Edwin Alonzo Boyd

by Brian Vallee

  As reporters bombarded police officials with questions about the capture, Lamport was in a corner getting the names of the officers involved in the capture. The mayor could barely contain himself as he posed with Chisholm and Inspector of Detectives Alex McCathie. “My God, chief,” shouted Lamport, “wouldn’t this just make you cry. I’m so happy.”

  Then Lamport, Chisholm, and McCathie headed for the basement cells for a chat with the Boyd Gang. The three cells were in a guarded room with a heavy steel door and grate. Boyd was in the first cell, Suchan and Willie Jackson in the second, and Leonard Jackson in the third. The prisoners had received sandwiches and coffee, and except for Lennie were in good spirits.

  Ever since the capture the police had been questioning the gang about the morning shoot-out in Scarborough. Over and over they denied any involvement. When McCathie or Chisholm asked about it again in the cells, Boyd said, “I’m telling you rightly, we weren’t in on it and don’t know anything about it.”

  Reporters outside could hear Lamport lecturing the prisoners. “You can’t beat society this way,” he said.

  “But remember,” said Boyd, “we didn’t shoot anybody. We didn’t hurt anyone.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll get fair treatment,” said Lamport.

  In conversation with Lennie Jackson, the mayor asked: “Wasn’t the pressure pretty tough?”

  “It certainly was,” said Lennie. “I wish they’d got me. I wish it was tonight.” Jackson told the mayor that it wasn’t until two weeks before the break that they were able to talk Boyd into leaving the Don Jail with them.

  Outside the jail, the crowd had swollen so much that traffic was blocked on Yonge Street. Uniformed officers and detectives from North York and Toronto continued to patrol the grounds of the station, some of them still carrying machine-guns and shotguns. The crowd was in a raucous mood, and many – mostly teenagers – began chanting, “We want Boyd! We want Boyd!” Inside, Boyd could hear the chanting. He smiled, and winked at one of the detectives guarding him.

  Lamport remembers well the night of the capture. “I went up to North York to see them right away. They were very respectful to me. They knew damn well I meant business. They were a hell of a bunch of good-looking men. They looked more like bank managers or company executives, but they tried to make money the easy way. Unfortunately that’s not the way it turns out. They always get caught. They outsmart themselves. I don’t know why they took those girls along. They were getting away with so much, they got careless. Boyd was too smart for his own good.”

  Boyd’s take on Lamport is that “he just wanted publicity. He wasn’t too interested in us. He was interested in the pictures. He used every device he could to get his picture in the paper.”

  At an impromptu press conference after his meeting with the prisoners, Lamport said the capture had been a disheartening experience for the gang. “They’re a bunch of whipped lambs tonight, and I rubbed it in. Leonard Jackson is about ready to throw in the sponge.”

  Jocko Thomas was among the reporters who had arrived at the North York jail. For the first time he found that the newspapers were facing serious competition from television. “We thought that television was being given a little too much leeway by the police. They were anxious to get the television reporter in there to set up his cameras and photograph Boyd behind the bars. They were let in first. We had to wait our turn.”

  Thomas found that none of the four prisoners had much to say. “It was really just a photo opportunity for the papers to take a picture of the reporter talking to Boyd or the Jacksons and Suchan behind bars.”

  The next day the Telegram described Lennie in his cell: “Leonard Jackson, furthest from the door, looked like a wild man, and now and then let out a loud laugh. His woolly hair was in disarray. He was suffering badly from asthma.”

  A doctor was called in to look at Lennie, who was still wheezing and struggling for breath. The doctor gave him some pills. Thomas says that although Lennie Jackson wasn’t well, “he was quite cocky. That was his natural manner. He was what was known as a cop-hater. Boyd would not be a cop-hater because his father was a policeman.” Boyd, in contrast, seemed relaxed.

  From behind his cell door Boyd asked a reporter, “Do you have a good car?”

  The puzzled reporter said he did. A late model.

  “Do you keep it filled with gas?” asked Boyd.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s fine. Keep it that way. I’ll need it to get out of Kingston next year.”

