Criminal bank robber. Born Edwin Alonzo Boyd in Toronto, Ontario. His father, Glover Boyd, was a World War I veteran and a Toronto policeman. His mother, Eleanor, died from scarlet fever in 1930 when he was fifteen years old. He had three younger siblings Gordon, Norman, and Irene. After his mother's death, he dropped out of school and left home. He became a drifter out West, riding the rails. He survived the Great Depression by conning women, doing odd jobs, and committing petty theft. At 22, Eddie robbed a gas station and spent two and a half years at Prince Albert Penitentiary in Saskatchewan. During World War II, he joined the Canadian Army as an infantryman. While overseas, he married Doreen Thompson, and the couple had four children. After the war, he returned to Toronto with his British war bride and found employment as a streetcar driver. Bored and unsatisfied with his job, he soon turned to crime. He pulled off a string of armed robberies in Toronto, beginning with a heist at a Bank of Montreal branch on September 9, 1949. He used a German military pistol he acquired during the war to terrorize bank staff during these hold-ups. Boyd committed at least eleven bank robberies and escaped twice from the Don Jail. He was arrested on March 15, 1952, and was sentenced to eight life terms plus 27 years concurrently. Boyd was released from Kingston Penitentiary after serving ten years but returned for four more years after parole violations. In 1966 he was encouraged by the parole board to assume a new identity, "John," and relocate out of Ontario. He then moved to Victoria, British Columbia, where he drove a bus for disabled people. He remarried and devoted himself to the care of his disabled wife, Marjorie. He died on May 16, 2002, at the age of 88, after being hospitalized with pneumonia. A biopic, "Edwin Boyd: Citizen Gangster," was released in 2011. It is a dramatization of Boyd's life.