by Joe Kimball
Roger knew he'd made a fool of himself, but still didn't grasp the extent of her betrayal. She had, after all, already remarried without bothering him with the details of a divorce. “I was a fool, and I'm sure I looked like a gigolo, which I was, in a way. But that's not accurate, either. A gigolo at least gets something for his gigoloing.”
He said, though, that he didn't hate her. “I have no feelings for her whatever, one way or the other. I blamed her for this mess only as far as she deserted me. I can't really blame her for her mother and the nurse being killed. After all, 12 jurors in Brainerd said: Hey, ho, off he goes. The only thing that really offends me is that she totally abandoned me. It just isn't right. You don't treat people that way.”
He said they faced financial problems from the very start, when Marjorie bounced a check at their wedding reception. He paused a minute for another wedding memory: “The trustees in Duluth sent us a set of towels for the wedding. Marj went through the roof.”
As the debts mounted, Roger panicked. “I was rowing as fast as I could, but we kept getting in deeper and deeper. I told her we were both going to end up in jail. I knew what we were doing was wrong. I was just a poor slob running around like a maniac, trying to pacify people who were threatening to sue. I was in a state of panic by the time of the murders. We were in hock tens of thousands of dollars and there was no indication that she was going to give up writing bad checks. It finally dawned on me that she was not about to change. No amount of preaching or hollering was going to make her change.”
Back at his apartment, where he lived with a girlfriend, Evelyn, and a orange tabby cat, Roger limped up the stairs. He said his knees were wracked with arthritis. His place was small, with shelves of knick-knacks. A magnifying glass sat atop the TV Guide on his coffee table. He showed me a row of shirts in his closet, saying he'd bought them for a quarter apiece at the St. Vincent de Paul thrift shop.
He had dozens of plants in a little garden behind the apartment and took pride in showing them off.
It was a depressing visit, but I learned volumes about Roger. I had $20 in cash left as I prepared to head home. I gave him the money. As I left, he said he had one more thing to say, but it had to be off the record. I agreed.
“You can't print this or they'll put me back in prison for perjury. But I didn't do it. I was home in bed, in Colorado that night. I remember distinctly that I was reading a book, ‘SS-GB' by Len Deighton. I didn't do it.”
He acknowledged that there was no way he could prove that he was in Colorado. Again, it was hard to know if he was telling the truth or telling me what he'd convinced himself was the truth.
The interview with Roger was the highlight of the 10-year roundup, but there were other tidbits, as well. I learned that Wally Hagen's first wife, Helen, had died rather suddenly soon before Marjorie and Wally were married, and that Marjorie had been the last person to visit Helen in the nursing home. Wally's children were suspicious. Police investigated the case as a possible homicide, but no charges were filed.
Loren Pietila - husband of Velma Pietila, the nurse who died defending Miss Congdon that night - had sued the Congdon estate, claiming they hadn't provided adequate security. A jury agreed and awarded him $225,000, but the Minnesota Supreme Court overturned the award. By then it didn't matter. Loren Pietila had died 11 days earlier.
Some of the nurses who cared for Miss Congdon in her later years also told me that they suspected she'd given birth to a baby, based on scars they'd seen. There had been speculation over the years that one of her two adopted daughters might actually have been hers, but the records had been sealed and there was never any proof. Jennifer Johnson, Miss Congdon's other daughter, said she sincerely doubted that her mother had borne a child. She said doctors had operated on her mother several times over the years, which could account for the scars.
I never saw Roger again, but I returned to Latrobe one year later for his funeral His dire predictions had come true, although medical problems hadn't killed him. It was suicide.
The Monday before he died, Roger's sister-in-law, Betty, called to say Roger was acting strangely. He'd told his family that he was terminally ill, so Roger's brother planned to meet with the doctor that week to check the prognosis. After a Twins game Wednesday night, about 10 p.m., I called Betty in Latrobe to see how the doctor visit had gone.
