by Joe Kimball
Publicly, police called it a robbery. “An empty jewelry box was on the floor of the bedroom and the room was ransacked,” Grams told the media.
But behind the scenes, police already were tracking two prime suspects: Marjorie and Roger Caldwell. Immediately upon hearing the news, family members told police that they suspected the Caldwells, primarily because of the couple's financial troubles.
Within hours after the murders were discovered a Congdon relative in Denver hired a private investigator to protect his family from the Caldwells.
Based on the tips from the family, Duluth police began an intense investigation in Duluth and in Colorado. They checked out the Holland House Motel in Golden, Colo., where the Caldwells were living. When the Caldwells attended Miss Congdon's funeral, they stayed at the Radisson Hotel in Duluth. Police checked out that room, too. And they checked the Holiday Inn Airport South in Bloomington, where the couple stayed for several nights after the funeral.
Ernie Qrams
At each place, police found evidence that firmed up the case against the Caldwells. It was enough, they believed, to link Roger to the murder.
My colleagues and I covering the case for the Minneapolis Tribune discovered much of this evidence, too. And even though police still maintained publicly that it was a botched burglary case as late as July 5, we prepared a story for the July 6 editions naming Roger Caldwell - Miss Congdon's son-in-law – as the chief suspect.
Because of a deal I'd made with Detective Grams, I called to let him know we were running the story. He wasn't happy and said: “Now we'll have to lay all our cards on the table.”
About midnight, Grams called me at home to say that Roger Caldwell had been arrested in a suburban Minneapolis hospital room. He had collapsed in a Bloomington hotel room the day before and was recovering when police arrived.
I called the newspaper and despite the late hour was able to change the story. The new headline on the morning editions read: Son-in-law arrested in Congdon murder case.
Congdon notes:
Early in the investigation I wrote a feature story about Ernie Grams as he worked long hours to solve the case. Trying to find a colorful phrase to describe him, I called him the “Duluth Sleuth. “He was very helpful to a rookie reporter trying to cover this major case, and I'd spend hours a day outside his office, watching him chomp on his ever-present cigar. Other agencies that worked with him on the case were: the State Patrol, Golden, Cob. police, Twin Cities airport police, police officers from Twin Cities suburbs of Fridley, Bloomington and St. Louis Park, and the Hennepin County Sheriffs deputies.
While Roger waited in jail, a judge ruled that too much publicity in the case meant Caldwell could not receive a fair trial in Duluth, so the trial was moved to Brainerd, a growing resort town in north central Minnesota.
Jury selection began in April 1978, ten months after the murders. Attorneys spent nearly a month questioning 81 potential jurors, before seven women and five men were selected.
Then Prosecutor John DeSanto moved into action, methodically presenting the case of the State of Minnesota vs. Roger Sipe Caldwell.
There was no direct evidence linking Caldwell to the crimes. There were no eyewitnesses or fingerprints on the candlestick holder. But DeSanto presented 100 witnesses whose testimony wove a web of circumstantial evidence, which, DeSanto alleged, proved that Caldwell was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
The motive was greed, he said. The Caldwells were so deep in debt that they needed the inheritance to pay their bills. And even in their penniless state, they continued to shop for a ranch in the mountains. A sudden infusion of cash was the only way they'd ever pay for that.
A stream of witnesses outlined the Caldwells' financial woes: repossessed Jeeps, the trip to Duluth to plead for money, the ranch deals that fell through for lack of a down payment.
“This was a very extravagant, spendthrift, dream-world type lifestyle for this unemployed fortune seeker,” DeSanto told the jury. “And this financial pressure continued to build until that fatal day.” Caldwell, sitting at the defense table near the front of the courtroom, remained impassive during this stinging rebuke.
DeSanto told the jury about a piece of paper found in the Caldwells' safe deposit, which appeared to be a will, made out by Marjorie just three days before the murder. The will gave Roger control of more than $2.5 million of his wife's expected inheritance. DeSanto called the will “the carrot,” intended to entice Roger to commit the murders.
