by Brian Vallee
– the Boyd Gang – which was the toughest outside of New York City, but we had some very courageous police officers like Chief John Chisholm, and Payne, and Sergeant Tong. We had some great soldiers in that department.”
Lamport wanted the banks to install secure, vaultlike rooms in their basements where transactions involving large sums of money would be conducted by appointment, leaving minimal amounts in the tills upstairs for day-to-day business. “They would have had to spend a little money, but that would have cleaned it up entirely.”
When the bankers said the proposal wasn’t feasible, Lamport threatened them with special taxes to cover the policing costs of so many robberies. “The cops were spending so much time on bank robberies we didn’t have them for other things. I’m not condemning the banks, but Boyd and these other guys were prepared to do a lot of thinking and outsmarting, and they got away with it. They were breaking in right and left.”
Jack Webster was a motorcycle policeman in Toronto at the time and said some bank employees were frightened to go to work. “I can remember very well when the calls would come over that there was a bank job – the Boyd Gang strikes again. If you were in that area, you would be searching back lanes and stopping cars and looking in cars. Bank staffs, the majority of them female tellers, were terrorized. The banks were being hit far and wide – the east end, North York, Bradford.… Dolph Payne told me that in conversations he had with bank managers, they didn’t know how they were going to operate. Staff were frightened to come to work. And you can understand how a young woman or a young man would feel – suddenly having a gun thrust in their face – it was a frightening situation.”
Lamport says the sensational newspaper coverage of the bank robberies added to the pressure on him and the police to crack down. “The papers just snappled on to this,” he says, and the readers loved it. “A good story sent a quiver up their back and made them feel that they belonged to a big lively city.”
Lamport was on the job less than a month when the Boyd Gang robbed the Bank of Toronto on Kingston Road. Five weeks later, there was the College Street robbery. Two other banks were held up by other gunmen in that same period. In those days the mayor of Toronto was also the city’s chief magistrate and chairman of the police commission, and this gave Lamport all the more reason to bring the Boyd Gang and other bank robbers to heel. “This was all a big strain on me,” says Lamport. “They knew we meant business. They got wise to me being pretty tough. It was my duty and I fulfilled it.”
When Boyd robbed the Bank of Toronto with Suchan and Joe Jackson on January 25, they made the front pages, but Lamport grabbed the biggest headlines when he condemned “secret deals” at the CNE that were creating “midway millionaires … at the expense of the city taxpayers.” He promised to open the books and to ensure that future midway contracts were open to public tender. “I’ve only begun to scratch the surface,” said Lamport.
John Sanderson, a retired elementary school principal in Sault Ste. Marie, recalls visiting Eddie Tong’s family in Toronto. Sanderson had grown up in Harriston, a small farming community about ninety miles northwest of Toronto, and Tong and his family used to vacation at the nearby Gordon farm. “I went to high school with Lamont Gordon, whose family owned the farm,” says Sanderson. “Around 1950, Lamont and I stayed with the Tong family for a couple of days while we were in Toronto. I was about seventeen or eighteen at the time. I never forgot it because the Tongs had a pet skunk, and I was a little scared of it. It had been fixed, but I think its sweat or something still had a skunky smell. Maybe I was imagining it, but I was sure I could smell it.”
Sanderson says the warmth and closeness of the Tong family were obvious. “I liked Tong. He was a bear of a man. At seventeen or eighteen you’re not usually impressed with any adult, but he impressed me a lot.”
Tong took Sanderson and Lamont to the CNE. Tong would walk up to a game concession and grab a stuffed animal or toy that was being offered as a prize and hold it out to him and Lamont. “You want this?” he would laugh. “You can have anything you like.”
“He was just joking, and he’d put it back,” says Sanderson, “but he said nearly all of them in the booths had records and were on his sheet – they were his informants.”
Eddie Tong had one informant who, in early March of 1952, would pass him information that would prove disastrous for Steve Suchan and Lennie Jackson – and for Tong himself. The informant was Jackson’s own sister, Mary Mitchell. She had told her brother and the rest of the gang that she talked to Tong from time to time, but only to see if she could find out if the police were closing in on them. But all that changed when her relationship with Suchan became strained after the birth of his son. He was feeling guilty about Anna Camero, who wasn’t shy about telling him he was neglecting her and the baby.
