by James Renner
“How did I meet Ted?” she asked, repeating my question. “Geez. Let’s see. I was with two friends, driving down Detroit and there Ted was, walking on the sidewalk. I went to St. Augustine, so I didn’t know him, but one of my friends did and she said, ‘Oh my God, that’s Ted Conrad! I heard he just broke up with his girlfriend.’ He was very handsome, you know? So we stopped. Anyway, he and I started dating. And we dated until he robbed the bank.”
Kathleen paused for a moment, then said, “I have this tape you should see. It’s pretty old. VHS. It’s a news story about Ted. There’s lots of stuff on it.” She said she’d make a copy of it and send it to me. She also recommended I watch the original Thomas Crown Affair, the one starring Steve McQueen. The summer of ’67, Conrad had dragged her to see it twice and had even gone again without her. After each viewing, he would light a cigar and smoke it while he gushed about the film.
I wanted to know about the letters Conrad had sent after skipping town. But she couldn’t remember much.
“It was just things about our life together. He said, ‘I blew it for $250,000.’ And he called me once, too. He said he’d read that thing about his landlady saying he waved to her from the cab. He said, ‘I did not wave.’ We were all excited when he called. My friends were over and everyone said, ‘hello.’ He said he’d been in a library and had researched statistics on how often the FBI caught the people they go after. He said, if you get enough head start, ‘They’re not real good.’ ”
When she heard that Conrad had stolen the money, she wasn’t surprised. He had told her he was going to do it, although she claims she didn’t think he was really serious. “He liked to think that he could pull off a heist like Steve McQueen,” she said. “He threw it out at a party, once. Told everyone how he was going to do it. He told us he was only going to take money that the bank was storing for some racetrack. He said the money coming in from the racetrack was not counted. The serial numbers weren’t logged.”
Kathleen may have even, unwittingly, told Conrad how to obtain fake identification. “I had just gotten my social security card and I told him how easy it had been to get a copy of my birth certificate from the bureau of vital statistics. You just went in, looked in a book, pointed to the one you wanted and they gave you a copy. All you needed to get a social security card at the time was a copy of a birth certificate.”
The weekend Conrad disappeared, he told Kathleen he was going to see his mother perform in a concert—she was a musician with the Pittsburgh Symphony. He said he was going to stay in Erie. “But then he called me that night. He said, ‘Why don’t you stop over?’ Thank God I didn’t.”
Kathleen claims that before Conrad took off, he left clues in his apartment that would send the FBI on “a wild goose chase.” Things like hair dye and specific references to certain cities he was avoiding. He was going to miss his best friend Rusty’s wedding, so he also left behind a piece of paper stuck to his TV set that said, “Rusty, here’s your present.” Unfortunately, she could not remember Rusty’s last name.
Wherever Conrad ended up, he stopped contacting her in the fall of ’69—he probably realized the feds were tapping her phone. She figures Conrad went to Canada, because he spoke fluent French. “He wasn’t a stupid guy,” she said. “He’s probably on an island somewhere. I lived on St. Croix for awhile. Have you ever been on an island? You’d never find someone there. I know some people who have gone to St. Croix on vacation and just stayed. It’s so unregulated.”
There was one other thing Kathleen mentioned in that first conversation. A book had been written about Conrad in the ’70s—Move Over, Steve McQueen. A friend of hers happened upon it at a garage sale. “It’s completely, totally inaccurate,” she said. “At least the stuff about the girlfriend.” I found two copies of the book for sale on the Internet. One was listed at over $300. The other, available on eBay, was marked at $29.95—shipping included. The eBay listing also had a picture of the front page. It was signed by the author—Jeff Keith. It read, “To Josephine, to our West Virginia agent, with best wishes, Jeff.”
I added it to my shopping cart.
* * *
Special Agent Keesling called me back early in the afternoon. He had checked with his old co-workers in Washington state—Conrad was not considered a suspect in the D.B. Cooper case. The timing of the Plain Dealer article had been coincidence.
Darn.