Some key evidence presented in the trial:
A wicker basket, filled with jewelry, which police found in the Caldwells' Bloomington motel room after Miss Congdon's funeral. It was the same jewelry and basket taken from the closet in Miss Congdon's bedroom, a Congdon employee told the jury.
John DeSanto
A gold coin, the Byzantine coin that was taken from Miss Congdon's bedroom on the night of the murders. Bizarrely, police found the coin in an unopened envelope inside the Caldwells' mailbox at their motel in Golden. It had been postmarked in Duluth on June 27, the day of the murders, and delivered in Colorado while the Caldwells were in Duluth for the funeral. Experts said the envelope was addressed to Roger Caldwell in his own handwriting. And Roger's thumbprint was on the envelope, too, according to the testimony of a fingerprint expert. DeSanto told the jury that this was proof Roger had been in Duluth that day, and that he'd probably mailed the coin to Colorado as a signal to Marjorie that the deed had been done.
A receipt for $56 from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport gift shop, found in the Caldwells' Duluth hotel room after the funeral. Police said the receipt, dated June 27, was for a suede suit bag, which police later found in the Caldwells' Bloomington hotel room. The receipt was crucial to the case because it showed Roger had been in Minnesota on the day of the murders.
The prosecution had some unexpected help in the case when two employees of the airport gift shop, testifying under oath about the receipt, pointed to Roger in the courtroom and said he was the man who'd purchased the suede bag on the morning after the murders. Spectators in the courtroom were aghast, because earlier in the trial DeSanto had told the jurors that neither of the two employees could specifically remember Roger or identify him. But sitting at the witness stand, each one calmly pointed to Roger and said he was the man she'd seen in the gift shop nearly a year earlier. It was like a scene from a television courtroom drama when defense attorney Doug Thomson tried to discredit the witnesses by pointing out to the jury that the clerks had failed to identify Roger when questioned by police four days after the murder, when their memories, presumably, were much clearer.
But there were several holes in the state's case. The major one was proving how Caldwell got back to Colorado. Several witnesses in Golden, including a banker, testified that they'd seen Roger Caldwell in Colorado late in the day of the murders. For that to be true (if Roger committed the murders), it appears there were only two commercial air flights from Minneapolis that he could have taken early that morning. Police checked airline records for both flights but could not find Roger's name or a likely alias.
Prosecutors worked hard to overcome this obstacle and finally decided that the banker was wrong; that Roger had come to the bank to try to get his repossessed Jeep back on the following day. But the banker, with full confidence that he was right, was a difficult witness to refute.
And Ricky LeRoy, Marjorie's youngest son from her first marriage, was living with the Caldwells in Golden and testified that he looked into the bedroom the night of the murders and saw “two lumps under the covers.” But he said he had not seen Roger's face and his testimony, coming from a 17-year-old who was clearly supporting his mother throughout the case, was not particularly harmful to the prosecution.
Still, many serious questions remained about the case against Roger. If he had killed the women, why did he bring the stolen jewelry back to Colorado, then pack it up again and bring it to the Twin Cities?
And why did he mail the gold coin to himsel
f? None of his fingerprints were found inside the mansion, so why was he so careful there, but then was so careless to leave prints on the coin's envelope?
Why did he rely on nurse Pietila's car for the get-away? Pietila was filling in that night for a vacationing nurse. How did he know her car, or any car, would be available?
Defense attorney Thomson pointed to these inconsistencies in the case, all of which suggested that Caldwell had been framed. He knew that the rest of the Congdons did not like Marjorie, and suggested to the jury that they might have arranged to make it look like Marjorie's new husband was the killer. (He conveniently neglected to say how any of Miss Congdon's other relatives could be so heartless as to murder their beloved matriarch just to frame the family's bad seed.)
DeSanto told the jury that Roger made “stupid moves” because he “wasn't himself after the murders, or maybe he was feeling a false sense of security because he thought he had gotten away with it.”
