Before Thomas Randele – a Boston-area car salesman and golf pro – passed away in May, he was known as a good friend, loving husband and “gushing” father.
Since Randele’s deathbed confession that he was actually another man, one who pulled off a $215,000 bank heist in 1969, his family and friends have had to come to terms with his two identities.
“I’m still grieving the loss of my husband, who was a great man,” his wife, Kathy, told Cleveland.com in November. They share one daughter, Ashley Randele.
“I met Thomas (Ted) in our Lakewood High School biology class. He was handsome, sweet and very patient. I was a miserable lab partner.
So many of us at school wondered where he ended up and I am so glad he found love and contentment. Please accept my deepest condolences on the loss of your husband and father. May his memory be eternal,” said a user named Dena Spanos Hawkey on his obituary page.
The obituary would eventually help authorities determine Randele’s original identity.
It states that Randele was born in 1947, but he didn’t go by that name until around January 1970. That’s when 20-year-old Theodore “Ted” Conrad of Cleveland, Ohio, walked into a Boston Social Security Administration office and asked for an identification number. At the time, it was not unusual for adults to get numbers for the first time.
Shortly before he became Randele and added two years to his age, Conrad walked out of the Society National Bank in Cleveland – his workplace – with what would be worth $1.6 million today.
Russell Metcalf, who was Conrad’s best friend from high school, said his friend also used to brag about how he could steal money.
Some think that Ted Conrad chose the name “Thomas” after Steve McQueen’s character in “The Thomas Crown Affair,” a 1968 movie about a heist that was filmed in the Boston area. Conrad’s friends remember that he saw the film at least six times and copied Steve McQueen’s character, said the Associated Press.
“He modeled his whole life after the movie,” said Pete Elliott, the top U.S. marshal in Cleveland. Elliott took up the search for the bank robber from his father John Elliott, a deputy U.S. marshal at the time of the heist.
While the world was focused on the historic Apollo 11 moon flight, few but John Elliott were thinking about the Society National Bank robbery. So, Conrad was able to slip away.
At first, he kept some connections. He sent letters to his girlfriend and one indicates he erroneously thought he would be able to return to Cleveland in seven years. Eventually he cut contact with his entire family, including divorced parents and three siblings. Some family members assumed he was dead.
“She thought she would go to her grave and never know,” said Matt Boettger, a nephew Randele never met, of his mother, a sister Randele hadn’t seen for decades.
Once he became Randele, the secret bank robber went on to work as a golf pro and a car salesman. He married Kathy in 1982.
“He was just a gentle soul, you know, very polite, very well-spoken,” said Jerry Healy, who worked with Randele at a Massachusetts car dealership. Randele and Healy were part of a group of car salesmen friends.
Others in the group remember him as a great golfer, someone who didn’t drink much and was always in control of his emotions.
Though the group never suspected their friend was a wanted criminal, Healy now realizes Randele didn’t talk much about his past.
“You know all the years I knew Tommy, I never heard him mention a sister or a mother or a brother or a father. Everything was kind of generalized,” he said.
Randele also always had a beard and would often wear dark glasses on the golf course.
“The man I knew didn’t change all of a sudden because of something he did a lifetime ago,” said Healy, who still misses his friend even after learning about his bank-robbing past. “He was a good man, he was my friend and I think no less of him today than I did before this all came out. And I’d love to go play a round of golf with him.”
Despite his work and the robbery loot, the Randeles landed in financial trouble over the past decade. They filed for bankruptcy protection in 2014 and court records showed they then owed $160,000 in credit card debt.
The Marshals Service said what happened to the $215,000 from Society National is not clear.
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