Boston Woman’s Dying Father Reveals He Is Wanted for 1969 Bank Heist

A Boston woman’s beloved father hid a massive secret from his family for decades, and revealed it to them before dying.

Thirty-five-year-old Ashley Randele was relaxing with her parents one day in 2021 when her father, 71-year-old Tom Randele, who had recently been diagnosed with lung cancer, told them he changed his name years ago before moving to the area, the New York Post reported Saturday.

However, the man also said officials were probably still searching for him, which shocked his family.

After Ashley’s father told her his real name was Ted Conrad, she researched him online and found that a Ted Conrad had worked as the vault teller for Society National Bank in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1969 when he was 20 years old.

On July 11 of that year, he walked off the job with a paper bag containing $219,000 in stolen cash from the vault.

Conrad immediately traveled to Washington, DC. When the money was found to be missing, bank leaders called in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The young Conrad became a wanted man.

During her research, Ashley recalled feeling shock and disbelief, stating, “I said out loud to my empty room, ‘My god, my life is a Lifetime movie.'”

An image shows the father and daughter together, while another shows the man in his younger years.

According to Deputy U.S. Marshall Pete Elliott, “He covered his trail really well. It’s really unbelievable that he lived the way he did for so many years. He was so good at it,” the Messenger reported Friday.

Ted Conrad’s inspiration apparently came after watching the 1968 bank heist movie, starring Steve McQueen, called The Thomas Crown Affair:

Officials continued investigating while Conrad made his home in Boston and created a different identity.

“Handsome and charismatic, the newly minted and freshly bearded Tom Randele landed a job as a car salesman and became a scratch golfer,” the Post report said, adding he claimed his money came from an insurance settlement from his family’s deaths in a car accident.

However, his relatives were not dead, they just had no idea what happened to him. In December 2021, ABC 7 reported the man’s friends described him as “one of the nicest and most honorable people they’d ever known”:

Ashley believes her father committed the crime to escape a difficult life situation that may have stemmed from his parents’ divorce when he was a teenager.

After Conrad died in May 2021, a true crime writer saw his obituary and recognized him. The person contacted Elliott, who is the son of the U.S. Marshal who investigated the case in the beginning stages. He later visited Ashley to talk about the case.

When speaking of her research, the woman told the Messenger, “It was weird to Google your dad and see ‘Kid Robs Bank,’ ‘Fugitive On The Run,’ and knowing there’s so much more to him, you know, before the crime and after the crime.”