In November, authorities announced that they'd found their man: Thomas Randele, who died of cancer in May in suburban Boston, was actually a fugitive wanted in one of the largest bank robberies in Cleveland's history, a heist carried out in the summer of 1969. Not even his wife or daughter knew until he told them in what authorities described as a deathbed confession. How the man born Ted Conrad was able to leave behind one family and create a new life is just now being pieced together. What's not clear yet is what happened to the money. The Marshals Service is looking into whether he lost it early on through bad investments.
But as for the heist: Conrad quickly figured out that security was fairly loose at the Society National Bank in Cleveland after he started as a teller in January 1969. He told his buddies, "It'd be so easy for me to walk out with all kinds of money," Russell Metcalf, his best friend from high school, said in an interview with the AP. A day after his 20th birthday that July, Conrad did just that, walking out at closing time on a Friday with a paper bag stuffed with $215,000 from the vault, a haul worth $1.6 million today. By the time the missing money was noticed the following Monday, Conrad was gone. Letters sent to his girlfriend showed he made stops in Washington, DC, and Los Angeles within the first week. In one letter, he mistakenly thought he could return in seven years when the statute of limitations expired. But once he was indicted, that was no longer true.
Conrad apparently cut off contact with his entire family, including three siblings and his parents, who were divorced. Some family members eventually presumed he was dead because so many years had passed. Why Conrad committed the robbery has been analyzed endlessly. "It wasn't about the money. He always wanted to impress people," said Metcalf, his high school pal, who remembered how Conrad once stole a deck of cards just to prove he could. "He had no fear." Investigators believe he was inspired by the 1968 movie The Thomas Crown Affair, about a bank executive who got away with $2.6 million and turned the heist into a game.
story continues below
Conrad saw the film at least six times and copied Steve McQueen's character, driving sports cars and drinking high-end liquor, according to friends. It's a good possibility that he chose his new first name, "Thomas," based on the movie. The man known as Thomas Randele came into existence the first week of January in 1970, investigators have found in recent weeks. That's when Conrad walked into a Social Security Administration office in Boston, asked for an identification number under his new name, and made himself two years older. At that time, it wasn't unusual to wait until you were an adult, so his application didn't raise any red flags. With a new identification card, he was able to open a bank account, build credit, and create his new life. (Read the full story for much more.)
(More
bank heist stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
