Secrets of the Congdon Mansion

by Joe Kimball

  It turned out that within minutes of learning about the murders, Congdon family members had told police that they suspected two people: Marjorie, Miss Congdon's adopted daughter, and Roger Caldwell, Marjorie's second husband. The Caldwells lived in Colorado and were desperately short of cash, family members said. Just a month before, Roger had come to Duluth asking the family trustees for money and been turned down. They also told police about the time Miss Congdon become violently ill after eating some marmalade brought to her by Marjorie.

  Grams said he was working with police in Colorado to gather evidence against the Caldwells; they'd already searched the couple's hotel room in Golden, Colorado, and Duluth detectives were keeping a close eye on them now that they'd returned to Minnesota for the funeral.

  These were amazing revelations. It was the first anyone outside the family or police department had heard about the Marjorie connection, but I'd made a deal and felt I could trust Grams to fill me in when the time was right. The Fourth of July holiday had come, so I drove home from Duluth.

  On July 5,1 went into the Minneapolis newsroom and was hit with a bombshell. Earlier, when I had first mentioned a possible Colorado connection to the editors, they had sent reporter Peg Meier to Denver to poke around. That morning, she'd stumbled on a search warrant filed in the county courthouse. It outlined the complete case against the Caldwells, with even more information than Grams had given me.

  “This is great,” I told an editor. “But we really we can't run it yet. I promised Lt. Grams that we'd wait until he gave the word.”

  “That's nuts,” the editor said. “First of all, we got all the information independently. Those are public records at a courthouse. Anyone could walk in there and find it. Second, reporters aren't authorized to make those kinds of deals. So don't do it again.”

  So again I had to make a painful phone call I reached Grams and explained the situation, saying that we would have the story about the Caldwells in the next day's paper. Then I apologized. He was silent for a long moment, then said: “Now well have to lay all our cards on the table.” Then he hung up.

  We finished writing the story, which had the headline: “Son-in-law a suspect in Congdon Murders.” When I got home, about 11:30 p.m., the phone rang. It was Grams, calling from Duluth.

  “I promised to tell you when we made an arrest. Well, we picked up Roger Caldwell an hour ago,” he said.

  Even though I hadn't lived up to my end of the bargain, he had. He went on to give me the details of the arrest: Roger had been arrested at a hospital, where he was being treated for an apparent heart attack. (It turned out not to have been a heart attack.) Police found some of Miss Congdon's missing jewelry in the Caldwells' hotel room.

  After he hung up, I called the newspaper office and we were able to change the top of the story. The headline was changed to: “Son-in-law arrested in Duluth slaying probe.” It was another big scoop.

  My respect for Grams was unbounded. I continued to speak with him as the investigation continued and once, during a lull in the case, wrote a long feature story about him. I called him the “Duluth Sleuth” and talked about his ever-present cigar and the gruff exterior that masked a warm human being.

  The people of St. Louis County must have agreed with my assessment; they elected him sheriff in 1982. Four years later, on Sept. 22, 1986, Grams died in a car crash while driving home from work. He was 62.

  Soon after his arrest, Roger Caldwell hired St. Paul attorney Doug Thomson. The gray-haired lawyer was considered one of the top defense attorneys in the region. He'd been involved in the T. Eugene Thompson murder trial in the early 1960s, which, until the Congdon murders, had been considered one of the state s most sensational murders. (Thompson, a hotshot lawyer, was convicted of hiring a hit man to kill his wife. Doug Thomson defended Norman Mastrian, the middleman.) That was before my time, but I'd covered Thomson in other high-profile cases like June Mikulanec, who heard voices and stabbed her old boyfriend's new wife 98 times. And he defended Donald Larson in the Virginia Piper kidnapping case; Larson and Kenneth Callahan had been convicted of the kidnapping, but in a 1979 retrial, were acquitted. Thomson also defended Lois Jürgens, convicted in 1987 in the death of her adopted son, 22 years earlier.