  Boyd’s comments were the grist for more headlines the next day. The papers gave him celebrity treatment as the circulation war turned white-hot again. All of the papers ran huge headlines and dozens of photos and stories about the capture. One entire page in the Telegram was filled with a portrait-style photograph of Boyd staring out pensively from behind the bars of his cell. Possibly, the Telegram was playing one-upmanship with the Star, which had run a similar photo of Boyd that filled all but the bottom two inches of a page.

  While the Boyd Gang was being held in the modern cells in North York, workers were labouring through the night to make their old cells at the Don Jail “Boyd-proof,” in the words of one jail official. The bars in the window they had escaped through were replaced with new, saw-resistant ones from Taylor’s Safe Works. And instead of regular jail guards, a special squad of seven OPP officers – including a sergeant and a corporal – were to guard the four prisoners round the clock – the first time in the history of the jail that police were brought in for day-and-night guard duty.

  As soon as word of the capture got out, hundreds gathered at the Don Jail hoping for a glimpse of the gang. The crowd finally began to disperse after 11 p.m. when a police inspector told them they would not be returned from North York until morning.

  32

  On Trial

  There were no thoughts of escape when the Boyd Gang returned to the same cells they had sawed their way out of eight days earlier. Now they had new bars and twenty-four-hour armed guards. In addition, Reform Institutions Minister John Foote said that “all privileges will be taken away from these men. They will not be allowed newspapers or magazines, and there will be no more card-playing.”

  All the Boyd Gang trials, including those of its peripheral members, began on September 22, in the third-floor courtrooms of the City Hall building on Queen Street West. Suchan and Leonard Jackson went on trial in Supreme Court before Mr. Justice James McRuer, while Boyd and the others appeared in County Court before Judge Robert Forsyth. The gang was transported between the courts and the Don Jail in heavily armed police convoys. They entered the building’s inner courtyard off Albert Street and from there were escorted in manacles to the basement cells. When the court convened, they were taken up the elevator to the courtrooms while dozens of police officers armed with shotguns lined the corridors.

  All of the trials would be over in less than three weeks, during which the newspapers were again flooded with Boyd Gang stories and photos. “In those days production was much faster,” says Jocko Thomas. “I’d send something over from the courts at City Hall at one o’clock and it would be in the paper by the time I picked it up at two o’clock. Pneumatic tubes ran under the street from City Hall right down to the Star office at 80 King Street West. The Telegram had the same thing. You put your stories in little containers and shoved them into the tube in the press room. City Hall and court stories occupied quite a bit of the newspaper space in those days.”

  For the duration of the trials, the Toronto Police Department kept the Don Jail under heavy guard. Inspector Charlie Greenwood was in charge of the police detail. Jack Webster was working in the traffic division at the time, and it was from traffic that Greenwood got most of his manpower. Greenwood was a notorious disciplinarian and was feared by most officers on the force. Problem officers were transferred to Greenwood’s No. 8 Station for discipline. “That was before the Police Association had any real power,” says Webster. “It didn’t matter where you lived in the cit
y, you would be sent to No. 8 at Queen and Pape. The first thing Greenwood did was put you on nights for three straight months.”

  Webster says he and other officers hated duty at the Don. “It was so boring. You just stood around all the time.” Each night during the trials, about forty officers ringed the jail. Webster smoked in those days and Greenwood, a nonsmoker, didn’t allow his men to smoke while on duty.

  One cold and rainy night, Webster had just lit a cigarette when Greenwood’s voice boomed out of the darkness: “Put that out!” Webster was surprised to see him. “It wasn’t unusual to have a patrol sergeant come around when you were working,” he says. “But not an inspector in the middle of the night.”

  “What’s your name?” asked Greenwood.

  “Webster, sir.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “Inspector Greenwood.”

  “Well, put that down in your book – visit from Inspector Greenwood, 3:10 a.m.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Webster mumbled under his breath as Greenwood walked away. Webster was relieved when Greenwood didn’t take further action.

  As the trials got under way, Edwin Boyd, who had originally decided to plead not guilty to all charges, changed his mind after he was found guilty in the $49,270 Leaside robbery. He knew the evidence against him was overwhelming on most of the remaining charges.

