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The Glensheen Mansion Murders

May 6, 2024

In this episode, Payton and Garrett dive into a chain of suspicious deaths and murders that all surround one suspect.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland, and I'm Garrett Moreland, and he's the husband. I'm the husband.

Holy cow, I'm so happy to be back. I'm ready to record today. I don't know about you, Garrett, but this feels good. Yeah.

Feels like it's been a while because our last episode didn't work out. Oh yeah, I forgot. That's probably why you feel like that. It is. I can't believe we recorded a whole episode and it just did not work. It's got to be one of the worst feelings because that sucks. It actually, guys, it kind of did work. It's just that we sound like aliens. We're like, it's almost like there was a filter on, which shouldn't happen. So who knows what happened, but we're back in action.

Here we are, ready to record. And if you don't know the deal, we have been doing our live shows, and all those live shows will be posted for Patreon, Apple subscribers, and Spotify subscribers that go through Patreon. Anyways, basically, all our paid subscribers will be getting all those episodes. We're going to do seven of them, seven different cases total. So yeah, just wanted to throw that out there. If you're interested in hearing those, they will be on there. Garrett, I think you forgot something very important that our listeners are going to want to hear. What is that? We have ‘Strangey Dangey’ merch out. I did forget about that. I forgot about that. We have merch. We have merch. We have ‘Strangey Dangey’ merch available right now as you are listening to this. It is not the same design as our last 'Strangey Dangey' This one has a big old eyeball on it. I think it's super cute. I think it's quirky. And of course, it says "Strangey Dangey." We were just asked for another 'Strangey Dangey' launch because it's been a while. And so yeah, we have merch available right now. Go to the link in the episode notes, go to the link in our social medias to find it all right.

So now that you have got Strange Dangey merch, let's jump into Garrett's 10 seconds. So I got very burnt in Fiji, and I usually don't peel. I feel like my tolerance is usually pretty high. I usually-- what's so funny? Just as your skin is literally falling off. You probably can't see it on YouTube, and if you're listening on audio, you definitely can't see it. But usually, I get pretty tan. I got tan, but my entire arms and my legs, there's-- it's been flaking, just falling off. Like, it looks crazy for about four or five days now. It's just been falling off everywhere. I went to the doctor's today, and they were like, "Hey, like, what's wrong? Are you okay?" Like, "Yeah, I just got sunburned." So maybe we'll put a picture up on YouTube. Not-- didn't go to the doctor's for your legs. No, I didn't go for doctor my legs. Maybe I'll put a picture up on YouTube and Instagram like a story or something. It's kind of gross though, so I doubt people really want to see that. But yeah, I'm peeling. I'm peeling like a snake, huh? And Payton, every night before we go to bed-- sorry, we'll get into the case in a second-- every night before we go to bed, Payton comes over and she goes, "Can I please pick a piece because normal-- okay, people are going to relate to this right now as they're listening. Normal people allow their significant others to peel their peeling skin, pick their zits, whatever it needs to be. Garrett does not allow. So every night, I ask for just one pull, and I give her one pull to peel my gross skin off. And I have to search for the best one. Guess what? That is true love right there. We are fully in love. We're fully married.

And on that note, let's hop into today's case. All right, our sources for this episode are NPR News, Glensheen Mansion, Zenith City Press, Fox News, KMSP, Artful Living, Minnesota Post, WebMD, Duluth News Tribune, Star Tribune, LA Times, and Justia Law. WebMD? Don't use WebMD. No, I'm just kidding. You can use it. All right. Trigger warning: This episode does include discussions of murder and suicide, so please listen with care.

Now, I think we've all had moments where we are just not our best. We do something selfish or hurtful because we're scared or we're exhausted, maybe we're in a bad mood. But that's not our default personality. Most people, to their core, are pretty decent people. However, there's a small subset of the population who just take things to another level. Some people are just wired wrong. For whatever reason, they don't play by the same rules as the rest of us. They'll do anything to achieve their goals, even if that means killing somebody. And this story is chilling, not only because it features a brutal murder, but because of the extreme lengths that one of the alleged killers went to after the killing.

