Notorious Cleveland Bank Robber Identified as Deceased Massachusetts Man After 52-Year Search

A  bank robber who heisted $215,000 from a Cleveland bank in 1969 was positively identified by U.S. Marshalls this week, following his death six months ago.

Theodore John Conrad was 20-years-old when he arrived for work as a bank teller on Friday, July 11, 1969, at Society National Bank in Cleveland, Ohio. At the end of the day, with the bank set to close for the weekend, Conrad left with a paper bag carrying $215,000 and had a two-day headstart on law enforcement, according to a press release from U.S. Marshalls. The amount is equivalent to $1.7 million in 2021.

At the time of the heist, Conrad was “obsessed” with the 1968 Steve McQueen film “The Thomas Crown Affair,” according to authorities. In the movie, “Bored millionaire Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) concocts and executes a brilliant scheme to rob a bank without having to do any of the work himself,” according to Rotten Tomatoes.

Conrad had seen the film upwards of half a dozen times, U.S. Marshalls say. “From there he bragged to his friends about how easy it would be to take money from the bank and even told them he planned to do so.”

Conrad vanished, and a nationwide manhunt ensued. Authorities followed leads in California, Washington, DC, Hawaii, western Texas, and Oregon, but the searches turned up empty, U.S. Marshalls say.

Conrad had stumped investigators for over fifty years, and America’s Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries featured his story.

This week, U.S. Marshalls finally positively identified the recently deceased Thomas Randele of Lynnfield, Massachusetts, as Theodore John Conrad, according to the release.

Marshalls analyzed documents Conrad signed from the 1960s and compared them to court papers signed by Randele, including documents from when he filed for Bankruptcy in Boston Federal Court in 2014.  The examination produced a match, allowing authorities to positively identify Randele as Conrad.

“He had been living an unassuming life in the Boston suburb since 1970,” the U.S. Marshall press release states. “Ironically, he moved to Boston near the location where the original Thomas Crown Affair movie was filmed.”

Randele used the birthday July 10, 1947, for his new alias, which is precisely two years before his actual birthday on July 10, 1949, Marshalls say. The elusive bank robber died in May of 2021 following a battle with lung cancer.

The bank robber worked as a golf pro split time in Massachusetts and Florida while living under his new identity, according to his obituary on Legacy.com. “He eventually shifted his vocational interests from golf to his second love, cars and began a successful career in luxury automotive sales which spanned nearly 40 years,” his obituary states. His wife and daughter survive him.

Peter J. Elliot, a U.S. marshall for northern Ohio, says his father spent much of his life investigating the mystery of Conrad’s disappearance.

“This is a case I know all too well.” Elliot stated in the release.

“My father took an interest in this case early because Conrad lived and worked near us in the late 1960s,” he went on to state. “My father never stopped searching for Conrad and always wanted closure up until his death in 2020.”

“We were able to match some of the documents that my father uncovered from Conrad’s college days in the 1960s with documents from Randele that led to his identification,” Elliot said.