Edwin Alonzo Boyd: The Story of the Notorious Boyd Gang

By Brian Vallee

A Second World War veteran and the son of a policmen, Edwin Alonzo Boyd seemed an unlikely condidate for the role of master criminal.  But before his career as a bandit was ended in 1952, the glamorously handsome Boyd cut a swath through 11 Toronto-area banks, stealing thousands of dollars and igniting two manhunts of unprecedented scope.  When he and his confederates escaped not once but twice from Toronto's Don Jail, the Boyd Gang created headlines across North America and became an enduring Canadian legend.

Eventually recaptured and sentenced to life imprisonment, Edwin Alonzo Boyd was paroled in 1966.  Since then he has lived under as assumed identity, but he willingly shared his memories with best selling author Brian Vallee, resulting in this gripping account of Boyd's dubious career.  Numerous others--including Boyd's former wife and various police officers involved with the Boyd Gang--also spoke candidly to the author.

Edwin Alonzo Boyd: The Story of the Notorious Boyd Gang sheds light on a unique fragment of our history, rich with details of Depression-era and postwar Canada and alive with the insights and memories of those who lived this true-life cops-and-robbers drama.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Dec 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9780385674393

Reviews for Edwin Alonzo Boyd

[lamour_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This volume is chronicles the exploits of the infamous Boyd Gang who robbed banks in Ontario and Quebec in the early 1950's. The reader learns the background on the members and what led them to rob bank and how the life of crime affected their relationships with the women they loved and who loved them in return.I vaguely remembering their notoriety as child growing up in rural Ontario probably because my father would have been an avid follower of their exploits in the press. While the book is about the gang members and their life of crime, it is also about the newspaper circulation wars amongst Toronto's three newspapers with particular emphasis on the Star and the Telegram competition.Having recently read a history of the famous Toronto Don Jail and also recently toured the Kingston Penitentiary, it was very interesting reading what it was like to be a prisoner who serve time in both of those institutions. The Boyd Gang's escapes from the Don described by the gang members gave me a different perspective of how they achieved it from the description in the book, The Don.As two members of the Gang were hung for the murder of a Toronto policeman, the author included how the their deaths led to the eventual abolishment of capital punishment in Canada.