He was serious.
In January 1969, Conrad took a job at Society National Bank, which occupied the building at 127 Public Square in downtown Cleveland. The bank’s headquarters was one of those midcentury institutional buildings that announced itself as solid and trustworthy. Conrad was hired as a teller, assigned to the cash vault—the room where money was packaged and prepared for distribution to the bank’s branches.
This was a position of genuine trust. Conrad handled significant amounts of cash daily. Supervisors, according to later U.S. Marshals Service accounts, described him as a model employee. He appeared to be above suspicion. He had never been fingerprinted. He understood the rhythms of the vault, the patterns of oversight, the moments when cash moved and when it didn’t.
He spent approximately six months learning the place before he decided it was time.
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## Friday, July 11, 1969
The day Conrad chose was a Friday. It was also the day after his twentieth birthday. The choice of a Friday was not random: a Friday theft would not be discovered until Monday at the earliest, when the vault was reconciled against the previous week’s records and Conrad’s absence from work prompted someone to check. A Friday gave him a two-day head start.
One additional circumstance may have influenced his timing. According to later accounts, his supervisor was away that day, having surgery. The specific oversight structure of the vault may have been slightly different with the supervisor absent.
Conrad met his best friend, Russell Metcalf, for lunch that day. Metcalf remembered this lunch later; at the time he didn’t know it was a goodbye. After lunch, Conrad went back to the bank for his afternoon shift. At some point during that afternoon, he took $215,000 from the vault—in cash, in a paper bag—and walked out.