He had lung cancer and was close to dying. Yet Thomas Randele still had a big secret. He decided to confess it to his daughter Ashley. This is how the woman discovered that her father was actually someone else. That he had robbed a bank and had been on the run all his life. In a new podcast, the woman talks about the incredible confession.
LOOK. Daughter Ashley on her father’s incredible confession
Back to 2021. The then 35-year-old Ashley Randele was sitting at home, in a suburb of Boston, next to the sickbed of her father Thomas or ‘Tom’ Randele. He had lung cancer and would soon die. Doctors gave 71-year-old Tom another six weeks.
“When I moved here, I had to change my name,” Tom said suddenly, while watching television with his daughter. “The authorities are probably still looking for me.” His daughter wanted to know more about it. Tom Randele told her his name was “Ted Conrad.” He begged her not to investigate, but his daughter ignored that advice.
Hundreds of articles
That night, Ashley typed ‘Ted Conrad missing’ into Google. “Maybe someone was looking for him,” I thought. The woman came across hundreds of articles about her father. He turned out to be one of the most wanted bank robbers in history. “I was in complete shock,” said Ashley. “Oh my gosh,” I said. “My life is like a movie.”
“I told him,” Ashley told CNN. “I looked you up,” I said. “There are a million articles about you. And they’re still looking for you, too, in case you didn’t know. And we have to tell mom.” As her mother read the articles, she said for ten minutes, “Oh my God! Oh my God!’. “She had known him for almost 40 years, and to hear this secret – I can’t imagine how traumatizing that was.”
Bottle of whiskey and pack of cigarettes
On July 11, 1969, 20-year-old Ted Conrad was working as a safe deposit box teller for the Society National Bank in Cleveland, mother and daughter read. It was a Friday and Conrad’s birthday was that weekend. At the end of the day he stepped out of the bank with a paper bag. It contained a bottle of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes, but also $215,000 – the equivalent of about $1.7 million (or 1.6 million euros) today.
That night, Ted Conrad took a taxi to the airport and a flight to Washington. His bosses at the bank only discovered the theft on Monday morning, giving him an advantage over his pursuers. He sent two more letters to his then girlfriend. One from Washington, and one from Los Angeles. Then the trail to Ted Conrad disappeared.
America’s Most Wanted
The man became front page news everywhere and the FBI was looking for him. His face appeared on wanted posters, and the suspect became the focus of programs such as ‘America’s most wanted’ and ‘Unsolved mysteries’. But days turned into months, months into years, and years into decades. Ted Conrad remained a fugitive the entire time.
However, he wasn’t really hiding. The man had started a new life in Massachusetts, in a suburb of the city of Boston, under the name Thomas Randele. He married, had a child and took his daughter Ashley to school every day.
Never go abroad
Although some pieces of the puzzle fell into place after his confession, Ashley says. For example, her father almost always had a beard and usually wore a cap in public. He also never wanted to travel abroad. “He always said there were so many things to see in the United States,” says Ashley. “He didn’t have to leave the country.”
Didn’t go to the police
Her father’s confession turned life in the Randele family completely upside down. But because her father only had months to live, Ashley and her mother decided not to tell the authorities. “The last thing she wanted,” says Ashley, “was for her sick father to be taken to jail.”
“We love you very much. The fact that we discovered this doesn’t change that. But we need to talk about it,” Ashley told her father. Her father died in May 2021, two months after his confession.
Handwriting
Ashley and her mother decided to take a year to grieve before telling the police. But in November 2021 they already had agents at their door. Someone had delivered Thomas Randele’s obituary to the police, saying he was probably Ted Conrad.
The obituary also mentioned Ted Conrad’s parents, according to CNN. The police then started an extensive investigation. In doing so, using a 1967 university application, they discovered that Ted Conrad and Thomas Randele’s handwriting was the same.
Ashley contributes to a podcast about her father and his bank robbery. The first episode ‘Smoke Screen: My Fugitive Dad’ was released on Monday.
Also read:
IRRESISTABLE URGE. John is tempted into bank robbery, but is released after trial: “He allowed himself to be carried away by a bad spirit” (+)
The wild Belgian years of Clark Olofsson, Sweden’s most notorious criminal who now stars on Netflix: in style in Leuven, stuck in Wemmel and married to Limburg (+)
Free unlimited access to Showbytes? Which can!
Log in or create an account and never miss anything from the stars.