by Brian Vallee
The hunt for circulation was as intense as the hunt for the escaped prisoners, and by Tuesday the headlines were even larger. The big news of the day was the announcement by Premier Leslie Frost that a royal commission, headed by Judge Ian Macdonell, would convene immediately to look into the escape, and that Brand, Noble, and six guards had been suspended. It was also announced that the province, the City of Toronto, and the Canadian Bankers’ Association were offering rewards totalling $26,000 for the capture of the Boyd Gang.
The Telegram ran a huge banner line above the nameplate and a second headline below.
Below the second headline was a five-column photograph of Dorreen Boyd holding a copy of the Telegram with her husband prominently displayed. The photo was there to promote an exclusive in-depth interview with Dorreen by reporter Dorothy Howarth. The story filled most of page 3. Dorreen said she would always remain loyal to her husband. “If it had been murder or rape I might feel differently, but Ed never hurt anybody, only the banks and they’re heavily insured. They don’t lose anything.”
Of the reward offer, she told Howarth: “I wouldn’t give him up for a million. You know what it’s like when you love a man.” Dorreen reminisced about her childhood in England and talked about how she had met Ed and how they were both dispatch riders during the war. During the interview she pulled a photo of her husband from her wallet. “He looks like Errol Flynn, doesn’t he?” Yes, Howarth told her readers, “Edwin Boyd certainly does look like the famous movie actor – a handsome, dashing young fellow and a devil-may-care gleam in his clear eyes that look straight out of the picture at you.”
Dorreen confided to Howarth that Boyd had told her after his first escape that there was no sense in stealing two or three hundred dollars at a time, “you might as well make it big.” She said the only gambling Ed did was with his own life.
“He even took me to a show in Toronto one night. We passed right by a policeman phoning his girl in the lobby. But Ed never batted an eyelash, just said to the cashier ‘two tickets please’ and walked right into the show. You can’t say he hasn’t got guts, maybe he doesn’t use them the right way, but he certainly has them.”
Dorreen warmly described the previous Christmas she and Ed and the children had spent together at the Sunnyside Motor Hotel. “The only thing we didn’t manage was a Christmas tree. In the evening Ed and I went to the Famous Door and had supper there. It was nice but we both had the feeling we might be recognized at any minute and that didn’t make us feel very comfortable.” She also recounted New Year’s Eve when Ed bought champagne. “It wasn’t the best New Year’s we ever spent, but we both had high hopes for the future.”
A few days after New Year’s, Ed drove Dorreen and the children to Niagara Falls for the weekend. “We stayed in a motel near the Rainbow Bridge. For those few short days at Niagara it seemed as though we were a normal family again. It didn’t last long. Early in March Eddie Tong was shot.”
They went into hiding after the shooting, but living in one room (on Spadina Road) was difficult for both of them, and that was when they decided to move to the Heath Street apartment. Dorreen confirmed that her husband had no contact with Suchan or Lennie Jackson from the time of the shooting until they were re-united in the Don Jail.
Dorreen said it was her fault her husband was captured. “Norman said I was to go to his place because … the car was in my name.… Ed said … it was a police trap and to be careful. I said I didn’t think it was a trap.”
The night of the capture Dorreen suggested to Ed that he take a leisurely bath. “He said that he was too tired and there would be plenty of time in the morning. He never did get that bath. Perhaps he will be able to have one now that he’s out again.”
Dorreen knew it was wrong, but was glad her husband was free again. “The only regret I have is the effect this is having on the children. The other kids tease them so much. After all, it’s not their fault, is it?”