See, on June 27th, 1977, at around 7 a.m., a nurse named Mildred Garva pulled up to the famous Glensheen Mansion in Duluth, Minnesota. An elderly woman, Elizabeth Congdon, lived there, and after surviving a stroke eight years before, the elderly woman, Elizabeth, needed constant care, which is why our nurse, Mildred, is there. Elizabeth was single, and her two children were adults who actually lived out of state. So she had a few nurses who helped look after her. One handled the night shift, and Mildred came by each day. She usually had to unlock the front door and let herself in. But that morning, when she got up to the mansion, she noticed that it was unlocked, and this was strange enough to actually set off some alarm bells for Nurse Mildred.

She went straight inside and tracked down the first staff member that she could find, and it ended up being a cook who actually lived on the property and was already in the kitchen getting breakfast started. And I'm not sure what exactly Mildred said to the chef, but from the sound of things, she asked about why the front door was unlocked, and the cook said that she hadn't noticed anything odd that morning. All she could remember was that around 3 a.m., her dog had woken up from her sleep and barked. But dogs can get upset for all sorts of reasons, so the cook didn't really think much of it. That must have been reassuring because Mildred's next stop was going to be Elizabeth's bedroom on the second floor.

So Mildred stepped onto the grand staircase, but midway up, she sees another sign that something might not be right. The night nurse, Velma Pila, was lying on a window seat on the landing. Now, Velma wasn't the usual person who worked the overnight shift. She used to help Elizabeth out during the days, but she'd recently retired. And the only reason Velma had been working the night before was because another nurse was on vacation, so she came out of retirement to fill in, basically. Elizabeth was like, "We need someone. Can you come back and help me fill in?" So when Mildred saw Velma lying on the stairs, she was like, Okay, maybe she's asleep. Like, she came and did the night shift, and now she's just sleeping up here. She was getting older. Maybe she wasn't used to the hours. It still wasn't really like Velma. She was usually more responsible.

So Mildred walks upstairs and tries to wake Velma up. Uh-oh. But once she gets closer, she notices that Velma was covered in blood, and there were injuries all over her body. It looked like someone had literally beaten her. It didn't take Mildred long to confirm that Velma, the fill-in night shift nurse, was dead. And her next thought was for her client. If someone had hurt Velma during the night, they probably had made it to Elizabeth too.

So sure enough, Mildred leaves Velma there and runs to Elizabeth's room. And she walks in, and the room is trashed. Someone had dumped Elizabeth's jewelry box over, thrown it on the floor. There were necklaces, brooches, rings scattered all over the place. Some pieces of jewelry were missing. And for Elizabeth herself, the elderly woman was in her bed with a bloody pillow over her face. The intruder had obviously suffocated her. Now, remember, Mildred is a professional nurse. She's a trained medic. So she takes Elizabeth's pulse and confirms that she's dead too.

Then, keeping her head straight on her shoulders, Mildred runs to the nearest phone to call 911. So from there, the homicide investigation is underway right away. The police determined that Elizabeth didn't really have any enemies. She'd been very involved with local nonprofits and charities. Elizabeth had made lots of donations in the past. When her health was better, she'd been a very active volunteer. She was pretty much beloved. This left one other motive for the people to consider, and that is obviously money. As you know, Elizabeth is extremely rich. And I'm actually surprised you haven't asked me yet how rich she is, where she got this money from. Uh-huh.

So it was inherited. Elizabeth was the daughter of a wealthy miner, so she actually inherited this entire fortune. She was said to be worth about $8 million, maybe more. I mean, just pretty good. This is enough. She's got a mansion, she's got a staff, and this is like, I mean, she's retired, she's got millions. Oh, we're in 1977, okay. That's a big difference because $8 million is a lot these days, trust me. Give me $8 million, I'll take it. Yeah. But I mean, you could spend $8 million on a house these days. Insane. But $8 million in the '70s, inherited, and you're retired, you know? Like, that's a lot of money.