* * *
The next day I called Kathleen again. She had been thinking about Ted and remembered more details about her long-lost love. “We used to have this ritual on Friday nights. There was a seafood place next door to his apartment and they got fresh shrimp on Fridays so he would buy some shrimp and a bottle of champagne and we’d go back to his place.
“And the FBI almost got him in Hawaii, in 1969, I think,” she continued. “A couple from Ohio were on vacation and spotted him at a bar. I think the FBI found a pewter mug there that I had given Ted as a present. I think that’s how they know it was him, for sure. It had his initials on it.”
Since we had talked, Kathleen had found an old letter, written to her by a friend of Conrad’s named Mike Murphy, who was visited by the FBI while stationed in Germany in 1969. She read the letter into the phone. “ ‘If you happen to be thinking at this moment that they wanted to ask about Ted, you are correct. They took me outside, asked me a number of pertinent questions like, when did I last hear from him, did he ever mention anything about this to you? I finally got back inside to a cold pizza and warm beer.’ ”
After giving it some more thought, she really felt that Conrad must have gotten a new identity worked out before leaving Lakewood and had probably found a name to use at the vital statistics office.
Having recently written a story about a man in Eastlake who stole someone’s identity in 1978 (Chapter 10: Hiding in Plain Sight: The Unsolved Suicide of Joseph Newton Chandler), I knew one way such a thing could be done. “Sometimes, people who need to hide will use the name of someone they knew, someone who would have been about their age, but died in a tragic accident before they were old enough to collect a social security card,” I said. “Was there anyone you and Ted knew who was about your age, who died?”
“Actually, yes,” she said.
A friend of Kathleen’s had a younger brother who died in an accident in Lakewood. The boy’s name had been Tim Greenrod.
An online directory search found no Tim Greenrod in the United States. If Conrad was using the name, he wasn’t in the phone book.
I contacted a friend of mine named Mike Lewis, who runs Confidential Investigative Services, a local private-eye firm. He ran the information through a system that compiles names, phone numbers, and addresses pulled from public records, credit reports, and magazine subscription lists. He got a hit.
Lewis sent me an e-mail with the results of his search for Tim Greenrod. Someone using that name, with a birth date that matched the deceased, was associated with an address right here in Cleveland.
Later that afternoon, I pulled into the driveway on Linn Avenue listed in Lewis’s report. It was a bad neighborhood, a section of rundown houses off Broadway. Metal bars obscured windows that looked out over the smokestacks of Mittal Steel. Ugly dogs barked incessantly at strangers, held back by wire and thick chain link fences.
The house, which someone using a dead boy’s name had once listed on some form, was vacant and neighbors said that no one had lived there for a long time. The house has a mailbox hidden from the road, though, and I wondered if it was possible someone used this abandoned property as a safe place to pick up mail. I looked around. The mailbox could be seen by two homes.
At the house closest to the mailbox, a young woman answered the door, flanked by a small child.
“Do you know anyone who uses that house?” I asked.
“Victor,” she said.
“Is Victor white?”
“Nah. Only white guy around here lives there,” she said, pointing to the other house that could see the m
ailbox. “He’s kind of an older man.”
But that house was vacant, too. The windows were smashed and there was no car in the driveway.
I left a message for Victor, but he never called.
Waiting in my mailbox when I returned home was my copy of Move Over, Steve McQueen. I scanned the author’s bio—“Jeff Keith,” it read, “was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1949 . . . by the age of 10 he spoke French fluently.” I set the book aside for the moment. That evening, I watched The Thomas Crown Affair, taking notes, because Kathleen was quite convinced that Conrad had studied the film and McQueen’s performance.
Whereas the newer version of the movie—the one starring Pierce Brosnan—has Crown stealing priceless art, this classic was a well-staged bank heist. Crown hired patsies to rob the bank for him. And the first thing he did after the heist was light up a stogie. After depositing the $2.6 million in a Swiss bank account, Crown returned to the states and fell for the woman hired by the insurance company to catch him. He offered her a chance to go with him, but in the end left her behind.