If the Boyd Gang had been looking for maximum publicity, they couldn’t have chosen a better day to escape: that very evening, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation began regular television service in Toronto on CBLT Channel 9. The three-hour package began at 7:15 p.m. and included an address by Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent. But fugitives Edwin Alonzo Boyd, Steve Suchan, and Leonard and Willie Jackson upstaged the opening program: they were the first to appear on air as CBLT televised police photographs of them at regular intervals all afternoon and early evening. And on the first CBC News Magazine program at 7:30 that evening, Lorne Greene – referred to affectionately by his colleagues as “the voice of doom” – led off with an item about the escape: “This is Lorne Greene. Our first story – the story of a manhunt.” Over clips of the Don Jail, a police dispatcher, motorcycle policemen streaming out of police headquarters, and policemen arming themselves with rifles, he said that the fugitives were desperate and that, as two thousand policemen went after them, “the unofficial word was ‘shoot to kill.’ ”
On the Sunday following the escape, Mayor Lamport used the new medium to ask for the public’s help in capturing the Boyd Gang: “I plead with all citizens for their co-operation. Your efforts may be the means for saving a lot of lives by bringing to trial these four desperadoes who escaped from the Don Jail.”
The story of the escape made the front pages of most newspapers in the country. But it was Torontonians who expressed the most anger and disgust. It was their policemen who had been shot down in the streets. It was their banks that were being routinely robbed. And it was their jail that had twice allowed the culprits responsible to escape. Editorial writers and columnists reflected the public anger and frustration. Globe and Mail columnist Frank Tumpane wrote two days after the escape: “How many innocent lives will be lost this time through the bungling incompetence and stupidity that permits desperate men to treat the Don Jail as if it were a sardine can?” He joined the chorus of those calling for a new jail and a shake-up in the Don’s administration: “The time has come for a change. The vermin are crawling over the walls and they are the kind of vermin whose bite is poisonous.”
Only the Peterborough Examiner showed any sympathy for Governor Brand and the guards: “When the birds have flown, public condemnation and loss of employment is their reward. But when the birds are all safely in their cages, who ever thinks to give the jailer a kindly word? Every job has its peculiar difficulties, but that of being a jailer seems to us to be especially unfortunate.”
In From Police Headquarters, Jocko Thomas writes that there was obvious and considerable public interest in the Boyd Gang and the upcoming Tong murder trial, “but we turned the escape into an even greater sensation than it was.” The reason, he says, was the ongoing circulation war between the Star and the Telegram. “For the first few days after the breakout, the two papers seemed to be locked in a contest to see which could print the biggest headline.… By the end of the week however, the public was sick of it and Hindmarsh [the Star’s president] ordered us to lay off unless we had something real to report.”27
Hindmarsh may have been feeling complacent, because just a month before the Boyd Gang’s escape from the Don, his nemesis and greatest antagonist, George McCullagh, who had vowed to
“knock that shitrag [the Star] right off its pedestal,” died of a heart attack. But the man McCullagh had picked to run the Telegram, John Bassett, was just as determined as McCullagh to win the circulation war against the Star. Hindmarsh would not be complacent for long.
30
Manhunt
For the second time in ten months, Edwin Alonzo Boyd and Leonard and Willie Jackson were on the move up the Don Valley. But this flight to freedom would be markedly different: this time there was a fourth man – Steve Suchan. And instead of going over the wall at 5 p.m., they had gone over at 5 a.m. And instead of a $500 reward for their capture, it was $26,000. And instead of a couple of dozen policemen looking for them, there were more than two thousand, fully armed and ready to shoot. And this time Leonard Jackson
was wearing a tin cup over his stump instead of his prosthesis.
In the first escape, it was three hours before the guards discovered they were gone; this time it was two hours. Since the first escape was at night, they were able to leave the valley and melt into the city after covering no more than half a mile in the bush. This time, the sun broke the horizon just about the time the escape was discovered, and because police were flooding the city and closely watching the gang’s families and associates, they would have to stay in the bush for miles as they worked their way north. The first escape had been on an unseasonably cold, dull day, with light snow. This time the weather was in their favour: the temperature was 50°F. when they came off the wall and would reach 70°F by early afternoon.
But the warm weather was not fortuitous for Lennie Jackson. As soon as the fugitives skirted Riverdale Hospital and headed into the bush, Lennie knew he was in trouble. It was as if someone had sliced open a strong onion and held it under his nose. He had for most of his life suffered from hay fever and asthma, a condition so serious it had led to his hospitalization for two months in England during the war. Lennie dreaded late summer and early fall – the peak of the ragweed season. Ragweed pollen was the most prevalent cause of hay fever and related allergies, and now, as he moved into the bush near the Don River, the pollen-filled air instantly inflamed the mucous membranes in his eyes and nose. He was miserable as his nose dripped incessantly and tears flowed from his swollen, itchy eyes. His breathing was laboured, and he knew there would be no respite as long as he was in the bush.
