Boyd Gang
criminal gang based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
The Boyd Gang was a notorious criminal gang based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, named for member Edwin Alonzo Boyd. The gang was famous in the media at the time because of their actions, which included bank robberies, jail breaks, relationships with women, gun fights, manhunts, and captures.
Formation
Edwin Boyd had committed a variety of crimes in his youth and served time in Saskatchewan's Prince Albert Penitentiary at the age of 22. After returning from service in the Second World War, Boyd robbed a Toronto branch of the Bank of Montreal with a German Luger on September 9, 1949, while drunk and escaped with US$3,000 (equivalent to $40,594 in 2025) With others, he committed six more robberies before he was caught and imprisoned in the Don Jail. There he met Willie Jackson and Lenny Jackson (not related) and together they broke out of jail with a hacksaw concealed in Lenny's artificial leg. After their escape, they were joined by Valent Lesso (a.k.a. Steve Suchan) and committed four more robberies in four months for US$75,000 (equivalent to $1,003,631 in 2025). Although Lenny Jackson, a hairdresser from Niagara Falls, led the group, Boyd's charms and good looks led the media to label them the "Boyd Gang".
Death of a policeman
On March 6, 1952, Detective Sergeant Edmund Tong and his partner, Sergeant Roy Perry stopped a vehicle containing two men; these two men turned out to be Lennie Jackson and Steve Suchan. As Tong approached the vehicle, Suchan drew a .455 pistol and shot him and Sergeant Perry in the police car, wounding the latter in the arm.
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This entry incorporates text from “Boyd Gang” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.