DULUTH — Monday marks 45 years since an elderly heiress from one of the region's most high-profile families and a retired night nurse who was working a pick-up shift were found slain in the Congdon mansion — a story that remains one of the city's most buzzed about murders.
On June 27, 1977, Elisabeth Congdon — at 83, the last living child of Northern Minnesota mining magnate Chester Congdon and his wife, Clara — was found smothered in her bed in the family's 39-room Jacobean mansion on the shore of Lake Superior. Nurse Velma Pietila, 66, who had recently retired but was subbing for a former colleague, was found on the staircase — beaten to death with a candlestick.
The women's bodies were discovered when the morning nurse showed up at the mansion for her shift.
Though the case was first treated as a burglary, signs pointed to Elisabeth Congdon's adopted daughter Marjorie Caldwell and her husband Roger Caldwell. They were struggling with severe financial problems at the time and had moved to Colorado with a plan for a horse ranch. There was a more than $8 million inheritance on the line.
Roger Caldwell was ultimately convicted; Marjorie, charged with plotting the murders, was acquitted.
Roger Caldwell was set to serve two life sentences, but the ruling was overturned in the early 1980s and he was released from prison — contingent on a confession that might or might not have been wholly true.
"An extremely wealthy person was murdered," he told Joe Kimball of the Star Tribune in 1987. "Someone had to pay. My wife was the most hated member of the family and the only way they could get to her was through me."
He was in poor health and living in his hometown of Latrobe, Pa., in 1988 when he killed himself.
