by Brian Vallee
Ed and Dorreen Boyd were at the movies on Thursday when Eddie Tong and Roy Perry were being ambushed. They were walking down a back alley from their Spadina Road rooming house when they saw their friend Florence Lamb hanging out washing behind her house. Dorreen says Flo and Frank Lamb “never gave a thought about Ed being a bank robber.”
“Do you want to go to the show?” she hollered to Florence.
“Yeah, just a minute, I’ll be right there.”
They went to see Another Man’s Poison, a 1951 British film starring Bette Davis, who played a man-hungry novelist opposite her real-life husband, Gary Merrill. When they came out of the movie they saw the headlines on a nearby newsstand.
Boyd fished in his pocket and purchased both papers. The story said two gunmen were being sought, but gave no names. Boyd’s instincts told him it was Suchan and Jackson. They had told him the day before that they “had taken some weapons and ammunition out to a gravel pit, halfway to Niagara Falls, and they were practising shooting, which I didn’t think was a good thing to be doing. They even practised with their machine guns.”
Dorreen could see that Boyd was upset. He knew it would mean a lot more heat, just when it was becoming safer to move around in public. “What are we going to do?” asked Dorreen.
“We’re not going to do anything but lay low,” said Boyd.
The next day he was furious when he saw his picture on the front pages, just where he didn’t want to be. Suchan and Jackson had been identified as the gunmen who shot Tong and Perry, and police were telling reporters they were probably on their way to meet Boyd to rob a bank when Tong pulled them over. “Police think Edwin Alonzo Boyd, 37, the ‘master bank robber’ … was in an automobile on a side street and aided Jackson and Suchan to escape after they abandoned their car,” said the Star.
The Telegram went with the same theme, saying police “hope also to catch in their dragnet Edwin Alonzo Boyd, wanted for armed bank holdups and jailbreaking. Police say Suchan and Jackson were en route to hold up a bank, where they would rendezvous with Boyd … Then Boyd, police believe, met the gunmen in a side street and drove them away in a second car.”
Boyd was angry at Suchan and Jackson for not taking more precautions against being spotted by police. “After a robbery they acted like they were royalty. They figured they were beyond any possibility of being caught. They knew the police pretty well, and the police are victims of routine. Until then, the police really hadn’t done too much. They weren’t all like Tong or Payne. Tong was a guy that if he decided he wanted to get someone, he would latch right on to them until he finally caught them. If you were robbing banks, you couldn’t stay in the same city as Tong. So he went after Lennie Jackson, but he wasn’t too interested in Suchan, and Suchan was the guy who shot him.”
Boyd had no sympathy for Suchan, but he felt badly for Jackson. “Suchan was a real pain. He was so filled with his own importance. He figured when he was tied in with Len, he was in the upper class – a big-time mobster. Len was pretty good. He seemed to have his life figured out. But he got tied in with Suchan.” Boyd believes that Suchan’s cockiness and womanizing led to Lennie’s downfall.
25
Ambush
While Toronto police were launching “the most intensive manhunt in the city’s history,” Steve Suchan and Lennie Jackson left the Lessos’ rooming house on Sorauren Avenue and took their waiting taxi to Queen and Roncesvalles, where they boarded a westbound streetcar. They got off at Long Branch, the end of the line, and from there took a bus along the Lakeshore Highway to Port Credit on the western outskirts of Toronto. About 2:30 Thursday afternoon they went to the office of Port Credit Taxi on Stavebank Road.
“How much for a cab to Oakville?” asked Suchan.
Driver John Rundle conferred with his partner, Ernest Manera.
“Three dollars,” said Rundle.
“That sounds fair,” said Suchan.
Manera would remember the man as “pimply and kind of sweating in the face.” And he noticed that he was carrying a briefcase and was wearing a light brown coat and a fedora. The next day, when Manera looked at the front page of The Globe and Mail, he would learn that the man’s name was Steve Suchan. Rundle drove the two men to the railway station in Oakville, pulling up just as the eastbound train, for Toronto and beyond, left the platform.
