What Conrad did with those three days is not established in the public record beyond the information from his letters: he traveled to Washington, D.C. He appears to have then continued to Los Angeles. The specific transport he used—the route he drove or the flights he took, if he flew—is not documented in available reporting. Whether he had made travel arrangements in advance, or whether he improvised in real time, is unknown.
The decision to go east before going west is interesting. Washington, D.C. was approximately five hundred miles from Cleveland by road, a nine-hour drive in 1969 or a one-hour flight. Los Angeles was another twenty-six hundred miles beyond that. The arc from Cleveland to D.C. to Los Angeles traces a path that kept him in motion—that used the first days to put maximum distance between himself and the bank before anyone began looking.
He was writing to his girlfriend during this period. This detail—the letters—is the kind of human detail that reveals the gap between the plan and the person executing it. A purely strategic fugitive would sever all contact immediately. Conrad maintained contact. He expressed regret. He described his stops. He was, in the first weeks, still a twenty-year-old who had done something enormous and was frightened and wanted connection with someone who knew him.
The letters stopped at some point. When they stopped, he was effectively gone. The trail went cold in late 1969 and did not warm again for fifty-two years.