As Boyd, Suchan, and the Jacksons worked their way north, staying out of sight but following the railway tracks, there was chaos around the Don Jail. With so many police vehicles and fire trucks converging from 7 a.m. onwards, traffic was badly snarled along Broadview and Gerrard near the jail. And on north Yonge Street traffic was also at a standstill as all northbound vehicles were halted and searched at a police roadblock.
As soon as the police realized the fugitives were not in the Don Jail, they launched an intensive manhunt throughout the city and beyond. Every OPP cruiser was radioed a description of the four men. The same information was sent to RCMP offices across the country, and to the Montreal and Quebec Provincial Police. Photographs and fingerprints of the gang followed by air mail.
By 9:20 a.m. Monday, the FBI and U.S. and Canadian immigration offices had been notified of the escape and sent descriptions of the men. By 10 a.m. police photos and descriptions were in the hands of Norman DePoe, editor of News Round-Up; he would broadcast them on CBC Television at half-hour intervals. Two Toronto detectives and two OPP inspectors were staking out Malton Airport.28 Three more officers were stationed at the Island Airport, and others were keeping watch on the cable ferry running between the Toronto waterfront and the airport. Police marine units patrolled the waterfront.
There was plenty of wild speculation in the media, some of it attributed to police sources. One story suggested that a $28,000 bank robbery at Roncesvalles and Howard Park Avenue, three days before the escape, had been committed by associates of the gang to help them get out of Toronto.
On Monday morning, as the four fugitives stayed low and moved north through the bush and ravines of the Don Valley, the Fall Assizes for York County got under way, although without the star players. Crown attorney William O. Gibson presented indictments to the grand jury against Suchan, Leonard Jackson, and Boyd. The jury was considering indictments against Boyd for armed robbery and related charges, and against Jackson and Suchan for murder. Willie Jackson had been indicted earlier and was to be tried with Boyd. Gibson expressed hope that the gang would be caught in time to go to trial as scheduled on September 15. The case against Lennie Jackson’s associate, Frank Watson, was among a total of twenty brought before the grand jury at the assizes. Watson was charged with bribing jail guard James Morrison and possession of counterfeit money.
The extensive publicity and the prospect of a reward for the capture of the Boyd Gang – dead or alive – turned the trickle of tips into a deluge. The reports came to police from all over the country, and nearly all were checked out.
Whitby poultry farmer Roy Larsen didn’t wait for the police. On Monday night he was sitting at home by the fire listening to radio reports of the Boyd Gang’s escape when he heard loud squawking from his chicken run. He grabbed his .22 and went out to his yard, where he saw a trespasser limping rapidly in the direction of the fence. He fired into the ground three times, but the man ran faster. Larsen thought it must be Lennie Jackson. His fourth shot struck the man in the buttocks. “The blast caught the intruder in the seat of the pants,” reported The Globe and Mail the next day. “The intruder jumped, howled, clutched at the tender spot and fell writhing to the ground. Municipal police responded and took the culprit away.” The “culprit” was a mental patient who had escaped from a nearby hospital.
Two days after the Boyd Gang’s escape, a constable on all-night surveillance at the home of Suchan’s parents at 27 Sorauren Avenue brought seven police cruisers to the scene around 7 a.m. when he shouted into his radio, “I just saw a man enter Suchan’s house.”
Uniformed police ringed the house with guns drawn as Inspector Bert Mace and several detectives went to the door, where a bewildered factory worker explained that he was a roomer at the house and had just returned from the night shift. And that night, acting on tips from the public, police raided hotels on Yonge Street, Queen Street East, and Jarvis Street, with no results. “You’ve got to follow up each of those tips, no matter how crazy they may seem,” Inspector Mace told a reporter. He suggested that the gang was probably trying to reach Vancouver, where they could catch a ship for the Orient or Australia.
