He is best known for his undercover work in exposing the "Banditti of the Prairie", resulting from his investigation of the torture-murder of noted Illinois pioneer and frontiersman Colonel George Davenport.
Between March 14 and April 11, 1844, he was chosen by Joseph Smith, the founder and leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who was a friend, to be a member of the Mormon theocratic "Council of Fifty.
[2] After the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith in Carthage, Illinois, in 1844, Bonney, who as a non-Mormon was considered an outsider by the Nauvoo church elders, lost his influential status among the Council of Fifty.
During the next several years, he worked with law enforcement agencies, in Montrose and Lee County, to hunt down various criminals, in the area, as a sort of freelance bounty hunter.
Bonney gradually attained a reputation as a skilled detective, adept at "piecing together odd bits of information and rumor", although he was often subject to suspicion and persecution for his Mormonism.
After learning "crime doesn't pay" Birch finally became an honest man and twelve years later, was one of the founders of the Pinos Altos gold mining camp in 1858 in the New Mexico Territory.
Following the trial and execution of Granville Young and the Long brothers, Edward Bonney returned to Lee County, Iowa Territory the following year and was indicted by the local district court for murder and later acquitted.
Bonney lived in Rock Island, Illinois for a time and before moving to Chicago in Prospect Park in DuPage County where he was appointed as the second postmaster of the town.
Private Edward Bonney was medically discharged, from the Union Army, on December 23, 1863 and went back to Chicago, dying on February 4, 1864, as the result of his crippling leg wound.