Canadian True Crime - 63 The Boyd Gang

Episode Date: April 1, 2020

TORONTO, ONTARIO In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Edwin Alonzo Boyd terrorized Toronto through a series of daring bank robberies... bringing along a band of bank-robbing misfits known as the Boyd Gang.Thank you to my generous sponsors!You can find the codes, where applicable, at www.canadiantruecrime.ca/sponsorsFind out more about: Book: Edwin Alonzo Boyd: The Life and Crimes of Canada’s Master Bank Robber by Nate HendleyPodcast recommendation: Mens Rea - an Irish True Crime podcast  Credits: Research and writing: Nate HendleyEditing: Kristi LeeAudio editing and production: We Talk of Dreams Disclaimer voiced by the host of Beyond Bizarre True Crime Theme Song: We Talk of Dreams All credits and information sources can be found on the page for this episode at www.canadiantruecrime.ca/episodes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi there, thank you so much for tuning in during what is an unprecedented time of global uncertainty in our lifetime. At the time of recording, it's been 10 days since it was announced that all public schools here in Ontario will close for at least a few weeks and we're expecting an extension. Straight away, my family decided to batten down the hatches, stay home and do our part to slow down the spread of this virus. It's been a weird year for me. In February, when the virus was just something we were watching on the news from afar, not

something that was happening to us, my family and I decided that the time had come to make a decision. Life had reached a level of chaos we didn't like and something had to go. It was either my day job or the podcast. Just a month later, here I am winding down my last few weeks at my day job before I transition to full-time podcaster and now reluctant homeschooler. The world is an entirely different place now. We don't know when things will return to normal, in fact, we don't even know if there

will be a normal again. What a time this is in history. My husband and I are grateful to have jobs where we can work from home and employers who are happy to let us do it. But there are many of you that can't and don't and it's now that we find out who the essential people in our communities really are and I'll tell you, it's not true crime podcasters. So thank you to the frontline workers who are making daily sacrifices so that our society doesn't completely fall apart.

We're all in this together now, so wherever you are listening from, I wish you and your loved ones good health, physically and mentally as we all navigate this next period of uncertainty. And please, please stop stockpiling toilet paper. Turning to true crime now, thank you so much for the great feedback on the Richard Olin series. It was by far the most complicated case I've ever covered and those who have been listening for a while know that I've covered some doozies. Big props to Gemma Harris who researched and wrote the series.

Today's case gives us all a much needed break from that detailed forensic evidence. Thanks again for your support and take care. North York is the name of a collection of neighborhoods north of Toronto. Today, a particular stretch of Avenue Road, one of the main roads there, features restaurants, a rug shop, dry cleaners and of course a Tim Hortons. But in the mid-20th century, there was a Bank of Montreal branch there, the Armour Heights branch. It was September 9th, 1949 and manager George Ellwood and three of his staff were enjoying

a moment of quiet before the lunchtime rush was due to start. George was doing paperwork in his office when a man walked in wearing a blue suit and tie with a fedora hat. He caught George's attention. The man looked like a normal business bank customer but his face looked weird and usually swollen especially around the mouth area. George decided quickly that the man looked suspicious and decided to approach him before he went to one of the tallers.

Can I help you? The man gave him a folded check. George opened it up. On the check was a handwritten message that said, hold up and below it in smaller print was written, if you don't want to be a dead hero, fill this sack with money. Without saying a word, the man produced a white cotton bag and pushed it across the counter towards George. George asked the man if he was kidding.

At the time, Toronto had a reputation for being very safe and a bit dull. Bank robberies were unheard of. The man opened his suit jacket to reveal that he was carrying a Luger, a common pistol in the German military in World War II. At this point, George could see the man's eyes beneath the rim of his hat. He didn't like the look of them. He would later describe them as real inward eyes. And George noticed the man's eyebrows were unusually dark and thick.

In any event, it seemed like this situation was real, so George nodded at one of the bank tallers called Joyce to start putting cash in the white bag. At the same time, he was thinking about the fact that there were two other guns in the branch. Guns in Canada at the time were stocked with handguns for use in robberies, and staff were encouraged to take matters into their own hands with potentially dangerous, heroic moves. One gun was a revolver in George's own office, and the other was in Joyce's tallard drawer, a fully loaded .38 caliber Ivor Johnson revolver.

George conducted a quick risk assessment. The gun in Joyce's drawer was within reach, but the man with the puffy face demanding the money was too close with his own gun. As Joyce continued transferring cash from her drawer to the white bag, she pushed the silent alarm under her desk with her foot. She had more than $2,000 in her drawer, but she was filling the bag as slowly as possible, hoping to delay the gunman until the police showed up. Also, she noticed the gunman smelled strongly of liquor, and his behaviour seemed to be

that of someone who was inebriated. He was bobbing around as he tried to stand there. To Joyce, he seemed like an amateur, so she continued slowly filling the bag. After a while, the police still hadn't come, and the gunman likely realised things were taking longer than they should. Hurry up, he said, holding his gun with both hands, adding that there would be a lot of dead people if she didn't finish quickly. Joyce put all the cash in the bag, and the gunman then asked George to take him to the

safe. George lied, and told him that on Fridays, the safe was cleared out, so all they had was in the tallard drawer. The gunman, now impatient, grabbed the white bag and backed towards the front door, still pointing his gun at George and Joyce. On the way out, a clerk saw his eyes, describing them as terrible, jet-black and wicked. The gunman yelled to not press any alarms and ran out the door. George yelled, call the police!