Thomas Crown, Ted Conrad. T.C., T.C. It was hard to tell where one began and the other ended.
* * *
The next day, Kathleen’s package arrived via overnight express. Inside was a DVD copy of the VHS news report she’d kept for 20 years, a 1986 segment by Bill McCay that had aired on a local station. It was about 20 minutes long and gave a few details that I had not found in newspaper articles.
Most interesting were a few snippets from the actual letters Conrad had mailed to Kathleen in the days following the heist. “I do want to write, though I only ask that you burn my envelopes so the authorities don’t get the postmarks!”
But the FBI intercepted the letters. One was dated July 15 and had been deposited at the Washington D.C. airport. A second letter was dated July 17 and postmarked “Inglewood, CA.”
An FBI agent revealed that Conrad had been making audio recordings of his phone calls to Kathleen. The tapes are played in the report.
“Have you played your Beach Boys album, yet?” Ted asks in his too-innocent voice.
It’s impossible to make out her response.
“Very good,” he says. “That’s what counts. Everybody else make it home okay? Oh, I’m keeping you from your friends!”
“It’s okay,” she says. “It’s my turn.”
Conrad, according to McCay’s report, is left-handed, enjoys golfing, and is an accomplished billiard player.
The report confirmed Kathleen’s story about the couple in Hawaii. They were from Beachwood, and claimed to have met Conrad in the Princess Kauai Hotel bar.
Apparently, Conrad wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. Further letters reference the statute of limitations for embezzlement—seven years. Unfortunately for Conrad, the statute of limitations became meaningless when the federal government indicted him in December of 1969.
“Maybe on that 7th year, we’ll meet and fall in love,” he wrote. “It’s now seven days and only six years, 358 days to go!”
The report ended with a statement from Conrad’s father. “This is the heartbreaker of my life,” he said.
* * *
Move Over, Steve McQueen was a fast read: 133 well written pages, crafted in a style undoubtedly inspired by Hemingway, Salinger, and, at the end, Faulkner. It claims to be a novel.
The main character is Ted Conrad. Worried about the draft, he enrolls at Cuyahoga Community College to avoid going to war. He gets a job at Aero Kit, Inc., a Rocky River factory that produces rubber gaskets for the war machine. There, Conrad befriends an assortment of colorful characters and sort of falls for an older married woman. Eventually, he gets an interview at Society National Bank, and the president is so taken by him that Conrad is made “vault teller.”
In various places throughout the book, the writer drops French idioms or lapses into the language during conversations between Conrad and his mother. The girlfriend, Cheryl Ann Miller, bears little likeness to Kathleen.
On page 89, during a conversation between Conrad and his friend “Russell Dunn,” Russell warns his friend that his clever plan might not work. “Don’t you think someone’s gonna see a paper bag and check it?”
“That’s just it!” says Conrad “I’m depending on everyone looking but no one seeing!”
Finished, I closed the book and set it face down. On the back was the author’s photo. For a moment, it felt like I couldn’t breathe.
* * *
I ran “Jeff Keith” through a newspaper archive search. This headline came up: “How One Lawyer Tormented His Victims and the Justice System.”
“People will tell you Jeffrey Keith is the devil himself, but officially, he is inmate No. 182622 in 7 Delta Pod of the Cuyahoga County Jail,” it began.
In 1995, Keith had been convicted of a litany of arson charges and sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison. The prosecution proved that Keith had terrorized his ex-girlfriend by hiring a man to torch the cars and homes of just about anyone she knew.
The article described Keith as a lawyer from Lakewood who didn’t practice law and who ran unsuccessfully for City Council four times, a clever, maniacal sociopath who owned three properties and kept different women at each. One woman claimed Keith had locked her and her children in the house on weekends while he drove to Erie, Pennsylvania, to visit his other girlfriend. She said that when Keith found out she was pregnant—with his daughter—he talked her into an abortion because he only wanted a son.
He was also a member of a local middle eastern organization, to which he donated $30,000, but got kicked out after he started dating the president’s daughter. At about the same time, 46-year-old Keith started dating a high school senior he met on a levy campaign, in Parma.
