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in 1984 to take a job with Twin Cities Public Television.

“Before I left Duluth, Gary and John and I had been talking that, someday, we should write a book about the whole story behind the story” of the Congdon murders, trials and legal mess that followed Marjorie, Feichtinger said. “I think they trusted me because I saw them every day, twice a day, when I made my rounds on the beat for the paper.”

That “someday” didn’t happen for several years, and then took another decade to come together. But the book, “Will to Murder: The True Story Behind the Crimes & Trials Surrounding the Glensheen Killings,” was finally was published in 2003 as a cooperative effort by Feichtinger, Waller and DeSanto. By then, Feichtinger had attended law school and was well into a career as a staff attorney for the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office.

Feichtinger met her husband and raised a family in the Twin Cities, where she still lives. But she has been continually drawn to the drama of the Congdon case.

“Even though I left Duluth, I never left the story,” she said.

Some 17 years after it was published — and now 43 years since the murders — the book continues to sell well at the Glensheen Mansion book shop, Feichtinger said in a recent phone interview. And to this day she still gets calls from “sources” about the case, especially about Marjorie, who is still alive at age 88, living in Arizona after being in and out of court and prison over recent decades for arson, fraud and other crimes.

“Another of the other parts I covered while working in Duluth was Marjorie’s bigamy case, when she married Wally Hagen in North Dakota while she was still married to Roger,” Feichtinger noted, adding that Marjorie is a potential but uncharged suspect in the death of both Hagen and his previous wife.

Feichtinger said several of her sources in the case still call her on occasion and that some still refuse to talk on the record for fear Marjorie, even though aging, might somehow still dole out retribution.

For the record, Feichtinger said she always thought — and that the evidence shows — Roger Caldwell was involved in killing Elisabeth Congdon and Velma Pietila and that Marjorie Caldwell, strapped for cash and hungry for her inheritance, was indeed the mastermind behind the crime.

But Feichtinger also harbors a theory, held by some others involved in the case, that there was another assailant who assisted Roger in the physical crime — someone who has never been identified, let alone charged or convicted.

“There is some evidence that points to someone else helping him. And Roger (who slashed his wrists and took his own life in 1988) was such a bad alcoholic at the time, was drinking so much, likely would not have been able to do it by himself.”

Duluth’s most notorious crime and long legal drama still fascinates Feichtinger, who said it definitely helped inspire her to go to law school and become an attorney. (She’s not prosecuting criminals, but serving vulnerable adults and children on assignment with the Department of Human Services.)

“This story never ends,’’ Feichtinger said of the murders at Glensheen. “There are still parts of this case that will always be a mystery.” u

“Will to Murder: The True Story Behind the Crimes & Trials Surrounding the Glensheen Killings” is published by Zenith City Press and is available at Amazon and other booksellers.

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