  He pleaded guilty to eight of the bank robberies and related car thefts, and to one charge of attempted bank robbery.

  That left two charges still pending – the $4,300 robbery of the Dundas–Roncesvalles branch of the Bank of Toronto, and the $10,000 robbery of the Birchcliff branch of the same bank. The eyewitness identification of Boyd in the Dundas–Roncesvalles robbery was questionable and he was found not guilty, and the Crown decided not to proceed on the Birchcliff charge, since the other accused, Steve Suchan, was facing capital murder charges.

  After Boyd pleaded guilty, Sergeant of Detectives Dolph Payne went into the witness box and gave Judge Forsyth a detailed account of how Boyd had planned and carried out the robberies, using stolen getaway vehicles. But all of his comments about Boyd weren’t negative. “He’s a very safe man with a gun,” said the detective. “And he has less respect for his own life than for the lives of the people he robs or the police.” Payne said Boyd had been fired on many times, but had returned fire only once – when he shot over the head of the bank manager who fired at him during the aborted Imperial Bank robbery, at Fairlawn and Avenue Road on October 11, 1950.

  “Boyd had great opportunities to fire on me, but never did,” said Payne, who was so overcome with emotion as he started to recall the Heath Street capture that he could not continue. A recess was called, and Payne explained later that he believed he owed his life to Boyd because Boyd could have shot him during the capture in the apartment.

  During the two and a half weeks of the trials, Jack Webster one day was assigned to the holding cells in the basement of City Hall. As he stood outside Boyd’s cell he remembered his early days on the police force when he worked with Glover Boyd, who used to brag about his son overseas in the army.

  “You know, I knew your father,” said Webster.

  “Did you?”

  “Yes, I walked the beat with him in Parkdale – No. 6 Station.”

  Webster said Boyd found the information interesting and they talked a while longer.

  “You know,” said Webster, “your father was very proud of you.”

  “Well he should still be proud of me,” said Boyd with a slight smile. “My picture’s been on the front page of every newspaper in Canada.”

  Webster said Boyd made the comment “in sort of a facetious way.”

  Boyd knew he was facing a long prison term, but what troubled him most was the fate of his brother Norman, who was facing two charges of armed robbery and one charge of harbouring. He felt responsible for his brother’s legal problems.

  On Friday, September 26, Norman Boyd was found guilty of harbouring. On Monday morning he was back in court to face armed robbery charges for the $46,270 hold-up of the Leaside Royal Bank. In one of the few moments of levity at the series of Boyd Gang trials, Norman Boyd said he had lent his Austin to Dorreen Boyd.

  “But that car was registered in her name,” said the Crown counsel.

  “It was her car in name only,” said Norman. He said he had switched it to Dorreen Boyd’s name because after he lent her the car she had received numerous tickets for driving the wrong way on one-way streets.

  “I thought she might as well pay the tickets herself,” he said. His comments brought laughter in the courtroom. Edwin Boyd smiled broadly in the dock and glanced at his wife, who also smiled.

  Norman and Edwin Boyd and Willie Jackson were all found guilty of the robbery. Norman was stunned by the verdict. He had been doing survey work with the City of Toronto’s sewer department that day – even his boss had testified to that. But he had been convicted, and still faced one more charge of armed robbery. After his experience with the jury in the first case, he decided to be tried by judge alone. The charge stemmed from the robbery of the Dominion Bank on Sheppard Avenue East in September 1951.

  At the trial, Norman testified that while questioning him about the robbery, Dolph Payne took him into a room, slapped his face and said, “You’re the man we’re looking for.” And on the same day, he said, Payne had banged a belt on the table beside him and said, “Okay, we’ll make you talk.” Payne denied the allegations on the witness stand.

  But Norman Boyd stands by the allegation that Payne struck and threatened him. “That was normal police practice,” he says. “I think anybody who was arrested went through the same kind of thing. That’s the way they got their evidence. You might call it torture, you might not. I guess it’s a matter of opinion.”

  Judge Forsyth said that the case against Norman Boyd in the Dominion Bank robbery was difficult. There was conflicting evidence that raised some doubt, “and the benefit of the doubt must be given to the accused.” By acquitting, Judge Forsyth may have been redressing the injustice of the jury decision in Norman’s earlier armed robbery trial.

