decided she should probably give up the house and take an apartment while he worked out a plan for the future. Soon after, the children went to stay temporarily at the home of Bill Underwood, Boyd’s friend who had operated the judo school. Boyd’s eldest son Anthony, then eleven, was later sent north of Toronto to a farm owned by a minister who was a friend of Boyd’s father. And the eight-year-old twins were enrolled in a boarding school. “It was kind of a ticklish time,” says Boyd. “I wasn’t used to being on the run, and I was thinking too much about hiding out instead of using my brain to work out a plan. Looking back now, I should have left some money with Dorreen and taken a train out to Western Canada. I could have made a new life and sent for her and the children later, or just hid out on my own.” Dorreen stayed for a while with their friends Frank and Flo Lamb, but eventually found a room in a house near Avenue Road and Bloor Street, where Ed sometimes stayed.