Books I Read in 2021, Vol XI

 

GLENSHEEN'S DAUGHTER: The Marjorie Congdon Story
Sharon Darby Hendry

In 1932, Elisabeth Congdon, an unmarried heiress to a mining fortune, adopts a three-month-old baby girl. The child, Marjorie, grows up in the Glensheen Mansion in Duluth, Minnesota, given everything she could possibly need or want. Forty-five years later, Elisabeth is found smothered in her bed. Her night nurse has been bludgeoned to death with a candlestick. Evidence points to Elisabeth's son-in-law, Roger Caldwell, and her adopted daughter Marjorie. This is the inside story of Marjorie Congdon and the stream of mysterious arsons and murders that have followed in her wake.

I bought this book (from the used book corner of a local-crafts store in Grand Marais, MN) because I once sung about Marjorie Congdon LeRoy Caldwell Hagen in the Dakota Chautauqua at the Dakota County (MN) Fair. It was a deceptively bouncy song about such a dark, twisted woman:

Oh Marjorie, Marjorie you tried so hard

To do that perfect crime

Marjorie, Marjorie, and now you're in the slammer

Doing time

You had a wealthy mother who was murderously smothered

With a pillow across her face

And when you went to trial and issued your denial

Somehow you were acquitted, got away that case

(Pete Martin & Eric Peltoniemi)

It took a little effort to get into the book because I felt assaulted with lots of names and relationships that I couldn't keep straight, but once Hendry started documenting Marjorie's parade of financial misdealings, arsons, and murders, it got pretty interesting.

The book, published in 1999, ends with Congdon sitting in prison for arson (having somehow gotten away with the murder of her third husband), awaiting parole. Wikipedia updates the story: "Marjorie was released from Arizona State Prison on January 5, 2004. She was arrested again, on March 23, 2007, in Tucson, Arizona, at her residence at an assisted living facility on charges of computer fraud and several other counts. In November 2008, Marjorie Congdon LeRoy Caldwell Hagen pleaded guilty to fraud after illegally taking funds from the bank account of Roger Sammis after his death. Mr. Sammis had been under her care before his death, and some suspect Ms. Congdon of foul play."

What a woman!

First line: It was a warm fall afternoon, October 30, 1992.

Page 56, Line 5: At this, Marjorie pulled him out of the public school and enrolled him in Benilde, a Catholic school.

Last line: It was one of many prices, he said, for the bad choices he'd made in life.