  Thursday, October 16, was a crisp, sunny day with light winds. The Boyd Gang had been recaptured exactly one month before. It was the day of reckoning for Edwin Alonzo Boyd, Willie “the Clown” Jackson, and the six others with connections to the Boyd Gang, including Boyd’s brother Norman, Steve Suchan’s parents, Willie Jackson’s brother and brother-in-law, and Leonard Jackson’s sister, Mary Mitchell.

  All eight faced Judge Robert Forsyth in the General Sessions Court at City Hall. The first to be sentenced were Joseph and Elizabeth Lesso, parents of Steve Suchan, who were charged with harbouring Edwin Boyd and Willie Jackson after their first escape. Joseph Lesso had been held in custody and was brought up from the cells. His wife had been free on bail. At the sentencing hearing, Crown counsel A.O. Klein said that Joseph Lesso had been convicted of beating his wife three years earlier, but explained he was suffering from mental illness at the time.

  The defence counsel, Lou Herman, said that Joseph Lesso was “in a desperate position” with his son facing the death penalty for the murder of Eddie Tong, and that Lesso’s harbouring of Boyd was a case of “overindulgence as regards his son.” Lesso, he said, had been forced to take out a second mortgage on his house to help pay for his son’s defence, and if he drew a jail term he would lose his home. Lesso had been in custody for thirty-nine days and, said Herman,

  “that is surely punishment enough and would serve all the ends of justice.”

  Elizabeth Lesso’s lawyer was Lou Herman’s brother, Carl. He said that his client had a four-year-old son at home and asked for a suspended sentence. It she were sent to jail, there would be no one at home to look after the boy.

  Judge Forsyth was not swayed. He sentenced Joseph Lesso to nine months in jail, and Elizabeth Lesso to six months indeterminate, meaning she could be released at any time on good behaviour.

  Twenty-eight-year-old Mary M
itchell, composed and stylishly dressed, was next to appear before Forsyth. She was also charged with harbouring Boyd and Willie Jackson after their escape from the Don. Crown counsel Klein said she had no previous criminal record until the conviction for harbouring Edwin Boyd, “a very dangerous man.”

  The defence lawyer, Frank Nasso, said that Mitchell’s “primary interest” had been Steve Suchan and not Edwin Boyd, even though she had harboured him in her Montreal apartment and at the Sunnyside Motor Hotel, where she had arranged rooms for him. “She should be sentenced apart from all the others,” said Nasso. And in sentencing her “no consideration should be given to what the others have done.” He said she had quit Suchan’s company in February 1952 and had done nothing to help Boyd after that. Nasso asked for a suspended sentence; instead Judge Forsyth sentenced Mitchell to six months indeterminate – the same as Elizabeth Lesso.

  Next to be brought into Forsyth’s courtroom were Edwin and Norman Boyd, Willie and Joseph Jackson, and Allister Gibson. They were shackled to detectives and to each other, and there was barely room in the prisoner’s box for all of them. Boyd managed a wan smile to Dorreen as he was brought into the courtroom.

  Each of the five men was dealt with in turn by the court. Gibson had been found guilty of the $24,000 Bank of Montreal robbery at College and Manning on March 4, 1952. He had been paid $1,000 for the job. His lawyer said his client was truly repentant, and except for a conviction for break and entry in 1944, he had never been in trouble until the bank robbery. Forsyth sentenced Gibson to eight years in penitentiary.

  Joseph Jackson, convicted in the same robbery, was sentenced to ten years. His lawyer said he was “easily led.”

  Norman Boyd, found guilty of armed robbery in the Leaside hold-up of November 30, 1951, had no previous record, and the jury had recommended leniency. Lawyer Fred McMahon, who represented both Boyds, said Norman had studied engineering for two years after the war and had a solid employment record. McMahon added that there was “a very strong brothers’ affection” between the Boyds, and that it was affection rather than any criminal intent that had led to the harbouring. Also, he said, Dorreen Boyd had asked for his assistance and he had given it; thus Norman had been helping her rather than helping his brother escape police.