Betty was quite disturbed when she answered. “Haven't you heard? I thought you knew,” she said.
“What, Betty? What is it?”
“Roger. He's dead.”
After telling his family that he was dying and had only two months to live, Roger made the decision to end his life. He was 53. His apartment was only eight blocks from his parents' place, so he walked over there one last time. His 82-year-old father wasn't there. He was in a nursing home recovering from a broken hip. Roger told his mother nothing about his plans, but overstayed his welcome. His family had grown increasingly tired of his complaints and depression in the previous months, and about midnight his mother called his brother to take Roger home.
Howard and Betty arrived and led him out. Roger kissed his mother as he left and said goodbye. It was the last time she would see him alive. Howard and Betty bought him some cigarettes and beer and took him home. He was very talkative and as they left, he also kissed Betty goodbye.
The next day, Roger called Betty. “He was looking for someone to talk to. That's all he wanted, and maybe some beer or whiskey or cigarettes. He felt abandoned,” she said. He talked mostly about his childhood and Marjorie. “He said nothing about the murders, but I really believe that's what he wanted to talk about.”
Betty said Roger and Evelyn had recently moved into a new apartment, but late Tuesday night Roger returned to the old apartment and slit his wrists. His body was found at 11 a.m. Wednesday.
Although I learned of the suicide late at night, I was able to reach the two main attorneys in the case. John DeSanto, the prosecutor, said it was unfortunate that Roger died without telling all he knew. “From my perspective, I always believed Marjorie was involved, and I always thought that he'd implicate her at some time,” he said. “The whole thing's kind of sad. It was really a wasted life.”
Roger's attorney, Doug Thomson, said, “I really don't know whether he did it or not. There's always been some doubt, and that's all you need in a criminal case. Even when he entered his plea in the plea bargain, that statement was loaded with inconsistencies. It created more doubt about what happened.”
Using the interviews with Betty, DeSanto and Thomson, I was able to write a front page story for the next day's paper. “Congdon murder figure Roger Caldwell, 53, dies” was the headline. But after finishing the story, I wondered why Betty Caldwell had assumed that I already knew about Roger's death, when I first reached her. The answer came the next day, when the Pioneer Press newspaper ran a frontpage story about Roger, which they overzealously labeled as exclusive. Apparently someone from Latrobe had called them about Roger's suicide and the reporters talked with the family and lawyers before I did, leading them to believe our paper wasn't aware of the development. In her grief, Betty thought she was talking with someone from our newspaper, which is why she figured I already knew.
Three days later, Roger was buried after a small private service attended by eight family members and me. There were Bible readings and some tears at the closed-casket service. Roger's mother and three brothers were there, but his father couldn't leave the nursing home. Roger's two daughters from his first marriage weren't there, either. He'd had no contact with them since the 1974 divorce and they might not have even known about his death
A few more details about his last days emerged. Just days before he killed himself, Roger told his brother that he'd been on a three-week drinking binge and had lost 80 pounds. The minister who presided over the service said he'd seen Roger only once before, when a congregation member helped an obviously drunk Roger walk across the parking lot. The last person to see him alive was a patron at the bar next to Ro
ger's apartment, a stranger who told police Roger had called to him out the window, and asked what day it was. Police said Roger had cut his wrists with a steak knife and died in the living room, with an empty beer bottle nearby.
Evelyn, who'd been Roger's girlfriend for more than four years, wasn't at the service but I found her in town. She said she'd broken her arm on Sunday and was in no shape to attend the funeral. “Maybe it was the booze that made him do it. Maybe the thoughts of all he'd been through. He was always sitting around with nothing to do, and it preyed on his mind,” she said. He didn't discuss the murders with her, except to say occasionally that he didn't do it. And he rarely talked to her about Marjorie. When he was sober, he was a good man, she said. “He was a very good person. He gave up on life, but he was still a good person.”
Roger's suicide note said: “What you need to know is that I didn't kill those girls, or to my knowledge, ever harm a soul in my life.”
