.jpg;w=960;h=640;bgcolor=000000)
The Boyd Gang was a group of notorious bank robbers back in the 1950s. Edwin Boyd was not the actual leader, but he was the Hollywood-handsome member, so the press focused on him.
Besides Boyd, the gang’s members were Willie Jackson, Lennie Jackson (no relation) and Valent Lesso (a.k.a. Steve Suchan). Lennie Jackson, a hairdresser from Niagara Falls, was the real leader.
The gang focused on banks, mostly in the Toronto area.
But one day, in 1951, they came to Bradford Ontario.
That day, provincial constable Reg Wilson was off duty, in civilian clothes, and walking along Holland Street West, away from Barrie Street (old Highway 11). He had just left his home at the corner of Holland and Barrie streets and was a few stores west. Interestingly, his home was an apartment above the Canadian Bank of Commerce.
Wilson testified at a later preliminary hearing he noticed something strange — two men approaching the bank, wearing bulging coats. The pair turned away from him and waited for him to pass, then continued walking toward the bank and through its front door.
Once in the bank, the two men instructed the people inside, including the tellers, to get down.
Grace Moriarty, a bank ledger keeper, testified she was “compelled to lie on the dirty floor in my white dress.”
In the meantime, Wilson testified, “I ran back to my apartment door, (entered and) closed the door and pulled the curtain back.”
He then saw a black car pull around the corner, coming south from Barrie Street and turning west on Holland.
“I saw a third man get out and go to the bank door. I ran upstairs for my revolver. As I came out, I saw three men heading for the car. As they were entering the car, I fired a shot at them. One turned and fired a shot at the bank entrance. I fired another shot and this time they spotted me. One fired back at me and I backed into my doorway.”
He ducked for cover and heard a few more shots fired from the car.
“By this time the car was in motion and one of the three men was leaning out the front window, firing his pistol. I fired one more shot as the car passed me.”
Two bullets the robbers fired at Wilson were close — one above his head went through the window over the door, and the other hit the wall a few feet from where he was standing. Clearly, at least one member of the Boyd Gang was a good shot, given these were fired quickly from a handgun and at least one from a moving car.
The getaway vehicle raced down Holland Street to Moore Street and turned right, heading north, then made a quick right again at John Street, heading east, toward Barrie Street. It then turned right on Barrie, heading south and back to the scene of the crime. And, oddly, toward the Bradford police station, which was at the same intersection as the bank, on the opposite corner.
The car drove past the bank and the police station and made a left, heading east and south on Holland Street East.
Wilson said Jackson was the man behind the wheel and Watson was the man he’d seen get out of the car after getting to his apartment.
Wilson later said he wasn’t sure if any of his shots hit any of the suspects. “I sure tried to.”
The gang had made off with $4,200. They headed down Holland Street, over the bridge at the east-end limits of town and down Highway 11, through Holland Landing, then down what is Leslie Street today, through Sharon. There, they switched cars, escaping minutes before police arrived.
But the connection with Bradford didn’t end there. The gang later rented an apartment in Toronto (on Heath Street, which runs between Lonsdale and St. Clair) that was owned by a Bradford couple.
George Stoddart and his wife had rented their Toronto apartment to a couple who identified themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Hall. Mr. Hall, it turns out, was Boyd’s brother, Norman.
Norman was being followed by a Toronto detective. The detective got a key from the owner and waited, watching from a neighbour’s home. When Boyd moved in with his wife and Norman, the detective set up a raid and caught Boyd when he was fast asleep on March 15, 1952. (Yes, the Ides of March, for those Julius Caesar fans.)
Meanwhile, two other members of the gang had been picked up in Montreal. Soon they were all back in the Don Jail.
While some people might have had romanticized ideas about the Boyd Gang, public opinion had mostly turned against them when, after the Bradford hold-up, Det.-Sgt. Ed Tong was shot and killed after stopping suspected members of the gang. Tong had recovered some banknotes from the vehicle the gang members were travelling in. Those banknotes were identified as coming from the Canadian Imperial Bank in Bradford.
On Sept. 8, 1952, the Boyd Gang escaped from jail. They made their way into the nearby Don Valley, slowly working their way north.
Police were searching the province for the gang, getting calls from Powassan and West Ferris and North Bay.
But they were still in Toronto. They’d hidden out in a barn at the fringes of the Don Valley, east of Yonge and Sheppard streets.
A passerby noted a motley crew around the barn and figured they were hobos. But as news spread of the still-free gang and the fact two of them were wanted for killing Tong, calls soon came in about a possible sighting of the runaways. Little more than a week after their escape, the gang was back behind bars, captured without incident at the barn.
Suchan and Lennie Jackson were hanged in December 1952 for their part in the death of Tong. Boyd and Willie Jackson went to Kingston Penitentiary. Boyd was released for good behaviour in 1966. He eventually moved to British Columbia. In a 2002 interview with the press, he confessed to the murder of a couple in Toronto, prior to his bank-robbing days. He died May 17, 2002, before an investigation into his confession could be completed.
Tom Villemaire is the co-author of two books with Randy Richmond: Colossal Canadian Failures and Colossal Canadian Failures 2 — both about things that seemed like a good idea at the time — and writes about local history.
Thanks to Bradford Archives for this story.