  Thomson began preparing the criminal case out of public view, meeting with Roger in the county jail. But one day I ran into another prominent Twin Cities lawyer in Duluth. Ron Meshbesher was doing research in the courthouse. I thought he might be helping Thomson with Roger's trial, but he said he was working for Marjorie Caldwell on the civil side — the inheritance issues.

  Soon after the murders, most of Marjories children from her first marriage had filed a civil lawsuit to keep her from getting any of Miss Congdon's money. The children argued that their mother had been involved in their grandmother's death. Marjorie needed a sharp lawyer to protect her interests, as forces began to mount from all sides.

  In August, Marjorie appeared with a black eye and bruised face, claiming that a mysterious man had beaten her up while she was visiting one of her sons in Fridley. Police investigated and decided that her wounds were self-inflicted. Evidence of her craziness was mounting.

  In September I ran into Meshbesher and Marjorie at the Hennepin County courthouse in Minneapolis, where they were doing research on their case. Marjorie proceeded to tell me she was being followed by someone, the police or private detectives, she thought. She said she'd even confronted them at a restaurant. It turned out that 10 Congdon family members had hired private detectives to keep an eye on Marjorie. At the courthouse that day, Marjorie also claimed she was penniless and had applied for welfare. And accompanying her to the courthouse were Wally and Helen Hägen of Mound, and their daughter, Nancy. Within five years, Helen would be dead and Marjorie would be the new Mrs. Wally Hagen. And much later, Nancy would lead the charge of voices who claimed Marjorie had killed both of her parents.

  By spring of the next year, the two sides were ready. The case of the State of Minnesota vs. Roger Sipe Caldwell was ready to roll. A judge in Duluth moved the trial to Brainerd, citing too much pre-trial publicity in Duluth, even though almost everyone in the state was pretty much aware of the situation.

  I drove to Brainerd the first day of the trial in April 1978, and checked into the Holiday Inn. The first few days were full of legal motions and maneuvers, as they prepared to find 12 people who hadn't already made up their minds about the case to be the jury.

  There wasn't much excitement at first. Each night, reporters covering the case gathered at a local restaurant for dinner, discussing the slow moving events and wondering how long we'd be away from home. One night, a few of us had a brainstorm. Rather than spend the summer living in a hotel room, why not see if one of the local resorts on world-famous Gull Lake could put up a group of reporters at a reasonable price?

  We called around and hit the jackpot at Grand View Lodge. Just 10 minutes north of town, Grand View was one of the premier Brainerd resorts and manager Fred Boos told us he'd just purchased a three-bedroom house on the edge of the grounds that wasn't yet in use. So the three of us— reporters from the Minneapolis Star, the Duluth paper and me— could share it for far less than we were paying at the hotel.

  So each morning we packed up our notebooks and tape recorders, drove to the courthouse and spent the day listening to testimony. We'd talk to the lawyers for a few minutes afterwards, then write stories for our newspapers. Then it was back to the lodge, for relaxing evenings on the veranda. It was a fun summer.

  In court, a stream of police officers, Congdon family members and witnesses from Colorado took the stand. Most of the information we already knew, but there were many fine moments, like when a police officer used a cardboard cutout to reenact how Roger reached through the broken basement window to break into the mansion.

  We speculated for weeks about whether Roger would testify on his own behalf. He didn't. Doug Thomson didn't want to take the risk that Roger would say something incriminating or stupid. Thomson
sincerely believed that there was a chance that the jury would have reasonable doubt in the case, because there was very little physical evidence and no eyewitnesses. And back in those days there were no reliable tests for DNA. Dueling experts testified that fingerprints, hair and blood found in the mansion could have, or could not have, come from Caldwell

  In addition to reporters from around the state, a cadre of regular trial watchers showed up each day at the historic courthouse. Most were drawn by the sensational aspect of the murders, but soon found the day-by-day testimony repetitious.

  “Sometimes it gets a little boring,” said Mrs. E. M. Goldsberry of rural Brainerd, who skipped jury selection but saw all but one day of testimony. “Like Tuesday. I almost fell asleep and so did the jury.”

