The Boyd Gang

Edwin Alonzo Boyd, a former streetcar driver and army veteran, began robbing Toronto banks in 1949, eventually forming a small gang that carried out a string of holdups across the city in the early 1950s. The gang's crimes escalated in 1952 when an associate shot and killed a Toronto police detective, turning what had been a series of property crimes into a full manhunt and making Boyd one of the most wanted men in Canada.

Two escapes from the Don Jail

Boyd and members of his gang escaped from the Don Jail not once but twice, first in November 1951 and again in September 1952 alongside convicted murderers, feats that turned the gang into an unlikely subject of public fascination even as police intensified their pursuit. The gang was recaptured for good in 1952 after a tip led police to a barn where they were hiding, and Boyd was sentenced to life in prison, eventually paroled in the 1960s under a new identity. The case remains one of the most written-about Canadian crime stories of the era.

Sources

• The Canadian Encyclopedia — Boyd Gang
• Wikipedia — Edwin Alonzo Boyd

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