Woman says her dying father, while watching ‘NCIS,’ confessed to being a fugitive with an assumed name

(Gray News) - A Massachusetts woman is sharing the incredible yet troubling story of her late father’s secret past.

Ashley Randele’s father, Thomas Randele, was really a fugitive bank robber named Theodore Conrad, who had spent more than half a century on the run.

In 1969, when Conrad was 20, he robbed an Ohio bank, stealing $215,000.

He fled and built a new life as Thomas Randele, a Massachusetts car salesman and a country club golf pro who adored his wife and child.

Conrad admitted all this to his daughter as he was dying from lung cancer in 2021.

Ashley Randele told CNN he was watching an episode of “NCIS” with his wife and his daughter when he mentioned it.

“And he looked over at us and really calmly said, ‘Ladies, just in case it ever comes up, I had to change my name when I moved here. The authorities are probably still looking for me. I don’t want to talk about it. But just so you know in case it comes up, you’re not blindsided.’ And then we went back to ‘NCIS,’” she said.

Ashley Randele asked him for more details the next day.

“If his name wasn’t Tom Randele, I deserved to know my father’s name and that I deserved to know my name. And he finally said that he would tell me as long as I promised not to look into it. And that’s when he told me that his name was Ted Conrad,” she said.

“I obviously did not listen to him and I did look into it,” Ashley Randele said. “And that night at about 2:30 in the morning alone in my childhood bedroom, I looked up Ted Conrad and then put in the word ‘missing,’ figuring it’s been 50 years. Somebody might be looking for him. And that’s when I saw the headline like Vault Teller Heist. And I was absolutely floored. Like could not have been more shocked. I think I said out loud just to the room, ‘Oh my gosh. My life is a Lifetime movie.’”

Authorities said his bank heist was inspired by his favorite movie, “The Thomas Crown Affair,” a1968 film about a millionaire businessman who robs a bank for fun.

During Conrad’s decades on the run, his case was featured on episodes of “America’s Most Wanted” and “Unsolved Mysteries.”

Conrad’s wife and daughter planned to go to authorities a year after his March 2021 death, but in November of that year, U.S. Marshals came knocking at their door.

They wanted answers in the case, but assured the mother and daughter they wouldn’t face charges.