Then grabbed the loaded revolver from Joyce's drawer and ran out of the bank after the robber. Meanwhile, a local man called William Cranwell had just been to the nearby hardware store and returned to his car parked near the bank. As he went to turn on the engine, a man appeared at his passenger side door with a puffy face. The man yanked on the door handle, but it was locked, so he ran around the other side and pulled the driver's door open. He pointed his gun at William and told him to get out of the car. William complied, and the gunman hopped into the vacated driver's seat.

But in his state of inebriation, he couldn't figure out how to start the car. As he tried pushing the pedals, he yelled at William, get away from here! As William moved to the rear end of his car, bank manager George Elwood ran out of the building with his loaded revolver and fired the gun at the car, narrowly missing William and piercing the trunk of the car. William shocked at what was happening, turned to George and yelled, what the hell are you doing? George yelled back, it's a hold up!

As he kept firing at the car. William realized the seriousness of the situation and ran for cover. The gunman still hadn't started the car and evidently decided to ditch that plan, jumping out of the car with his white bag. Meanwhile, all of George's shots had missed and he was now out of bullets, so as he ran back into the bank to grab his own revolver, the gunman made a run for it, sprinting north along Avenue Road. By the time George returned, the gunman was gone.

The police arrived and so did the media. This was a big event for Toronto at the time. The next day, the Globe and Mail ran a huge banner headline about the robbery, focusing on the heroics of bank staff, especially the manager, George Elwood. A picture of William Crandall pointing to the bullet hole in the trunk of his car was circulated. Coverage of the robbery was also intense in other publications, including the Toronto Daily Star.

No one knew it yet, but this was the start of a crime spree that would go down in Canadian history. This is Christy and you're listening to Canadian True Crime, Episode 63. On April 2, 1914, a baby boy called Edwin Alonso Boyd was born in Toronto. His parents were Eleanor, described as a kind, loving mother, and his father was called Glover, who had been described as tough and religious. Eleanor also had another son named Harold from a previous relationship. Shortly after Edwin was born, the First World War broke out.

In the summer of 1915, Patriarch Glover Boyd joined the Canadian Army and was shipped overseas to fight in the war. When the war ended three years later, Glover returned home and promptly produced a new line of kids with Eleanor. In rapid succession, she gave birth to three kids called Gordon, Norman and Irene, siblings to Edwin and Harold. Glover Boyd needed to find a good way to feed his growing family, so he became a constable with the Toronto Police.

He would spend his adult career enforcing the law. Back to Edwin. As a kid, he didn't care for academia and school discipline. He was great at athletics though, so that was always his preference. When he took a part-time job with a butcher, he did his deliveries by walking on his hands along the sidewalk to show off. Edwin's father Glover was strict and would sometimes beat him for various misdeeds. Edwin grew distant from his father, but he was very close with his mother Eleanor.

In 1930, Edwin's brothers Gordon and Norman caught scarlet fever, an infectious disease caused by group A strep, the same bacterium that causes strep throat. Gordon and Norman suffered the characteristic symptoms of sore throat, fever, headaches, swollen lymph nodes and a rash. The Boyd household decided to quarantine themselves so as not to spread the disease, which was a proven killer. The boys would recover, but unfortunately Eleanor Boyd caught it and she soon died. 15-year-old Edwin was devastated at the loss of his mother.

He was left with his cold and distant father. Not long after this, he dropped out of school. His timing was terrible. The economic calamity known as the Great Depression had just started, which left millions of Canadians in unemployment, poverty and homelessness. After doing farm work for a while, 18-year-old Edwin joined the ranks of unemployed young men who travelled the country on railway boxcars, looking for work where they could find it and, of course, adventure.

As a young man, Edwin was strikingly handsome, described as having a close resemblance to the film idol Errol Flynn. His good looks and charm came in especially handy when he got hungry and he would often accept meals from kindly strangers. And Edwin's looks couldn't save him from trouble with the law. In late 1933 in Alberta, he was arrested for vagrancy or homelessness and was given a home in jail for six weeks. When he was released, he worked briefly in a relief camp that's a government facility

set up during the Great Depression, where young men did heavy labour in exchange for food and a place to stay. He soon decided that that wasn't for him and became a drifter again, stealing cars and committing other crimes to bring in money. In 1936, he tried to rob a Saskatoon gas station with a friend but was unsuccessful. He was sentenced to three and a half months in jail. After he'd served his time, Edwin returned to Toronto. By this time, it was 1939 and he was 25 years old with little education and a criminal record.

He did odd jobs. He bought a motorcycle but his prospects seemed bleak. Then, world events changed everything. In September of 1939, Germany invaded Poland and World War II began. After Germany refused to cease military operations, France and Britain declared war. Soon after this, they were joined by Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada. Edwin Boyd was one of the 10% of the Canadian population who enlisted in the army to fight in the war.

For once, Glover Boyd was proud of his eldest biological son. Edwin trained in Quebec and then was shipped to England. Because he could ride a motorcycle, he was assigned the duty of dispatch rider, delivering messages around the English countryside. Edwin took well to army life, finally feeling a sense of direction and purpose in the chaos that had been a main feature of his life since the death of his mother. In 1940, while still at war, Edwin met a young English woman named Doreen Thompson. The pair married that fall but Doreen hadn't told him everything.

Unbeknownst to Edwin, she had recently given birth to a baby boy after committing the mortal sin of getting pregnant out of wedlock. After she had the baby, she put him in the care of her grandmother and within the next few months, she met Edwin, a Canadian soldier, and they married. Not long after their wedding, she surprised her new husband with the six-month-old infant that she'd been keeping secret. He decided he was okay with it and later adopted the little boy, called Anthony. Doreen became pregnant again, this time with her husband's baby.

Edwin Alonzo Boyd Jr. was born in 1941 but didn't live long. In a desperately sad war twist, there was an air raid and a nurse was moving infants into a bomb shelter and banged the baby boy's head against a door jam. He died. Still living in England, Doreen became pregnant again and gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. In late July of 1944, a few weeks after the D-Day landings that led to the liberation of the country from Nazi rule, Edwin was sent to France.