  On some of the pleasant summer days, reporters and spectators sat on the courthouse lawn during the lunch break, relaxing, eating and comparing notes. Several times a WCCO-TV reporter brought his tuba along and serenaded the group with rounds of deep oom-pah-pahs.

  But the atmosphere turned serious July 1, when testimony ended after eight weeks and 108 witnesses. Now it was the jury's tum. For three days they wrangled with questions of evidence and experts and common sense. At least two jurors were bothered that Roger didn't testify on his own behalf. They all compared notes and argued back and forth. On their first vote, a majority wanted acquittal, so Thomson was on the right track in his feelings about reasonable doubt. But a forceful foreman kept raising the evidence issues and after three days the vote was unanimous. Guilty. As the verdict was read, Roger looked at the jurors and said quietly: “You're wrong.”

  Before rushing off to write out the story, I asked Prosecutor DeSanto: “What's next?” “This was just the end of Step One,” he said. Does Step Two involve Marjorie? “Probably, but that's all I can say right now.”

  There was one additional mystery during the trial. The first juror chosen back in mid-April was Fern Swartout, a 54-year-old housewife from rural Brainerd. But four weeks later, just as the main trial was about to begin, the judge removed Swartout and another juror was added. The judge and lawyers refused to discuss her removal until after the verdict. The media crew, a little giddy after such a long encounter with justice, made t-shirts to celebrate the end of the trial. On the back of the shirts was the question: “Whatever happened to Fern Swartout?”

  Finally, when Roger was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison two days later, the Fern question was answered. Before testimony began, Swartout had received a letter offering her $10,000 to convict Roger Caldwell. She immediately contacted the judge, who removed her from the case. Police investigated the letter and one of their theories, never proven, was that Marjorie Caldwell might have sent it.

  One day later, Marjorie Caldwell was charged with conspiracy to kill her mother. She turned herself in and was released on $100,000 bond. Step Two had begun.

  Marjorie's trial was closer to the Twin Cities - just south of St. Paul in Hastings - so the reporters didn't have to stay at a hotel or resort. Too bad. It began a year later, in April 1979. The list of potential witnesses included names of those who'd testified in the first trial, police officers, Congdon family members and staff, and people from Colorado who'd seen Roger or Marjorie the week of the murders. But there was one name that didn't ring a bell: William Furman of Colorado.

  Using directory assistance, I tracked down Mr. Furman on his mobile phone in Denver. He said he was a private detective who'd been hired by Thomas Congdon of Englewood, Colo., a nephew of Miss Congdon. And he said one of his men followed Roger and Marjorie from Denver to Duluth, where they attended Miss Congdon's funeral. He said that his employee couldn't find a hotel room in Duluth that first night, so Furman, himself, flew to Duluth to take over surveillance. Furman said he flew back the next morning, leaving his assistant in charge. When the Caldwells left Duluth and moved into a Bloomington hotel room, Furman's detective became sick, so Furman said he hired a Twin Cities detective agency, Triple A, to take over the case. But afterwards, when he tried to obtain records of that surveillance, Furman said he was unable to find any trace of Triple A. This was a very convoluted story, and the newspaper editors and I decided not to publish it at that time. This was early in the trial, on May 11.

  Soon after, Thomas Congdon confirmed that he had hired Furman, first to protect himself and his family in case Marjorie had begun a rampage, then to investigate the Caldwells in a free-lance operation independent of the police.

  On June 27, exactly two years after the murders, attorney Ron Meshbesher dragged Furman directly into the case. In his opening argument, Meshbesher hinted to the jury that Furman or his associates might have planted evidence against the Caldwells. Meshbesher had heard the same story Furman had told me: that his team had followed the Caldwells from Colorado to Duluth to Bloomington. That meant they'd been in each place the police found evidence, such as the jewelry stolen from the mansion, the airport parking ticket, the suit bag purchased at the airport and the gold coin.

  After Meshbesher's courtroom revelations, I called Furman again. He said he was very unhappy at the way he was being portrayed and said he didn't frame the Caldwells. He said Duluth police were with him in Colorado when the gold coin was found at the Caldwells' hotel. And he said his men never tampered with evidence.