When he was indicted on the arson charges, that high school senior told the police some odd things about Keith. She said Keith had a lot of money but never worked. She claimed he had a safe-deposit box in which he kept gold teeth and coins, according to the article.
He was also in trouble for forging an old lady’s will.
Assistant county prosecutor Steven Dever sent Keith away for a long, long time. And Keith was not happy.
In 1996, Keith was indicted again—this time for plotting to kill a firefighter and the prosecutor who put him away. But those charges didn’t stick. A woman named Barbara Loesser, who worked as a reporter for the failed alternative weekly Downtown Tab, contacted the prosecution’s witnesses—using the name Chris Lawrence—and intimidated them until they recanted or changed their stories. Prosecutors noted that Downtown Tab was owned by James Carney Jr., a friend and associate of Keith’s, although Carney was never charged. Loesser was indicted for bribery, intimidation, obstructing justice, and perjury. She, too, is now on the run and wanted by police.
* * *
I had one more call to make that night. On the envelope in which the book was sent, the return address listed a “Josephine Mackin” and a West Virginia address. I assumed it was the same “Josephine” that had once been Keith’s agent. Maybe she could provide some information about whether there was ever a partnership between Keith and Conrad.
Apparently, however, “Josephine” is a popular name in West Virginia. The woman was not the same Josephine who had once been Keith’s agent. She claimed to have found the book at an estate sale four years ago.
* * *
Mondays at the paper are busy as everyone rushes to make deadlines. But I needed to share a wild theory with my editor.
“Do you have five minutes to hear a story?” I asked my editor, Frank, peeking into his office.
“Sure,” he said.
I sat down and placed a newspaper clipping that showed Ted Conrad’s school photo on his desk. Quickly, I gave a brief synopsis of Conrad’s crime. Then I set Move Over Steve McQueen next to the article, face up. I told Frank about the strange insight the author had into Conrad’s actions and motivations, how it pretended to be fiction, how the author was fluent in French, was born the same ye
ar as Conrad, and seemed to have a lot of money but reportedly did little work. Then I flipped the book over. The photo on the back was taken in 1977, and the guy had a handlebar mustache and longer hair, but…
“I think it’s the same guy,” I said.
“I see a resemblance,” said Frank.
“The chin and the ears are the same,” I said.
“Look at the left eyebrow,” said Frank. “It dips in here and here, just like Ted Conrad’s.”
The art director concurred. “I’d buy it,” he said.
I called the Trumbull Correction Institution where Keith is being held while he awaits his first parole hearing in 2018. I could submit a request to meet with Keith, but it was up to him whether or not he would see me. I faxed a letter explaining that I had a copy of his book and wanted to talk to him about his inspiration for writing it.
While I waited for an answer, I tried to find some kind of verification that Keith was who he claimed to be.
* * *
There is an office at City Hall where the names of everyone born and everyone who has died in Cleveland are kept in large black binders, arranged by year. It’s a weird, off-putting place. It feels a little like some modern-day re-invention of Greek mythology.
I was looking for proof that the real Jeff Keith had died and Ted Conrad had stolen his identity, like someone had apparently stolen Tim Greenrod’s.
I quickly located the birth certificate for a “Jeff Keith” in 1949, the only “Jeff Keith” listed that year. I combed the dead files for the years immediately after 1949, hoping to find “Jeff Keith” again. I didn’t. However, I did find a “Baby Boy Keith” who died in 1950, shortly after childbirth. That child’s father had the same name as the father listed on Jeff Keith’s certificate. But the mother’s name was different.
Later that day, a spokesperson with the prison called to say that a conference room had been reserved for tomorrow—Keith had agreed to meet me.
On the way home, I dialed a number I had found for the real Jeff Keith’s mother, based on information taken from his birth certificate. An aged woman’s voice answered. “Hello?” I explained, as best I could, who I was and that I needed her to tell me if her son was the man who had written Move Over, Steve McQueen.