by Brian Vallee
Brand ordered that the oak door remain open at all times except during meal parade, when other prisoners went through No. 9 corridor on their way to the dining room. He wanted it closed then so that Boyd and the others couldn’t receive contraband or pass messages. With the oak door open the rest of the time, the guard on the landing in front of No. 9 Hospital had a full view of the corridor in front of the four cells. And he could also see into the front portion of the first cell – Willie Jackson’s. Willie often stood at the door of his cell joking with the guard on duty.
There had been a general tightening of security under Brand. He had eliminated bowling in the corridors because it had been used as a ruse to distract the guards while Boyd and Willie Jackson were sawing bars. He had abolished the playing of quoits in the exercise yard because it was thought that outsiders might insert a saw blade into a rubber-hose ring and toss it over the wall. And the blankets covering the card tables in the corridors had been ordered removed because it was thought they could be used to subdue a guard.
Brand had also installed an alarm system that would sound in the radio room of police headquarters on College Street, bringing fifty officers to the jail within minutes. Switches for the system were located in Brand’s office, at his residence, and in the jail’s main rotunda. Brand was just as worried about criminals breaking into the Don or his home in an effort to free their friends, as he was about escapes from the inside.
Also, Brand had an officer patrolling the grounds outside the walls throughout the night. Two or three times a night a scout car from the Toronto Police Department would check with the guard, who duly reported the police visits in his notebook.
In late summer, as the trial date for the Boyd Gang neared, Brand was approached by Inspector Charlie Greenwood, who was in charge of No. 8 Police Station on Pape Avenue just north of Queen Street East. The Don Jail fell within the boundaries of his division, and he offered to station two policemen at the rear of the jail to improve security at night. Brand was delighted with the offer. As a further precaution, Brand agreed to block off the rear laneway running between the jail and Riverdale Isolation Hospital. The lane was on jail property, but the public had been using it as a short-cut to Broadview Avenue. The two police officers assigned by Greenwood would ensure that barricades installed at both ends of the lane were not breached.
The Boyd Gang at first were fed in their cells, but Brand thought it was risky to have a guard carry the food in to each of them. And when the guard returned to the landing, the angle was such that he couldn’t observe them eating. Brand worried that the eating utensils might be used for some nefarious purpose. He decided to set up a table with benches in the narrow corridor in front of the cells. All four men could now be watched as they ate, and the table could be used for playing cards as well.
“So all of a sudden, there we are – the four of us,” says Boyd. “And the next thing you know, the superintendent lets us walk up and down in front of the cells all day, and they give us a table and benches and a deck of cards and a pencil to keep score.”
At first the four men had to exercise in their tiny corridor, and for security reasons they were issued felt slippers with thin soles instead of the regulation prison boots. In August, however, Brand decided that they would be taken to the jail’s exercise yard for an hour a day, except Sundays. But they would not be allowed to exercise with the other inmates. And to keep them off balance, they never knew what time of day they would be taken out to the yard. It could be early or late morning, or early or late afternoon. For Boyd, Suchan, and the Jacksons it was a relief to get out of the corridor. For Brand, it was an opportunity to have each of their cells thoroughly searched each day.
Since they were now using the exercise yard, Boyd and the others were issued boots, but their slippers were not taken from them. Lennie Jackson had special socks without heels to wear over his stump, but his prosthesis had been confiscated, and Boyd doesn’t remember if he was allowed to wear it during the daily exercise period. “I don’t recall if he used his artificial foot in the yard or if he rigged up something else,” says Boyd. “I know he didn’t have it in his cell.” The men were handcuffed together in pairs for the daily walk around the bullring – the cement path circling the perimeter of the exercise yard. Boyd was usually paired with Willie, and Suchan with Lennie.
