The question of whether Conrad attempted to contact any members of his Cleveland family at any point during the fifty-two years is not answered in the public record. He cut off contact in 1969. Whether he maintained that severance completely, or whether there were any communications that did not become public, is unknown.
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## The Cost of Running
What Ted Conrad’s case cost, measured in the accounting available from outside, is several things.
It cost Society National Bank $215,000 in 1969—approximately $1.7 to $1.89 million in current values. The bank, presumably, was covered by Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation protections, and the practical financial impact on depositors or customers may have been limited. But the money was taken, and whatever the insurance dynamics, it was money taken from a financial institution by a teller who had been trusted with it.
It cost the U.S. Marshals Service and the FBI fifty-two years of investigative effort. Twenty binders of files. Trips to Washington, California, Texas, Oregon, Hawaii. Television features on America’s Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries. A retired marshal who kept searching after retirement and died without closure. A marshal’s son who inherited the case and spent years on it before a single obituary in November 2021 broke the thing open.
It cost Conrad’s Cleveland family his presence for fifty-two years. His parents, who are not described in available reporting as having died with knowledge of what happened to their son. His three siblings, some of whom apparently presumed him dead. His nephew, whose mother—Conrad’s sister—expressed relief at learning he had lived a happy life. These are people who lost a family member to a choice he made at twenty and who lived with that loss until an announcement in 2021 gave them a specific answer.