Despite being the daughter of a woman suspected to have murdered her wealthy adopted mother and nurse in 1977 in Duluth, Minnesota, author Suzanne Congdon LeRoy has turned her life to good. In Nightingale: A Memoir of Murder, Madness, and the Messenger of Spring, University of St Thomas educated Congdon LeRoy – who has not seen her estranged “psychopath” mother Marjorie Coldwell since the 1970s – recounts her grandmother Elisabeth Congdon’s life as a pioneering social reformer and philanthropist and as a nurse herself, she has gained accolades for her advanced practice work in the field of HIV/AIDS. Of her personal safety, Congdon LeRoy told an interviewer: “You never turn your back. And I have taken all the necessary precautions to keep myself safe. At the same time, [my mother] essentially only comes after people she can get something from, and none of my siblings or myself have anything for her” in 2014.
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