In 1970, applying for a Social Security number required presenting yourself at a Social Security Administration office and filling out a form. The primary requirement was information: your name, your date of birth, your parents’ information, your address. There was no requirement that you present a birth certificate. There was no check against existing SSNs to confirm you weren’t already in the system under a different name. There was no cross-reference against the FBI’s wanted persons files.
A person who knew what background information to present, and who chose a name with no existing government footprint, could construct an identity from a single SSA application. The SSN would be genuine—validly issued by the federal government. Everything built on it would carry the authority of that genuine foundation.
Conrad was methodical in his approach. He kept the birth month and day—July 10—the same. He shifted the birth year by two, to 1947. He kept the parents’ first names, because these were the details a memory could hold accurately across decades, and because falsifying them risked internal inconsistency later. He kept the college history consistent enough to be plausible. He chose a surname—Randele—that had no obvious connection to his real identity.
The two-year age shift accomplished something practical. Thomas Randele, born July 10, 1947, was two years older than Theodore Conrad, born July 10, 1949. This difference made Conrad’s apparent age in 1970 consistent with his stated birth year. It would make him slightly old for his actual years across his life—a forty-year-old car salesman who might seem a year or two more settled than his actual age would suggest—but not conspicuously inconsistent.