The Deck - Clarence and Marjorie Paulson (2 of Clubs, Minnesota)

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

In July 1984, Clarence and Marjorie Paulson, father and daughter, were reported missing from their home in Minnesota. At first glance, sheriff’s deputies didn’t see any obvious signs of a struggle. Marjorie and Clarence didn’t have driver’s licenses, and the three-wheeler Clarence used to travel was still at his house. Marjorie’s purse and knitting needles were left behind. Neighbors didn’t offer much of an explanation about where they’d gone – the two were considered reclusive, but known to travel into town every so often.  But a closer examination of the home revealed more to the story. And six years after reported missing, detectives found the unthinkable.  Anyone with information about the death of Marjorie and Paulson should call Crime Stoppers of Minnesota: 800-222-8477, or the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension tip line is 1-877-996-6222.    View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/clarence-and-marjorie-paulson Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media. Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuck Twitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuck Facebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllc To support Season of Justice and learn more, please visit seasonofjustice.org. The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers.  Instagram: @ashleyflowers TikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkie Twitter: @Ash_Flowers Facebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Our card this week is Clarence and Marjorie Poulson, the two of clubs from Minnesota. Clarence and Marjorie were father and daughter, and both went missing from their rural home in 1984. It started, like, a lot of missing persons cases, with hope. The two were known for going off the radar every now and then. But some of what was left behind at their house left neighbors thinking something was very wrong. Or to quote one neighbor at the same. the time. This whole thing is weird. Clarence and Marjorie's disappearance presented a bit of a paradox. They kept to themselves, but were known by everyone. They knew their thickly wooded

surroundings intimately, but hunters got lost or stuck in those swampy woods all the time. For years, this disappearance puzzled authorities, until a discovery unearthed the unimaginable. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck. In December 1990, a Minnesota farmer named Eldon Weiss had picked up a home renovation project. He bought a property in Maple Township about two years earlier hoping to use it for ranching. Now, the property was pretty remote, hours from any major city, and at the end of a dirt road that deadended at a field. And the building that stood on it was, as detective said at the time, in very poor condition.

I mean, before the sale, it was all but abandoned. So over the years, Eldon and his son had been in the process of salvaging and removing boards from the dilapidated farmhouse. But by 1990, they were ready to take the building off the block of its foundation. And that's when they found it. I believe he described it first as it looked like a pair of cowboy boots, but then also some clothing is located. So he gets down off this piece of equipment,

and takes a closer look, and he finds two bodies. And so he immediately calls law enforcement. That's Ryan Fisher, an investigator with the Cass County Sheriff's Office. Been in law enforcement for 22 years. I absolutely love being investigator. I love working complex crime such as this one. That day in 1990, December 15th, to be exact, Eldon called the sheriff's office to report the bodies he'd found.

And believe it or not, it was Investigator Ryan Fisher's dad, Randy Fisher, who took the case. So I'm actually a third generation law enforcement of our third generation of my family to work for the Cascone Sheriff's Office. So my dad was still a investigator at the time. He actually worked on this case quite a bit, actually. So it was his dad's reports that Investigator Fisher reviewed before meeting with our reporting team. In one, investigator Randy Fisher took note of how the two decomposed bodies were both lying near the west edge of the foundation in fine dirt and debris. You know, they're essentially mummified, if you will, but they weren't exposed to the elements as such where they would have decomposed as, say, a body that was just left out in the woods, exposed to the elements. Both were clothed, albeit in fraying clothes. And even though the remains were mummified and would take three days to identify,

everyone had a hunch about who this might be right away. Rural America, right? Everybody's putting things together and that this is, it almost has to be, you know, Marjorie and Clarence. That's 34-year-old Marjorie Poulson and her 59-year-old father, Clarence Poulson. The two locals had been missing for six years. Clarence and Marjorie lived together about five minutes from where they'd been found. It was just the two of them. Clarence was separated from his wife, Olive, and his two other boys, Marjorie's brothers, had their own places.