It's funny you mentioned miner because literally yesterday I was on YouTube looking up how to find oil on my land. Where are land? We got a little-- what? You're going to do it on our, like, what if I go somewhere random, buy some land, and then maybe we'll find oil on it? I was thinking like, what are the chances? What do I look for? What are the signs? What do I do? We're not finding oil, unfortunately, after doing all the research I did. But always a possibility. You're like starting to sound like John B from Outer Banks, baby. I was just like, oh, that'd be so cool if I found oil on my land.

Okay, so $8 million in the 1970s for a retired elderly woman. Police are like, okay, the jewelry box has obviously been raided, and so they're thinking this is a robbery gone wrong. Someone came in, killed the night nurse, and killed her and stole some money. The detectives searched the Glensheen property for clues about the killer's identity at this point, and they found a broken window in the basement of the mansion. The theory was that someone smashed it to get inside, maybe around 3 a.m., and that's when the chef's dog probably began barking. Now, while the intruder was on their way up the stairs to Elizabeth's bedroom, they must have bumped into Velma, who was on her way down to investigate the noise. In a panic, the invader grabbed a nearby candlestick holder and beat Velma to death. Oh my gosh, dude. Then they made their way into Elizabeth's bedroom, where they smothered her with a pillow. And afterward, they may have escaped in Velma's car because her car, the night nurse's car, is now missing.

You keep saying Velma, and I can only think of Scooby-Doo. I know, I know. She's a victim in this case. I know, I know. So this theory was based on the fact, like I said, that when the police notified her husband of Velma's murder, he said that she'd driven to work, and now the car is not on the property. Now, they did eventually find Velma's car at the Minneapolis Airport about 150 miles away from the crime scene. Was it the Scooby-Doo van? That's called the Mystery Machine. Was it the Mystery Machine, not the Scooby-Doo van? I forgot what it was called.

So Velma's keys were in a trash can at the airport parking lot, along with the parking ticket showing exactly when it had arrived. So after the murder, the killer must have sped straight from Glensheen Mansion to the airport to make it in time. And from there, they might have flown out of the city, found another ride home. This was admittedly a kind of pretty weird getaway plan. It suggested that the murderer hadn't even driven to Glensheen before the homicide because they didn't leave in their own car.

Also, airport security and anything that has to do with airport tracking was not nearly as thorough as it is now, right? So it'd be probably harder to find him, yeah. And I think police are also thinking, okay, if this killer didn't drive to the mansion but then stole a car and drove home from it, they're thinking, is there an accomplice at this point? Unless the killer was someone who maybe dropped them off, but it would be odd for someone to head to the manner without a getaway plan.

So then police are thinking, maybe the killer was very familiar with Elizabeth's staff and knew that Velma was going to be working that night. But they couldn't have predicted that her car would just be available, because sometimes she would get rides to work, which left the police wondering how the murderer had planned to get to the airport without Velma's vehicle.

Why go to all the bother of arranging a ride to get there without thinking of how to get home? It was hard to fit all the pieces together, and all this physical evidence still wasn't pointing at a specific culprit. But the detectives knew there was one more clue they could look for, and that was defensive wounds. See, even if Elizabeth had woken up during her murder, she couldn't have struggled or resisted because she'd been paralyzed for years ever since her stroke, which was part of the reason she needed so much care. However, Velma had put up a fight against whoever had killed her. When police found her body, she still had a handful of hairs in her fist—DNA, and she obviously had probably yanked them out of her murderer's head.

So during Elizabeth's funeral a few days later, the police paid extra special attention to the attendees. They wanted to see if anyone looked like they'd recently traded punches with someone. And sure enough, they honed in on a suspect right away: Elizabeth's son-in-law, Roger Caldwell. Gosh, okay.

