On his deathbed, man confesses to family that he was bank robber on the run for 50 years
Just before Thomas Randele died, his wife of nearly 40 years asked his golfing buddies and his co-workers to come by their home. They gathered to say goodbye to a guy they called one of the nicest people they'd ever known — a devoted family man who gushed about his daughter, a golfer who never bent the rules, a friend to so many that a line stretched outside the funeral home a week later.
By the time of their final visit last May at Randele's house in suburban Boston, the cancer in his lungs had taken away his voice. So they all left without knowing that their friend they'd spent countless hours swapping stories with never told them his biggest secret of all. For the past 50 years, he was a fugitive wanted in one of the largest bank robberies in Cleveland's history, living in Boston under a new name he created six months after the heist in the summer of 1969. Not even his wife or daughter knew until he told them in what authorities described as a deathbed confession.
How he was able to leave behind one family and create a new life — while evading a father and son from the U.S. Marshals Service who never gave up their hunt — is just now being pieced together. Ted Conrad quickly figured out that security was fairly loose at the Society National Bank in Cleveland after he started as a teller in January 1969. He told his buddies it would be easy to rob the place, said Russell Metcalf, his best friend from high school.
A day after his 20th birthday that July, Conrad walked out with $215,000 from the vault, a haul worth $1.6 million today. By the time the missing money was noticed, Conrad was flying across the country. The bank heist in 1969 didn't capture the attention of the nation, or even of Cleveland. Everyone else was focused on Apollo 11′s historic flight to the moon.
long article at:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/thomas-randele-fugitive-bank-robber-wanted-cleveland-ted-conrad/
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