Since July of 1969, U.S. Marshals have been trying to track down Theodore John Conrad. After getting inspiration from the hit movie “The Thomas Crown Affair,” the bank teller decided to take some of his work home with him and ended up a “most wanted” fugitive. What he did was so amazingly simple you could never get away with it today. Conrad ended up with the last laugh, too.
Father and son Marshals
Two generations of the Elliott family have been dogging the trail of most wanted fugitive Theodore “Ted” Conrad. After more than five decades of frustration, the file is closed. Key investigator Peter J. Elliott, who proudly serves with the U.S. Marshals in northern Ohio, grew up with the case. His family was one of Conrad’s neighbors in the 60’s. His dad opened the file.
“This is a case I know all too well. My father, John K. Elliott, was a dedicated career deputy United States marshal in Cleveland from 1969 until his retirement in 1990,” Peter relates. “My father never stopped searching for Conrad and always wanted closure up until his death in 2020.”
The Marshals have been looking for Conrad ever since he failed to show up for work one Monday morning in July, 1969. The teller in a Cleveland, Ohio bank had recently seen the movie “The Thomas Crown Affair” and was instantly inspired.
At the end of his shift on Friday, “the then 20-year-old stole $215,000, stuffed it into a paper bag — and vanished.”
In today’s money, the Marshals Service notes, that would be worth $1.7 million. They call it “one of the biggest bank robberies in the city.”
As of last week, they know for sure where he’s been all this time. On Friday, November 12, they announced they have “identified the man considered one of the nation’s most wanted fugitives.”
Living quietly in Boston
All this time, he’s been living quietly in Boston. Until he died. On his deathbed this past May, before he succumbed to lung cancer, Thomas Randele told his family he had a confession to make.
He didn’t have an affair or kill anyone but that wasn’t his name either. That’s when he admitted to being a bank robber and he managed to get away with it. He simply couldn’t go without letting someone in on his secret. The family called the Marshals and let them know.
Once they came to interview the family, the Marshals soon realized that the home Randele chose for himself was near where the movie had been filmed.
The blockbuster film was about a protagonist who “steals more than $2 million from a Boston bank.” He had been “obsessed.” They looked for him in California, Hawaii, Texas and Oregon. He was even featured on “America’s Most Wanted” and “Unsolved Mysteries.”
Friends told the Marshals all the way back in the beginning that he was hooked on that flick. “A year before the Cleveland bank robbery, Conrad became obsessed with the 1968 Steve McQueen film. The movie was based on the bank robbery for sport by a millionaire businessman.”
Conrad bragged “to his friends about how easy it would be to take money from the bank.” He was right. The bank didn’t even know they had been robbed until he didn’t show up for work on Monday. It was also a lot easier to disappear in 1969 without leaving a trail than it is today.
