It’s just one night in the living room of a suburban Boston home in 2021.
Thirty-five-year-old Ashley Randele, along with her parents Tom and Kathy, were watching an episode of “NCIS.”
Tom was lying on the couch, which had become his domain following his recent lung cancer diagnosis.
Doctors have told the 71-year-old he may be six weeks away from death.
“When I moved here, I had to change my name,” she said mid-show, casually as if asking her daughter to pass the remote control. “And the authorities may still be looking for me.”
Stunned, his family received the news and said nothing at first.
“Part of me thought this was a dad joke. The authorities?” Ashley, now 38, told The Post. “I sat with him for a day. Then I realized that, if he wasn’t Tom Randele, I wasn’t Ashley Randele. I told my dad that he had to tell me his real name. He said he would tell me as long as I promised not to see him.”
Ashley Randele, with her father Tom Randele — né Ted Conrad — before she found out he was a thief wanted by the FBI. Courtesy of Ashley Randele Ashley Randele was shocked to learn her father had committed a bank robbery and was living under an assumed name.
He agreed.
“After a long pause, he told me his name was Ted Conrad,” said Ashley, who was unable to keep the promise. “That night, at 2:30, I googled Ted Conrad.”
What he found shocked him.
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 his job with a paper bag containing a bottle of whiskey he had just purchased.
Sticking out from the top is a cigarette carton.
Ted Conrad before he robbed a bank, went on the lam and started living under an assumed name. Fairfax Media via Getty Images
Underneath the cigarettes: $219,000 in stolen money — the equivalent of $1.8 million today — taken from bank vaults.
That night, Conrad took a cab to the airport and boarded a flight to Washington, DC.
By Monday morning, his boss at the bank had discovered an empty safe and was in panic mode.
The FBI was called in.
Conrad became a wanted man and front page news.
“I looked down the article rabbit hole and was shocked,” says Ashley, host of the new podcast “Smoke Screen: My Fugitive Dad,” which premiered 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, aka Tom Randele, and his relationship with daughter Ashley, is the subject of a new podcast.
The next day, Ashley tells her dad that she broke her promise, adding, “The fact that you took this money doesn’t make me love you any less.”
Then he told his mother.
“For 10 minutes straight, he kept saying, ‘Oh, my God,'” Ashley recalled.
Ted Conrad’s great story begins with him repeatedly watching Steve McQueen’s 1968 bank robbery movie “The Thomas Crown Affair.”
Then, apparently, he began to think about his own situation as a bank employee.
“Ted would talk about how lax bank security was,” Russ Metcalf, a childhood friend, recalled on the podcast. “He said he didn’t have to be fingerprinted. He works in the vault for $2 [million] to $3 million in it. He thought it was cool [McQueen’s character] can commit bank robberies and never get caught.”
Steve McQueen starred in “The Thomas Crown Affair,” a heist movie that supposedly inspired Ted Conrad to rob the bank where he worked. Courtesy of the Everett Collection
Conrad also told his girlfriend at the time that he was thinking about robbing a bank. He failed to take it seriously.
After he steals the money, FBI agent and US Marshal John Elliott investigates the crime thoroughly.
There is speculation that Conrad has fled to France. A tourist in Hawaii reported seeing it, but it was a false lead.
Family members stated that he stole for the mafia and was killed.
In fact, Conrad settled in Boston, moved into a luxurious penthouse apartment and adopted the name Thomas Randele.
There is speculation that he took the first name of the iconic character McQueen from the film and the last name was inspired by a lesser known character, Josh Randall, played by the actor in the TV series “Wanted Dead or Alive.”
Ashley Randele with father Tom — the bearded man who changed his appearance before the bank robbery. Courtesy of Ashley Randele
He finalized his social security card and driver’s license under a new name, keeping his birth date the same but changing the year from 1949 to 1947.
Handsome and charismatic, the newly minted and bearded Tom Randele got a job as a car salesman and became a scratch golfer.
He attributes his wealth to an insurance settlement that came from his parents and twin brother who died in a fiery car accident (in fact, his family was still alive and unaware of his condition).
Tom met his wife, Kathy, through mutual friends, and later had Ashley, their only child.
They briefly moved to Florida where Tom played on the mini tour – a sort of PGA minor league – while working on a car lot.
The man known as Tom Randele is a scratch golfer who might make it in the PGA. Courtesy of Ashley Randele
“He told me he was not chasing [turning pro] because he doesn’t want to travel to this country,” said Ashley. “But he’s unlikely to become a professional golfer because of the exposure that would bring.”
By all accounts, the bank robbery was the only crime committed by his father, whom he described as an ideal family man and an outstanding father.
Ashley believes that his motivation goes beyond the “Thomas Crown Affair” obsession.
“It’s not about the money,” he said. “He wants to start over and leave his life. We have run out of options.”
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 knows as Tom Randele. Courtesy of Ashley Randele
His mother remarried and lives in Ohio. His siblings lived their own lives.
“Talk to my dad and talk to my dad [then] girlfriend, he has no love [family],” Ashley said. “His stepfather doesn’t like raising other people’s children. Not a day goes by when he doesn’t tell my dad that he’s useless.”
Young Conrad moved to New Hampshire and attended a college where his biological father, who had remarried, taught. “Within one semester, his father’s wife said she didn’t want him around. Maybe it was a different time,” Ashley said. “But it’s heartbreaking. He wants to start over. And wouldn’t it be easier to start your life over with money?”
As for where all that money went, Ashley believes it was blown by luxury digs and at least one bad investment.
US Marshal Pete Elliott is the son of a US marshal obsessed with Ted Conrad. AP
Funds in the family became tight enough that he once loaned his parents $10,000. In 2014, they filed for bankruptcy.
Tom Randele, né Ted Conrad, died in May 2021.
Soon after, a true crime writer in Cleveland saw his obituary, recognized the man he knew as Ted Conrad and forwarded his hunch to Pete Elliott — the son of the US Marshal who originally investigated the case.
“All he did was talk about Conrad,” Pete, now a US Marshal himself, said on his dad John’s podcast. “It was the mission of his life … But no one approached him [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 is coming to our house in November 2021,” Ashley said. “I was very scared. But the first thing out of his mouth was, ‘You’re not in trouble.’ He asked a lot of questions. There is no one to arrest. But there are things to learn.”
Now, he added, “Pete is the person I look up to. I spoke to Pete three days ago. He checked on my mom once a week for a while. He never said to me, ‘Your father is a bad man.'”
And Ashley didn’t go against her father.
“It is a crime of convenience. If he didn’t work at the bank, he wouldn’t have robbed the bank,” he 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: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
