What he found meaning in is suggested by one consistent detail in every account of his early life: he was socially oriented, concerned with impression, drawn to the idea of being impressive. His high school best friend, Russell Metcalf, would later tell reporters that Conrad “always wanted to impress people” and “had no fear.” Former classmate and roommate William O’Donnell said Conrad “always thought of himself as being like Steve McQueen.”
Steve McQueen, in 1968, starred in The Thomas Crown Affair.
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## The Thomas Crown Affair and What It Meant
The Thomas Crown Affair, released in October 1968, is a heist film about a wealthy Boston businessman who orchestrates an elaborate bank robbery not because he needs the money—he has plenty—but because he finds the exercise stimulating. The film is now remembered mainly for its style: a chess scene that became infamous, a polo scene, McQueen’s cool surface authority, and a score built around the song “The Windmills of Your Mind.” The bank robbed in the film is in Boston. The city matters; the film is saturated in Boston’s particular geography.
Ted Conrad saw The Thomas Crown Affair more than six times. He became, by accounts from people who knew him, obsessed with it. He talked about it. He talked about how easy bank robbery was. He talked about how the security at Society National Bank was lax and that taking money from it would not be difficult.
His friends remembered these conversations later as what they seemed at the time: the kind of boast that young men make, the kind that is meant to convey boldness rather than genuine intent. Nobody took him seriously.