‘She Seemed So Nice’--but Death, Fire and Mystery Follow in Her Wake : Crime: Marjorie Hagen, suspected of killing her third husband, was earlier acquitted of killing her adoptive mother and a nurse, and convicted of arson.

Where Marjorie Congdon Hagen goes, fire and death follow.

In 1979, she was acquitted in the smothering of her adoptive mother and the beating death of a night nurse. In 1985, she was imprisoned for setting fire to a house for insurance money. In 1988, her second husband killed himself.

Now, at 60, she is suspected of killing her 82-year-old third husband, Wallace, and has been convicted of setting a fire at a neighbor’s home, one of a rash of fires plaguing this small town.

Hagen, through her attorney, denies the accusations. Her husband died from a prolonged illness, and she was set up on the arson charges, she says.

Lt. Tom Taylor, who runs the Pima County sheriff’s substation, disagrees: “In my opinion she is one of the most sinister people I’ve ever dealt with.”

But to her neighbors, Hagen was a friendly, highly religious woman, devoted to her ill husband. “She seemed so nice,” said Elizabeth Reyna. “She was a seamstress, did arts and crafts and was active in the church.”

They didn’t know about the 1977 murders of her stepmother, Duluth, Minn., heiress Elisabeth Congdon, and of the night nurse--a case that remains among Minnesota’s most celebrated. Hagen and her then-husband, Roger Caldwell, were charged with the murders.

The motive, according to prosecutors, was to claim Congdon’s $8-million fortune, made from selling land rich in iron ore. During her trial Hagen was portrayed as a spendthrift who had depleted two $1-million trusts.

Caldwell was convicted, but Hagen was acquitted. Then, after a family battle over the Congdon estate, Hagen got about one-fourth of a $6-million trust and a share in another $2-million trust. Family members believe she receives about $40,000 a year.

Caldwell was granted a new trial based on new evidence brought up at his wife’s trial, and was released under the terms of a plea bargain.

In 1988, Caldwell slashed his wrists with a steak knife. In a note he left behind, he denied he committed the slayings.

By that time, Marjorie Hagen had already served her sentence--she went to prison for 22 months for torching a house in Mound, Minn.

Later, she was charged with bigamy in Wallace Hagen’s home state of North Dakota for marrying him in 1981 without divorcing Caldwell. She denied the charge, though she never went to North Dakota to face prosecution.

None of this was known to the people of Ajo, a former mining community known for its picturesque sunsets, whitewashed churches and boxy tract homes, when the Hagens moved here in early 1990.

If Hagen was wealthy, the townspeople didn’t know it--she and her husband bounced two checks of about $1,000 for work on their motor home.

The fires in Ajo began before the Hagens moved in, but authorities say that Marjorie Hagen was the prime suspect in many of them.

Neighbors said she was often present at the fires--most of which were in vacant homes--and that the town volunteer Fire Department became known jokingly as “Hagen’s Heroes.” One case involved the Hagens’ recreational vehicle, which was destroyed while parked at a repair shop.

Then, in the early morning hours of March 25, 1991, the Hagens’ next-door neighbor, Mark Indvik, a U.S. Border Patrol agent, watched with deputies as Marjorie Hagen placed a kerosene-soaked rag on his windowsill and lit it.

Hagen insisted she was merely getting her dog from Indvik’s yard, but the jury disagreed. Convicted of attempted arson on Oct. 29, Hagen was given 24 hours to turn herself in for sentencing, and to transport her ailing husband from Tucson, the county seat where she was tried, to Ajo.

Hours later, an off-duty sheriff’s deputy bicycling by the Hagens’ residence smelled gas coming from the house. He checked with Marjorie Hagen, who said the stove’s pilot light had accidentally gone out for a short time.

Shortly afterward, authorities were notified by Marjorie Hagen’s attorney that Wallace Hagen was dead, and his body was found in the home.

What happened to Wallace Hagen?

Authorities, at first, charged his wife with his murder. But less than three weeks later, they announced they were dropping the charges, pending further investigation and results of an autopsy and toxicology studies.

Another theory was that the Hagens had agreed to commit suicide, but that only Wallace had killed himself. It was reported that a note had been found that indicated Wallace Hagen believed he was entering into a suicide pact; authorities have yet to confirm it.

“It may have been a suicide pact that went awry,” said attorney Ron Meshbesher, who defended Marjorie Hagen in Minnesota. “That is more understandable because Wally wouldn’t want to go on with Marjorie going to jail.”

Hagen’s current attorney, William P. Bolding, says her husband died of natural causes. Bolding says he was sickly, and mostly confined to a wheelchair.

“This man had cancer,” Bolding said. “He had a cancer operation 2 1/2 years ago and he was given two months to live.”

Medical Examiner Bruce Parks, who performed on autopsy on Hagen, said there was evidence of the operation, but no sign of cancer.

It is left to the people of Ajo to gossip and to conjecture and to search their memories for clues as to what happened.

Some said Wallace Hagen appeared healthy when his wife was jailed on the arson charge, unable to make bond. “After she went to jail, he began walking all over town,” said Ms. Reyna. “I think she had him all doped up.”

“Then she got out and there was Wally back in the wheelchair,” said retiree Dean Hadfield, a neighbor.

“That’s a figment of sick imaginations,” said Bolding.

Others say their neighbors were snookered by Marjorie Hagen.

“I hardly ever spoke to her,” Indvik said. “She had everybody fooled that she was a nice old lady. . . . She is just a psychotic, evil, mean woman.”

And still others, like Father Tony Navarria, are just puzzled:

“What makes me very, very sad is I don’t understand why she didn’t call me to go and pray. I went to the scene and she didn’t want to talk to me.”