Over the years, many people have asked whether I think Roger committed the Congdon murders. I think he did. Despite his denials, there is too much evidence pointing to his guilt to think otherwise. And after his suicide, I decided that if Roger was capable of committing such violence on himself, he was capable of doing it to others, particularly if he was drunk.
And shortly before he killed himself, Roger offered to sell additional information about the murders to Charles Johnson, the well-to-do husband of Marjorie's sister, Jennifer. Using an attorney as an intermediary, Roger claimed he wanted to set the record straight and would reveal information about another person involved in the murder - for a price.
Johnson balked at the idea of paying Roger up front, though, and instead suggested that a reward might be paid if another person was charged in the case. However, the negotiations bogged down, and then Roger committed suicide, so there's no way to know if his offer was legitimate, or, if in his impoverished state, he was simply trying to extort money from the family.
So even though Roger hinted that he had been framed, it doesn't seem likely. To accept the frame-up theory means believing that some nefarious group pulled off a wide-spread, perfectly executed conspiracy. Knowing many of those involved, such a theory seems implausible.
Less than a year after Roger's death, Marjorie was again in the news when Arizona officials investigated a $55,000 bad check she'd allegedly written for mobile home repairs. Then came the rash of fires in Ajo, Az., and finally Marjorie's arrest and trial in the arson case.
I kept track of the case by phone, checking with investigators and lawyers as necessary and writing occasional stories. On Oct. 29, 1992, the jury found her guilty of attempted arson, for trying to bum down her neighbor's home. The judge allowed her to return home for a day before beginning her prison term, to arrange for care for her ailing husband, Wally.
Our newsroom is usually deserted on Saturdays, but on Saturday, Oct. 31, one of my bosses stopped in the office and checked the answering machine. She reached me at home and gave me a message to call Lt. Tom Taylor of the Pima County Sheriff's office. I did and his report was unbelievable: Marjorie was in jail charged with murdering her husband. I hurried to the office and got to work.
During Marjorie's short furlough at home, police noticed the smell of natural gas outside her home. When they checked, Marjorie said she'd left the oven on, but everyone was okay. A few hours later Taylor got a call from one of Wally Hagen's son, saying Marjorie had just called him to say Wally was dead. She was arrested and charged with murder. That night, I attended a Bruce Springsteen concert in Minneapolis, but missed much of the first set because I had to make final changes in the story with the copy desk. I'm a huge Springsteen fan, but the story was the top priority.
Over the next several months I was in constant touch with Wally's children from his first marriage, who were convinced that Marjorie was responsible for their father's death. They also felt Marjorie had killed their mother years before, even though no evidence had ever turned up in that case. The long-simmering feud between Marjorie and her stepchildren erupted into a full-scale, public war.
The signature battle was fought over Wally's body. His children wanted him shipped to Minnesota, to be buried next to their mother. But Marjorie wanted him buried in Arizona. For seven months, the body was kept frozen in a morgue, as potential evidence in the murder case. Eventually, the murder charges were dropped when tests showed that Wally apparently committed suicide with an overdose of a prescription drug. The body was cremated. The Hägen children were stuck with a $750 bill; Marjorie paid $250.
The legal skirmish for custody of the ashes continued for more than three years. The Hägens tried to prove that Marjorie and Wally were never legally married, because there was apparently no divorce from Roger. But in a deposition, Marjorie claimed she had filed for divorce, somewhere in Mexico, though she couldn't remember the details. At one point, neither side trusted the other to take the um to the courthouse for safekeeping, so attorneys from each camp were told to make the delivery together. A Tucson judge tried to settle the matter by suggesting that they split the ashes, but both sides balked at that idea.
Finally, at the end of 1995, the Hägens' money and patience ran out. They agreed to the Solomon-like decision and shared the ashes. The lawyers agreed to the settlement on Dec. 19, but the mortician, fearing that the package might get lost in the Christmas mail rush, waited until after the holiday to send their half to Minnesota. The family held a memorial service and buried the remains next to his first wife's plot in a Mound cemetery, more than three years after his death.
