On the run for 50 years: father confesses a secret to his daughter on his deathbed

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Thomas Randele (†71) suffered from lung cancer and felt that he did not have long to live. He had just finished his first round of chemotherapy. He was lying on the couch watching a crime show with his daughter in a Boston suburb and suddenly said, “I had to change my name too.” The authorities are probably still looking for me.”

When she asked, he revealed all: his real name was Theodore Conrad – and he was a bank robber who had been on the run for 50 years. At the age of 20, he robbed an Ohio bank of $215,000.

“Oh my God, that’s my dad.”

Ashley Randele was shocked when she told CNN, “I was alone in my childhood bedroom and I Googled ‘Ted Conrad missing’ and the first thing that came up was something like ‘Vault teller robs bank.’ I just thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s my dad’.”

With every click she discovered more about her father and his dark past. It was one of the largest coups in Ohio history. Randele was inspired by the 1969 film ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’, a movie about a bank robbery.

He was working as a teller at a bank and one Friday, shortly before closing, he went into the vault and stuffed $215,000 (which would be about $1.7 million today) into a bag. On top of it he placed a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of whisky. Then he calmly walked out the door – and disappeared.

Two days ahead

It wasn’t until Monday, two days later, that the theft was noticed and the FBI became involved. There was a national search for Randele and his portrait was printed on the front pages. But the young man remained missing. for 50 years. He moved to Boston, got a new Social Security number and a driver’s license under a new name, and left an old life behind him.

A day after her father’s confession, Ashley revealed her mother Kathy’s secret. “She read the articles on the Internet and kept saying, ‘Oh my God! Oh my God, for ten minutes,” Ashley Randele said. “She had known him for almost 40 years, and to find out this secret, I can’t imagine how traumatizing it was for her.”

He never left the country

Ashley Randele says little things about her father are finally adding up. Her father always wore a beard and never took off his baseball cap in public. And he never left the country – even though his wife and daughter begged him to go to France. Today she knows: he simply did not have a passport under his assumed name.

Ashley and Kathy Randele decided not to tell authorities about Thomas Randele’s secret until a year after his death. The daughter told CNN she did not want her ailing father to go to jail.

Thomas Randele died in May 2021, two months after his confession. In November 2021, US federal officials suddenly showed up at the door. An anonymous tip tipped them off that the late Randele was likely the bank robber they were looking for. However, the revelation had no consequences for the family.

In a podcast, daughter Ashley speaks for the first time about the case and the shock the confession caused. ‘I couldn’t be mad at him at the time because it seemed unfair to me somehow. I couldn’t get angry until after he died.” Yet she holds no grudge against him: “He was the best father you could ever wish for.” (neo)

Source: Blick