Although detectives close to the case believed the Boyd Gang was still in Toronto, they were convinced the four would eventually split up and leave town. But they also feared the gang would need cash to finance their getaway. For that reason, every bank in Greater Toronto was placed under police watch and a flying squad was placed on standby in case a robbery alarm came in from any part of the city.
By Wednesday, three days after the escape, police had staged raids in Montreal, Winnipeg, Fort William, Windsor, Welland, Stratford, and North Bay. In the Cochrane area of Northern Ontario where Suchan grew up, police set up roadblocks and checked every car entering and leaving the district. Police were also watching Boyd’s relatives in Gravenhurst. As a result of tips from the public, roadblocks also went up in Quebec and British Columbia, where many suspects were detained for questioning. In Havelock, northeast of Peterborough, four male tourists where surrounded by thirty police officers at a motel after a tip that they were the Boyd Gang. “It’s too bad to shock them like that, but we can’t take any chances,” said one of the officers on the raid.
Also on Wednesday, the OPP issued its official Wanted poster advertising the $26,000 reward. All four fugitives were shown and described. Boyd was back on top of Canada’s most wanted list – a position he had relinquished after his capture in March.
On Thursday, September 11, Dorreen Boyd was back in the newspapers in a big way when she appealed to her husband to surrender:
My Dearest Eddie,
Am I asking too much of you under the circumstances to give yourself up? If to anyone, to me, or to the men both you and I know would give you a fair deal. I have thought this over so much in the past three days, and knowing me as your devoted wife, I’ll wait for you no matter what the outcome may be. God willing we will have the privilege of growing old together. This is all I ask of you, and remember always I love you.
The letter ran in all three Toronto dailies, along with Dorreen’s picture. The next day Dorreen, her children in tow, showed up at Toronto radio station CKEY and sent a similar appeal over the airwaves. This time her plea was underlined with another from the children: “We miss you daddy, please come home.” The station was flooded with callers, half of them expressing outrage that she was exploiting her children, the other half expressing sympa
thy for her plight.
In the week following the escape, police in Toronto and its suburbs conducted raid after raid on former hang-outs and haunts of the gang members and their associates. By Friday the police were still on high alert, but they had quietly returned to normal hours. At the time of the escape, all time off had been cancelled or delayed as all officers, including those on traffic and desk duties, had been called out.
By week’s end the police were becoming increasingly frustrated.
There had been hundreds of leads and dozens of raids, but not a whiff of the gang’s whereabouts. “Everybody thinks they’ve seem them,” complained Sergeant of Detectives Bill Matthews, “but nobody we’ve talked to really has seen them.”
For Boyd the escape was an anniversary of sorts: he had robbed his first bank three years earlier almost to the day. Even the weather was the same. Whisky had messed up his plans on that day, and only luck had saved him from being shot or captured. Now he was wondering if that luck would hold.
The run for freedom up the Don Valley wasn’t exactly aimless. The Boyd Gang had a destination – a hideout where they could lie low for a few days to consider their next move. Boyd says that Willie had directions to an abandoned farm in North York and had arranged for a cache of food and supplies to be left there. The Don Valley of the early 1950s was largely undeveloped. There was no Ontario Science Centre; no Inn on the Park; no Donalda Golf and Country Club; no Flemingdon Park Golf Club; no North York General Hospital; and, most significantly, no expressway running through the heart of the valley. It was mostly dense bushland broken only by the Don River and the ribbon of railway tracks.
Canadian National Railways constable Francis John Goodenough was patrolling in Leaside about 9 p.m. Monday when he spotted a man in the shoulder-high grass in the northeast corner of the CNR yards near a patch of small gardens maintained by some of the men who worked in the railway shops. The shop men had asked the officer to check their plots that night because somebody had been stealing their vegetables. Goodenough’s CNR flashlight was broken, and he was using one that he kept in his car. It didn’t throw much light, and he could barely see the figure in the grass. He drew his revolver. “Hold it right there!” he shouted. But the man dropped down in the grass out of sight.