He didn't see combat but he came back with a souvenir, a Luger pistol that he'd stolen from a dead German soldier. The family decided to move. That Christmas, Doreen and the three kids sailed to Canada. Edwin would join them later, but for now they moved in with Glover Boyd and his second wife Minerva, a nurse that had moved in to help him with the kids after Eleanor had died of scarlet fever. When Edwin joined them, he brought the stolen Luger pistol with him, hidden in his duffelbag.

To demobilization from the war, Edwin had to get a responsible job to provide for his family. He became a streetcar or tram driver for the Toronto Transit Commission or TTC as it's known. With a steady job, wife and kids, Edwin's life seemed set. He was finally on the straight and narrow, but it wasn't long before he got bored. He wanted some kind of action. After just a few months as a TTC driver, he quit his job.

After that, he took menial work and fantasized about becoming an actor. After all, people had said that he was movie star handsome. But this was Toronto, a pretty dull and boring city in the 1940s, and being a paid actor wasn't exactly a realistic vocation. In the spring of 1949, Edwin turned 35. At loose ends and needing money, he read a newspaper account about a teenager with a developmental disability who attempted to rob a Toronto bank of nearly $70,000, all without a gun.

Adjusted for inflation, this hall would be the equivalent of over $780,000 in today's currency. The teen left with the money and was only caught because he dawdled on the sidewalk after leaving the bank. The story got Edwin thinking. He had no idea that it was so easy to rob a bank. He had a pistol, military training, and of course, he badly needed money, so he decided he would try his hand at bank robbery.

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That's squarespace.com.ctc with offer code CTC, and get your passion project off the ground today. On the morning of September 9th, 1949, Edwin stared at himself in the mirror as he shoved wads of cotton into his lips, cheeks and nostrils to make his face look puffier than it was. He then applied black mascara onto his eyebrows. He needed to disguise himself. He put on a blue suit, fedora hat and armed himself with the Luger pistol he'd stolen from the German soldier.

He was very nervous about this, his first bank heist, and he'd be doing it solo. He drank whiskey to fortify his nerves. He drank a lot. He then made his unsteady way to the Bank of Montreal at Armour Heights in Toronto's North York. He passed the note to the bank manager indicating that this was a holdup and to fill the white bag with cash. After revealing his pistol to the bank employees, the bag started to fill.

But the booze he'd gulped was starting to kick in. Edwin was feeling a strong effect. He started wobbling around and found himself coming close to passing out a few times. He decided it was time to get out of there. He waved the pistol around as a final threat and then grabbed the white bag and ran outside on wobbly legs. He owned his own truck but he didn't want to drive it to the bank in case there was a sharp-eyed witness who would note the make, model and license plate number.

Edwin's getaway vehicle plan was to steal a car, drive it to the garage where he'd left his truck and then drive his truck home. As he ran onto the road, he staggered towards a sedan parked near the bank. Edwin pointed his gun at the driver and ordered him out of the vehicle. Edwin jumped into the vacated driver's seat. As he fiddled with the keys, he was so drunk that he didn't notice the bank manager run out behind him with a gun, firing bullets at the car. Edwin cranked the keys in the ignition but the sedan wouldn't start so he made a snap

decision to make a run for it. Drunk as he was, Edwin was always good at athletics and he was in excellent shape. The bank manager tried to chase him but Edwin easily outran him. Eventually, he stopped running. He caught his breath, wiped off his makeup, removed the cotton he'd used to puff his face up and began strolling down the street. These cars raced by sirens blaring. The cops were searching for a weird looking bank robber wearing mascara but Edwin Boyd

now looked like a regular man out for a stroll. He walked to the garage where he'd left his truck. He was exhausted so he took a nap inside of it and when he woke up, he counted the cash. It came to $2,256. In today's currency, that's the equivalent of over $25,000. A nice haul for a first time bank hold up. When all the media attention came and his crime made front page headlines, Edwin realised that he'd only escaped by sheer dumb luck.

The next time he pulled a bank job, he vowed to remain sober and put more thought into his getaway. Edwin waited a few months and then put a new plan into action. This time, he would steal the getaway car before the robbery. The skills he had acquired as a car thief in his youth proved useful as he stole a blue 1949 Meteor. In January of 1950, he drove the Meteor to a branch of the Canadian Bank of Commerce. He wore old ratty clothes and again filled his cheeks with cotton.

Once again, he passed a folded check with the words hold up to a bank employee and flashed his Luger pistol. This time, it was sufficient to intimidate bank staff and luckily for him, no one tried any heroics. After robbing the bank of $2,862, Edwin tore off in his getaway vehicle. He ditched the Meteor near a disposal plant and then made it home. After this robbery, Edwin decided to come clean with his wife about his new career path. Doreen was shocked but didn't protest.

After all, she was a war bride from England, now living in a new country with three kids to look after. She really had little choice but to go along with her husband's sudden interest in bank robbing. That summer, Edwin robbed a Dominion Bank branch of nearly $2,000. In what would become his signature move, he leapt dramatically on the bank counter, shouting that the place was being robbed. In this robbery, he came with a mystery partner whose identity remains unknown even today.

But Edwin didn't like having to share his takings. He needed to go solo again. So a couple of months later, in the fall of 1950, he stole another car and headed for the Imperial Bank in North York by himself. He entered the bank, pulled out his luga and demanded cash. After all the media coverage praising the previous bank manager George Ellwood's heroics defending his branch, Edwin really shouldn't have been shocked when the bank manager at this bank grabbed his bank issue pistol and began firing.

