Fifty-two years after a “The Thomas Crown Affair” obsessed financial institution teller stole the modern-day equal of $1.7 million from his office in Cleveland and vanished, authorities say the case has been solved.
In line with The USA Marshals Service, on July 11, 1969, 20-year-old Theodore John Conrad walked into his job on the Society Nationwide Financial institution in Cleveland and when he left, he took $215,000 in a paper bag. The next Monday, financial institution workers realized the one was lacking after Conrad did not report back to work.
Authorities stated they discovered Conrad instructed mates earlier than the incident that it was simple to steal cash from a financial institution, and he was planning to ultimately achieve this. Conrad had develop into obsessive about the 1968 film “The Thomas Crown Affair,” a film a couple of millionaire that steals cash for sport, for over a yr earlier than he dedicated the theft.
With a two-day head begin on authorities, Conrad evaded arrest for over 50 years, regardless of being featured on “America’s Most Needed” and “Unsolved Mysteries” and investigators following leads across the nation.
However final week, U.S. Marshals from Cleveland recognized a person in Lynnfield, Massachusetts below the identify Thomas Randele was truly Conrad. They discovered that Conrad had died in Might of 2021 from lung most cancers on the age of 71.
Authorities have been in a position to affirm Randele was Conrad from the similarities in paperwork he submitted within the Sixties and ones submitted previously 10 years, together with when he filed for chapter in 2014.
Conrad had stay in Massachusetts below the pseudonym since 1970, near the place the 1968 movie “The Thomas Crown Affair” was filmed. Authorities stated Conrad had lived an “unassuming life” whereas in Lynnfield, and adjusted his precise date of delivery of July 10, 1947 to July 10, 1949.
The case of Conrad’s whereabouts was initially dealt with by U.S. Marshal John Okay. Elliott till he retired in 1990. His son, U.S. Marshal for Northern Ohio Peter J. Elliott, said in a statement the case was one he knew all too effectively.
“My father took an curiosity on this case early as a result of Conrad lived and labored close to us within the late Sixties. My father by no means stopped trying to find Conrad and at all times wished closure up till his loss of life in 2020,” he stated.
Elliott stated he hopes his father, who handed away in 2020, is “resting slightly simpler” that the case he ” at all times wished closure” from had lastly been delivered to a detailed.
“Every part in actual life doesn’t at all times finish like within the films,” Elliott stated.
Comply with Jordan Mendoza on Twitter: @jordan_mendoza5.