One other apparent hole in the prosecution's case was cleared up before the trial ended. Police had found two fingerprints at the mansion that apparently didn't match up with anyone involved in the case. They definitely weren't Roger's, and Thomson hinted that they might belong to the real killer.
Police checked further, though, and cleared up the mystery. One of the fingerprints belonged to a part-time nurse at the mansion.
The other print – found on the blood-stained bathroom sink where the killer had washed before fleeing the mansion–belonged to Duluth Police Sgt. Gary Waller, the chief investigator in the case.
Doug Thomson
Testimony in the trial lasted two months. Finally, on July 6, 1978, the jurors began deliberations. They spent three days in a small room in Brainerd's Crow Wing County courthouse, arguing back and forth.
It wasn't until 4:30 p.m. on the third day that they reached a consensus. The courtroom was silent as the jurors marched in, taking their places in the jury box. The court clerk took the verdict and read the word: “Guilty.”
Roger Caldwell, who had not testified in his own defense, looked at the jurors and softly said: “You're wrong.”
The judge asked each of the jurors if they agreed with the verdict. All 12 said yes. One woman cried as she replied.
Later, several jurors said the sentiment in the jury room initially seemed to be for acquittal. But by the time the first vote was taken, it was seven to five for guilty. The discussions continued until everyone agreed with the judgment of guilt.
Two days later, Roger Caldwell was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison. St. Louis County Judge Jack Litman called the murders “brutal, heinous, awful and awesome.”
The day after Roger's sentencing, the other shoe dropped. Marjorie Caldwell was charged with conspiring with her husband to kill her mother and the nurse. She turned herself in to Duluth police and was quickly released on $100,000 bond.
Part Two of the Congdon Murder Trials had begun.
As Marjorie prepared for trial, another judge ruled that there had been too much publicity in the case for her to get a fair trial in Duluth. So Marjorie's trial was moved to Hastings, a small town on the edge of St. Paul's southern suburbs.
In the beginning, the Marjorie trial was similar to Roger's trial. Jury selection was lengthy, taking nearly three weeks. And again, John DeSanto was the prosecutor.
Testimony began on April 26, 1979. DeSanto again told of the Caldwells' extravagant lifestyle and subsequent debts. And we learned a little more about their personal relationship. DeSanto told jurors that Marjorie “dominated and manipulated Roger from the very beginning.” She planned the murders, he committed them “with the assurance he would get a certain amount of the money,” DeSanto said.
Much of DeSanto's evidence in this trial was familiar: financial documents, the suit bag, the gold coin and stolen jewelry. In addition, he outlined conflicting stories Marjorie had told about Roger's whereabouts on the night of the murders. She told her son Ricky that she and Roger would be looking at real estate all weekend. She told a real estate agent that Roger was in Colorado Springs, she told a lawyer that Roger had just gone to a convenience store and she told someone else that Roger was visiting a sick friend at a Denver hospital, DeSanto said.
The defense in this trial was much more aggressive. Ron Meshbesher, Marjorie's attorney, had used the year since Roger's trial well; he had some surprises for the prosecution. Meshbesher began by attacking the police investigation of the case. Under cross-examination by Meshbesher, a police officer admitted that he'd used the toilet and sink in the upstairs bathroom while searching for evidence. Other police officers said that they lost photographs taken during the investigation, and when duplicates were made there was confusion about who took the photos and when they were taken. Meshebesher seem to take pride in making the police look like bumbling idiots.
Marjorie's former lawyer, David Arnold, caused quite a stir when he testified that Marjorie “loved her mother and never spoke an unkind word about her.” Arnold also said that Marjorie thought she might not inherit much of the Congdon estate because she was adopted.
