(PatriotWise.com) — Fugitive bank robber Theodore Conrad, who had been living a different life for more than 50 years, confessed his secret to his daughter as he was dying of lung cancer in 2021, CNN reported.
After his first round of chemotherapy for lung cancer, Conrad, who was going by Thomas Randale, told his daughter Ashley in March 2021 that he wasn’t who he claimed to be. He confessed to robbing an Ohio bank more than 50 years earlier, when he was only 20.
In July 1969, Conrad was working as a teller in a Cleveland bank when he stole $215,000 and disappeared, later reinventing himself as Thomas Randale. He later settled in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, with his wife Kathy and daughter Ashley, where he worked as a car salesman and golf pro for a country club.
After her father died, Ashley and her mother agreed to wait until June 2022 before informing authorities of his true identity to give themselves time to mourn his death. However, federal law enforcement arrived at their door before the year was out.
In November 2021, US Marshals arrived at the Randeles’ Lynnfield home, knowing that Thomas Randale was the fugitive bank robber Theodore Conrad.
According to Ashley Randele, after her father’s death in May 2021, someone sent his obituary to an Ohio crime reporter with a note alleging that Randale was, in reality, Theodore Conrad.
While Randele’s date of birth was two years earlier than Conrad’s, both shared July 10 as a birthday, US Marshal Pete Elliott told CNN at the time. What’s more, the first names of Randele’s parents were identical to the first names of Conrad’s parents.
US Marshals began looking into Randele’s past and found a bankruptcy filing from 2014 in a Boston federal court. A review of the filing found that Randele’s handwriting matched that on the 1967 college application form filled out by Theodore Conrad, Elliott told CNN.
According to Elliott, when he arrived at the Randele home in November 2021 and introduced himself as a US Marshal from Ohio, the look on Ashley Randele’s face confirmed that her father was indeed Theodore Conrad.
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