He had bruises and cuts on his face when he showed up to his mother-in-law's funeral. Roger was married to Elizabeth's adopted daughter, 45-year-old Marjorie. They lived together in Colorado and had actually flown into Minnesota for the service. So when the police asked Marjorie about her husband's injuries, she insisted that a horse had recently stepped on his hand. But that obviously didn't explain why he had a split lip. You'd think that he just wouldn't go, right? Well, I mean, but then you look even more suspicious, I guess. So, and he had a cut above his eyebrow. Marjorie said, "Oh, those are just from him cutting himself shaving." And the police are like, "Okay, she's obviously in on it." They're not buying it.

They immediately moved Roger to the top of their suspects list because, again, they're thinking whoever did this had to have known their way around the mansion. They had to have known things. And since it seemed like Marjorie may have been covering for him, she also became a person of interest too. Anyone who knew Marjorie was pretty unsurprised to learn that she was being investigated in her mother's homicide, even though she'd never been a suspect in a major crime like a murder before. Her history was still pretty alarming.

See, Elizabeth adopted a very young Marjorie. The little girl had everything her heart could desire when she adopted her. She grew up in a wealthy household with endless resources at her disposal. But in spite of all of this, Marjorie was a deeply unhappy child. And this led to her lashing out in disturbing ways. She was caught trying to set fires on multiple occasions. Someone actually had to intervene once when she tried to poison her own horse to death. This was very unsettling behavior, bad enough that Elizabeth actually sought psychological treatment for Marjorie, and she was then diagnosed as a psychopath. Now, that's an outdated term. If Marjorie had gone in for treatment today, they would say she had antisocial personality disorder instead. But whatever you call it, that diagnosis suggested that Marjorie would basically do whatever she had to do in order to get what she wanted. And it's very rare in these cases that we have a suspect who's actually a psychopath, like, diagnosed. She wouldn't let pesky things like morality stand in her way. As we know, to be clear, there are plenty of people with antisocial personality disorder who don't become violent.

I thought psychopaths normally don't feel emotions. They normally don't because she said they can't because you said that she was very unhappy. And so I'm trying to figure out, I mean, maybe you can be unhappy still and not feel emotions, you know what I'm saying? Well, I think the emotions you feel are selfish, okay, so if she wasn't getting her way, she would be unhappy. Mhmm, again, I just want to clarify that not everyone who's diagnosed is this way, but it obviously is a red flag, especially if someone's mother was just killed and their husband has cuts all over the face, being diagnosed to poison their horse when they were younger, right, right.

The condition obviously can make it harder for people to resist impulses. It can take a lot of work with mental health professionals for people with the condition to manage their urges. It's definitely a struggle. And sadly, even though Elizabeth had the funds to get Marjorie into treatment, she decided not to once they got the diagnosis. Now, you know, as a mother, you get word that your daughter, who's been different since you adopted her, is now diagnosed back then as a psychopath, and you decide not to further treatment. This could be because conversations around mental health were just so taboo at this time. She might have figured it was better to just ignore Marjorie's psychological issues, hope it goes away. I'm going to give you a spoiler alert: they did not go away without professional help. Usually, they don't.

So by the time Marjorie was a young adult, she had almost no inhibitions. In the 1950s, she got married, she had several children, and spared no expense in keeping up the lifestyle that she'd grown accustomed to. So for 20 years of marriage, Marjorie spent money as quickly as she could get her hands on it. She did have a million-dollar trust fund, which she burned through. Wow. Even once Marjorie's money was gone, she just kept buying things that she couldn't afford. Her checks routinely bounced, and Marjorie was quickly sinking into debt. And this still didn't slow down the shopping spree. Elizabeth had to step in and bail her out a number of times. And this didn't embarrass Marjorie or help her to keep a budget. She just kept blowing through her money.

So her husband gets pretty sick of her impulsive spending. It was a constant sticking point. They fought about their finances all the time. And when Marjorie refused to change her behavior, he finally filed for divorce in the 1970s. Now, afterward, Marjorie moved to Colorado where she met her second husband, Roger Caldwell, who again has the scratches all over his face once his mother-in-law's murdered. And they get married in 1975. And Marjorie's money management skills don't get any better. In fact, she and Roger keep buying cars and homes that would end up getting repossessed. Needless to say, Marjorie's inheritance, if her mom were to die, probably would have really helped them make ends meet because they were in a pretty deep hole.