Their names are Gerald and Clarence Jr., but everyone calls Junior Polly. Now, because the family didn't all live together, it took a minute for anyone to realize that they were gone. So really, we don't know which day in July. July 1984, they even went missing. We just know that Polly, who still lived in town, had last seen them on July 13th. When they went a few days without contact, it didn't raise any alarm bells. Polly figured that his dad and sister had just been over in Duluth a couple of hours away visiting Gerald.

So it took about a week before anyone noticed that Clarence and Marjorie were missing. The 20th is when the first reports came into law enforcement, both from Pauley and also one from a local man appointed as Clarence's guardian named Ed Swardajuski. So they ultimately do report them missing, or both had reported them missing, as just a question as to who was the first. Ed told investigators he'd seen Clarence about once a week over the last two years to organize his finances. And while he wasn't in charge of Marjorie, the work he did technically supported her, too, ever since she moved in with her dad.

It's my understanding that Marjorie had just recently or only recently moved in with her father. She had, I'm told, some cognitive or maybe mental impairment that didn't allow her to live on her own. I'm also told that he had some cognitive impairment, but maybe not to the same level as Marjorie. But I'm told that he was kind of a recluse, I guess, of sorts. He didn't go out very much. Clarence was a World War II veteran who'd been medically discharged tied to a paranoid schizophrenia diagnosis.

Now, back at home, he had just a few hobbies. I'm told that one of his past times was he enjoyed getting a six-pack of beer and going for a ride on his three-wheeler out in the woods. Marjorie was more social, though. She had gone to Brainerd Community College, now Central Lakes College, and St. Cloud State University.

After that, she held a few jobs. She worked as a receptionist and a secretary in the Twin Cities and a nurse's aide in Fargo. One article after she disappeared described her as a poet and an artist. Marjorie wasn't working at the time that she went missing. So her and her dad were living off the roughly $1,700 a month that Clarence got from the veterans and Social Security administrations, according to the then-M Minneapolis Star Tribune. Today, that's closer to $5,400. $100. Clarence had a guardian in place to manage his house and finances since at least 1980.

Before Ed Swaydajuski took over in September 1982, it was Clarence's son, Gerald. But that didn't go so well. A judge said that Gerald's method of accounting was, quote, outside the concept of reality. So Gerald was removed as the guardian and ordered by the court to pay back $15,275 to his dad's estate that Ed would now take charge of. I got the impression from both sides that, you know, they were, you know, the family was a little bit upset with the guardian and then the guardian also had some, you know, not so nice things to say about family. So there was definitely some tension there.

No one could point to any kind of specific threat, though, from past guardian or present. Ed said that nothing was out of the ordinary the last time he stopped in on Clarence, and Polly said the same. The only thing he noted about his dad's demeanor the last time he saw him was, quote, nervous about a three-wheeler incident a couple days before. Other than that, everything seemed normal. End quote. And the reality was when sheriff's deputies responded to the Poulson House on the 80-acre tract of land, everything did look pretty normal, but honestly almost too normal. Kind of like two people, had been right in the middle of something when they just vanished. Clarence's plate was still at the table with some mustard on it.

Marjorie's knitting purse was still there, so it was about $23 in cash, which might not seem like a lot of money, but it's worth about $74 today. At first glance, sheriff's deputies didn't see any obvious signs of a struggle. Nothing tipped over, no blood, no signs that Marjorie or Clarence were injured. Now, Marjorie and Clarence didn't have driver's licenses. Remember, Clarence used that three-wheeler to get around. And that three-wheeler was still there. And neighbors didn't offer up much help when investigators got around to talking with them.

The father-daughter pair may have been a bit reclusive, but Clarence and Marjorie's neighbors definitely knew them. Clarence would sometimes go into the nearby Loon Lake Cafe three or four times a week. But it also wasn't unusual for him to be MIA for a month or so. So they didn't even know that anything was wrong until deputies came knocking. Now, they didn't have a ton of friends, but investigators concluded that they didn't have any contentious relationships either. Clarence's worst offense, a neighbor pointed out to the Star Tribune, was that he played 1940s music on his harmonica and some teenager didn't like it.

