Photo: US MARSHALS SERVICE / copyright
The fugitive behind one of the most notorious bank robberies in US history has finally been identified after 52 years of searching, as announced by US officials.
Ted Conrad was working at the Society National Bank in Cleveland, Ohio, when he robbed his boss in July of 1969.
Then disappeared with US $ 215. 000, which today would be the equivalent of US $ 1.7 million.
After that, the fugitive lived a peaceful and unpretentious life , according to the US Marshals Service
Conrad, who died last May victim of lung cancer, had only 20 years when eating threw the theft.
The perfect crime
Conrad is said to have taken advantage of the bank’s mediocre security and walked out with all the money stuffed inside a brown paper bag when his office closed on a Friday night.
When the other bank employees realized that money was missing, already Conrad had disappeared.
His escape sparked a search that has lasted more than half a century and that has been told in television shows such as America’s Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries (America’s Most Wanted Unsolved Mysteries)
According to the Marshals Service, Conrad had told his friends about his plans to rob the bank and bragged about how easy it would be.
Apparently he was obsessed with film The Thomas Crown Affair , starring Steve Mcqueen in 1969, in which he commits a perfect robbery .
Conrad saw her more than a dozen times during his preparation for the robbery.
Authorities say that after Conrad disappeared, Conrad changed his name to Thomas Randele and fled to Washington DC and LosAngeles, before finally settling in a Boston suburb, about 1. 000 miles from the crime scene.
Researchers say that he subsequently lived a quiet and unassuming life, and the newspaper The New York Times reported that it had passed the last 40 years working as golf pro and used car dealership.
Case cooled
The case went cold for decades until investigators, alerted by the appearance of Randele’s obituary in a newspaper, were able to compare the documents he had submitted during the decade of 1960 with other papers he had recently completed.
Ironically, those papers included a bankruptcy case that Randele filed in a Boston court in 2014.
Marshal Peter Elliott was one of the lead investigators on the case. He inherited it from his father John, who had been obsessed with finding out what had become of the intrepid thief.
“ My father never stopped looking for Conrad and always wanted to close the case until his death in 2020, ”Elliott said.
“I hope my father is resting a little easier today knowing that his investigation and his United States Marshals Service put an end to this decades-long mystery.”
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