Edwin returned fire but neither men hit their target. He cut his losses and fled without getting any money. Dismayed, he decided to go legitimate for a while. He took a job with a City of Toronto street repair crew with duties that included pouring hot asphalt into potholes. It was a long way down from the thrill of bank heists and fast money. During a boring shift, Edwin came up with the plan. He would rob the Bank of Montreal in Armour Heights again, the same bank with the gutsy

manager George Ellwood. But Edwin reasoned that surely, employees wouldn't expect to be held up twice in such a short period of time. In March of 1951, Edwin stole a car disguised himself by putting cotton in his cheeks again and a working man's cap on his head and held up the original Bank of Montreal again. Fortunately, George Ellwood was sick that day. Once again, Edwin leapt up on the bank counter and created a scene, taking off with just over $3,000 and a guarantee of huge headlines.

Police were now in serious investigation mode, intent on catching this person or person's responsible for the sudden string of robberies in their once safe town. But they hadn't connected anyone with the robberies, certainly not Edwin Boyd, so when his money ran low, he simply returned to the street repair job with no one the wiser. Back at work, he befriended a fellow employee named Howard Gault, who was a former prison guard. After Howard confided in Edwin that he liked to steal cars for booze money, Edwin took the opportunity to bring in a helper.

Howard eagerly agreed to take part in a new bank robbery. The robbery took place the first day of September in 1951. There was Howard, Edwin and Edwin's younger brother Norman. The three men stole a car and drove it to a branch of the Dominion Bank and staged a hold up. It was a successful heist and the three men made off with over $8,000. Edwin kept a low profile after this robbery, but he used his robbery money to better his family's position, buying a house in Pickering, Ontario, then a small quiet community near

Toronto. The Cinder Block house didn't have running water, but it was in an isolated locale which made it a great hideout. Doreen did her best to make the place a family home for the Boyd children and Edwin would routinely treat his family to meals and movies. But after a while, those funds began to run low, so he contacted Howard Gault to see if he was interested in setting up another robbery. He was feeling cocky because of his last few successes and put minimal effort into coming

up with a strategy for his next caper. In October of 1951, Edwin picked up Howard in his truck and the pair drove around scoping out banks and contemplating targets. Edwin suddenly had a brainwave. Why not rob the Bank of Montreal on armour heights for a third time? Howard was amenable, so the armed pair parked the truck and stole a black 1948 Chevrolet to be their getaway car. But as Edwin and Howard slowly cruised outside the Bank of Montreal, they drew the attention

of the bank staff, who were now understandably paranoid. The police were called and Edwin noticed the commotion inside and sped off. But Howard was disappointed and insisted they find another bank to rob. After all, they were armed, amped up and ready to go and it seemed like a waste to just go home and call it a day. Edwin gave in to the whining. The pair drove to a branch of the Dominion Bank and with virtually no advance planning, they parked and then raced inside waving their guns.

This handed over cash as they were supposed to do, but Howard was off this time. Instead of putting the cash in a shopping bag like he was supposed to do, he tossed bills into the air, laughing. Horrified, Edwin decided that his partner was either drunk or momentarily crazed at the sight of so much cash. While Edwin had pulled off his first robbery while impaired, Howard seemed beyond reason. This was going to be a problem, and by this time, the silent alarm had been triggered and the police car sirens could now be heard.

With some difficulty, Edwin got Howard outside with the $12,000 they'd stolen. The plan was for Edwin to go to the car first and then pick up Howard, but Edwin was in far better shape when it came to physical fitness and the much slower Howard was quickly nabbed by police and taken to the station. He told the cops everything he knew about Edwin Boyd. The friend he'd met at the street repair job. He also provided a helpful description of Edwin's truck. Meanwhile, Edwin ditched the stolen Chevy, got in his own truck and started frantically

driving away. He had no idea that Howard had ratted him out and was caught off guard when a police pursuit car identified his truck and pulled up next to him, continuing the drive side by side. While one cop steered the car, the other waved a pistol out the window at Edwin's head. Edwin took the hint and pulled over, surrendering without so much as producing his own weapon. During a rough interrogation at Toronto Police Headquarters, Edwin Boyd admitted to robbing a string of banks.

He pleaded guilty and was sent to Toronto's notorious Don Jail. Sure, his criminal days were over. Built in the Victorian era, the Don was overcrowded, noisy and dangerous. And if Edwin had been placed with quiet cellmates, he might have gone straight for the sake of his family. That's not what happened. Instead, Edwin found himself in the company of two violent and remorseful criminals. Willie Jackson was generally considered to be a good-natured lout with a gregarious personality,

but it masked a sadistic streak. He was serving seven years for brutally mugging an old man for petty cash. Willie Jackson shared the same last name with the other criminal, Lenny Jackson, although they weren't related. Lenny had a ferocious temper and was commonly called Tough Lenny. With the help of other associates, Lenny also had bank robbing experience, having robbed several banks in small Ontario communities. He was known for having bad asthma and an artificial foot.

His real foot was severed while he was trying to hop a ride in a freight train and fell under it. Lenny had attempted to escape the Don jail before and was able to give Edwin the useful intel that the decades-old iron cellblock window bars had gone soft with age. He told Edwin that he'd smuggled a hacksaw blade into prison in his artificial foot. The three men hatched an escape plan. They selected a window in their cellblock that featured a metal screen and a glass panel with a top that could swivel open to let air inside.