Every so often, maybe a bigger issue would crop up, though. There was an easement on their property that gave a name. neighbor access to his land, which caused a disagreement. And then there was that three-wheeler incident that the son had mentioned. And more information about that revealed Clarence said that he'd been chased by a red car, though he didn't know who was behind the wheel. No one they talked to could point to a specific concern or why they'd be missing. But the vibes were definitely off. A neighbor told the brainer dispatch that she had a bad feeling about the disappearance. that this whole thing was weird.

She said, quote, I'm no expert, but I think there's foul play involved. Marjorie wouldn't leave her knitting and money behind. Investigators themselves didn't immediately suspect foul play. But they too could see that something wasn't right. I mean, even if they'd left of their own volition, they could still be in danger.

And when I think of the south, part of our county, it's very rural. And so there's a lot of open rolling hills that are sparsely wooded, but also a lot of low-lying area, a lot of swamp. And that's a, you know, we have a lot of missing hunters and those types of cases, and that's a pretty common occurrence where they get out in the swamp and they either get stuck or they get turned around. Some of these swampy areas can be quite vast and it's easy to get turned around. So I don't think it was out of the ordinary, even back then, to, you know, let your mind wander to the possibility that they're, you know, they might be lost. Investigators from Cass County and next door Crow Wing County walked dirt roads around the property looking for something. Anything that might tell them where Marjorie and Clarence had gone.

Other deputies swept the area in a helicopter. You know, the early on in the investigation, there's a lot of ground searches. conducted. There's a lot of aerial searches conducted. It's not an overly wooded area, but it is, there are wooded areas in that. It's kind of like farm and ranch country. It's a lot of open area. But there are a lot of aerial searches conducted. There was the State Patrol helicopter was utilized. This sheriff at the time actually had his pilot's license and he would fly the area. So there was a pretty extensive search that was conducted early on. Investigators even did an underwater search of a nearby small lake with

divers and dragging equipment. But nothing. Ed, Clarence's guardian, told newspapers that Clarence knew the woods like the back of his hand. Maybe he ventured out, overconfident, and got turned around. But did two people venture out and get lost? The assumption was that whatever happened, they were together. But they hadn't, you know, they weren't enough separated. Because Marjorie really relied on Clarence, and I think it was kind of a mutual.

I think they both relied on one another. Finally about a week after they took their first missing persons report, investigators went back to the house to do a thorough search. And there's a few items that are located. Those items would give investigators their first real clue about what might have happened to Clarence and Marjorie Poulson. The clues that told investigators something was wrong had been there all along.

Outside, investigators saw a yard light had been shot out, and there were three blunt impressions on the Paulson's front door, like something had been thrown against it. When they walked inside, things only got more concerning. Investigators found a bullet hole in the kitchen ceiling and bullet cartridges strewn about the house. And I thought this was super weird that they were only paying attention to this now and not the first time that they'd gone by the house. But Fisher said that you have to think about where they are. Now, I would caution people that this is rural Minnesota, right? Would it be that uncommon for, you know,

certainly loose ammo, things like that, to be located in the house? Even fired ammunition, shell casings, things like that, you know, somebody was, say, they were target practicing in the yard, you know, they didn't want to leave their shell casings out for, you know, you get run over with the law more, whatever. So it seems like a smoking gun that their shell casings found in a house, but on the same token, it's maybe not necessarily out of the ordinary. Investigators didn't find a weapon. All they knew was that the bullet casings belonged to a 22-caliber gun,

which is fairly common. They collected it all as evidence now, though, and they looked for prints, but they didn't find anything of value. Even then, law enforcement didn't have reason to believe someone harmed the pulsins. Investigators didn't find a trace of blood, so they never ended up using luminal. Shoe leather police work might have to be their next best bet. Leeds came in about where Marjorie and Clarence could be from all over. But from the jump, investigators looked closer to home.

specifically at Ed and Gerald. Maybe, they thought, what happened to the Pulsins could be traced back to the guardianship situation between Gerald and Ed, where Gerald was ordered to relinquish control of his dad's estate. I think there was always some animosity there. And I think that's pretty common, right? You know, any time and outside, even though Ed was a family friend,

I think it seems reasonable that a family's always going to be a little bit upset that, well, why does somebody else have to do it when we're capable or whatever? There was another strange and unsettling incident that involved Gerald shortly before his dad and sister disappeared. Two months prior, his dog was found tied to a pole by a chain and shot to death in an abandoned house. So was there someone out there trying to get retribution for something that Gerald had done? Maybe Marjorie and Clarence were just next in. line, and Gerald was a victim too. Or could Gerald have tried to seek vengeance after he was removed as Clarence's guardian?