Mary Mitchell was still jealous and worked out a plan that she thought would keep Suchan away from Camero. On one of her visits with Tong, sometime in mid to late February, she gave him a description and the licence number of Camero’s car and told him that underworld types were using it to transport stolen goods to Montreal. Later she would tell Suchan and her brother that she gave Tong the information only after he had burned her breasts with a lit cigarette. She even showed them the burn marks. Suchan and Jackson believed her story and were enraged.
Dolph Payne and Jack Gillespie – and eventually Ed Boyd – believed that the burns to Mary Mitchell’s chest were superficial and self-inflicted. “Every time I saw her come out of Tong’s office, she was smiling,” said Payne. “I didn’t see her every time she came out of there, naturally, but Tong would never have burned her. Mary Mitchell was a wicked woman.”21 Gillespie, who worked with Tong, said Mary Mitchell was giving information to Tong “and at the same time she was going back to the guys and saying that Eddie beat her up and did this to her and that to her – which was a bunch of bloody lies. But that made Suchan and Lennie really hostile towards Eddie. And Eddie would never do that. She was really mad at Suchan for fooling around with the other woman. You couldn’t believe Mary Mitchell. Her saying that Eddie Tong burned her was all bullshit.”
Boyd didn’t hear until later about Mary’s claims regarding Tong. “She just said that Tong had been questioning her, and that was about it. She said she never told him anything, but all the time she was telling him everything. She was a nice person to talk to but she was always on the lookout for guys who had money.” Boyd lays some of the blame on Suchan “because he used to lay on the line to Mitchell that he could be trusted, but it was all crap – he was always fooling around.”
Dorreen Boyd was seeing more of her husband now that she had given up the Pickering house and the children were with others. She made a couple of trips to Montreal with Boyd, staying at Suchan and Mary Mitchell’s apartment, and got to observe the gang at first hand. There seemed to be mutual respect between Lennie Jackson and her husband. “Lennie was a nice guy,” she says. “I liked him. He was such a doll – good looking and very well-spoken, too. He was such a gentle guy, was Lennie. And Ann was a nice girl.” She says Boyd didn’t like Suchan because he didn’t trust him. “But could Suchan ever play the violin. Oh God, he was good. He had it with him there in Montreal.” Dorreen has no kind words for Mary Mitchell, saying only, “She was a whore.”
It will never be known whether Suchan eventually came to disbelieve Mitchell’s story about Tong burning her, or if he took a calculated risk by continuing to stay in contact with Camero. He liked travelling with Mitchell and sharing the Montreal apartment with her, but now he was almost out of money. There would be no more travel for pleasure or expensive restaurant meals until he robbed another bank. Mitchell returned to Toronto near the end of February, knowing Suchan would soon be following.
Lennie and Ann Jackson were still in their basement apartment on Lincoln Avenue, where Jackson was passing himself off as Fred Wilson, a salesman. The building’s caretakers, Laurette and Henri Côté, would see him leave the building each morning ab
out 10 and return between 5:30 and 6 p.m., usually carrying a briefcase. “I did question him as to what he did while he was away in the daytime,” said Ann, “but he accused me of nagging him and I did not question him further. He continued to carry his gun with him when he went out, with the exception of when he went to get a haircut. He would have to take his coat off and someone might see the gun.”
Shortly after Mitchell left for Toronto, Lennie and Ann invited Suchan to their apartment for dinner. The Jacksons had only two place settings, and Suchan brought his own plate and cutlery. “Why don’t I drive you over to see my apartment,” Suchan suggested after the meal. The three of them piled into his black Chrysler and drove to the Croydon Apartments. “The apartment was sparsely furnished with no curtains,” said Ann Jackson, “and it appeared to me as if he was living alone. He said he couldn’t afford to keep it any longer and he was going to move.”
A few days later, Suchan was on a train back to Toronto. He telephoned Anna Camero twice on Monday, March 3, and arrived at her house shortly before midnight. “He was alone and we remained up most of the night arguing,” said Camero. “I was not very satisfied with the way he had been treating me.”