A lot more than handcuffs bound Steve Suchan and Lennie Jackson together. They had known each other longer than the others, they were both facing capital murder charges, and they had both been gunned down by police in Montreal. Suchan had lived with Lennie’s sister, and they were both recent first-time fathers (Ann Jackson had given birth to a son on August 10, 1952). Lennie treated Suchan like a kid brother, and apparently bore no grudge against him for his impulsive act of violence, which might soon leave both of them dangling at the end of a rope.
As soon as Willie and the others arrived in the cells at No. 9 Hospital, Boyd warned them that their conversations were being monitored by the overhead microphone. They realized it was a two-way system when somebody inadvertently hit the wrong switch and a short conversation from Brand’s office was piped into the cells. On another occasion Brand’s voice came through the speaker: “Suchan, your lawyer will be in to see you this afternoon.”
Life in No. 9 Hospital had improved considerably for Boyd since he first arrived in mid-March. From being alone and depressed with zero privileges, he now had three relatively congenial cellmates, with Willie always providing the entertainment. His cell was unlocked from 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. He had unlimited reading material. He could wander in and out of his cell into the small corridor at will. He was allowed a full hour of exercise in the yard every day but Sunday. And his meals were delivered to his cell, which spared him from the assembly-line feedings that other inmates had to face three times a day.
Most of the guards treated Boyd and the others with cautious deference. Two or three were downright friendly. The guards were only human, after all. To them, besides being dangerous criminals, the Boyd Gang members were also celebrities. Wasn’t the whole country talking about them? And weren’t the guards’ friends fascinated and impressed when it slipped out that they saw the infamous inmates just about every day – actually spoke with them?
Guard Murray Clarke treated the members of the Boyd Gang in a civil manner, but as far as he was concerned they were criminals just like all the rest, and he didn’t trust them. He had been a guard at the Don for eight years, and before that a policeman in Britain for eight years. His first conversation with Ed Boyd came after a thorough search of the four cells in No. 9 Hospital while the inmates were out for their daily exercise. Clarke had stood on their beds while searching the cells.
“Do you wear size nine boots?” asked Boyd on his return from the yard.
“Yes I do,” said Clarke.
“Then you are the man who has been searching our beds.”
“No. I don’t search your beds.”
“Well you left your footprints on top of the blankets. You have no respect for our beds.”
Clarke stayed off their beds after that, and Boyd became more friendly. “Where do you live?” asked Boyd one day.
“In the east end of Toronto near the Nash plant,” said Clarke.
Boyd smiled. “Well they make good cars, the Nash people do. I know because I own one. I drove it back and forth to Montreal a few times with no problems at all.”
Clarke knew Suchan best of all because he had been one of the three men assigned to guard him while he was recovering from his wounds at Toronto General. And when Suchan had visitors at the Don it was usually Clarke who accompanied him to the visitors’ room. Suchan felt comfortable with Clarke, despite Clarke’s businesslike approach to his job. When Suchan arrived back at the Don after attending a prolonged line-up session at police headquarters, Clarke was waiting to escort him to his cell.
“Where were you?” asked Clarke.
“A police line-up,” said Suchan.
“What was the
reason for that?”
“Well, they fingered me for a bank hold-up.”
“And is it true?” smiled Clarke.
“Well it might be.”
“What are you going to do with all the money from these hold-ups?”
“Do you want some of it?” asked Suchan, his voice suddenly serious.
“Yeah, sure I do.” said Clarke.
“Could you use $5,000? You’d get it in twenties, tens, and fives.”
“Certainly I could use it.”
“You’ll have to do something for it.”
“What would you like done for $5,000?”
What Suchan wanted was for Clarke to spirit him out to the service yard in one of the jail’s oversized garbage pails.
“Well, are you interested?” asked Suchan.
“No, $5,000 doesn’t interest me,” said Clarke. “Not the kind of money you handle.”
Clarke reported Suchan’s bribery attempt to Brand. Nothing much could be done about it, but it became a running joke between Suchan and the guard. Clarke certainly wasn’t humourless, and he particularly enjoyed the antics and jokes of Willie Jackson.