Certainly we're looking at family. You know, usually family are the first ones that we need to interview and potentially rule out. I remember Gerald. Gerald was looked at pretty heavily early on, and that ultimately led to him consenting to a polygraph examination. It was that easy. With a past polygraph, they ruled Gerald out as a suspect

and didn't go down any more of those hypothetical paths. Plus, Gerald had a real one for them to go down. Because from early on, he had been pointing the finger at a man that investigators are calling John. So there's always been a pretty clear standout person of interest in this case. and certainly associated with the family. Not a family member, but a guy the Paulsons knew. Gerald told investigators that he had a bad feeling about the guy.

John was the son of one of Clarence's neighbors. And though sometimes John and Clarence hung out and drank beers, Gerald said that his dad didn't like him. There was a few different, coming from the family especially, there were some altercation, not altercations, but certainly some disagreements, I guess, that they thought were worth, you know, extra attention on law enforcement's part.

Problem was John had an alibi, kind of. And you have to remember, you know, we have information from family that state that they saw Clarence and Marjorie alive on the 13th. They're not reported missing until about the 20th. So we have a pretty large time frame or large window. So if somebody has an alibi for, say, a specific day or maybe even a specific part of the day, you know, is that enough to rule that individual out?

The obvious answer is no. But they still have a pretty specific window there. And so a lot of those questions circle around what was that individual doing during that time. John's alibi was a little spotty. It took him out of the picture, but not for that whole week between when Marjorie and Clarence were last seen and when they were reported missing. So John wasn't crossed off the interest list. But investigators also didn't interview him at the time either, Fisher said. And I guess there wasn't enough to push the case forward.

Not enough evidence, not enough witnesses, or even confirmation that a crime, actually happened. So, the case stalled for about five years. Then, in 1989, Clarence and Marjorie were declared legally dead. A court settled Clarence's estate. Pauli finally destroyed the family home where his dad and sister had lived and told the Star Tribune, quote, there was no sense of its being there. Polly told reporters that he had a hard time moving on, but the case had run cold, and it stated. cold for another year until that day in 1990 when Farmer Eldon discovered the bodies and Cass County sheriffs started their investigation all over again. Finding the two bodies underneath that abandoned house fundamentally changed Clarence and Marjorie's

case. An autopsy revealed Marjorie's cause of death, a gunshot wound to the chest. Clarence's autopsy report listed his cause of death just as homicidal violence. But that left a lot open to interpretation. He had some pretty significant head injury, head trauma, to the point where a lot of, you know, a lot of his head was absent. Investigators weren't sure if that was the result of a gunshot wound or blunt force trauma. When I think traumatic injury, especially to, the head, I guess my thought typically goes to some kind of blunt force trauma. It could have been a gunshot, but again, given the state that he was found, I would feel it was unlikely that it was

gunshot related and probably more related to some kind of blunt force drama. Both likely died a very painful death, a very grotesque. and painful death. Now that investigators weren't trying to find them, they could try to figure out who killed them. Certainly, you know, now this case went from what we thought was, you know, likely a homicide or something having to do with foul play. But, yeah, this ramped it up to this is absolutely a homicide.

You know, we have two people that died from homicidal violence. Now it's 100% a homicide. And it also gave investigators something to finally work with. Ramped it up in high gear. And now we have, it opens up a world of opportunity in terms of the potential for evidence. And they knew exactly who they wanted to ask about it. The same guy investigators had been looking at in 1984. His name was high on the list.

