Man Who Got Away With Bank Robbery Identified 52 Years Later
This is one of the rarer things you’ll ever see. In fact, only in Hollywood do you ever really see it. 52 years ago, Theodore Conrad was 20 years old. He was working as a teller at the Society National Bank in Cleveland, Ohio. On a Friday, he stashed $215,000 ($1.7 million in today’s dollars) in a paper bag and simply walked out the door. The bank was not aware of anything amiss until the following Monday morning when they discovered the cash missing from the vault. By that time, Conrad had a weekend’s head start…and was gone.
I’m not sure how he was able to do it, but Conrad not only avoided authorities for 52 years, but was apparently hiding in plain sight. He didn’t head for Mexico, or France, or South America (countries without extradition treaties with the US), no…he fled to Lynnfield Massachusetts where he lived in suburbia selling cars and as an asst. golf pro until this past May when he died at age 71 (of lung cancer). This is an amazing story that is just BEGGING for a movie treatment. Did he ever have a close call? Was he constantly looking over his shoulder? Did he ever confide in anyone?