Taxi driver William Bowles was on Spruce Street heading towards the Oakville station when two men flagged him down and asked him to take them to Bronte, halfway between Oakville and Burlington. When they reached Bronte, Bowles asked where they wanted to be dropped off.
“Take us to the hotel,” said one of them.
“There is no hotel in Bronte,” said Bowles.
“Well, take us to the bus station.”
They told Bowles they had missed their train connection, but later changed their story, saying they had had car trouble. He dropped them at a roadside lunch counter and grocery store that doubled as a bus station. Beside it was a small taxi stand. Taxi driver Sidney Plummer was having a coffee at the lunch counter when Suchan tapped on the window and motioned to the cab in front. Plummer came out to the street.
“What’s the fare to Burlington?” asked Suchan.
“Two dollars,” replied Plummer. One of the men paid him, and they got in the cab. In Burlington, Plummer dropped them at the bus station on the north side of Highway 2 opposite the Aylmer Canning Factory.
About 3:45 that afternoon, George Seaton, owner of DeLuxe Taxi Company, was sitting in his office on Brant Street in Burlington when one of his drivers pulled up with two male passengers who had flagged him down on the street. The driver told his boss the men wanted to go to the Royal Connaught Hotel in Hamilton. Seaton had a rule that he personally checked all long-distance fares to make certain they were capable of paying. He studied the men. Both were wearing topcoats and fedoras and one of them was carrying a briefcase. He thought they might be salesmen and approved the run to Hamilton.
It was still daylight when they were dropped off in Hamilton. “We thought the best thing we could do was to get off the street,” Suchan would say later. “It was broad daylight and we were both jittery and panicky. There was a show across the street from the Royal Connaught and we went in there until nightfall.”
After the movie they went to the hotel, where Lennie Jackson spent sixty cents to send a telegram to his wife in Montreal: DARLING, WILL BE IN LATER THAN EXPECTED. LOVE, FRED. The telegram was sent at 8:53 p.m. A short time later, Jackson hot-wired a car and the two men drove to Montreal, arriving on Friday morning.
Ann Jackson hadn’t seen her husband in more than two days; that was the longest they had been apart in their two-month marriage. She had received his telegram Friday morning, but she was still worried about him. News of the shooting of the Toronto policemen had been on the radio the day before, and she wondered if Lennie might be involved.
Not knowing when her husband would be returning, Ann Jackson left her basement apartment on Lincoln Avenue on Friday around 11:30 a.m. She planned to spend the day window-shopping, and pick up a few groceries on her way home. While she was out, she bought a copy of the Toronto Star and read that her husband and Steve Suchan were wanted for shooting Tong and Perry. “I did not recognize the name of Suchan,” she said in a statement to police later. “I had never heard of this name before.” But she saw the address – 190 Wright Avenue – and read that the car used in the shooting belonged to Anna Camero. That was a name she knew, and she realized then that Steve Suchan was probably Val Lesso. She did not bring the newspaper back to the apartment.
Lennie arrived at the apartment shortly after noon. He immediately shaved off his moustache and threw his horn-rimmed glasses into the trash. When Ann returned in late afternoon, Lennie didn’t say where he had been or who he had been with, and she didn’t ask. He seemed pleased when she told him he looked handsome without his moustache. She didn’t mention the newspaper or Steve Suchan.
“I heard about the shooting of Detec
tive Tong,” she said. “Do you know if he died?”
“He’s still alive,” said Lennie.
“That’s good, because it would be murder if he died.”
Lennie was silent. It was obvious he didn’t want to talk about it. But at 6 p.m. they heard the radio newscast name Lennie Jackson and Steve Suchan as the shooters of Perry and Tong, whose condition remained critical.
“Well, he should never have approached them,” said Lennie sullenly. Ann thought them was a reference to the men in the car Tong had stopped, but “it was not specifically an admission from my husband that he was one of the men.”