  “I don't plan to be drug through the wringer and have my reputation ruined just because some attorney's trying to get his client off the hook,” he said. Some further digging showed that Furman had been involved in some other high profile cases. When he'd been hired that previous year to follow, then try to kill the wife of a wealthy businessman, he went to police. He wore a wire and recorded conversations with the husband, which led to a murder indictment. He also worked with detectives in a 1975 murder case that led to the conviction of two former New York police officers.

  Asked about the Furman connection, DeSanto wouldn't comment, but other sources said the prosecution was reluctant to use any information that the detective had come up with because his reports contained many inconsistencies that would be exploited at trial. Furman's response: “I had four cases going at once back then and I got some of my agents' names mixed up.”

  And there was this word from the Congdon estate: Furman had been fired from the case because they thought he was incompetent.

  Furman finally showed up in Minnesota to testify on July 10. To everyone's surprise he refused to answer 59 questions about his role, claiming his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

  Furman did testify that he'd made only one trip to Minnesota during the case, but that it was to Bloomington, not Duluth as he'd told me earlier. He'd told the same set of stories to DeSanto, too, because the prosecutor asked Furman, under oath, about the $15,000 he received from Thomas Congdon in fees and expenses.

  “In fact, you've defrauded Thomas Congdon of that money, haven't you?” DeSanto asked.

  “I'll take the Fifth,” Furman said.

  DeSanto also asked if Furman or any of his men had planted evidence in the case. “No,” Furman said.

  Then, to clear up any doubts that Meshbesher might try to plant in the jurors' minds, DeSanto asked Furman: “Did you murder Elisabeth Congdon and Velma Pietila?”

  “No,” Furman said.

  I wrote a story about Furman's testimony for the next day's newspaper and included the context from our previous discussions. Because the jury had been instructed to avoid newspapers and television during the trial, they were unaware of the many different versions of the truth that he'd told me. But not for long. The next morning, Meshbesher called me at home and asked me to testify about the earlier interviews. The newspaper policy allowed me to testify only if subpoenaed, but Meshbesher said he could arrange for that. When I got to work, the subpoena was waiting.

  Minnesota law protects reporters from divulging their notes, so Meshbesher agreed to ask me only about the published report. So, after being sworn in, I explained how I'd first contacted Furman. Then Meshbeshe
r read parts of the story aloud and asked if I had written them. I answered yes.

  Under cross-examination, DeSanto, whom I had come to know and like over the years, demanded that I turn over my notes on the Furman interviews, apparently so he could see if there was any other pertinent information he could use. But the newspaper's lawyer, who was sitting in the front row, objected and after some discussions in the judge's chambers, the matter was dropped.

  In an apparent bid to attack my credibility, DeSanto also asked me if I intended to write a book about the case. At the time, I truthfully answered: no. But the idea had been planted.

  In the end, Furman's role in the case was not crucial. But it provided a big distraction during the trial and probably raised some questions about the overall credibility of the police investigation. And in his final arguments, Meshbesher did raise the specter of a “Colorado Connection” that had mysteriously framed the Caldwells.

  It worked. The jury acquitted Marjorie, then invited her to a post-trial party. (She was going to attend, but the press discovered the time and place so she backed out.)

  Observers agreed that new information in Marjorie's trial - an eyewitness who claimed to have seen Roger in Colorado hours before the murders, and a fingerprint expert who disputed the fingerprint on the envelope containing the gold coin mailed to Roger - made the difference.

  Immediately following the verdict, I drove to Stillwater Prison to interview Roger. He said he wasn't surprised, and figured this would help with his appeal. “I'm extremely happy, ecstatic, elated,” Caldwell said. “Likewise, I'm bitter because I'm still in prison.”

  He also said that Marjorie hadn't visited him at all since his conviction. It was another concrete clue that all was not well in the Caldwell marriage.

  Buoyed by Meshbesher's success, Doug Thomson continued to press Roger's appeal, but it was a slow process. Because Roger had no money and couldn't afford to pay $5,400 for the transcript of his trial, Thomson had to borrow Meshbesher's copy.