Camero’s telephone rang the next morning about 7 a.m., and Suchan answered it. It was Lennie Jackson calling from the train station in Oshawa. He wanted Suchan to come and pick him up. Taking the train into Union Station in Toronto would be too dangerous. The call had awakened Anna Camero.
“I have to go and meet a friend,” said Suchan. “Can I borrow your car?” She handed him the keys. He returned to the house about 9:30 a.m. accompanied by Lennie Jackson, whom Camero still knew only as Freddie. He had been clean-shaven the last time she saw him, but now he had a moustache. He had also gained weight and was wearing horn-rimmed glasses. Jackson went to sleep in the back room while Suchan lay down in Camero’s room. Camero went into the living room with the baby. Jackson slept about an hour and then came into the living room, where he lay on the chesterfield and talked to her. Suchan slept until mid-afternoon.
Camero’s friend Betty Huluk was still living at the house and when she arrived after work she brought along a newspaper. Camero was busy with the baby and passed the paper to Suchan. She noticed Suchan and Jackson huddled in hushed but animated conversation over something they saw in the newspaper. “I found out later there was a headline about a robbery,” she said. “They said they were going out to get something to eat, and they returned before midnight.”
What Suchan and Jackson had seen in the newspaper was an account of Boyd’s heist of $24,696 from the Bank of Montreal at College and Manning. He had pulled it off without them. They met up with Boyd and Dorreen later that night.
“Suchan had run out of money completely,” says Boyd. “He had sold his car and he was just kind of marking time. I told them when they didn’t show up I went ahead with the robbery without them.” Dorreen told Suchan he wasn’t getting any of the money.
“Well I don’t want it,” said Suchan. “I’m not the one who robbed the bank.” Boyd says Suchan wanted a cut of the loot, but was in no position to ask for it after freezing him and Willie Jackson out when Joseph Lesso went off to Florida with their money.
Anna Camero was in bed by the time Suchan and Jackson returned to her house around midnight. During the day she had noticed on the dresser in her room a textbook on pistols and revolvers and the 1952 edition of Gun Digest. There was also a metal target and two air pistols in a box. “What is this?” she asked Suchan when he came in.
“Oh, it’s a set I got as a Christmas present,” he said.
On Wednesday, March 5, Suchan and Jackson got up about 10 a.m., borrowed Camero’s Monarch, and went out two or three times for short periods. In the afternoon they spent some time in Camero’s basement, and when they came up, each was carrying one of the air pistols.
“Are they harmful?” asked Camero.
“No,” said Suchan. “You can use darts or pellets with them. It’s not harmful.”
“Well what are you doing with them?”
“We were just trying them out.”
“Well as long as they’re not harmful. I wouldn’t want them around the house because my little girl could injure herself.”
A few days later she discovered that a life-size plaster “dummy head” and a papier-mâché torso, stored in the basement since her hairdressing days, had been damaged. The plaster head and the torso’s chest were riddled with holes. Steve Suchan and Lennie Jackson had used both for target practice.
24
In Cold Blood
On the morning of Thursday, March 6, Suchan and Jackson were up about 9 a.m. Anna Camero had already left the house. She had driven to Fern Avenue School to check into complaints that her daughter had been arriving late for school. When Camero returned, Suchan asked to borrow the car. Camero took pride in her 1951 black Monarch sedan with whitewall tires. She had purchased it new from Elgin Motors, and she took good care of it. Now it had some minor scrapes and dents, and she blamed Suchan. They argued about it for a while, but as usual, she gave in to him. She couldn’t find her keys and gave him a spare set from her dresser drawer. Suchan and Jackson left, but returned a short time later, handing her the keys.
Camero’s friend, Betty Huluk, had the afternoon off and arrived home from work about 12:30 p.m. Her room was the first off the hallway, and on this day she left her door open. At about 12:45 she saw Suchan and Jackson go out the front door. She didn’t notice that they were carrying bulging briefcases.