Lenny entrusted his hacksaw blade to Edwin. The plan was that while Lenny and Willie kept an eye out for guards, Edwin would slip under the metal screen and through the opened glass panel and then cut at the bars, concealing their work by slapping on a mixture of soap and dirt on the bars. On the afternoon of November 4, 1951, the plan was going into action. The three men removed the cellblock window bars then lowered themselves outside using ropes they'd made from bedsheets. They repelled 13 metres down the side of the building into the exercise yard and then crept

to the outside wall. They scaled that wall with the improvised ropes, then leapt three metres to the ground on the other side. All three men made it, even tough Lenny with his artificial foot. A man called Steve Sushin was supposed to pick the men up at a pre-range spot and drive them to safety. He was an associate of Lenny's who had helped with previous bank robberies, but he never showed up.

An angry call was made to Steve's girlfriend, a woman called Anna, who handed the phone over to him. Steve apologised profusely and then raced over and picked up the three escapees, now shivering in the cold before bringing them back to Anna's house. Edwin, Lenny and Willie had made a successful escape. They joined forces with Steve and decided to work as a group, a gang if you will. Just two weeks later, they robbed a bank of Toronto, making off with $4,300. Obviously, the police had put two and two together by now.

The Toronto Daily Star wrote, The gang is believed by police to have been led by Edwin Alonso Boyd, master bank robber, who escaped with two other desperate criminals from the Don Jail two weeks ago. It was the star who coined the name The Boyd Gang, a nickname that would stick. This annoyed Lenny Jackson, who considered himself to be the true leader of the gang. Just 10 days after the Bank of Toronto heist, they struck a Royal Bank of Canada in Leeside. Edwin leapt over the bank counter to confront staff, while Lenny guarded the door with a submachine gun. With Willie and Steve's assistance, the four men made off with over $46,000,

the equivalent of over half a million dollars today. A front page headline in the Toronto Daily Star said, Sten Gun 5 stage biggest bank holdup in history of Toronto. They got the number of participants wrong. There were only four, but it was the biggest successful holdup. The teenager who inspired Edwin originally had made off with $70,000, but was caught soon after. The Boyd Gang shocked the city. Toronto had always been affectionately referred to as Toronto the Good,

as it was known for being straight and safe. It was not the kind of place that typically attracted well-armed gangs of bank bandits. The story was covered extensively by Toronto's three main newspapers, the Telegram, the Toronto Daily Star and the Globe and Mail. The Star and the Telegram were locked in a circulation war, eager to attract readers who were worried about what was happening to their city. Inevitably, Edwin Boyd was described as the leader of the gang. The press described the gang as crack professionals who carried out robberies with military precision.

But in truth, behind the scenes, the gang barely got along and largely led separate lives when they weren't holding up banks. Edwin and Steve plain didn't like each other. Tough Lenny had a big ego and wanted to be the boss, and he was constantly annoyed by the Boyd Gang headlines. Ironically, the Boyd Gang were about to become crime victims themselves. Steve's father ran a rooming house with his wife and persuaded Edwin and Willie to give him their cash for safekeeping.

He promised to put the bills in a safe hiding spot inside the rooming house, but he promptly disappeared with it. Steve was greatly embarrassed by his father's actions. Willie was furious, but Edwin took the theft in his stride. He figured there would always be more banks to rob. But the Boyd Gang's problems continued. Shortly before Christmas of 1951, Willie got drunk in a Montreal nightclub and waved his pistol around showing off.

Police arrived and arrested him before identifying him as one of the three men who had escaped from the Don Jail. Unlike previous associates of Edwin's, Willie did not rat him out to the police. He said nothing, which sent him back to jail with an extra two years for the breakout to be served in addition to his original sentence. That same Christmas, Edwin, his wife Doreen and their children hid out while staying in a motel. When the family started to run low on cash, it was time to plot new robberies.

With Willie Jackson behind bars, his younger brother Joseph offered to join the gang. Good thing too, because the gang was falling further apart. When Edwin suggested getting together to rob a Bank of Toronto branch, Lenny was in Montreal and showed no interest. Steve was in Montreal too, and while he initially said no, he changed his mind and joined Edwin and Willie's younger brother Joseph in the robbery in 1952. As you'll recall, Steve had a girlfriend called Anna, whose house they all went to after Steve's late pickup after they first escaped from jail.

Well, Steve also had a second girlfriend on the down low called Mary. And because she was also tough Lenny's sister, they all felt like they could trust her to be a getaway driver for a job. The Bank of Toronto robbery was a success, with the slightly revised Boyd gang making off with roughly $10,000. Two months later, the gang changed again. Now it was Edwin, Joseph and Joseph's brother-in-law Alistair, and together they robbed a Bank of Montreal branch, taking off with almost $25,000.

Despite Lenny's insistence that he was the leader of the gang, the only common denominator between every single robbery was Edwin Boyd. And now he was starting to contemplate retirement, mulling over ideas in his head like perhaps buying a rooming house and taking in borders for cash. It certainly seemed safer than robbing banks. As he was contemplating what to do next, Mary, who drove the getaway car, was feeding information to police. Even though her own brother Lenny was involved with the gang,

insiders thought that she turned police informant to get back at her less than loyal boyfriend, Steve. See, his main girlfriend Anna considered herself to be Steve's true love. They even had a child together. Anna owned a black Monarch car, which had been used by the gang for various activities. It was this information that Mary sent as a tip to Toronto Sergeant Detective Edmund Tong. Mary told Detective Tong that there was a black Monarch car that was being used to transport stolen goods, and gave him the number plate. She didn't mention anything about the bank robberies or the Boyd gang though.

Not long after that, in March of 1952, Steve and Lenny took a fateful drive in the very black Monarch that Mary had mentioned to police. Detective Tong was patrolling the city that day in an unmarked police car with Detective Sergeant Roy Perry. Tong spotted the black Monarch, matched the number plate, and followed it. The police car pulled up alongside the vehicle, and the occupants were signalled to pull over. The cars were only a few feet apart, and Detective Tong didn't even draw his gun as he walked towards the Monarch, because he thought they were just investigating a stolen goods racket.