For several years, the case was quiet. Marjorie was serving her time in the Arizona State Prison system, working as a typist and clerk in school programs, the chaplain's office and the law library.
Then one day in August 1999 I got a call from a reporter in Denver. She was working on a story that I'd covered in the past and wanted some background information. It was the Caldwell murder case, she said. I filled her in, then listened to her fascinating, but morbid, account: A woman from the Denver area had killed her mother, then preserved the body for two weeks in 700 pounds of rock salt, in a makeshift cardboard coffin in her basement. After police found the body, the daughter killed herself.
The amazing part of the story, from a Minnesota point of view, was that the dead mother was Martha Bums, Roger Caldwell's first wife. And the murder suspect was Chris O'Neil, the 44-year-old daughter of Martha Bums and Roger Caldwell. They lived together in the same house in Arapahoe County where they had lived with Roger before the divorce. (In 1977, I'd stopped at the house while working on the story in the Denver area, but Bums had asked me to leave, saying she had no comment.)
The parallels were spooky. O'Neil had smothered her mother with a pillow, the same way Roger had killed Miss Congdon. And then, overcome by despair and other demons, O'Neil had committed suicide, just like her father.
Roger had talked only briefly about his two daughters, saying that one of them blamed him for the suicide of her brother, Roger's only son. But Roger had never said which daughter bore him such hatred. The other daughter lives in California.
In the fall of 2001, preparations began for Marjorie's first parole hearing at the Arizona Women's Prison in Parryville, on the outer western edge of Phoenix's suburbs. Her 15-year sentence actually ran until 2007, but it was assumed that she'd be released after about 10 years. It had now been nine. Prison officials sent notices to many of Marjorie's family members, as well as to witnesses in her trial, so they could comment about her possible early release.
Comment they did. Ten people sent letters opposing her release, including one of Marjorie's daughters and Marjorie's sister, Jennifer Johnson. The man who lived in the house that was nearly burned down also wrote, saying he'd moved to another state but that “it would not be hard for her to find me.”
Most vehement, though, were Tom Hagen and Nancy Kaufmann, two of Wally's children. They decided to attend the hearing for two reasons, to tell the board that she would continue to be a r
isk if she were released, and to let Marjorie know they were watching her. The parole board received only one letter in favor of parole. It came from Ed Bolding, Marjorie's Arizona lawyer and long-time friend.
I arrived in Phoenix a day before the hearing and checked her files at the state offices. That night, Tom and Nancy called my hotel room; they'd just arrived and wondered if I wanted to have dinner. I'd already eaten, but went with them to have dessert and listen to their plans for the hearing. They weren't sure what they'd say, but felt it was important to respond to whatever Marjorie might say about their father.
The next morning, the hearing was delayed for two hours, so I waited in the office of prison warden, William Gaspar. He wondered why I'd come all the way from Minnesota for a hearing on an attempted arson case. He had no idea about Marjorie's background, so I gave him the abridged version.
The warden then told me stories about his early days in the prison business, when he used to hunt escaped prisoners. Once, he and a partner found a fleeing inmate riding a bicycle down a city street. They stopped their car, knocked nim off the bike, threw him into the car and put the bike in the trunk. On the way back to the prison, though, they were stopped by a local police officer responding to reports of a kidnapping.
As the hearing time approached, we waited in a sun-drenched plaza deep inside the prison walls. Marjorie waited, too, at a picnic table 20 yards away. She wore an orange jump suit and white tennis shoes, with her grey hair pulled back in a bun. She didn't speak with other inmates waiting nearby, but often consulted a file folder. I didn't approach her, because I'd been warned earlier by prison officials not to speak directly with her. Any press interviews were to be conducted by telephone, but Marjorie had already declined two interview requests that week.