There has been a lot of speculation about where Suchan and Jackson were headed on that fateful day. Suchan would testify in court later that he was driving Jackson to the bus station on Bay Street for a trip to Oshawa, where he would catch the train to Montreal. But Jackson knew that the bus station was just as dangerous for him as Union Station, which he had avoided when he arrived in Toronto. He knew from his days at the Horseshoe that Tong had informants everywhere, and he knew that his picture and Boyd’s were likely posted at the bus terminal. If he was planning to return to Montreal, why wouldn’t Suchan simply drive him to the train station in Oshawa, where he had picked him up? On a more mundane level, since he was travelling without luggage, why would he leave his custom-tailored sports jacket hanging in Camero’s house? The more likely scenario is that he and Suchan were intent on either robbing a bank that day, or casing a bank to rob later. Both of them were out of money, and they certainly weren’t about to go out and look for work. Jackson’s new wife was pregnant, and he may have wanted to move east or west to start a new life. If so, he couldn’t do it without a stake, and the quickest, easiest way to get one was to rob a bank. They had the experience and the guns. And hadn’t Boyd, just two days before, walked out of a bank with almost $25,000 for three minutes’ work, using two rookie accomplices?
Whatever their plans, it is known that Suchan found Camero’s car keys, and that he and Jackson drove off from Wright Avenue shortly before 1 p.m. They had failed to heed Mary Mitchell’s warning that she had told Sergeant of Detectives Edmund Tong that Anna Camero’s 1951 black Monarch sedan, license No. 418-A-2, was being used by unnamed criminals to transport stolen property to Montreal.
Tong and his partner, Detective-Sergeant Roy Perry, had been watching the Monarch for several days, but had yet to see anyone driving it. Tong had told Perry only that the car was owned by a woman, whom he wasn’t yet ready to question. “I have information that the car is sometimes driven by someone other than the owner,” he told Perry.
Perry and Tong were driving north on Roncesvalles Avenue when they saw a black Monarch pull out from Wright Avenue just ahead of them. “Get on him – that might be it,” said Tong to Perry, who was driving the police cruiser.
There were several cars between them and the Monarch, and they weren’t close enough to check the licence number or see who was driving. They followed as the car turned east off Roncesvalles and took several side streets before emerging on Dundas Street West. There, the officer
s got close enough to confirm that the licence number was the one they were looking for and that two males were in the front seat. Both cars continued east and entered College Street. As the Monarch approached the intersection at Lansdowne, Suchan began to slow as he saw cars in front of him stopping for a red light. Behind him, Perry decided to make a move and pulled beside the other car. Tong rolled down his window.
“Pull over to the curb, boys,” he said.
The cars were no more than three or four feet apart. Suchan and Tong had never met and didn’t know each other. Whether Jackson recognized Tong’s voice or caught a glimpse of him will never be known. Nor is there any way of knowing whether Tong could see Lennie on the other side of Suchan. And even if he could, would he have recognized him with the moustache and glasses? Suchan must have known, however, that it was a police car. Who else would be pulling him over? And he quickly realized that if he stopped, his world would completely unravel. Both he and Jackson were armed. He was harbouring an escaped fugitive. He had harboured Edwin Alonzo Boyd, who was on the RCMP’s most-wanted list. And he had participated in several bank robberies. There were plenty of witnesses. He could be picked out of a police line-up. All of these thoughts must have been tumbling through Suchan’s mind as he slowly eased the Monarch to the curb. The police car was still beside him, but it had stopped and its hood was adjacent to the Monarch’s rear fender. By now the light had turned green and the cars behind were moving around them and through the intersection. Suchan gripped his .455 Smith & Wesson revolver.
Tong got out and approached the Monarch. When he was within three or four feet, he seemed to hesitate and twist his body in a half-turn to the right. Perry heard a shot at the same time and saw Tong fall heavily, face down, to the pavement. The bullet had entered his chest slightly below the left nipple, passing through his lung, severing his spinal cord, and lodging under his right shoulder-blade. As Perry yanked at the emergency brake, a bullet ripped through the right-hand side of the windshield past his ear. Instinctively, he threw up his right arm to protect his head. He saw a flash as the driver fired again. More shots followed as he tried to get out of the cruiser. Suddenly he felt a sharp pain and his right arm went numb as a bullet struck him between the wrist and the elbow. If his arm hadn’t been raised he likely would have been shot in the head.
