The Author Behind the True Crime Story of Greed and Murder in Minnesota

Duluth, MN (RJBraodcasting.com & trfnews.i234.me) The author of a best selling book about the Congdon murders in Duluth, Minnesota will be making appearances at libraries across northwest Minnesota this coming week.
the Congdon murders at the glensheen mansion in Duluth it’s one of Minnesota’s biggest crime stories of greed murder and Mayhem covered by then rookie Minneapolis Tribune reporter Joe Kimball back in 1977 who went on to write a book about it secrets of the kangan Mansion you can meet Kimball live in person during appearances at Northwest Minnesota libraries this coming week here’s a bit of the story in an interview with a news partner RJ broadcasting’s Mark askkelson tell me a little about what happened that night or what a little bit about the the murder we don’t get too much of the secrets but for those that aren’t familiar what essentially happened that night with that murder um well Elizabeth Congdon was an heiress to the counting fortune and she lived in in the house there in Duluth uh we call it glensheen now and she had had a stroke a few years earlier so she needed round-the-clock nursing care so there was a nurse with her at all times and someone broke into the mansion that night and both women were killed and it was quite a mystery for a while uh but it turned out that uh that it was a a family member was suspected from the beginning and uh police worked really hard behind the scenes and and finally uh gathered it up enough evidence to to file some charges in the case and so did you think right away this was suspicious or there was more to it covering this I mean uh did you kind of feel like something was pretty I mean it’s a murder so obviously it’s pretty efficient but did you think it was someone from the family uh initially not initially um you gotta remember I was just a kid I was just out of college and and I was kind of overwhelmed by this and what police were saying the first day was that it was a a burglary because jewelry had been taken from Miss condon’s room and uh a bag had been taken and they’d loaded it up with jewelry and so they the the official uh statement from the police was that it was a burglary gone bad and the two women had been killed in the midst of that um and it it stayed that way the official line was was like that for for more than a week while police were working behind the scenes because family members had alerted them to some possibilities with uh with one of the uh Miss congen’s daughters uh and but it took I think it was 10 days later before I kind of stumbled on I overheard some some of the officers talking about the case and uh how it was related to Denver Colorado middle and so we did some digging and realized that this daughter actually was living there in Denver and so it was quite a while before we really got the the whole story so what was it like covering uh you know that story especially as a you know a young kid or a rookie reporter what was it like covering you know something like a murder you know kind of getting your feet wet and something like that well it was uh it was really exciting but it was also a little overwhelming because um I’d never done anything like this before and uh you know so there were things I had to do uh people had to talk to and and I knew what I had to do but then each day I wondered what am I going to do next I mean where do you go from here and the paper uh you know they realized I was young and and inexperienced so they had a couple other reporters also kind of uh keeping track of things but but from down in the cities in Minneapolis I was I was the only one who was actually up there so I was kind of the boots on the ground and I got good direction in most cases of what to do but a lot of it was just kind of stumbling along and frankly I got a lucky uh quite a few times with Just Happening to hit the right person to talk to to kind of illuminate things a little bit for for our readers and that’s something that you know I think makes a good journalist right A lot of times you just get you get lucky and you happen to talk to the right people but that’s part of your job right to talk to the people and learn some of those things that maybe you don’t hear about in the police report uh you know to find out those different things that uh can kind of help bring the story to life a little more yes that that is the trick to it just keep uh knocking on doors and asking questions and hopefully you’re in the right place at the right time and in this case I I was uh quite often I mean I didn’t get every scoop but I got more than my share and so are there things about the murderer that we you know we don’t hear about obviously you know the glensheen Mansion is a famous tourist attraction now uh in the Duluth area that uh you know very commonly visited you can kind of learn more about that but is there more about the murders that you know that you people don’t hear about well the reason I wrote the book in the first place was back in the 80s when it opened as a tour uh there was no mention at all of the murders when you when you go around to look at the rooms in the house and my wife and I went on one of the first tours because up until then I’d never been in the Mansion because it was a crime scene for three or four years and then they cleaned it up and fixed it up for the tours but on on this tour that we went to really early on the tour guides said when Miss Congdon passed away she willed the Mansion to the University of Minnesota Duluth and and that’s true but um I went up to her afterwards and I said you know that she just didn’t pass away that that she was brutally murdered here and and um I wonder if we could talk more about that and she said oh no we’ve been told not to say anything about the murders we just want to talk about the family and the architecture and the Legacies uh but I kind of mentioned to her I think I think many people are here you know drawn to the place because of of the wanting to know more about the case and so that kind of spurred me on to to write down what I knew because at this point there had been two trials and lots more uh Intrigue in the case and and so I knew quite a bit about it and I I thought people would want to know that so that was the initial uh thing about being the secrets of it because they wouldn’t tell you on the tours yeah so what was the motivation behind uh the murder of Elizabeth Kong Dunner nurse tell me more about you know the motivation for the murder right it was as is often the case in these things uh it was money uh one of miscondon’s adopted daughters was living in Denver and she was basically broke and she had just recently remarried and her her new husband didn’t have a job and she didn’t have a job and the Mansion the the Condon trustees had cut them off because they were trying to constantly trying to get more money from her mother back in Duluth and they they finally got tired of that and and cut Cut Her Off from from her uh from any money coming out of Duluth so the speculation initially and and what was uh shown at trial was that uh Marjorie was the daughter got her new husband whose name was Roger Caldwell to come to Duluth to kill Miss Condon so that that would speed up their inheritance which was about eight million dollars we figured at the time for that would have gone to Marjorie um When Miss Condon died gotcha so uh what can people expect uh with your appearance here at some of our area libraries here at the lake Agassi Regional Library System uh you’ll be making visits here to Rossi Morad Foss and Barnesville Macintosh Ada Crookston Breckenridge DL and Holly sir you’re making the tour here uh Joe so what can people expect uh from coming to see you during your trips here to the Legacy Regional Library System well I I have a a good knowledge of the case and I’m able to uh to tell father kind of show people what happened how it happened through my eyes as a rookie reporter at the time I kind of uh go through what I went through and what I saw and some of the things that happened and then uh even beyond the murder case uh the this daughter that we mentioned Marjorie then continued on with uh you know several crimes and was imprisoned twice uh there was arson and bigamy and several other deaths that she was involved with so so we we talk a lot about that to kind of fill out this picture of of uh you know just a dysfunctional uh family and this daughter who went to Such Great Lengths to speed up her inheritance and uh you know killed her mother