A woman has detailed the incredible story of finding out that her ‘boring’ father was actually a fugitive bank robber – after he made the jaw-dropping confession on his deathbed.
Before her father passed away in 2021, Ashley Randele, 38, said she trusted him more than anyone else ‘in the world.’
‘Some women rely on their mothers this way. I counted on my dad.’ Ashley wrote in a first-person piece for Newsweek.
She grew up believing that her father Thomas Randele was a model citizen and ‘typical suburban dad,’ and was completely devastated when he was diagnosed with an aggressive and incurable form of lung cancer in 2021 at just 71.
Ashley Randele pictured with Jon Walsh and Callahan Walsh from America’s Most Wanted, where she talked about her father’s mysterious past
Ted Conrad pulled one of the biggest bank robberies in Cleveland, Ohio’s history in 1969, making off with $215,000 at the time – what would now be the equivalent of more than $1.8 million (pictured here in 2012)
However, only six weeks before his death, the loving daughter found out something that completely changed her life.
Ashley explained the last few months of her dad’s life saw her simply spending time with her parents as her father grew increasingly sick – reflecting on their routine of her dad laying on the couch watching their favorite shows.
‘One day, we were in the living room, when he said out of the blue: “Ladies, just in case something ever comes up once I’m gone, I don’t want you to be blindsided, but there’s something you should probably know… When I moved here, I had to change my name. The authorities might still be looking for me,”‘ she recounted.
Although initially she thought it was a ‘very weird dad joke,’ Ashley and mom Kathy soon realized he wasn’t messing around.
It turns out Ashley’s father wasn’t called Thomas Randele – but was actually named Ted Conrad.
Although Thomas begged his daughter not to Google his name, she searched him later that night and was in utter shock over what she found out.
Thomas – then Ted Conrad – pulled one of the biggest bank robberies in Cleveland, Ohio’s history in 1969, making off with $215,000 at the time – what would now be the equivalent of more than $1.8 million.
‘He’d been a wanted man my whole life, married to my mom for nearly 40 years, and never told a soul,’ she recalled in disbelief.
For 52 years, Ashley’s father had been a wanted fugitive, living in Boston, Massachusetts, under a new name he created six months after the heist with his wife and daughter.
Before her father passed away in 2021, Ashley, 38, said she trusted him more than anyone else ‘in the world’
It turns out Ashley’s father wasn’t called Thomas Randele – but was named Ted Conrad, with his daughter Ashley describing him as ‘a typical, suburban, boring but great-boring dad that was sort of everybody’s dad’
Society National Bank in Cleveland, where Conrad worked under the name Ted Conrad and eventually stole $215,000
‘Who is this person I’ve known my whole life? I almost didn’t believe it. I thought, my life is a Lifetime movie,’ she recalled in an interview with the Messenger in 2023.
‘It was shocking and it took me a few minutes for it to sink in,’ she continued.
‘In the best way, he’s that typical, suburban, boring but great-boring dad that was sort of everybody’s dad.’
Ashley told her father she knew what he had done – and convinced him to share the real story of his early life.
‘He told me that he had the opposite childhood I had had,’ she explained. ‘I was an only child who never doubted for a moment that I was cared for and wanted. He grew up with an emotionally distant military father, and a mom who was fairly indifferent to him.’
Ashley’s dad told her after his parents divorced, his mom remarried a man who ‘tormented him,’ telling him he was ‘good for nothing.’
He later enrolled in a college in New Hampshire to be close to his father, who was a professor there, but was told to leave by his father’s new wife.
Rejected, he went back to Cleveland where he started working as a vault teller at the Society National Bank – the bank he’d later go onto steal the money from.
According to his friends, he had often bragged about how easily he could walk out ‘all kinds of money.’
A day after his 20th birthday in July 1969, Thomas walked out at closing time on a Friday with a paper bag with the money.
A newspaper clipping of Theodore John Conrad- who changed his name to Thomas Randele in 1970
For 52 years, Ashley’s father had been a wanted fugitive, living in Boston, Massachusetts under a new name he created six months after the heist with his wife and daughter (pictured in 2018)
By the time the missing money was noticed on Monday, Thomas had fled the state – reportedly cutting off contact with his entire family, including three siblings and his parents.
Thomas changed his name in 1970 and settled in Boston, where he met his wife Kathy, and the couple lived most of their lives in a pleasant suburb with Ashley.
‘I don’t condone what he did. But I can understand why he couldn’t stand to feel like his existence was a burden to his family,’ Ashley admitted. ‘Why stick around if neither of his parents wanted him? Why not take the money he needed to start over?’
Ashley and her mom initially wanted to wait a year before letting the authorities know about her dad’s true identify so that they could close the case – but someone got there first.
‘Someone – we still don’t know who – called a crime reporter who called Pete Elliott, the US Marshal whose father had been chasing mine since the 1969 heist,’ she explained.
The Marshal’s held a press conference, announcing the 52-year-old case had been closed – which Ashley said was as painful as losing her dad all over again.
‘The headlines made it seem like he did it because he was some rash kid who loved the movie The Thomas Crown Affair, and wanted to be cool like Steve McQueen who’d orchestrated a robbery and gotten away with it,’ she said.
Ashley said stalking about her dad’s secret life has helped her cope with his death, starting a podcast called Smoke Screen: My Fugitive Dad, and appearing on America’s Most Wanted to talk about him.
‘I wanted the world to know the real him,’ she explained.
‘Making the show was a way of protecting him the best way I knew how and also making sense of the lies he told to the people he loved most. I’ll never stop missing him.’
‘But at least now, I know the Ted he was and the Tom he became,’ she said.
This post first appeared on Daily mail
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