Edwin Alonzo Boyd was born on April 2, 1914,[1] four months before the British Empire, of which Canada was part, entered World War I.

The apartment the family lived in was then too small, so they soon moved to a duplex on Bee Street in Todmorden, an area beyond the Don Valley, in East York.

Upon his return from the war, Boyd failed to find adequate permanent employment and turned to crime to provide for his wife and two children.

Lennie Jackson, a member of that gang, was caught at the same time as Boyd, and they began swapping notes while in jail.

Soon another experienced bank robber, Willie Jackson (no relation to Lennie), alias The Clown, arrived at the Don Jail awaiting transfer to the Kingston Penitentiary for a seven-year sentence.

They met a friend, Valent Lesso from Cochrane, one of the violent members of Lennie Jackson’s original gang, and the four became a team.

Lesso was a talented musician who couldn’t find work; he changed his name to Steve Suchan and became a bank robber.

[clarification needed] The police received numerous calls from residents in West Ferris and Powassan, Ontario, and from a pharmacist in North Bay, but they did not pan out.

The Toronto Nugget reported the event by stating "Edwin Alonzo Boyd, Canada’s Public Enemy Number One, surrendered meekly with his henchmen to two suburban detectives, ending the greatest criminal man hunt in the Dominion’s history."

Edwin Alonzo Boyd, who has spent much of his life dodging police, asked for their assistance last night to arrest his wife and her companion.

Last night Boyd sent a hurried call for help to Markham St. station when a man and woman arrived at his home and battered down the front door.

Two months prior to his death, Boyd told a CBC producer that he had once killed a couple and left their bodies in the trunk of a car in High Park, Toronto, years before his notoriety as a bank robber.

[23] Before a formal investigation into his confession could commence, on May 17, 2002, after a visit from his wife and his son, and a phone call from his former war bride and the mother of his three children, Edwin Alonzo Boyd died at age 88.

It debuted in 1987 at Toronto's Factory Theatre, produced by Dian English, and won a Dora Mavor Moore award for best musical.