Boyd continued to read his Bible and other religious books and pamphlets, which were supplied to him by a visiting clergyman. He had decided to change his life, and he was looking for spiritual guidance. But he was also keeping his options open, and he and Willie Jackson continued praying to the Devil.
“I just took things day by day,” says Boyd. “I would fast for a while and meditate, but not as much as before.”
He and the others were also studying their situation. Lennie Jackson wanted out, and Boyd was prepared to help him. He felt he owed him, since Lennie had provided the saw blades for the first escape and was now in a tight situation. “I would have gone straight if I had not felt obligated to help these guys,” says Boyd. “I know now I shouldn’t have helped them. I didn’t care what happened to Suchan, but I thought Len deserved a chance to get out of there.”
The four inmates were quick to see that there was a major gap in the security measures in place against them. From about 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. the oak door leading to their corridor was shut and locked and the guards simply disappeared. The deputy warden and others would tell the Royal Commission that because the jail was short-staffed, the guards had to leave their post to start breakfast and to rouse whatever prisoners had to get ready for morning court appearances. The police department had a patrol at the jail at 6:45 a.m., ready to transport the prisoners to police cells in the court building.
The guards were so busy that the inmates going to court were expected to make their way to the first-floor marshalling point without an escort. When there were no guards on the landing at No. 9 Hospital, the oak door was kept locked to prevent passing prisoners from communicating with the Boyd Gang.
All of this was news to Brand, according to his testimony before the Royal Commission. He said it did not require the services of all the men on duty to prepare the prisoners for court and get breakfast started. Further, if the oak door was closed between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m., “they were not carrying out my orders, because my orders were definite. There was no reason for their not having a man on that door.” Brand’s testimony was disputed by others, who said that locking the oak door had always been the practice and that Brand must have been aware of it.
Having a two-hour “safe period” wasn’t much good to the Boyd Gang if they couldn’t get out of their cells to get at the bars. And if they did get out of the cells, they would need saw blades to cut through the bars. This time they couldn’t depend on Lennie Jackson’s artificial foot. There wasn’t much they could do. The visits by close friends and family were monitored too closely, and there was no access to other prisoners who might have been ready to help them. It seemed hopeless, but Boyd and Willie Jackson continued praying to the Devil.
One day Willie returned from a visit with his court-appointed lawyer. He approached Boyd with a big smile. He couldn’t say much in the corridor with the microphone overhead, but in the exercise yard he revealed his good news. Willie said that the lawyer had told him he wasn’t optimistic about Willie’s chances in court, but he was willing to help him get out of jail – for a fee. Willie quickly agreed that the lawyer would be paid $10,000 from the gang’s first two bank robberies once they escaped. The lawyer, who is still alive, vehemently denies that any such discussion took place.
Boyd couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Their prayers to the Devil were working. Meetings between lawyers and their clients were considered privileged, and the guards stood outside the door of the visitors’ room while they occurred. Boyd says that Willie brought him a small piece of flat steel and a file, which Willie told him came from the lawyer. Boyd planned to fashion a key from the piece of metal.
Boyd’s cell was littered with religious books and pamphlets, and when the guards and turnkeys conducted searches, they paid more attention to Lennie Jackson’s and Suchan’s cells. For some time Boyd had studied his cell looking for a perfect hiding place. He found it in the wooden base of the toilet at the back of his cell. He was able to loosen a small piece of board in the base, and discovered a tiny hollow behind it. He slipped the steel strip and the file into the hollow and replaced the board. The base of a toilet wasn’t a guard’s favourite place to search.
Over the next few days Boyd and the others stole glimpses at the key the guards used to open their cells in the morning and lock them in at night. Studying the key gave Boyd a general idea of its shape and notches, but it wasn’t enough that he could begin filing. Willie Jackson came up with the answer. One night, as guard Murray Clarke was preparing to lock them in their cells, Willie grabbed the key attached to the ring on Clarke’s belt. “Let me lock Suchan in,” laughed Willie. “Just for fun.”