And it seemed like Marjorie didn't only have the motive to kill her mother, she might have also made a former attempt on Elizabeth's life once before. Because at some point in the past, Marjorie had come over to Elizabeth's house with a fresh jar of marmalade. Marjorie said she'd made it herself. She insisted on making a marmalade sandwich for her mom at this point. And she refused to listen to any protests about Elizabeth not being hungry or about the sugary snack not being good for her health. After Marjorie basically forced this sandwich on her mother, Elizabeth, she left, taking the jar of marmalade with her. And afterward, Elizabeth becomes seriously ill.

Gosh, you would think that if spending money was this important to her, she would have just married someone super wealthy, right? Maybe she couldn't find one, but I would say if my daughter had tried to poison her horse to death, I probably would never eat anything that she ever gave me. That's true.

So Elizabeth checked into the hospital, doctors ran blood tests, and they found out that Elizabeth had positively been poisoned. Now, of course, Marjorie's weird behavior immediately made everyone suspicious. I mean, it was at this point where whenever something happened, everyone else in Elizabeth's life would be like, "Your daughter." If my daughter or my son tried to poison me, I'd be throwing hands. So the police tried to track down that jar of marmalade so they could test it, see if it had been tampered with. They could never find it, and without any hard evidence, they couldn't prove that Marjorie had poisoned Elizabeth's food. Now, I mean, maybe Elizabeth was exposed to the toxin in some other way, and since she eventually recovered, nobody seemed to think it was worth investigating further, so everyone just dropped the issue.

Now, of course, now with the double homicide at Glensheen Mansion, Marjorie was looking a lot more suspicious. The problem was, the police didn't have much in the way of physical evidence against Marjorie or her husband Roger. Once they learned the history of this family, they were like, "Okay, Marjorie and Roger did it, 100%." But they had no evidence. They did find hair and blood at the crime scene, but DNA testing wasn't really a thing yet in 1977. Imagine how many cases in that moment it would have just solved, and it would have been open and shut, right? So they determined that the hair looked similar to Roger's in terms of color, length, and texture, but they couldn't guarantee it was an exact match. And the same with the blood. It was the right type, but obviously, that doesn't 100% confirm that it came from him. And the killer must have worn gloves because police weren't able to recover a single fingerprint. So basically, they didn't have enough to rule Roger out or prove he was the killer. They were at a stalemate.

The detectives expanded their search, securing a warrant to search Marjorie and Roger's home and the hotel room where they stayed during Elizabeth's funeral. And in the home, detectives found an envelope in the mailbox. It contained an antique coin that had gone missing from Elizabeth's house during the murder. Okay. It was postmarked for the day of the crime and sent from Duluth, where Elizabeth had lived, almost like the killer had stolen it and then dropped it in the mail at some point before they drove to the airport to then mail back to the house. The police also found some of Elizabeth's jewelry in the hotel room, and Roger had a brand-new garment bag with a receipt showing he had bought it at the Minneapolis Airport on the morning of the crime. So he lives somewhere else, but he has a receipt putting him at the airport the morning of the crime? What an idiot.

Now, I do want to say these details are a little weird. You have to wonder if Roger had just murdered two women and made a clean getaway, why stop to buy a garment bag? It's not like he needed it, and he definitely didn't need to keep the incriminating receipt and bring it back to Minnesota for the funeral like he carried it with him. I mean, I feel like people, I feel like if you're going to kill someone, you're probably just not thinking straight in general, so it doesn't surprise me. Plus, if Margerie and Roger had killed Elizabeth for their inheritance, they didn't need to rob her. Why steal things so pretty soon? That jewelry and the antique coins were going to be theirs anyway, right? I could see stealing the valuables to try and throw the police off, maybe make it look like a robbery gone wrong. But then why take all the incriminating back to your hotel room and stick it in the mail? The envelope with the coin in it was especially baffling. Again, there was no point in mailing such damning evidence to himself. It almost seemed like maybe someone was trying to frame Roger. Like they planted the jewelry, the garment bag, the receipt in his hotel room, and then sent him the coin.

