He Pulled Off One Of The Biggest Bank Robberies Ever In Ohio And After 52 Years He Was Finally Identified
Cleveland, Ohio. Ted Conrad, one of the United State’s most wanted fugitives, was finally identified after fifty-two years.
Conrad “pulled off one of the largest bank robberies in Cleveland, Ohio history.”
According to a press release by the U.S. Marshals Service, “On Friday, July 11, 1969, Theodore John Conrad walked into his job at the Society National Bank as an ordinary bank teller. He walked out at the end of the day with two hundred and fifteen thousand dollars in a paper bag and vanished.”
Today, that amount of money is equivalent to a whopping $1.7 million.
The following Monday, Conrad did not show up for work. The bank checked their vault only to realize that both the money and their employee were missing. Since Conrad made the move on a Friday, he gained a two-day lead on law enforcement.
A year before Conrad’s robbery, he had become enthralled with the 1968 Steve McQueen movie The Thomas Crown Affair.
U.S. Marshals; pictured above is Ted Conrad, also known as Thomas Randele
The movie was centered around a businessman who robbed banks for sport. After viewing it over half a dozen times, Conrad would brag to his friends about the simplicity of robbing a bank.
“The fugitive investigation into Theodore ‘Ted’ Conrad has perplexed many investigators over the past fifty years,” says the press release, “Conrad has been featured on America’s Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries.”
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Investigators followed up on leads from across the country over the years, spanning from Washington D.C. to Honolulu, Hawaii.
The baffling cold case was finally solved this past week, when “United States Marshals from Cleveland, Ohio traveled to Boston, Massachusetts and positively identified Thomas Randele of Lynnfield, Massachusetts as the fictitious name of Theodore J. Conrad.”
Conrad had been living in the suburbs of Boston since 1970. “Ironically, he moved to Boston near the location of where the original Thomas Crown Affair movie was filmed,” the press release added.
Investigators were able to verify documents that Conrad filled out in the 1960s against documents that Randele filled out.
“Randele,” aka Conrad, passed away of lung cancer in May of 2021. He would have been seventy-one years old.
Peter J. Elliott, a United States Marshal for Northern Ohio, had a personal connection to this case.
“My father, John K. Elliott, was a dedicated career Deputy United States Marshal in Cleveland. He took an interest in this case early… and never stopped searching for Conrad. He always wanted closure up until his death in 2020,” Elliot said.
“I hope my father is resting a little easier today knowing his investigation brought closure to this decades-long mystery.”
In Thomas Randel’s obituary, he is said to have maintained a successful career in automotive sales for nearly forty years.
In addition, he is recalled as an “excellent cook who loved watching any and all cooking shows.” He also had a wife, Kathy (Mahan) Randele, and a daughter, Ashley Randele.
Despite Conrad’s alias and unsuspecting fictitious life, he left behind a real circle of family and friends following his passing.
Still, it is important that everyone- from law enforcement to his unaware family- has finally gained knowledge and closure in the case of Theodore Conrad.
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