An even bigger stir arose during testimony about William Furman, a Colorado private investigator. Within hours of the murders, Congdon family members living in Denver hired Furman to protect them, fearing that Roger and Marjorie might be on a rampage. Later Furman said he was told to investigate the Caldwells. During that investigation, Furman and his associates supposedly followed the Caldwells from Golden to Duluth and then to Bloomington. In each of those places, evidence that incriminated the Caldwells was found and used against them. Meshbesher hinted to the jury that Furman might have planted that evidence as part of an elaborate scheme to frame the Caldwells for the murders.
Ronald Meshbesher
Duluth police were also aware of Furman's investigation, but soon discounted its value. They suspected that Furman never even went to Duluth or Bloomington, but merely submitted a bill for the expenses in an attempt to defraud Thomas Congdon.
Furman indirectly confirmed those suspicions when he was called to the witness stand. He refused to answer 59 questions put to him, claiming his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Furman remained a mystery man in the case.
Another surprise came late in the trial when a Golden, Colorado waitress testified that she had seen Roger Caldwell in Golden only hours before the murders were committed. Waitress Candace Byers said she saw Roger coming down the stairs of the Holland House Motel at 10 p.m. Mountain Time on the evening before the murders. If that was true, it appeared highly unlikely that Roger – who didn't seem to have access to a private jet – could have made it to Duluth in time to kill the women later that night.
Byers' testimony came as a shock to the prosecution. She had not testified in Roger's trial. And when questioned by police just days after the murders, nearly two years earlier, Byers said she had last seen Roger two days before the women were killed. She said nothing about seeing him the night of the murders. At the trial, she explained her confusion to the jury: “I was real nervous talking to the police. I just wanted them to leave. I had customers waiting for me and they were staring at me.”
She had changed, or embellished, her story just three months before Marjorie's trial, when questioned by Meshbesher's investigators as they prepared for the second trial. Even then, she didn't tell police about her new memory. She said the investigators “asked her not to pass it around.”
Perhaps the biggest blow to the prosecution's case, though, came when a fingerprint expert from Maryland, hired by DeSanto, testified that the thumbprint on the envelope containing the gold coin was not Roger Caldwell's print.
That thumbprint had been a huge factor in Roger Caldwell's conviction. Experts swore it was his print and because of the Duluth postmark on the day of the murders, it pretty well cinched the prosecution's claim that Roger had been in Duluth that day. Some jurors in the first trial said the thumbprint helped them convict Roger. But this new testimony, which was even m
ore devastating because it came from a prosecution witness, meant the thumbprint didn't count anymore and the case against Marjorie was looking a bit shaky.
During his final argument, Meshbesher wove an elaborate frame-up theory to convince the jury of Marjorie's innocence. Furman and his friends had planted the evidence, he said, so Marjorie would be deprived of her rightful inheritance. And to cover himself if the jury wasn't buying the frame, Meshbesher eloquently argued that even if Roger had killed the women, his wife knew nothing about it. Caldwell was a drunk, he said, and sometimes went on binges for days at a time.
The jury deliberated for nine hours. Marjorie sobbed quietly as jurors entered the courtroom. When the verdict “Not guilty” was read, she cried openly. Even Meshbesher had tears in his eyes. So did John DeSanto's mother, who'd been in the courtroom. But DeSanto eyes were angry, not misty.
After the trial, the jurors expressed sympathy for Marjorie and invited her to a party later in the week. She accepted, but didn't attend. Marjorie told reporters that she was tired and a little wobbly in the knees.
But her troubles were far from over.
When Marjorie walked out of the Hastings courtroom she was a free woman, but not a rich one. Her share of the Congdon inheritance, estimated at up to $8 million, was still tied up in the courts.
Four of Marjorie's children had filed suit in 1977, trying to prevent her from sharing in Miss Congdon's wealth. They were relying on a state law that forbids anyone involved with a murder from inheriting money from the deceased.
This probate court matter dragged on even after Marjorie's acquittal in the criminal case. The State Supreme Court ruled that a civil trial to decide the inheritance issue could be held without subjecting Marjorie to double jeopardy.