The mystery about the identity of one of America's most wanted criminals, accused of a bank robbery in 1969, has been solved half a century later thanks to an obituary and the joint work of a father and son in Cleveland, Ohio.
Theodore J. Conrad carried out one of the most notable bank robberies in Cleveland history when he was just 20 years old.
That Friday, July 11, 1969, Conrad went to work like any other day at the National Society Bank, but at the end of his day he
filled a paper bag with $ 215,000 (the equivalent of more than 1.7 million today)
and He is gone forever, according to The Washington Post.
His colleagues did not detect the lack of money until the following Monday, so Conrad gave the police a two-day lead.
A year later, when no one had yet managed to find his whereabouts, Sheriff John K. Elliott asked his son Peter J. Elliott, who is now leading the investigation: "When am I going to catch Ted Conrad?" The New York Times reports.
Last May, an obituary caught the attention of investigators.
Thomas Randele had died of lung cancer, but there were aspects of his life similar to those of Conrad: his date and place of birth coincided, as well as the university where he studied, and the names of his parents.
"
When people lie, they lie close to home
," Peter J. Elliot told The Washington Post.
[Robbers in police clothes steal $ 20,000 and flee at full speed]
Investigators cross-checked documents Conrad had filled out in the 1960s with more recent ones completed by Randele, including those he filed in 2014 during bankruptcy in federal court in Boston.
Last week they traveled to Boston and confirmed their theory before announcing that they had solved the case:
Thomas Randele and Theodore J. Conrad were the same person.
On his deathbed, according to The Washington Post, Conrad confessed to the robbery to his family, but they did not tell the police;
according to Smith, they will not be charged with any crime for it.
[This ex-cop became a bank robber. He assures that it is the fault of brain surgery]
In his youth, Conrad was a fan of the movie
The Thomas Crown Affair,
in which Steve McQueen plays a millionaire businessman who hatches a plan to rob a bank because he is bored.
"After watching that movie, I think he thought, '
Hey, what if I do this and get away with it?
' I really think it was a challenge for him to be able to do it," Smith explained to The Washington Post.
[Breath of the devil: they denounce a new method that thieves use to steal bank accounts]
Conrad's case was so well known that it appeared on true crime television shows such as
Americas's Most Wanted
and
Unsolved Mysteries
.