I wonder who, which was exactly what Roger claimed during his trial when he gets arrested. After this is found, this is what he claims. He says he didn't have any specific theories about who the real killer was or why they want him to take the fall, but he insisted that the evidence just didn't add up. Of course, that's an excuse that lots of accused killers use when they get caught. It's usually not a very compelling defense. It doesn't sound like anyone bought it in Roger's case. He was found guilty of both Elizabeth and Velma's murders and was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences. But, well, you think that's the end of the story? Yep, but it isn't.

The police found the killer, they convicted him, and they sent him off to prison. But even the prosecutors had to admit Roger had a point when he said that the evidence just didn't totally check out. It did seem like there maybe was something else. How do you get convicted of that, and then they go, "Ah, maybe things aren't adding up"? Well, I think they're just thinking there's more to this story. Yeah, they are thinking Roger didn't act alone, so they're saying no, we do think Roger was there, we just don't think that he did this all on his own. Okay, so right after his trial ended they decide to charge Marjorie, the daughter, as his accomplice.

It didn't sound like they thought she killed Elizabeth herself, they thought that Roger did it, but they thought that she planned the murder with Roger. Maybe that's why Roger allegedly mailed the coin to his own home, it was a way of wordlessly signaling to Marjorie that the deed was done, like maybe that was their signal.

Okay, so prosecutors built a case around the idea that Marjorie was a heartless killer, someone greedy enough to take her own mother's life for money. But when she reported to court, she seemed like a sweet old woman. Keep in mind, so did Ted Bundy, man. I know she was in her mid-40s, she wasn't that old, but Marjorie acted very gentle, very matronly through the entire hearing. She had a knitting project that she brought with her every day. Oh, she's pulling those heartstrings for real. That's crap!

Witnesses were on the stand, she clicked her needles together with a warm, angelic smile on her face. Oh my, she's smart. She even baked a cake for one of her lawyers on his birthday. That's what you call a psychopath. And then she showed up to court and was like, "Here, lawyer, happy birthday, here's this cake I made you." This sounds very transparent and like an obvious manipulation, but it worked from the sound of it. The jury just couldn't believe that such a kind woman would be capable of murder, and so they found her not guilty.

Okay, now not long after that verdict, Roger's husband filed an appeal. This was in 1982, which was 5 years after Elizabeth and Velma's homicides. The gist of his case was that the lawyers had presented different evidence during Marjorie's trial than they had during his own. This was in spite of the fact that they both had been accused of the same murder. She was acquitted, and he wasn't. So, Roger argued if he'd used the same evidence and arguments that his wife had, he also should have been found not guilty too. It was only fair for him to get a retrial using Marjorie's defense strategy. So he basically says, "My lawyers were incompetent. If they had done what her lawyers had done, okay, I wouldn't be here right now." He wanted to clear his name, but the Minnesota authorities offered him a deal that was too good to resist. If he pled guilty instead, they'd shorten his sentence to just six years, which Roger had already spent five behind bars. So this meant he could be a free man after just 12 more months, which obviously this is a win-win. The authorities will get to keep their conviction on the records, and Roger would be out before he knew it. But that wouldn't win for Elizabeth or Velma. If he turned down the bargain and the retrial didn't go the way he hoped, he would probably spend the rest of his life in prison. So obviously, he accepted the deal, and the following year he was released.

And do they still have all the money? Well, life on the outside wasn't everything Roger had hoped because while he was in prison, Marjorie moved on. She never formally divorced him, but she had married someone new in 1981 during his incarceration, which you can't do that, right? No, she technically has two husbands now, okay, Roger and the new guy, a guy named Walter Hagen. Based on her behavior, she apparently wanted nothing to do with Roger, and since he had a murder conviction on his record, he then had a hard time finding a job. So, needless to say, he didn't get a penny of Elizabeth's fortune, but she did.

