The man responsible for the largest robbery in Cleveland's history has been identified 52 years after he packed $215,000 into a bag at the end of his shift as a bank teller and vanished.
Theodore John Conrad was identified as the man who stole the equivalent of $1.7 million today in 1969, one of the largest robberies in the city, according to the U.S. Marshals service.
Conrad stole the money as a 20-year-old and from that point on was one of the nation's most wanted fugitives, authorities said.
Conrad allegedly robbed the bank on a Friday, leaving bank managers unaware of the robbery until Monday morning when he did not show up for his shift. After searching for him the days after, the case quickly went cold.
After he fled from Ohio, authorities searched for Conrad in several states, including California, Hawaii, Texas, and Oregon. However, authorities now know he lived the remainder of his days in Boston.
When he moved to Boston, Conrad did so under the name Thomas Randele, authorities said. To make the situation stranger, his home in Boston was close to where the bank robbery movie "The Thomas Crown Affair" was filmed.
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The film depicts the main character who stole more than $2 million from a Boston Bank.
"A year before the Cleveland bank robbery, Conrad became obsessed with the 1968 Steve McQueen film," the U.S. Marshals Service said in a statement. "The movie was based on the bank robbery for sport by a millionaire businessman, and Conrad... bragged to his friends about how easy it would be to take money from the bank."
Peter J. Elliot, a U.S. Marshal from Northern Ohio, was a key investigator in the case and his family lived near Conrad in the late 1960s.
"This is a case I know all too well. My father, John K. Elliott, was a dedicated career deputy United States marshal in Cleveland from 1969 until his retirement in 1990," Elliot said, CNN reported. "My father never stopped searching for Conrad and always wanted closure up until his death in 2020."
Elliot shared that some of the documents his father collected helped identify Conrad under his fake name.
"I hope my father is resting a little easier today knowing his investigation ... brought closure to this decades-long mystery," the younger Elliott said, CNN reported. "Everything in real life doesn't always end like in the movies."
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Conrad's case was shown on "America's Most Wanted" and "Unsolved Mysteries."
Last week, after investigating the case for years, federal authorities traveled to Massachusetts, where they confirmed that he'd been living a quiet life in Boston.
Authorities compared his 1960s documents to paperwork he had completed under the fictitious name to confirm it was him.
While he had gone without punishment for his crime, he was not living a life of luxury as in 2014, he filed for bankruptcy in Boston federal court.
Despite the discovery, Conrad can not be prosecuted as he died of lung cancer in May 2021 in Lynnfield, Massachusetts. The U.S. Marshals Service said he was 71.
