Katharina Buczek
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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