He had no idea that inside the car were two members of the Boyd gang who were armed and ready. They fired from the Monarch, hitting Detective Tong in the chest at point blank range. He collapsed face first on the street as bullets slammed through the front window of the police cruiser. In the driver's seat, Detective Perry was struck in the arm and peppered with glass shards, with his partner wounded and down, and struggling with injuries of his own, he called for backup over his radio handset. Lenny and Steve took their opportunity to make a run for it, and the black Monarch took off at high speed. The two detectives were rushed to the hospital, Detective Tong in critical condition and needing

intensive care. Toronto Mayor Alan Lamport flew into a rage. He offered a $2,000 reward for anyone who could bring the shooters to justice. Local newspapers ran the story on their front pages. A sense of panic was in the air. This was Toronto, not Chicago. Gangsters simply didn't shoot police officers in broad daylight in Toronto. At this point, police hadn't connected this gangster style shooting to the Boyd gang bank robbers. Steve and Lenny fled to Montreal. Thanks to the tips that Mary had fed to police, Montreal police tracked Steve down in an apartment he was hiding out at. They completely surprised him. He tried to draw his pistol, but this time the cops were prepared,

shooting him in the chest and stomach first. Incapacitated, Steve was put under arrest. As for tough Lenny, police discovered that he was staying in a basement apartment in Montreal with his new wife, who was pregnant. A SWAT team of Montreal police, assisted by some Toronto officers, assaulted the house, firing machine guns and tear gas into the residence. Lenny sustained multiple bullet wounds but managed to shoot back at them. His pregnant wife's frantic urgings seemed to be the only way to get through to tough Lenny, and he finally surrendered. He was taken to hospital under guard. Both he and Steve recovered from their injuries. Meanwhile, back in Toronto, Edwin Boyd knew he was now the most wanted

criminal in Canada. He decided to hide out in a Spadina Road boarding house. Doreen was still in Pickering, but they sent their eldest son to stay in a farm owned by a family friend, and had sent the twins to boarding school. Edwin loved the thrill of robbing banks, but worried that he would be responsible for the shooting of the two detectives. The courts took a dim view of anyone who assaulted police officers, and at the time, the death penalty was in effect. And even though Edwin wasn't even at the scene of the shooting, the Boyd gang was named after him, and he was the perceived leader. Toronto Detective Adolphus Payne described as tough and clever, set out to track Edwin down.

Regular listeners may remember Detective Payne from Episode 31 of this podcast, when he helped lead the investigation into the murder of 7-year-old Wayne Mallette on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition. The boy was murdered by teenage serial killer Peter Woodcock, but Payne initially thought another teenager named Ron Moffat was responsible. Ron falsely confessed and was convicted, leaving Peter Woodcock free to murder two more Toronto children before finally being caught. But four years before that, Detective Payne was intent on finding Edwin Boyd, with the goal of finally taking down the entire Boyd gang. He thought that if he could find a vehicle they'd used, he might be able to track Edwin down through

that. But his theory didn't quite apply here, given that they typically stole their getaway cars and then ditched them afterwards. But this was a minor point. Detective Payne wanted to find out if any Boyd gang members at large owned a personal vehicle. He looked through the vehicle registration records and discovered that Edwin's brother Norman owned a 1949 Austin sedan, and he could see that in early 1952, Norman Boyd had transferred ownership of the Austin to Doreen Boyd, Edwin's wife. Detective Payne assumed that the gang was probably low on funds, and with the police on high alert, it was unlikely that they would attempt another bank robbery. But he thought they might sell the car. A quick and easy way to get some cash to hide out and lie low, and if they

did try to sell the Austin, police might be able to follow the trail of the sale and locate Edwin Boyd. It was a long shot, but it was worth a try. Detective Payne began scouring newspaper classified ads for car sales. Eventually, an ad turned up for a car that matched Norman's vehicle. Payne called the number pretending to be interested in the car. Norman Boyd answered the phone and unwittingly chatted with the stealthy detective, who made sure to disguise his own voice. Payne determined that the person he was speaking to was in fact Edwin Boyd's brother, and believed that Norman was still in contact with his bank robbing sibling. He decided to smoke Edwin out, using the car his brother was trying to sell as a lure.

A sting operation ensued. A cop named Harold Jukes pretended to be married to a police clerk named Patricia Pryor, and they contacted Norman to express interest in buying the Austin. When Norman told them that the car was co-owned with his sister-in-law, they told Norman that they would only make the purchase if they got a signed release from the actual owner of the car. Obviously, they knew the owner was Doreen Boyd, and if they could find out where Doreen was, they likely would be able to locate Edwin. Norman agreed and called the undercover cop Harold Jukes shortly after, instructing them to come by his house to finalize the purchase.

Once there, Norman handed over a lean clearance notice signed by Doreen Boyd. In return, Harold Jukes handed Norman a deposit check, and said he'd be back to pick up the car and pay the balance shortly. Meanwhile, police put Norman's home under surveillance. They tracked him as he drove with Doreen, picked up Edwin from the boarding house on Spadina Road, and dropped him off at another house. Early in the morning of March 15, 1952, Detective Payne and 50 police officers descended on the house. Payne approached the door and then rushed in, gun in hand. Finally, he found Edwin and Doreen lying in bed. Edwin slowly opened his eyes to see Payne standing over him with a gun in his hand. Edwin gave himself up without a fight. The police found

