Investigators track down Cleveland bank teller who stuffed $215K into a paper bag after his shift 52 years ago — and vanished
Now greater than 5 a long time later, the federal regulation enforcement company introduced Friday that it is recognized the person thought-about one of many nation’s most wished fugitives.
Conrad had been dwelling in Boston since 1970 underneath the title Thomas Randele, authorities mentioned. In yet one more dramatic twist, his dwelling was near the place the film “The Thomas Crown Affair” was filmed. Within the unique film, the principle character steals greater than $2 million from a Boston financial institution.
“A yr earlier than the Cleveland financial institution theft, Conrad turned obsessive about the 1968 Steve McQueen movie,” the US Marshals Service mentioned in a press release. “The film was based mostly on the financial institution theft for sport by a millionaire businessman, and Conrad … bragged to his associates about how straightforward it will be to take cash from the financial institution.”
A long time of chasing leads nationwide
Conrad’s alleged heist came about on a Friday. The financial institution didn’t know the cash was lacking from the vault till Monday, when he failed to indicate up for work. Then the case went chilly.
For many years, investigators have chased recommendations on Conrad’s whereabouts in numerous states, together with California, Hawaii, Texas and Oregon. His case was spotlighted on “America’s Most Needed” and “Unsolved Mysteries.”
After years of investigation, federal authorities traveled to Massachusetts final week and confirmed he’d been dwelling a quiet life underneath a fictitious title in Boston. As a part of their investigation, they in contrast his Nineteen Sixties paperwork to paperwork he’d accomplished underneath the title Randele, together with a 2014 chapter submitting at a Boston federal courtroom.
He died of lung most cancers in Might of this yr in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, the US Marshals Service mentioned. He was 71.
A father and son helped remedy the thriller
One of many case’s key investigators was Peter J. Elliott, a US marshal from northern Ohio, whose household lived close to Conrad within the late Nineteen Sixties.
“This can be a case I do know all too properly. My father, John Okay. Elliott, was a devoted profession deputy United States marshal in Cleveland from 1969 till his retirement in 1990,” he mentioned. “My father by no means stopped looking for Conrad and at all times wished closure up till his demise in 2020.”
A few of the paperwork uncovered by the elder Elliott performed a task in confirming Conrad’s identification, the son mentioned.
“I hope my father is resting a bit of simpler at the moment realizing his investigation … introduced closure to this decades-long thriller,” the youthful Elliott mentioned. “Every little thing in actual life does not at all times finish like within the motion pictures.”
