They identify one of the most wanted fugitives in the US, accused of robbing a bank more than 50 years ago

Posted: Nov 14, 2021 04:58 GMT

On July 11, 1969, Theodore John Conrad left the bank where he worked with a loot equivalent to 1.7 million dollars hidden in a paper bag and disappeared without a trace. The robbery is considered one of the largest in the city of Cleveland.

A recently deceased man was identified in the US as the perpetrator of a bank robbery committed more than 50 years ago in the city of Cleveland (Ohio), reported this Friday the Marshals Service of the North American country.

This is Theodore John Conrad, an employee of the entity itself, who on July 11, 1969 entered the Society National Bank and left at the end of his shift with $ 215,000 (the equivalent of more of $ 1.7 million today) hidden in a paper bag, then disappear without a trace.

The robbery, considered one of the most important in the city, took place on Friday, so the missing funds were not discovered until Monday of the following week. This gave Conrad, then 20, a two day lead about the Police to escape.

As explained in a statement by the Marshals Service, the deceased was obsessed with a 1968 film, ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ (or ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’), where a millionaire played by Steve McQueen commits the perfect crime by causing five men steal a millionaire sum for him from a bank. The man he even confessed to his friends that he planned to do the same at the bank where he worked.

Despite investigators chasing leads of Conrad across the country, the case, which was featured on television shows like ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ and ‘America’s Most Wanted,’ could not be closed.

However, last week Cleveland sheriffs traveled to the state of Massachusetts, where they found that Conrad had lived all that time. low Thomas Randele’s alias in the city of Lynnfield, which, ironically, is very close to Boston, where the movie that inspired him to commit the crime was filmed.

Officers were able to link documents completed by Conrad in 1960 to Randele’s filing in bankruptcy court in 2014. Thanks to these documents and other evidence gathered during the investigation, the bailiffs they finally managed to close the case half a century later.