Just like in a soap opera, a man revealed a great truth to his daughter on his deathbed. He didn’t want to take the dark secret he kept hidden for fifty years to the grave and confess it to his daughter.

-My name is not Thomas Randele, but Theodore ConradTold him.

-When I was 20 years old, I robbed one bank of ohio.

Two unexpected ‘bombs’ exploded in Ashley Randele’s ears within minutes.

The father, awaiting chemotherapy treatment in Boston, begged him not to seek anything. She thought her daughter would leave the past alone, but Ashley couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried to sleep that night, he was unable to fall asleep, CNN en Español published on Sunday, October 3, 2023.

-‘Oh my God, this is my father’, She said in surprise as she googled that secret of her father and confirmed that what was said was true.

The woman, CNN noted, saw that the search engine had “hundreds and hundreds of articles about him.” The truth blew up in Ashley’s face in March 2021.

Ashley Randele informed her father that she would keep her last name after her marriage so that she would not die with him. “I thought about changing it for a while,” CNN reported.

“You know who I am, are you serious?” They tried to rob him at an ATM and when he turned around, he discovered it was his father

The Cleveland bank robbery

Conrad, his father’s surname and which he so often hid, committed the robbery on Friday, July 11, 1969. He was on the eve of his birthday.

The then young man went to work as a teller at Society National Bank in Cleveland. During the break, CNN reported, he bought cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey.

Before she left her work day, something her daughter could never have imagined happened: “she went into the safe, put $215,000 in a paper bag and left.”

No one heard from Theodore Conrad and it was the following Monday when the bank noticed the robbery. The man has since been booked as a thief in Cleveland. They never caught him.

New life as a fugitive

He was known as Thomas Randele in Lynnfield, Massachusetts. He raised a family and worked in car sales.

The authorities did not forget what his friends stated: “Conrad was obsessed with ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’, Steve McQueen’s 1968 film about a handsome millionaire businessman who robs a bank in Boston for fun.

In Massachusetts he could have gone unnoticed. Her surprised daughter now says that after more than forty years of living together, she realizes some details. Before, they didn’t have any doubts.

CNN en Español reported over the weekend that “he also ironically donated to local police charities” and, according to his daughter, “watched hours of “NCIS” and other police shows.”

The film’s fascination with Thomas Crown makes Ashley think that this is what led her father to adopt the name in his new life.

“Help me call 911”: A mother betrays her daughter and stops her from robbing a bank in the United States

Small details

The daughter now understands why her father refused to travel to Europe with her and her mother. The name was false and therefore he did not have a passport, the American media explain.

He also discovered why he had a thick beard if he didn’t look like one when he was young. Moreover, he rarely took off his baseball cap in public.

There are so many interesting things to see in the United States. I don’t have to leave the country.

Ashley Randele’s father

However, the woman believes that “her father did not exactly live as if he were in hiding. I took her to school every day. Sometimes, she said, he accompanied her on school trips.”

The father died two months after such a dramatic confession. He was 71 years old and had lung cancer.

At the age of almost 80, she was arrested for the third time when she robbed a bank: she gave the teller a note with an ‘apology’ for scaring him

The police finally found out

The widow and daughter made one covenant, he told CNN. They did not want to reveal the truth until they had gone through a year of mourning. But, the news network reported, police knocked on their door in November 2021.

How did they find out? “Someone had sent his obituary to a crime reporter in Ohio with a note saying the deceased man was probably Conrad,” Ashley Randele explained.

Neither she nor her mother were charged for their silence about the hidden life of that bank robber, the American network emphasizes.

When Conrad fled after the bank robbery, “he sent two letters to his then-girlfriend – from Washington DC and Los Angeles – telling her how much he loved and missed her. Things have cooled down since then.”

Five decades later, his daughter breaks this story via CNN and podcast. Just as his father was drawn to the movie ‘The Thomas Crown Case’, the life he had to live has all the makings of a cop show or movie.

-“The first thing mom and I said to dad was: ‘We love you very much.’ And discovering this doesn’t change the fact that we love you. But we have to talk about it.” Perhaps it was for the best at the end of the fugitive’s life. There’s a reason they say the truth heals and sets free.

(JO)