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Case file s269 · Great houses · 1977

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1977

Glensheen — Glensheen. Learjet at English Wikipedia. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

Died: 27 June 1977
Place: Glensheen, Duluth, Minnesota · United States
Field: iron-mining fortune (Congdon family) · Land and agriculture on the timeline
Legal tradition: US common law (Minnesota criminal law; trust law) · Common law
Historical event: The Glensheen murders; the mansion opened as a University of Minnesota museum in 1979

Great houses Murder and sudden death Postwar North America United States

An heiress and her nurse were killed inside Glensheen, and the adopted daughter who stood to inherit $8 million was acquitted

Glensheen is the Lake Superior estate of the Congdon family, whose fortune came from iron mining. In 1968 the heirs gave it to the University of Minnesota. Elisabeth Congdon, the youngest daughter, kept the right to live there for life. After a stroke her fortune was held in a trust. Her adopted daughter Marjorie was due to inherit about $8.2 million at her death and had spent more than $2 million in the ten years before. The trustees refused Marjorie's husband, Roger Caldwell, $750,000 for a horse ranch and $250,000 for a lawyer. Three days before the killings, a notarized letter gave Roger $2.5 million from a family trust on Elisabeth's death. On 27 June 1977 Elisabeth was smothered with a satin pillow in her bed and her night nurse, Velma Pietila, was beaten to death with a brass candlestick on the staircase. Roger was convicted in Brainerd in 1978 and given two life terms. Marjorie was tried in Hastings in 1979 and acquitted. A fingerprint on a key envelope proved not to be Roger's, and in 1982 the Minnesota Supreme Court ordered a new trial. In 1983 he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, confessed, and went free after about five years. He killed himself in 1988. Five of Marjorie's seven children sued over her inheritance, and she was limited to $40,000 a year from the trust. She later served 11 years for arson. In 2026 Glensheen is a university museum.

What the law took from it

A trust that pays out only on a death gives an heir in debt a stake in that death; the trustees' refusals kept the money out of the Caldwells' hands.

Sources

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “An heiress and her nurse were killed inside Glensheen, and the adopted daughter who stood to inherit $8 million was acquitted,” story s269, https://www.celebrity.estate/an-heiress-and-her-nurse-were-1977, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Great houses Murder and sudden death Postwar North America Common law United States