It was just another night in the living room of a house in the Boston suburbs in 2021.
Ashley Randele, 35, along with her parents Tom and Kathy, were watching an episode of “NCIS.”
Tom lay on the couch, which had become his domain after a recent lung cancer diagnosis.
Doctors had told the 71-year-old man that he was probably six weeks away from dying.
“When I moved here, I had to change my name,” he said mid-show, as matter-of-factly as if asking his daughter to hand him the remote. “And the authorities are probably still looking for me.”
Stunned, her family absorbed the news and said nothing at first.
“Part of me took this as dad humor. He authorities?” Ashley, now 38, told The Post. “I sat with it for a day. Then I realized that if he’s not Tom Randele, I’m not Ashley Randele. I told my dad that he has to tell me her real name. He said he would tell me as long as he promised not to investigate it.”
Ashley Randele, with her father Tom Randele, né Ted Conrad, before learning that he was a thief wanted by the FBI. Courtesy of Ashley Randele Ashley Randele was shocked to learn that her father had committed a bank robbery and was living under a false name.
She agreed.
“After a long pause, he told me his name was Ted Conrad,” said Ashley, who couldn’t keep his promise. “That night at 2:30, I Googled Ted Conrad.”
What she found surprised her.
In 1969, a 20-year-old college dropout named Ted Conrad was working as a vault teller for Society National Bank in Cleveland, Ohio.
On Friday, July 11, he left work with a paper bag containing a bottle of newly purchased whiskey.
A carton of cigarettes stuck out from the top.
Ted Conrad, before robbing a bank, absconded and began living under a false name. Fairfax Media via Getty Images
Beneath the cigarettes: $219,000 in stolen money (the equivalent of $1.8 million today) taken from the bank vault.
That night, Conrad took a taxi to the airport and caught a flight to Washington, DC.
On Monday morning, his bosses at the bank had discovered the empty vault and were in a state of panic.
The FBI was called.
Conrad became a wanted man and front-page news.
“I dove down the rabbit hole of articles and I was surprised,” said Ashley, co-host of the new podcast “Smoke Screen: My Fugitive Dad,” which premieres Monday (the full season can be accessed by subscribing to GetTheBinge.com). “I said out loud to my empty room, ‘Oh my God, my life is a Lifetime movie.’”
The life of Ted Conrad, also known as Tom Randele, and his relationship with his daughter Ashley, is the subject of a new podcast.
The next day, Ashley told her father that she had broken her promise, adding, “Just because you took this money doesn’t make me love you any less.”
Then he told his mother.
“For 10 minutes straight, she kept saying, ‘Oh my God,’” Ashley recalled.
Ted Conrad’s remarkable saga began when he repeatedly watched Steve McQueen’s 1968 bank robbery film, “The Thomas Crown Affair.”
Then, apparently, he began to think about his own situation as a bank employee.
“Ted was talking about how lax banking security was,” Russ Metcalf, a childhood friend, recalls on the podcast. He said they didn’t take his fingerprints. He worked in a vault with $2 [million] to 3 million dollars on it. He thought it was cool that [McQueen’s character] “I could pull off a bank robbery and never get caught.”
Steve McQueen starred in “The Thomas Crown Affair,” the heist movie that supposedly inspired Ted Conrad to rob the bank where he worked. Courtesy of the Everett Collection
Conrad even told his then-girlfriend that he was thinking about robbing the bank. She didn’t take him seriously.
After stealing the money, FBI agents and US Marshal John Elliott intensively investigated the crime.
There was speculation that Conrad had escaped to France. A tourist in Hawaii reported seeing it, but it was a red herring.
Relatives claimed he stole for the mafia and was murdered.
In reality, Conrad settled in Boston, moved into a luxurious penthouse and adopted the name Thomas Randele.
It is speculated that he took the name from McQueen’s iconic character from the film and that the surname was inspired by a lesser-known character, Josh Randall, played by the actor in the television series “Wanted Dead or Alive.”
Ashley Randele with her father Tom, sporting a beard that altered the appearance he had before the bank robbery. Courtesy of Ashley Randele
He got a social security card and a driver’s license under the new name, keeping his date of birth the same but changing the year from 1949 to 1947.
Handsome and charismatic, the newly minted, bearded Tom Randele got a job as a car salesman and became a scratch golfer.
He attributed his wealth to an insurance settlement that came from the deaths of his parents and twin brother in a car accident (in fact, his family was still alive and he was unaware of his situation).
Tom met his wife, Kathy, through a mutual friend, and later had Ashley, their only daughter.
They briefly moved to Florida, where Tom played on a mini tour, a sort of PGA minor league, while working at a car dealership.
The man known as Tom Randele was a scratch golfer who could have made it big on the PGA. Courtesy of Ashley Randele
“He told me that he did not pursue [turning pro] because I didn’t want to travel across the country,” Ashley said. “But he couldn’t have been a professional golfer because of the exposure it would have given him.”
By all indications, the bank robbery is the only crime committed by her father, whom she described as an ideal family man and a first-class father.
Ashley believes his motivation went beyond obsession with the “Thomas Crown Affair.”
“It wasn’t about money,” he said. “I wanted to start over and leave his life behind. “The options were running out.”
Conrad’s parents divorced when he was a teenager.
His father, a college professor, moved to New Hampshire and taught at New England College.
Ashley Randele with her father, the man she knew as Tom Randele. Courtesy of Ashley Randele
His mother remarried and remained in Ohio. Her siblings lived their own lives.
“Talk to my dad and talk to his [then] girlfriend, he didn’t have a lover [family]”Ashley said. “Her stepfather resented raising someone else’s child. Not a day went by without me telling my dad that he was no good for anything.”
Young Conrad moved to New Hampshire and attended the university where his biological father, who had remarried, taught. “After a semester, his father’s wife said she didn’t want him around. Maybe it was a different time,” Ashley said. “But it is heartbreaking. He wanted to restart. And wouldn’t it be easier to restart your life with money?
As for where all the money went, Ashley believes it was wasted on lavish digs and at the very least one bad investment.
US Marshal Pete Elliott is the son of a US Marshal who was obsessed with Ted Conrad. AP
The family’s funds became so tight that he once loaned his parents $10,000. In 2014 they declared bankruptcy.
Tom Randele, née Ted Conrad, died in May 2021.
Shortly afterward, a Cleveland true crime writer saw his obituary, recognized the man she knew as Ted Conrad, and relayed her hunch to Pete Elliott, the son of the U.S. marshal who had originally investigated the case.
“All he did was talk about Conrad,” Pete, now a United States Marshal, says on his father, John’s, podcast. “It was her life’s mission… But no one ever approached her. [to catching Conrad].”
After his father’s death in 2021, Pete maintained an interest in the case.
“It was a crime of convenience,” Ashley Randele said of her father. Courtesy of Ashley Randele
“Pete came to our house in November 2021,” Ashley said. “He was terrified. But the first thing out of his mouth was, ‘You’re not in trouble.’ He asked a lot of questions. There was no one to arrest. But there were things to learn.”
Now, he added, “Pete is the person I trust. I spoke to Pete three days ago. He visited my mom once a week for a while. She never told me, ‘Your father was a bad person.’”
And Ashley has nothing against her father.
“It was a crime of convenience. “If he wasn’t working in a bank, he wouldn’t have robbed any banks,” she said. “He always told me that if you’re going to do something, you should do it right the first time. And he did.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn