One of the most infamous dates in Bradford’s history was July 26, 1951, when the notorious Boyd gang robbed the local CIBC branch — at the northwest corner of Simcoe Road and Holland Street, now Captain George’s restaurant — in dramatic fashion, gunfight and all.

Except there is one problem with the narrative. Edwin Alonzo Boyd wasn’t there. He wasn’t even part of the gang at that point. It wasn’t until that November that Boyd joined forces with the culprits of the Bradford robbery.

So, who exactly did participate in the Bradford robbery?

One was Frank Watson, who looked more like an accountant or a bank clerk than a criminal. Wire-rim glasses, a slender build and quiet, almost shy countenance gave him a bookish appearance.

But Ontario-born Watson was, indeed, a hardened criminal, with a record going back to 1937 and extensive contacts in the underworld.

Watson also had a love for flashy suits and nice cars, and wads of cash he flaunted. Robbing banks was a means to a lavish lifestyle.

Another was Steve Suchan (an alias for Valent ‘Val’ Lesso), a young man with a long rap sheet of minor offences.

Lesso was born in Czechoslovakia in 1928 on Valentine’s Day, so his parents decided to name him Valentine. The young boy hated that name, so he later changed it to Valent.

In 1936, the Lesso family immigrated to Canada and settled in northern Ontario. At the age of 18, Valent headed to Toronto, where he changed his name again, this time to Steve Suchan, a name he thought sounded tougher.

Whatever name he went by, Suchan was a restless young man who couldn’t keep a job for long and began to dabble in petty crime.

In 1950, the 22-year-old Suchan was sent to the Guelph Reformatory for three months on six fraud-related charges after he tried to pass forged cheques totalling $664.

When he got out, his life seemed to turn around. Despite his criminal record, he managed to secure a decent-paying, respectable job as a doorman at the prestigious King Edward Hotel.

Then a chance meeting changed his life. Sometime in early 1951, he met the third member of the gang, Lennie Jackson, and was sucked into the older man’s plans to find riches through robbing banks.

Jackson was born in Toronto on April 23, 1922. He and his five siblings were raised by their single mother in Niagara Falls, their existence hovering right around the poverty line.

Jackson only completed Grade 8 before quitting school and finding work as a farm labourer, but farm work didn’t appeal to him, so hopped the rails and ventured all over North America, getting into trouble wherever he went.

Riding the rails eventually had tragic consequences. In 1946, he lost his grip and fell from a moving train. His foot was severed.

Jackson began to slip deeper into the criminal underworld. In February 1950, he and Watson robbed a bank in Pickering, netting the pair $5,000.

It was all too easy. Jackson was hooked. Bank robbing would be his career.

It was a decision that led him to Bradford more than a year later and, ultimately, to the gallows — alongside Suchan — on Dec. 16, 1952, for the murder of a Toronto detective.