A woman has described the incredible story of discovering her ‘boring’ father was actually a fugitive bank robber – after making the breathtaking confession on his deathbed.
Before her father passed away in 2021, Ashley Randele, 38, said she trusted him more than anyone “in the world.”
‘Some women depend on their mothers in this way. I was counting on my dad.” Ashley wrote in a first-person piece Newsweek.
She grew up believing 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 the age of 71.
Ashley Randele pictured with Jon Walsh and Callahan Walsh from America’s Most Wanted, where she opened up about her father’s mysterious past
Ted Conrad pulled off one of the largest bank robberies in Cleveland, Ohio history in 1969, making off with $215,000 at the time – which would now be the equivalent of more than $1.8 million (pictured here in 2012)
However, just six weeks before his death, the loving daughter discovered something that completely changed her life.
Ashley explained that during the last few months of her father’s life, her father simply spent time with her parents as her father became increasingly ill – reflecting on their routine of her father lying on the couch and watching their favorite shows.
“One day we were in the living room when out of the blue he said, ‘Ladies, in case anything ever happens while I’m gone, I don’t want you to be caught off guard, but there’s something you need to do. it probably… When I moved here, I had to change my name. The authorities may still be looking for me,” she said.
Although she initially thought it was a “really weird dad joke,” Ashley and mom Kathy quickly realized it wasn’t a joke.
It turns out that Ashley’s father wasn’t named Thomas Randele, but was actually named Ted Conrad.
Although Thomas begged his daughter not to Google his name, she looked him up later that night and was completely shocked by what she discovered.
Thomas – then Ted Conrad – committed one of the largest bank robberies in Cleveland, Ohio history in 1969, netting $215,000 at the time, which would be the equivalent of more than $1.8 million today.
“He was a wanted man all my life, married to my mother for almost 40 years and never told anyone,” she recalled in disbelief.
Ashley’s father had been a wanted fugitive for 52 years and lived in Boston, Massachusetts, under a new name he and his wife and daughter created six months after the robbery.
Before her father passed away in 2021, Ashley, 38, said she trusted him more than anyone ‘in the world’
It turns out that Ashley’s father wasn’t named Thomas Randele, but was called Ted Conrad, while his daughter Ashley described him as “a typical, suburban, boring but incredibly boring dad who was kind of everyone’s dad.”
Society National Bank in Cleveland, where Conrad worked under the name Ted Conrad and ultimately stole $215,000
‘Who is this person I have known all my life? I almost didn’t believe it. I thought, ‘My life is a Lifetime movie,’” she recalled in a 2023 interview with The Messenger.
“It was shocking and took a few minutes to sink in,” she continued.
“At his best, he’s that typical, suburban, dull-but-very-boring dad who was basically everyone’s dad.”
Ashley told her father that she knew what he had done and convinced him to share the real story of his early life.
“He told me he had the opposite childhood as me,” she explained. ‘I was an only child and never doubted for a moment that I was cared for and wanted. He grew up with an emotionally distant military father and a mother who was quite indifferent to him.”
Ashley’s father told her that after his parents divorced, his mother remarried a man who “tormented him” and told 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 returned to Cleveland, where he began working as a safe deposit box teller at Society National Bank – the bank from which he would later steal the money.
According to his friends, he had often bragged about how easily he could walk away with “all kinds of money.”
The day after his twentieth birthday in July 1969, Thomas walked out at closing time on a Friday with a paper bag containing the money.
A newspaper clipping of Theodore John Conrad, who changed his name to Thomas Randele in 1970
Ashley’s father was a wanted fugitive for 52 years and lived in Boston, Massachusetts under a new name he created with his wife and daughter six months after the robbery (photo in 2018)
By the time the missing money was spotted Monday, Thomas had fled the state and reportedly lost 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 bear his existence being a burden on his family,” Ashley admitted. “Why would we stay here if neither of his parents wanted him?” Why wouldn’t he take the money he needed to start over?’
Ashley and her mother initially wanted to wait a year before informing authorities of her father’s true identity so 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 U.S. Marshal whose father had been chasing mine since the robbery in 1969,” she explained.
The Marshal held a press conference and announced that the 52-year-old case had been closed – which Ashley said was as painful as losing her father again.
“The headlines made it seem like he did it because he was a brash kid who loved the movie The Thomas Crown Affair and wanted to be cool, like Steve McQueen who orchestrated a robbery and got away with it,” she said.
Ashley said stalking about her father’s secret life helped her cope with his death. She started a podcast called Smoke Screen: My Fugitive Dad and appeared 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 to protect him in the best way I knew how, and also to understand the lies he told to the people he loved most. I will always miss him.’
“But at least now I know the Ted he was and the Tom he became,” she said.