So Roger had no prospects, no money, and no real future to look forward to. Five years later, in 1988, he was found dead in his own home of apparent suicide. Okay, he left a note saying that he had never committed a murder, he couldn't even dream of hurting anyone. In other words, he said he was innocent. Now, once again, Roger's note didn't specify who he thought the real killer was, but he seemed very angry at his ex-wife, but not legally, Marjorie. Roger's will said he was only leaving her $1 since she'd abandoned him after his conviction. Now, from what I can tell, the police didn't think there was anything suspicious about Roger's suicide, but I do want you to keep his death in mind as I continue the story.

So, by this point, Marjorie had settled down with her new husband, Walter Hagen, but more or less since day one, there had been plenty of drama in their relationship. See, when Marjorie and Walter first met, he was married to another woman. His wife was very ill, and Marjorie stepped up in a big way, taking care of her and making sure she was as comfortable as possible. Okay, so yeah, just fathom what I just said. And one day, Walter's children came over to visit their mom, and they were surprised to see Marjorie spoon-feeding her something from a jar. Now, it's unclear what exactly, but right afterward, Walter's wife's health took a turn for the worse. She passed away pretty quickly. Walter's family didn't know much about Marjorie's history or how she'd been suspected of poisoning her mother and her horse. Still, the timing was odd, and after all, Marjorie did have a motive to want Walter to be single again. I mean, she wants to marry him, and she's going to marry him pretty soon afterward. But she also might have wanted his money, especially because Marjorie's children had contested Elizabeth's will.

So, their grandmother's will, who it's unclear if they still thought Marjorie had something to do with the murder, if they were just worried about her compulsive spending, but in the end, they agreed to split the fortune equally between themselves. So Marjorie had seven children and a sister, so she received just a small sliver of her mother's money. Whoa, yeah, like they contest, all that money is going to be gone with all those children. They contest, and then it gets split. It was still enough for her to live off of; she'd never have to work another day. But it wasn't the massive fortune that she probably thought she was going to get, and it definitely wasn't enough to cover her ongoing spending spree.

So she married Walter pretty quickly, and the two of them continued her bad financial habits, a lot of impulsive spending, which left them unable to pay their bills. There was also this weird pattern that kept cropping up: her neighbors' houses kept catching on fire. Oh my. And Walter and Marjorie's home would burn down right after they sold it. Now, luckily for Marjorie, they had a good insurance policy on it, so she got a big payout when she needed one. Afterward, Walter and Marjorie moved to a new town, but those mysterious house fires just kept following them around.

There were vacant houses in their neighborhood, and they would just regularly go up in flames, on fire at a repair shop. Eventually, the police are like, "Okay, all your stuff is catching on fire," and they think Marjorie is setting these herself. How is it not obvious at this point? They actually catch her in the act trying to burn down a neighbor's home. They're like, "Okay, this girl is a serial arsonist."

So in 1992, Marjorie was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the fires and the insurance fraud. But before her sentence began, she convinced the courts to give her some time to get her affairs in order. Oh my gosh. By this point, Walter, her husband, was very sick and frail, and she told the authorities she needed to arrange for a caretaker for him, which was kind of odd. He'd never had any major health problems until after he and Marjorie got married. What a surprise. She claimed he had terminal cancer; his doctors were like, "No, we've never diagnosed him with cancer." And during a brief period of time that Marjorie spent in jail, Walter all of a sudden just miraculously recovers. It was almost enough to make some of Marjorie's acquaintances think she's poisoning him or maybe he was faking it to earn her sympathy. Whatever it was, it's bizarre.