“Come on Willie, you know I can’t allow you to do that,” said Clarke. Willie released the key, laughed, and went into his cell. The moment Clarke left the corridor, Willie opened his hand. He had held the key so tightly the marks were still there. Grabbing a pencil, Willie held his hand up and quickly reproduced the exact shape of the key on the metal wall. Now that he had a pattern to work from, Boyd began shaping a key from the piece of steel, hiding it and the file at the base of the toilet when he wasn’t working on it.
The sound of Boyd filing was barely audible, but without covering noise, the microphone would pick it up. While he worked, the toilet was flushed more than usual and conversations were more animated. Sometimes there were prolonged manufactured arguments.
It wasn’t long before Boyd was ready to try the replica key. To allow them access to a toilet, one of the cells was left open each day while the four inmates were in the corridor. The other three cells were locked until the prisoners were returned to their cells for the night. While the others distracted the guard, Boyd inserted the key into the lock on the door of the open cell. When he turned it, the bolt slid out smoothly. Boyd was elated, but when he turned the key back to the original position, the bolt didn’t budge. He tried again and again but it didn’t move. “You could get it out, but you couldn’t get it back in,” recalls Boyd with a chuckle. He removed the key. Willie Jackson was frantic. “He didn’t know what to do,” says Boyd.
The guard who had let them out of their cells went off shift at 3 p.m. His replacement saw the bolt sticking out from the lock when he arrived to lock them into their cells for the night.
“What the hell’s going on here?” he asked.
“I guess the guy this morning turned the key the wrong way when he took it out,” shrugged Boyd. The guard accepted the explanation without comment and locked the men in their cells.
The next morning, as they were being let out of their cells, Boyd and Willie studied the jailer’s key to see where they had gone wrong. Both of them saw it at once. The operative parts of the key were its four teeth. What they had missed was a tiny notch between the second and third teeth. “There was this little indentation, about a sixteenth of an inch or so,” sa
ys Boyd. “It didn’t take long to shape that out, and then it was perfect.” Perfect indeed. The next time he tried the key, the bolt slid in and out effortlessly, and just as important, it barely made a sound.
Now the prisoners in No. 9 Hospital could, at will, let themselves in and out of their cells. They turned their attention to the bars. Boyd says Willie told him that the lawyer readily supplied a hacksaw blade to Willie, which he worked into the waistband of his denim trousers.
Boyd was delighted with the saw blade. “It was a new type of material that seemed to get sharper as you used it. I had never seen anything like that.” The blade was too long for the hollow at the base of Boyd’s toilet, but there were plenty of hiding places in the cracks of the corridor’s ninety-year-old hardwood floor. Boyd chose a deep but narrow crack in front of Lennie’s cell close to the back stone wall. The guards barely glanced at the floor during their searches. They were more interested in the inmates’ cells.
Boyd’s strategy was for him and Willie to work on the bars for no more than half an hour, between 5:30 and 6 a.m., except Fridays and Saturdays when there was no court and the guards didn’t have to assemble prisoners for the police transport.
After the oak door was shut in the mornings, Boyd would wait a few moments and then reach through the bars and slowly and silently turn the key to open his cell door. The microphone was a constant worry, and they knew it would have to be neutralized before they could saw the bars. Their solution was to quietly move the table directly under the vent screen covering the microphone. Suchan and Lennie Jackson then climbed onto the table and took turns holding a pillow over the screen. Boyd and Willie Jackson moved one of the two benches to the top of the radiator, to use as a platform while they were sawing. They used the other bench as a step to get to the first bench.
Boyd plugged the sink in his cell to soften part of a bar of prison-issue red carbolic soap in a couple of inches of water. Using the soap as a lubricant, he began sawing the first bar under the faint glow of the dim ceiling bulb in the adjoining antechamber. In the first escape, only one bar had had to be removed. But these were double-bars, so at least two would have to come out. What they didn’t realize was that the crossbars were lower than the one in their previous escape. That meant the hole would be smaller.
