An Unstoppable Force

Good Lord, they've arrested Marge Congdon again.

Or, to be more precise, they've arrested Marjorie Congdon LeRoy Caldwell Hagen again. It's funny, because I just finished reading a book about her.

Marge's story in a nutshell:

Elisabeth Congdon was the daughter of Chester A. Congdon, a Minnesota mining magnate (try saying that three times) who was one of the wealthiest men in America in his day. He built a 39-room mansion in Duluth overlooking Lake Superior called "Glensheen." Of all his children Elisabeth was the only one to live there her entire life. She never married, but adopted two daughters, Jennifer and Marjorie.

Marjorie was the problem child. The kid who was always throwing tantrums and making scenes, the pathological liar, and by the time she was a teenager, the officially diagnosed "sociopath." She had six children with her first husband, Richard LeRoy, who finally divorced her after years of bad temper, bad checks and very bad spending sprees.

Roger Caldwell was her second husband. The spending sprees continued- horses, real estate- but the income still wasnt' there. The Congdon family trustees were getting fed up with bailing Marjorie out of trouble, and the checks from the bank got rarer.

One morning in June 1977 the bodies of Elisabeth Congdon and her nurse, Velma Pietila, were found at Glensheen. Velma had been bludgeoned to death; Elisabeth, who was partially paralyzed, was suffocated with a pillow.

The police, along with the entire Congdon family. were convinced Marjorie was behind the murders, probably to speed up collecting on her inheritance. Both Marjorie and Roger were arrested and tried for the crimes; Marjorie was acquitted, but Roger went to prison. While he was there Marjorie got involved with another man, Wally Hagen. Wally was a widower. His wife, Helen, died in a nursing home a few days after being hand-fed her dinner by her dear friend Marjorie.

Marge married Wally in 1981. She did not trouble to divorce Roger first. There is still a bigamy warrant our for her in North Dakota. (Roger died in 1988, a suicide.)

Desperate for cash as always (what is it with these heiresses?), Marjorie turned to arson and insurance fraud. In 1984 she was sent to prison for burning down a house in Mound, a suburb of Minneapolis. When she was released she and Hagen moved to Arizona where, whaddaya know, a new series of fires broke out. In 1991 Marge was convicted of arson a second time. On the day she was to be sent to prison, Hagen died at their home. Marge was arrested for this one, too, but the charges were dropped when officials concluded it was possible the death was another suicide.

Marge was sentenced to 15 years in an Arizona prison. She was released in 2004 after serving 11 years. Last Friday, she was arrested again on suspicion of theft, forgery, fraud and computer tampering. She is 74 years old.

Marjorie Congdon's long, bizarre story is spelled out in detail in "WIll To Murder: the True Story behind The Crimes and Trials Surrouding the Glensheen Murders." That's a very long title for a frankly too-long book by Gail Feichtinger, with John De Santo and Garry Waller. Waller was the chief investigator, on the Glensheen murders. DeSanto was the prosecutor.

The book, like I said, is too long and- I realize this is a strange thing to say about a true crime story but it's really true in this case- way too detailed. But it held my interest, if only to find out what Marjorie would do next. There's something fascinating about an unstoppable force like sociopathy.