Thomas Randele lived a quiet, lawful life in the suburbs of Boston. He was a golf pro at a country club, a devoted father who drove his daughter to school, and a car salesman who was well-liked by his neighbors. He even donated money to local police charities.
But as he lay dying of lung cancer in March 2021, he pulled his daughter close and whispered a confession that unraveled five decades of lies. His name was not Thomas. He was Theodore Conrad, and he was one of the most elusive bank robbers in American history.
The Friday Afternoon Heist
In July 1969, Conrad was a 20-year-old employee at the Society National Bank in Cleveland. His position as a vault teller gave him a unique advantage: trusted, unrestricted access to the bank’s cash reserves. On a Friday afternoon, right before his birthday weekend, he decided to cash in on that trust. During his break, he bought a bottle of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes.
When he returned, he walked into the vault, unobserved. He quietly stuffed $215,000 in cash—equivalent to $1.7 million today—into a simple brown paper bag. Because he was an employee leaving at the end of his shift, security did not stop him. He walked out the front door, the fortune tucked under his arm, and vanished into the weekend crowd.
The Two-Day Head Start
Conrad’s timing was calculated perfectly. Because the robbery happened on a Friday evening, the bank vault remained locked until Monday morning. This gave him a crucial two-day head start before anyone realized the money was missing.
By the time the bank opened the vault and discovered the empty shelves, Conrad had already severed ties with his old life. He sent two letters to his girlfriend to say goodbye and then disappeared entirely. The authorities found no fingerprints because, as he had once bragged to friends, he had managed to get the job without ever being fingerprinted.
A Life Built on Fiction
While the FBI and U.S. Marshals chased false leads across the country, Conrad settled in Massachusetts, ironically close to where his favorite movie, The Thomas Crown Affair, was filmed. He assumed the identity of Thomas Randele and never slipped up.
He grew a permanent beard to hide his boyish face and avoided international travel because he could not apply for a passport. For 52 years, he watched crime shows like NCIS in his living room, knowing that a father-and-son team of U.S. Marshals in Ohio was still hunting for him.
The Final Discovery
It was only after his death in May 2021 that investigators finally closed the case. They matched his handwriting from a 2014 bankruptcy filing to a college application Conrad had filled out in 1967. The “perfect crime” remained unsolved during his lifetime, leaving his family to grapple with the realization that the gentle man they knew was actually a legendary ghost of the banking world.