Who was Ted Conrad, the bank robber and fugitive on the run for 50 years?

When Ashley Randele was 38 years old, her dad made a deathbed that overturned everything she thought she knew about her life. Now, Randele has revealed what happened the night she learned her father’s true identity in a 2023 true-crime podcast, Smokescreen: My Fugitive Dad.

Until his deathbed revelation, Ashley called her father, Thomas Randele, a Massachusetts family man, car salesman, and golfer. In 2021, Thomas was diagnosed with lung cancer at the age of 71 and given a few weeks to live. In light of that, Thomas confessed to Ashley that for more than 50 years, he’d been on the run. “The authorities are probably still looking for me,” Thomas told her (via the New York Post).

Ashley thought her father was joking at first, but he wasn’t. Thomas told his daughter the next day his name was not Thomas Randele. His real name was Ted Conrad, he said. He then asked his daughter to look no further into the case.

Ashley Googled Ted Conrad

What Ashley Randele learned about her father weighed heavily on her mind, and in the early morning hours, she Googled “Ted Conrad.” In 1969, she discovered her then 20-year-old father, whom she knew as Thomas Randele, stole around $200,000 from a bank in Cleveland, where he worked as a vault teller. Once Conrad pulled off the heist, he went on the run. Meanwhile, the FBI searched for him, but he managed to elude the authorities, and the case went cold.

For decades, Conrad was one of the most wanted men in America. He relocated to Massachusetts and became a quiet family man under an assumed name. As the years passed, Conrad started a family and built a new life, all while hiding in plain sight.

Telling Conrad’s story

Ted Conrad died not long after he confessed to his daughter what he did and who he was, a secret he’d concealed from the rest of his family, including Ashley’s mother, his wife. Since then, Ashley has also asked hard questions about herself: “… My name isn’t mine,” she added (via CNN).

Before Conrad died, Ashley did come clean to her father that she’d broken her promise not to investigate the case.  “The fact that you took this money does not make me love you less,” she told him (via the New York Post).

And referring to her podcast, Ashley said, “I immediately knew I wanted to tell his story and also my story about processing — both losing him and also finding out this massive secret” (via the Daily Mail).