Seven minutes before Lennie and Ann Jackson tuned in to the 6 p.m. news broadcast, Toronto police were issuing a description of Suchan’s car. Dolph Payne’s credo – a car was always involved – was validated once again. Camero’s neighbours on Wright Avenue had reported seeing a car with Quebec plates in front of the house from time to time. And when the name Victor J. Lenhoff was passed on to Montreal Police, they reported back that a 1951 dark-coloured Chrysler sedan, with the Quebec licence plate 324–385, was registered under that name. Police in Ontario and Quebec were on the lookout for the car. However, other information, gleaned from the receipt for the $200 that Anna Camero’s mother had wired to Suchan, would prove even more important – the address of Suchan’s Montreal apartment on Côte des Neiges.
When Suchan arrived back in the apartment on Friday afternoon, he decided to sell his Chrysler for sorely needed cash. He changed overcoats and armed himself with weapons and ammunition from his briefcase. In a holster on the left side of his belt he was carrying the revolver he had used to shoot Tong and Perry – the .455 Smith & Wesson for which he had traded his violin. A smaller right-side holster held a .30 calibre automatic Mauser pistol with a ten-round clip. Under his belt, in front, he stuffed a seven-shot .45 Colt automatic,
and in various pockets he secreted four extra clips – two for the Mauser and two for the Colt – and a dozen or so loose rounds for the .455. As heavily armed as he was, the weapons on his person were small change compared to the stash in the suitcase in the trunk of his Chrysler.
Suchan tried three or four car dealers before settling on one, who wrote him a cheque for $1,800 for the Chrysler. He removed a large, heavy suitcase from the trunk, and the dealer agreed to hold it for him until he returned to pick it up.
The Croydon Apartments at 3455 Côte des Neiges was by 1950s standards a luxury building. A doorman was always on duty, and there was a lobby with an ivy-covered fountain, much greenery, and a lot of marble. The building also boasted an upscale street-level restaurant where Suchan ate most of his meals when he was in town. He tipped well, was always quiet and polite, and had a hearty appetite. The restaurant’s cashier, described in the Telegram as “shapely Cecile,” said she was surprised to learn Suchan was just twenty-four. “He looked older, and he’s much better looking than the picture of him in the paper.”
Suchan’s three-room apartment, No. 330, was on the third floor of the eight-storey building. Inspector Alex McCathie of the Toronto police had notified the Montreal police of the address, and around 6 p.m., while Suchan was out selling his car, a team of seven detectives from the Montreal Police Department’s Special Squad arrived at his building. Entering through the garage, they took the stairs to the third floor and, using a key provided by the manager’s office, entered Suchan’s apartment with guns drawn. The suspect wasn’t there, but when they searched the rooms, they found Suchan’s tan briefcase in a front closet. In it were six spent casings from the bullets he had fired at Tong and Perry, an automatic pistol, two holsters, and an array of ammunition.
Detective Captain Langpré was in charge of the operation, and when he discovered Suchan wasn’t there, he assigned four of his men to conceal themselves in the apartment in case Suchan returned. Langpré and the other two detectives would search for Suchan’s Chrysler. As they were leaving, Langpré hesitated. “Was the bathroom light on?” he asked. The officers agreed the bedroom and living room lights were on when they arrived, but they couldn’t remember about the bathroom. They decided to turn the light off, and arranged a signal – five slow knocks – that Langpré and the others would use if they should return to the apartment.
Two of the detectives, George Poirier and Maurice Bilodeau, stayed out of sight in the bedroom, while Albert Dauphin and George Coté hid behind a half-closed door in the darkened kitchen off the living room. It was decided that if Suchan entered the apartment, Dauphin would confront him first.
Suchan, unaware that the receipt for the $200 from Anna Camero had brought the police to his Montreal doorstep, sauntered into the restaurant below his apartment. He had dumped his car and had the $1,800 cheque in his wallet. That would keep him going for a while. But now he was hungry. He was on a first-name basis with his waiter, Maurice. Suchan studied the menu, but couldn’t decide.
“What would you like to eat?” asked Maurice.
“I’m not sure,” said Suchan. “Everything looks good.”
“May I recommend the lobster,” said Maurice. “It’s very good tonight.”
“Yes, today is Friday. I’ll have the lobster.”