that Edwin had five loaded handguns, an army knife, ammunition, and $23,000 in cash in the room with him. Mayor Alan Lamport rushed to the house for a triumphant press release with a frenzied media. This was front page news in Toronto. The star newspaper heaped praise on Detective Payne. As Boyd stared, dazed into a flashlight beam, his first thought was, betrayal. And in a way, he was right. His much-vaunted mind had done him dirt. He had underrated police in general and one policeman in particular. This was the payoff on Brains and all he could do was blink. End quote. The sense of victory was soured when Detective Tong finally succumbed to his injuries after the gangster-style shootout. Police held a huge funeral procession and then vowed

that the Boyd gang would pay. They rounded up the remaining members of the Boyd gang and arrested them, including Mary, whose status as an informer didn't save her from arrest for driving the getaway car. But the Boyd gang story wasn't over. Edwin Boyd had been put back in Toronto's Don Jail. He was soon joined by Willie Jackson, one of the original members of the gang who had been arrested in Montreal when he showed off his gun in a nightclub. When Lenny and Steve had recovered from their wounds from the shootout, they were placed in the same cell block as Edwin and Willie. For all intents and purposes, the primary members of the Boyd gang were back together again. This was intentional. Prison authorities decided it would be easier to monitor the gang

if they kept them together. A microphone was placed in the cell block ceiling for surveillance purposes and guards intended to keep a close watch on the four members. Once the Boyd gang got over their astonishment at the unexpected reunion, they set about hatching a new plan to escape. Again, the plan was the same as before. Hack through the weak iron bars in a cell block window and make a dash for freedom. But there was a problem this time. There was no way to get to the bars because guards kept watch during the daytime and the prisoners were locked in their cells at night. After scrutinising the guards' routine, the Boyd gang realised that there was a brief period between 5 and 7am when no one was patrolling their area, apparently because of

staffing shortages. The men thought they might be able to soar their way through the window bars again, but they needed to find a way to get out of their cells without a guard letting them out. Willie Jackson, always the clown, came up with a clever plan to set things in motion. Pretending to goof around, Willie waited for a guard to come and lock Steve's cell door. He then grabbed the key off the guard, pressed it hard against his palm for a while and then let it go. The guard assumed Willie was joking, as always, and thought nothing of the incident. Willie returned to his cell and quickly used the imprint the key had made on his palm to draw an outline of it on his wall. Using this crude guide, the men carved a key with two pieces of contraband

that had been stashing, a file and a small piece of steel. The noise from the filing was loud, so the men flushed the toilets frequently and had loud conversations to conceal the sounds. Once the crudely filed key was ready, the men waited for that early morning time when they knew their area wouldn't be patrolled. The key worked. They were able to unlock their cell doors. Edwin or Willie would then cut at the window bars using a hacksaw blade, another piece of contraband. Once again, cuts in the bars were concealed with a paste made from soap and dirt. In the early morning hours of September the 8th, 1952, the Boyd gang removed the cell block window bars and slipped outside. The men crawled along an outside wall and dropped five meters to the ground.

They scampered into the Don Valley and nearby Woodard area. Police had confiscated Lenny's artificial foot, so even with an enamel drinking cup over his stump, he still made it. So much for them being under surveillance in prison. At 7am, the staff shortage period was over. The guards realized the Boyd gang were missing and all hell broke loose. Mayor Lamport was at his cottage and rushed back to Toronto to blast prison authorities, demanding to know who put them all in one cell block. The men were allowed to eat together, sleep together and were practically given club car privileges. The four men had unknowingly picked an auspicious day for their escape.

That night, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, or CBC, launched regular television broadcasts in Toronto, and news of the four convicts at large dominated the inaugural broadcast. Newspapers ran enormous headlines and lengthy stories about the breakout. A reward for the capture of the gang was quickly promoted. $26,000 was offered, which would be around a quarter of a million dollars in today's currency. 2,000 police officers were mobilized and what would become one of the biggest manhunts in Canadian history. Finding the Boyd gang, again, was priority number one in Toronto. For their part, the Boyd gang was not having an easy time.

Tough Lenny struggled with asthma and his improvised prosthetic foot. At the time, the Don Valley was largely undeveloped and difficult to navigate, and the men escaped wearing only their prison-issue clothes, which offered little protection at night when it got colder. The men moved north up the valley, searching for a hideout. Eventually, they found an abandoned farm and decided to turn the barn into their base of operations. For food, they scrounged raw potatoes and carrots from nearby farms. Steve left the group at one point to connect with some fellow criminals, returning with clothing, pistols and a new artificial foot for Lenny.

Toronto's three main newspapers all ran a story featuring Doreen Boyd, who publicly begged her husband, Edwin, to surrender before the police killed him. It's unclear if Edwin ever saw the article. The gang had vague plans to hop on a freight car and head out west, just as Edwin had done years earlier as a young man. But before they could leave, they were spotted by local farmers and workmen, who mistook them as tramps and reported them to police. Responding to tips, two North York policemen were sent to the location where the four men had been seen, expecting to find some homeless men who would be told to move on. The road leading to the derelict property was under construction,

so the cops parked their cruiser and walked to the abandoned farm. Inside the barn, no one heard the cops approaching on foot. The two police officers entered the barn and were surprised to stumble upon the Boyd gang, who had been at large for over a week. The four men were hustled to a North York police station, which was soon swarmed by reporters and members of the public. Mayor Lamport and the police chief praised the cops who captured the Boyd gang. The four men were taken back to the Don jail and placed under extra tight security, including an around-the-clock police guard.

The trials for the Boyd gang began two weeks later in September of 1952. Again, the men were guarded carefully to prevent another escape. A typically sensational headline ran in the Toronto Daily Star that read, Tommy Gunn at the ready as Boyd gang up for sentence. Willie Jackson received two 20-year prison sentences to be served concurrently for two armed robberies and two escapes. Lenny Jackson and Steve Sushin were found guilty of the murder of Detective Tong and were hanged about two months later at the Don jail.