The officials gave her 24 hours to spend with him before she had to return to prison. So, Marjorie goes home, and a few hours later, a police officer bikes past their house while he's off duty and he smells gas. So, he knocks on the front door. Marjorie says she was having problems with her stove, but she was working on it. She sends him on his way, and shortly later, Marjorie calls the authorities because Walter, her husband, has passed away. Why would they let her go back after all this? How in the world could you let her go back? She's manipulative. Blows my mind

So, when coroners arrived at the scene, his cause of death seemed to be due to gas inhalation. Now, somehow, he'd been fatally exposed to the gas while he was home alone with Marjorie, who was fine, by the way. She doesn't have it. This is crazy. So, I just want to clarify, this is the fourth time that someone close to Marjorie has died under highly suspicious circumstances. Crazy. You have her mom, her mom's nurse, um, and then her second husband Roger, who killed himself, and then Walter's first wife, who got super sick after eating something Marjorie fed her, and now her third husband.

So, of course, the police immediately figure, okay, Marjorie just murdered Walter. But Marjorie told them the story about how they were planning to take their lives together since they couldn't stand to be separated while she was in prison. She says, "No, no, Walter took a bunch of pills, but when it was Marjorie's turn, she was too afraid. Walter died and she survived." To back up this claim, Marjorie showed the police a suicide note that seemed to corroborate her story. And during Walter's autopsy, the police did find a bunch of drugs in his system, just like Marjorie had said. No, I don't buy any of this.

So, police are like, "Okay, maybe he did take him willingly. Either way, it was the overdose that killed him, not the gas." Basically, every single thing about this case was just suspicious, but it always goes her way. Nobody could actually prove it was murder, since Marjorie was about to spend more than a decade behind bars anyways. They decided not to pursue the charges against her, so they dropped the investigation, and she went to prison until 2004. And that's when she was let out early, after just spending 11 years in prison.

Now, not long after her release, Marjorie moved to an assisted living facility where she befriended an older man. You can guess where this is going. Marjorie said she wanted to help him with some of his banking issues and convinced him. The freak, this cannot be real. Someone made this up. This cannot be real. So, he gives her power of attorney, and then he dies not long afterward in 2007, and Marjorie collects all the money. And is she still alive? No way. Well, she was in her late 70s by this point.

Okay, by 2017, Marjorie was living in Arizona, still a free woman. Reports suggested she didn't get along with her neighbor, she was argumentative, she had a temper. But she did have some dogs, which I hope, hope that she spoiled. It sounded like Marjorie maybe liked her dogs more than she liked people, which I can't blame her. She did have probation officers who would check in with her periodically, and apparently every time Marjorie made a new friend, these officials would swoop in and explain, "Hey, uh, I know you just made a friend with old lady Marjorie, but you might want to be careful." Like, literally, this was part of their job, to go warn people. Keep her far away from me, that's what they would say. They were like, "There's risks to getting close to her, everyone around her dies. So just be careful."

And for the past decade or so, she's mostly stayed out of the news, and as I, I mean, from what I can tell through the research, she's alive and well. Like, she's still alive and a free woman at the time of this recording. Marjorie would be 91 years old, and I can't find that she's passed away. Crazy. And while she's still never been convicted of a single homicide, like, literally think about this case, not one single homicide has she been convicted of. It sounds like the media and everyone has kind of basically accepted that she's allegedly a serial killer, she's allegedly a murderer who's managed to get off scot-free for decades. It's kind of eerie. Everyone knows. But between all of her acquittals, the dropped charges, and the cases that there's just not enough hard evidence, there's not much authorities can do about it.

So from the sound of it, Marjorie isn't someone I'd like to run into anytime soon. But the good news is, people like her are very rare. Most human beings aren't violent, we don't want to hurt one another, even when we have something to gain from it. Of course, every now and then you encounter someone who's the exception to that rule, and they can show you exactly what depth humanity is capable of. And that is the story of basically the victims of Marjorie. That's crazy that four people have died. That's sad. Her own mom, not one conviction. Anyways, super sad. Yeah, that's crazy. You know, it's actually pretty devastating, and it's always weird when you find a case like this where you're like, how can five people like this happen, and like, there's just nothing. There's nothing. It's kind of crazy.

All right, you guys, that was our episode, and we will see you next week with another one. Don't forget to get your Strangey Dangey merch. I love it. And I hate it. Goodbye.

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