So I have to be a little bit careful here, obviously, but there's a lot of information circling around John. There was, so John's name got brought up fairly quickly, just as a local of sorts. He was very much known to the family. There was some speculation. It wasn't the red car incident, but there was also some one-of-one. of the leads early on was that John and Clarence had had some form of an altercation. The details of that altercation I can't share, but certainly, you know, he was known to the family both in a, you know, in maybe a amical level, but also there have been times where they've been maybe a little sideways.

So certainly leading to, you know, he's somebody that we want to look at. Because John and Clarence were something of drinking buddies, investigators figured it was possible John knew where Clarence's house was and the barn where the Poulson's were found. John was also a likely person of interest after the bodies were located because we knew that he has former knowledge of that property where that house would be. Can you tell me how John knows the property?

Not without making it relatively obvious for people to be able to identify him. To get from the Poulson's residence to the dilapidated barn where Marjorie and Clarence were found dead, you'd have to get onto County Road 1, drive a few miles north, and then get on a gravel road that dead ends. You'd come to a red gate before you could get onto the property, which at some point was used for deer hunting, and later ranching. You would have to know exactly where you were going to get here. I don't think there's ever been a question

that whatever happened happened either in or outside the house and they were likely transported to that final resting place. Investigator Fisher won't exactly say how or why he came to this conclusion, but he does have a theory on the murder, one that is supported by his colleagues and the ones who have come before them,

including his father. Maybe there's an angle there where there's some kind of, whether it's a physical assault or maybe even potentially a sexual assault, that's either taking place or about to take place, that's somehow interrupted by dad, by Clarence. It's worth noting that Marjorie's autopsy didn't say that she was assaulted, but she had been deconted. but she had been decomposing for six years before she was found. Investigator Fisher's drawing this conclusion based on a lot of different factors, including what we know about Clarence's mental health diagnosis.

But maybe, according to investigators, in the moment, Clarence became agitated and things escalated. I could be way out, but that wouldn't be an unlikely scenario that I could see playing out. and then ultimately this individual, you know, panics maybe cleans up the scene a little bit, doesn't do a thorough job. I mean, maybe these cases don't have anything to do with it. You know, like I said, it's not that uncommon that, you know, loose ammo would be found in a house. But, yeah, I mean, certainly this individual would have had to have cleaned up the scene well enough for experienced deputies to show up at the house and look around and go, well, maybe they just wandered off or whatever. But then ultimately the same individual takes them somewhere and a place that they know and hides them and thinks that they got away.

Maybe, Fisher and his colleagues thought, John never meant to actually kill them. Maybe he just panicked and acted swiftly. Fear makes you do crazy things. Like we always say, when we're getting a foot pursuit, they can run faster scared than we get mad, right? So I think the theory has always been that, you know, whatever happened, you know, this individual or individuals were scared. You know, the adrenaline's pumping and they knew that they had to obviously dispose of the bodies. And this ultimate location, was it a location of opportunity or was it a location that they maybe knew about previous? Maybe John took the two away to a dusty crawl space he thought was so abandoned that no one would ever check.

And to be fair, no one did. Eldon Weiss was taking the house off its foundation, which I'm sure whoever put them there wasn't expecting. I would take that one step further, and we talked about in the 90s or 1990 when this case ramps up again. and maybe this John starts to feel a little bit of pressure and relocates to another state. And then ultimately, it's in trouble in another state. So that's my gut reaction, my gut feeling. Now, he said maybe that's what happened. But he later confirmed to us that is what happened.

Some point after the bodies were found, John moved away and got into trouble. wherever he landed. He was charged with what Fisher could only describe as a crime of violence and was convicted and sent to prison. Now, that crime of violence that sent him away obviously doesn't tell investigators that John killed the Polsons, but it did reinforce that he may have been capable of it. We've never, there's never been any doubt that we're all in agreement, so it's the same person that we're looking at John.