Reporter George Brimmell would write in the Telegram the next day: “Steve Suchan had a big lobster dinner – as well as two loaded 45’s – under his belt when he walked into a police ambush in his posh apartment last night.”
Suchan left the restaurant shortly after 9:30 p.m. and took the elevator to his apartment. Dauphin and the other detectives had been waiting silently for more than three and a half hours when they heard a noise at the door. It wasn’t the five-knock signal from Captain Langpré – it was a key being turned in the lock. Dauphin held his breath and pulled his .38 service revolver from its holster. He heard the door close and peered into the lighted hallway. He had memorized the face in the photo from the Toronto police. A man came into the light from the entranceway. The size was right. Then he saw the face. Suchan.
Suchan turned away from the kitchen, distracted by a suitcase sitting in the hall. He thought he had left it in the closet. “I thought there might be someone in the apartment,” Suchan said later. “That was not unusual because the janitor and any of the managers had access to the apartment. They could come in any time they wished.”
Suchan was in the middle of the living room when he thought he heard a noise behind him. His right hand reached for the .455 Smith & Wesson in his left holster as he wheeled to face Dauphin, who had stepped out of the kitchen. Suchan’s heavy revolver was at a forty-five degree angle, almost level with his chin, from the momentum of his draw. “His gun was too high to shoot,” said Dauphin. “Mine was at the hip. He appeared to hesitate with the revolver still pointed upwards. I shot first – in the region of the heart about the middle of the chest.”
He fired a second shot that struck Suchan in the stomach. That shot turned Suchan sideways. “He was still holding his revolver in his hand,” said Dauphin, “so I shot his arm to disarm him, and then he crumbled to the floor.”
Dauphin’s first shot had hit an inch below Suchan’s heart. The second had caught his lower abdomen, exiting his hip at the back, and the third had smashed his left hand. Suchan was still holding his revolver when he fell to the floor on his right side. He tried to raise it to fire, but he was too weak and it fell heavily to the floor. In court he would deny ever drawing his gun.
“Okay George!” shouted Dauphin as he kicked the revolver out of Suchan’s reach. His partner, George Poirier, came out of the bedroom and picked up the revolver, handing it to Dauphin. Poirier removed the Mauser from Suchan’s right-side holster and the .45 Colt from the his waistband. Suchan was on his side, and Detective Coté “moved over to him as he lay there and turned him on his back.” One of the detectives called for an ambulance. Suchan was conscious. “You guys are poor shots,” he sneered. “Why don’t you finish me? What are you waiting for? No one will know the difference.”
“We want to keep you alive for
the Toronto police,” said Dauphin. “You won’t be shooting any more cops.”
Suchan was silent for a moment. “How did you find us?” he asked. No one replied.
The ambulance was instructed to pull up to the rear entrance to the building without sirens, so as not to tip off Boyd or Jackson if they happened to be in the vicinity. The police continued to stake out the apartment until early the next morning. Suchan tried to walk to the ambulance but had to be placed on a stretcher before he reached the elevator. He was taken to Queen Elizabeth Hospital under armed guard, his ankle manacled to the bed. “We’ve got to watch this man carefully,” said one of the police guards. “He’s husky and in good condition, and if he ever got hold of our guns, he’d try to shoot his way out of here.”
Suchan was operated on early Saturday morning. He told the surgeon, Dr. John Hayward, that he wished the police had killed him. “I’d be better off dead,” he said. “That sergeant is a lousy shot. If I had been able to get my guns out, I wouldn’t have missed like he did.” Strange bravado, thought Hayward, coming from a man who was about to have a bullet removed from an inch below his heart.
Dr. Hayward said that Suchan wasn’t in any danger, that he’d been taken off oxygen and was in excellent physical shape. When Suchan went in for X-rays, the doctors were surprised to discover another bullet. It was in the lower section of his right chest, and it had been there for some time. The wound caused by the bullet had been healed for several months. Suchan offered no explanation. The Toronto police would later conclude that Suchan had been shot while fleeing from the Bank of Commerce robbery in Bradford the previous July. OPP Constable Reg Wilson had fired several times at the getaway vehicle. At the time, he thought he might have hit one of the robbers.