A Cleveland Bank Vault Teller Stole $215,000—and Hid in Plain Sight for 52 Years

In July 1969, a 20-year-old vault teller at a Cleveland bank left his job with $215,000 in stolen cash, boarded a plane—and disappeared. Despite a nationwide manhunt in what became one of Cleveland’s most infamous heists, Theodore “Ted” Conrad’s whereabouts long remained unknown. His face appeared on wanted posters, and the story was featured on episodes of America’s Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries.

Answers didn’t come for more than five decades. In 2021, 73-year-old Thomas “Tom” Randele of Lynnfield, Mass., was dying from an aggressive form of lung cancer when he reportedly made a startling confession to his wife, Kathy, and daughter, Ashley. “When I moved here, I had to change my name,” Tom said, according to Ashley per a 2024 Newsweek article. “The authorities might still be looking for me.” 

Tom’s family was blindsided to learn he was a fugitive who had lived a seemingly ordinary life in the Boston suburbs. They planned to wait a year to alert law enforcement after Tom’s death in May 2021, Ashley wrote, but U.S. Marshals were already on a path toward solving the case.

In the eight months Ted was employed at Society National Bank’s Public Square office, his colleagues regarded him as a model employee. He was routinely placed to work in the location’s vault, a bank official told The Cleveland Press in 1969.

Described in contemporary news reports as “tall, good-looking [and] bright (IQ 135),” Ted was one of four siblings and spent much of his childhood in the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood. His parents divorced when he was young, and he completed his freshman year at New England College in New Hampshire, where he was elected class president and his father worked as a professor. Ted later moved back to Ohio to be near his mother, who had remarried, and enrolled in classes at a local community college.

Friday, July 11, 1969, was the day after Ted’s 20th birthday. That afternoon, he had lunch with his close friend, Russell Metcalf, and then purchased a bottle of whiskey and a carton of cigarettes from a liquor store, according to the book Ohio Heists. 

When he returned to the bank, he entered the vault and placed stacks of dollar bills—the equivalent of nearly $2 million today—into his grocery bag. He put the alcohol and cigarettes on top and calmly left with the money at closing time. He even stopped and chatted with one of the bank’s vice presidents for 20 minutes before going home, walking right past security on his way out.

Ted stopped at his apartment, packed a small suitcase and took a cab to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. Then he boarded a flight to Washington, D.C., under a fictitious name, never to return.

Bank managers didn’t realize anything was wrong until the following Monday. Ted hadn’t shown up for work, which was very unlike the normally punctual employee. Then they noticed the missing money, and the FBI was alerted the next day. The local press soon began covering the case.

“It was one of Cleveland’s biggest mysteries,” Pete Elliott, a U.S. Marshal for the Northern District of Ohio, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. Elliott inherited the search for Ted from his late father, Deputy U.S. Marshal John K. Elliott, who was first assigned the case in his 30s. In part because Ted was from his neighborhood, “my father was pretty obsessed with the Ted Conrad story,” Pete says.

Though Ted’s motives weren’t entirely clear, friends said he was enthralled by the 1968 movie The Thomas Crown Affair, which is about a wealthy Boston businessman who masterminds a roughly $2.6 million bank robbery simply for the thrill. Metcalf told the Cleveland Press that Ted once described pulling off such a crime as the “easiest thing in the world.” Ted also reportedly bragged about how his employer didn’t have his fingerprints on file, though this wasn’t common practice at the time.

Authorities searched far and wide for the missing vault teller, even following leads to Hawaii and Australia. In October 1969, a federal arrest warrant charged Ted with bank embezzlement and making false entries, but not robbery since Ted had worked inside the vault. The FBI looked for evidence at Ted’s apartment, and agents even attended Lakewood High School class reunions in case he showed up. 

Ted ultimately cut contact with family and friends, though he sent multiple letters to his girlfriend shortly after the heist, with the postmarks placing him in Washington, D.C., and Inglewood, Calif. Recovered by authorities, the letters suggest Ted believed he could return once the statute of limitations expired, Elliott says, but he didn’t realize that wasn’t true after he was indicted.

“He was fair game for as long as he lived,” Elliott says.

The trail went cold until November 2, 2021, when Cleveland crime reporter Jane Ann Turzillo received an anonymous email asking if she was still interested in Ted’s story. The Ohio Heists and Wicked Cleveland author responded “yes,” and the tipster shared an obituary for Thomas Randele of Massachusetts, who had died earlier that year at age 73. 

Turzillo didn’t immediately recognize Tom’s name or photo, but she spotted several peculiar similarities between him and Ted. They had the same birthdates in different years—Tom’s in 1947, Ted’s in 1949. Both were born in Denver, attended New England College and had parents named Edward and Ruthabeth, with the mother’s maiden name being Krueger.

“My heart started beating a little harder,” Turzillo tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “I went on, and it said that he had played golf and that he sold high-end cars, and I thought, that sure does sound like [Ted].”

Turzillo dug deeper. She discovered photos of a young Tom on Facebook—and, yes, the resemblance to Ted was striking. Turzillo contacted Elliott, who investigated further and matched Tom’s signature on a 2014 bankruptcy filing to Ted’s handwriting on 1960s documents.

“That kind of was the spear,” Elliott says. “Now all this stuff [was] looking good, it [was] all matching up, but we still [didn’t] know. We need[ed] to take a trip to the Boston area and knock on the door of this family.”

It wasn’t long before U.S. Marshals showed up at the Randeles’ home and learned about Tom’s deathbed confession. As Ashley recounted in her first-person Newsweek piece, her father had reluctantly told her his real name, and she confirmed through an online search that authorities were still looking for him. Then she showed her mother what she found. 

“She was reading through the articles online, and she just kept saying, ‘Oh, my God; oh, my God,’ for like 10 minutes,” Ashley told CNN in 2023, shortly before the release of the Smoke Screen: My Fugitive Dad podcast, which she co-hosted with journalist Jonathan Hirsch.

Tom eventually opened up about his childhood, including his contentious relationship with his stepfather, Ashley wrote. He died about a month later.

For investigators, a timeline had finally come together: In 1970, Ted arrived in Boston, obtained a new social security number using his false identity and opened a bank account. “Tom” lived an unassuming life from then on. He split his time between Boston and Florida and was a golf professional who gave lessons at a country club, where he rose to manager before moving into luxury automotive sales, according to his obituary. He married Kathy in 1982, and the couple welcomed Ashley.

When U.S. Marshals closed the case in November 2021, neighbors were stunned to learn the truth about the well-mannered family man who had befriended local police and enjoyed crime TV shows. But certain things also began adding up, like how Tom often wore dark sunglasses, sported a beard and never spoke about his parents or siblings. 

Some questions, like how exactly the stolen $215,000 was spent, remain unanswered, Elliott says. He adds that Tom’s family were victims in the ordeal.

“He seemed relieved to have finally unburdened himself,” Ashley wrote in Newsweek. “But I was devastated. It's like we ran out of time to make sense of things before he was gone.”