But here's the thing. John has actually been interviewed at least three times, including after his time in prison. And he agreed to talk without an attorney. Fisher doesn't have records that show he was ever polygraphed, though. And while he won't get too much into what they talked about, they have asked John where he was in July 1984. He's certainly not friendly towards law enforcement. And he knows that he's certainly, always been viewed as a suspect. But he has still, you know, he hasn't asked for an attorney. That's relatively common. You know, a lot of people, depending on their personality,

believe that they're smarter than law enforcement, that they can talk their way out of a situation. You know, again, time. Time is not, you know, our ally at this point. So the more time that goes by, in any case, that person gets more confident. I would say the biggest is probably they're, you know, and I'm not just speaking in terms of, you know, this John, but also many suspects. You know, they, personality-wise, they think that they can beat it.

They think that they're, you know, better than us or maybe smarter than us, and we just keep trying. Investigator Fisher and his colleagues are confident that they know who's responsible. They even think they've figured out where the crime happened and the chain of events that led to it. So why not put this guy in handcuffs today? It's easy for me to sit here and say, yes, this is a very chargeable case. Is it a winnable case? Is it a prosecutable case?

Is a whole other story? And I'm not in the least pointing the finger at any, one person because this, we've had probably close to a half dozen county attorneys that have been aware of this case, very aware of this case. And we've, we've presented this case several times. And, you know, nobody's disputing the fact that this is a, it's a good case. But fast forward to a criminal trial. And I don't, I don't know if it's popular to say that cases get sanitized, but there's things that just aren't allowable in court. John's crime history is going to be one of them.

So, you know, let's consider prejudice, right? So we can't parade in front of the jury that this individual did X, Y, Z out in another state. Generally, a jury isn't allowed to consider a defendant's past criminal behavior to determine his guilt in the present crime. This case has to be absolutely airtight. There have been cases that I would have felt were slam dunk. And as we went through as we navigated the trial process, getting towards the end, we're thinking, we might not win.

So now you take a case that has a lot of concerns. I mean, certainly, again, good evidence, but some concerns and maybe some gaps. And you start looking at the likelihood of this, you know, having a positive outset. I think we can all agree there's, we would like it to be a little bit stronger before moving forward. One thing that wasn't really a thing back in 1984 was DNA evidence. And so today, that might be where investigators find a breakthrough.

Investigator Fisher revealed to us that John's criminal record doesn't just extend to other states. He's actually been a person of interest in other cases nearby. And because of that, the Cass County Sheriff's Office, has his DNA on file. Investigator Fisher told us that they have tested evidence for DNA in this case, but he won't say what the results were. Here's what he will say. They've recently submitted the two shell casings for DNA testing.

So far, they haven't been able to get any profiles off of the shell casings, and nothing came from any of the prints that were in the house. The clothing's too deteriorated, but they do have other evidence preserved, like parts of the house, including the Poulson's front door. Sometimes in cold cases, investigators can be territorial. But in this case, Investigator Fisher's been working with the State Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Now he has a partner. And we're both motivated.

We both want to, I mean, for very obvious reasons. I mean, certainly we want closure for the family. We want closure for, you know, those that have come before us. as investigators, my dad, and I mean, there must be three or four investigators outside of my dad that's worked this case as well. So, I mean, it's very well known to all of us. But yeah, certainly, you know, we've all, you become invested in these. And we want to make sure that this is one of those cases that we can get some resolution for everybody, ourselves included. They believe this case is solvable. But they need that final detail that will bring this case to

closure, whether that's exactly where John was that entire week in July 1984 or when exactly the Pulsons went missing. But the important thing is making sure that Clarence and Marjorie's memory remains in the public and certainly within our agencies, you know, both, you know, the Casconi Sheriff's Office and the BCA. I do think this case is solvable. In a lot of ways, I feel like it's solved. It's just we need to charge it.

And again, I'm not a prosecuting attorney. And I certainly realize, I mean, any hesitation there is not without cause. But I still remain hopeful that there's somebody out there that has more information to give. that could come forward, and that's why I'm sitting here today. He's asking that anyone with information call the State Bureau of Criminal Apprehension or the Cass County Sheriff's Office. The crime stoppers of Minnesota tip line number is 800-222-8477, and the BCA tip line is 1-87-99622.

The deck is an audio-chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the deck in our advocacy work, visit the deckpodcast.com. I think Chuck would approve.