They were one of 26 men to be hung on the jail's indoor gallows. Edwin's brother Norman got three years in prison for armed robbery. The other occasional gang members all received various sentences for their crimes. As for Edwin Boyd, who was nearing 40 years old, he received eight concurrent life sentences for bank robbery and car theft. He served his time at the Kingston Penitentiary in Kingston, Ontario, but he didn't end up spending the rest of his life behind bars. Ten years later, in 1962, he was paroled when his wife pleaded with the parole board

that his family had suffered and they needed him. The parole board eventually decided to release him on parole for good behaviour. But by then, Doreen had moved on with her life. She was in a relationship with another man and turned down Edwin's attempts at a reconciliation. They ended up divorcing. Edwin focused on his integration back into society, taking a course at an adult retraining centre, where he formed what he said was a platonic relationship with a teenage girl.

The 16-year-old came from an abusive relationship and formed a bond with Edwin, who was nearing 50 years old at this time. Edwin insisted that he was just trying to help a troubled girl. No matter, his parole officer wasn't impressed. The relationship violated his parole conditions and he was sent back to jail in February of 1963. Three years later, Edwin Boyd was paroled again for good. Because of all the spectacle around Edwin Alonso Boyd and the Boyd gang,

authorities gave him a new name and he headed out west to start a new life. In British Columbia, he took a job driving a van for disabled adults. He fell in love with one of his passengers, Marjorie, and married her in 1970. In the following years, interest in the Boyd gang never faded. There were several books about the gang's exploits, a 1982 television docu-drama, and even a musical. In late 1998, CBC aired an interview with Edwin Boyd, then around 84 years old. He was portrayed as a redeemed scoundrel who was spending his senior years

helping his disabled wife and her housemate. A follow-up CBC documentary filmed a few years later offered a considerably darker take, but Edwin died in 2002 at age 88 before it aired. The documentary focused on crime reporter Brian Valley, who wrote the definitive book on the case, Edwin Alonso Boyd, The Story of the Notorious Boyd Gang. You might remember Brian Valley as the writer of the book Life with Billy from the Jane Hirshman episodes 46 and 47.

He talked to the CBC about phone interviews he conducted with an elderly Edwin Boyd. In these taped conversations, Edwin admitted that he could have gotten hanged for several crimes he said he was never arrested for. He discussed having to dispatch a couple of people and mentioned putting two bodies in the trunk of a car in a Toronto park. To those with eyes on the case, the details seemed to match the unsolved murder of George Vegas and Iris Scott, which happened in 1947, two years before Edwin would commit his first successful bank robbery. The couple were found dead in the trunk of a Chevrolet

that had been seen in Toronto's high park. Both had been strangled. Here's a short clip of Edwin's conversation with Brian Valley, courtesy of CBC Archives. They tried to fashion the guilt on the people that were related to the ones that I had problems with, but they couldn't prove it. So they had finally had to drop it. I mean, I was the guilty one, but they were the ones that were in a position to be blamed. And the point was that nobody got any problem with it, except that the people that I had to do away with. Edwin is a bit rambly. Remember, he was in his 80s at this time. Essentially, he says even though

he was responsible for the murders, the police thought others may have been, but they couldn't prove it, so they dropped the case. But this doesn't mean that he was responsible. Edwin never mentioned the names of the victims, and there has been speculation that given his age when he spoke with Brian Valley, it's possible he may have confused a crime he read about in the papers with his own exploits. CBC asked his former wife Doreen Boyd about it, and she categorically stated that her ex-husband was not a killer, adding that he never spoke to her about any involvement in the high park murders. Additionally, Edwin wasn't known for being a violent criminal beyond just threats, and this unsolved murder happened two years before he even committed

his first serious crime, the bank robbery where he showed up drunk for courage. Even so, it's clear that Edwin was far from being a charming rogue. He terrorized people with guns, stole money, and kept the company of murderers. His family lived under the constant worry that he would be killed or captured during his crime sprees. In 2011, he was portrayed in a Canadian feature film called Citizen Gangster, directed by Nathan Morlando and starring Scott Speedman as Edwin. The movie depicts a slightly fictionalized version of the gangster shootout, which led to the death of Detective Tong and also explores the strain on Doreen Boyd and their three kids. One of those kids consulted on the film and spoke out to the Toronto Star at around the

same time as the movie was released. Carolyn Boyd was just seven years old when her dad started robbing banks. She said it was difficult not having a father, but it was more difficult dealing with the fallout. Quote, for instance, most parents would not let their children play with us. Kids called us jailbirds and accused us of stealing. Carolyn said she later realized how much her father loved his family, saying that she found proof in the loving photos he took of them all. Before Edwin's death, he said that his greatest regret was losing his family. Thanks for listening and thanks to Toronto true crime author Nate Henley who researched and wrote this episode based on his book Edwin Alonso Boyd, The Life and Crimes of Canada's

Master Bank Robber. There's a link to more information in the show notes. Today's podcast recommendation is Men's Ray, an Irish true crime podcast hosted by Sinead. I love it. Take a listen. Men's Ray is the legal principle of criminal intent. It means literally the guilty mind. Join me, Sinead, every fortnight to discuss Ireland and the UK's most heinous crimes and the court cases that followed. Do you want to know more about a kink killing in Dublin in 2012 or serial killers in Scotland? Whatever your guilty pleasure, you'll find it and all the details with me. Find Men's Ray wherever you get your podcasts. This episode of Canadian True Crime was researched and written by Nate Henley, edited by me,

and audio production was by We Talk of Dreams who also composed the theme song. The host of the Beyond Bizarre True Crime podcast voiced the disclaimer, I'll be back soon with another Canadian True Crime story. See you then.