Peter Elliott described his father’s last days as still marked by the case. It “always stayed on his mind.” Conrad died in May 2021. John Elliott had died in March 2020. He missed the identification by roughly twenty months.
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## The Question of the Money
One of the questions that every account of Ted Conrad eventually confronts is: what happened to the money?
Two hundred and fifteen thousand dollars in 1969 cash is, in 2021 equivalent terms, approximately $1.6 to $1.89 million, depending on which inflation index is applied. It was a large sum. Conrad carried it out of the bank in a paper bag on a Friday afternoon. He drove or flew or took a bus—no specific transportation mode is established in public reporting—to Washington, D.C., then to Los Angeles, then eventually to Boston.
Money spent on the run goes fast. Motels, food, transportation, the cost of being a stranger in cities where you know no one and can’t easily get work under your real name—these expenses are constant and cannot be avoided. The first months of a life on the run are among the most expensive, per unit of time, because the fugitive is still in motion, still paying for the infrastructure of evasion.
Conrad was in motion from July 1969 through at least late 1969 and perhaps into early 1970, when he surfaced in Boston to apply for the Social Security number. During this period, the $215,000 was the only resource he had. He could not use credit cards linked to his real name. He could not draw on savings accounts in his own name. He was spending cash.