A Massachusetts woman is sharing the incredible yet troubling story of her late father’s secret past.
Ashley Randele’s father, Thomas Randele, was in reality a fugitive bank robber named Theodore Conrad, who had spent more than half a century on the run.
In 1969 when Conrad was 20, he robbed an Ohio bank stealing $215,000.
He fled and built a new life as Thomas Randele, a Massachusetts car salesman and country club pro who adored his wife and child.
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Conrad admitted all this to his daughter as he lay on his deathbed in 2021 dying from lung cancer.
“The next day I sat down with him alone and really pushed him on finding out his name. If his name wasn’t Tom Randele, I deserved to know my father’s name and that I deserved to know my name,” Ashley Randele told CNN. “He finally said that he would tell me as long as I promised not to look into it. And that’s when he told me that his name was Ted Conrad.”
“I obviously did not listen to him and I did look into it,” she said. And that night at about 2:30 in the morning alone in my childhood bedroom, I looked up Ted Conrad and then put in the word ‘missing’ figuring it’s been 50 years. Somebody might be looking for him. And that’s when I saw the headline like Vault Teller Heist. And I was absolutely floored. Like could not have been more shocked. I think I said out loud just to the room. ‘Oh my gosh. My life is a lifetime movie.’”
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Authorities say his bank heist was inspired by his favorite movie, “The Thomas Crown Affair.”
The 1968 film was about a millionaire businessman who robbed a bank for fun.
During Conrad’s decades on the run, his case was featured on episodes of “America’s Most Wanted” and “Unsolved Mysteries.”
Conrad’s wife and daughter planned to go to authorities a year after his March 2021 death, but in November of that year, U.S. Marshals came knocking at their door.
They wanted answers in the case but assured the mother and daughter they wouldn’t face charges.
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