True Crime Campfire - Scandalized: The Murder of Jacques Mossler

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

Life imitates art sometimes, or so the saying goes. And it’s true, no doubt about it. But you’re not always gonna get a masterwork. Sometimes, life imitates trashy art instead. With this story, we get the real-life equivalent of, like, a velvet Elvis—or more accurately, a season of “Days of Our Lives.” Join us for the story of one of Florida’s most scandalous murder cases—the “trial of the century” of the mid-60s. It’s basically a soap opera come to life, starring a glamorous socialite who could charm the paint off the walls, her rich but ruthless husband, and her dashing young lover—who had a secret that would knock genteel Key Biscayne sideways. Sources:Texas Monthly, Skip Hollandsworth: The Notorious Mrs. Mossler: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/the-notorious-mrs-mossler/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candy_Mosslerhttps://medium.com/lessons-from-history/jacques-mossler-his-wife-and-nephew-murdered-him-to-inherit-200-million-4d6209fec435Investigation Discovery's "A Crime to Remember," episode "Candyland"Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Life imitates art sometimes, or so the saying goes, and it's true. No doubt about it. But you're not always going to get a masterwork. Sometimes life imitates trashy art instead. With this story, we get the real-life equivalent of like a velvet Elvis, or more accurately, a season of days of our lives.

Join us for the story of one of Florida's most scandalous murder cases, the trial of the century of the mid-60s. It's basically a soap opera come to life, starring a glamorous socialite who could charm the paint off the wall. her rich but ruthless husband and her dashing young lover who had a secret that would knock genteel K. Biscayne sideways. This is scandalized, the murder of Jacques Mosler. So campers, for this one, we're in Key Biscay. Cain, Florida. June 29th, 1964, had been a rough day for socialite Candace Mosler. She and four of her kids were in Florida visiting her husband of 15 years, Jacques. They lived in Houston, Texas, but Jacques kept a luxury condo in Key Biscayne for when he had to be in Miami on business. Candice had tried to keep the kids busy at the beach all day, but her damn migraines kept acting up, so badly that she ended up at the ER several times throughout the day needing treatment. She made the final one of those hospital visits, kids in tow, after midnight.

They finally gave her an injection that eased the pain, and, feeling better, she took the kids out for a late-night burger at a 24-hour diner, and then they headed back to the condo. It was about 4.30 in the morning by the time Candace opened the door, and they all filed in, to an absolute nightmare. Jacques Mosler was on the floor of the living room, wrapped, almost swaddled, in a bloody blanket riddled with puncture marks. There was blood everywhere, an autopsy would later reveal more than three dozen stab wounds, plus brutal blunt force trauma to the head. Jacques Mosler, 69-year-old husband, father, and millionaire banker was dead, murdered about as violently as a person could possibly be in his own home. And his own wife and kids had to be the ones to find his body.

Under the blanket, Jacques Mosler was wearing nothing but the shirt he liked to sleep in. There was no sign of forced entry to the apartment, and on the kitchen counter there were two cocktail glasses, one of which had a few cigarette butts floating in the melted ice. CSIs managed to pull a nice palm print off the counter next to the glasses, but oddly, that was the only print they found at the scene, which is weird in itself. I mean, if you dust in my house right now, you'd sure itself find plenty of fingerprints. There was one other promising piece of evidence, though, a hair clutched in Jacques's bloody hand, and as Officer canvas the apartment building, they found several neighbors who had seen and heard potentially important things around the time of the murder. A few people had heard Jacques's dog losing his shit on the balcony at about 2 a.m. One guy had been bothered enough to open up his

own balcony door and yell, hey, Mosler, shut that dog up. And he did stop barking after that. But before the neighbor could close the balcony door and go back to bed, he heard Jacques's voice. Sounded like he was yelling, no, don't do that. And then everything went quiet. Another neighbor, a lady who lived downstairs from Jacques Mosler, had come out of her apartment to try and see what all the commotion was about. Right as she closed the door behind her, she noticed a man she didn't recognize, slipping around the corner, heading for the exit. Curious, she followed him outside, from a discreet distance, obviously, and watched him get into a white car. When detective spoke to Candace Mosler, still feeling wrung out from her migraine and undoubtedly in shock at what she'd just walked in on, she told him that Jacques's wallet was empty.

He should have had a few hundred dollars cash in there, she said. And she was missing her expensive diamond watch. Okay, so despite the lack of forced entry, it was starting to sound like a robbery gone south. Maybe Jacques had come out of his bedroom for a glass of water and interrupted a burglar. Of course, there were certainly plenty of other things the guy could have stolen, but I mean, maybe he would have if Jacques hadn't interrupted him.

Maybe he just panicked after the murder and ran. But when the investigators sat down with Candace again the next day for a more extended interview, she didn't pull any punches. Candice herself had an ironclad alibi. She'd been at the hospital getting treatment for her migraine at the time the murder took place. And she had some definite ideas about who might have murdered her husband. Sure, it could have been a burglary, she said. But there were any number of people who might want Jacques Mosler dead.

In fact, it might be quicker if they could just narrow down the list of people who didn't. Damn. Jacques had amassed a $33 million fortune over the years, way more in today's money. And he hadn't done it by being nice or easygoing. When it came to business, Jacques could be vicious. He'd repo your car, floor clothes on your house, seize your small business, take you for everything you had if you missed payments. And he wasn't the most forgiving employer either. There was a list as long as your arm of a pissed off ex-employee's colleague,

and customers who could have wanted revenge against this guy. And then, there was this. Candace said that ever since Jacques started spending more time at his condo in Florida, he'd changed. She said it in the sort of hushed tone of voice you'd used to talk about a relative with a drug addiction or something. What do you mean he'd change? The detective prompted her. Well, Candice said, a couple years ago, Jacques had started having some medical issues,

something with his lungs, so he'd flown over to Europe for treatment, and when he came back, he was just different, like a new man. He said he wanted to spend more time near the ocean. It was better for his health. He'd taken the condo down in Florida, and once he got down there, Jacques had started spending a lot of time with a circle of close friends, male friends. One of them had even moved in with him at the condo for a while. A much younger guy he worked with, Vincent Kaltajeroni. Now, Jacques was a millionaire dozens of times over. He didn't need a roommate, and he didn't even charge Vincent rent. Jacques was showing, quote, homosexual tendencies, Candice said. He'd bring men home for good

conversation, but she assumed there was a lot more to it than that. Who knows what one of those men might do if Jacques did something to make him angry, she said. It might have been a lover's quarrel. In fact, the whole week we were staying there, Candice said, this man kept calling for Jacques. His voice was kind of feminine. Okay, well, case closed then. Feminine voice definitely equals gay lover. Yeah, that's how that works. So, as you can imagine, the detective's eyebrows hit the ceiling at this. Jacques and Candice had one of those fairy tale-looking lives, the kind that make you the envy of everybody you meet.

they had wealth beyond most people's wildest dreams, a spectacular mansion in Houston, beautiful cars and clothes, and a literal herd of kids, 10 between the two of them. Yeah, Candice came into the marriage with a few from a previous relationship. Jacques had a few, and then they adopted four together. At the time of Jacques's death, they just celebrated their 15th anniversary. When people looked at the two of them, the milf with the blonde bob and the voluptuous, surgically enhanced bod, and the much older mogul, with a string of mansions and a fleet of luxury cars,

they tended to think they fit the old cliche, that Candy was his blonde Bimbed of a trophy wife and Jacques was Candy's sugar daddy. But for those who knew them well, it really wouldn't like that. Candy was an independent woman who'd come into the marriage with money of her own. Not nearly as much as he had, but it's not like she was struggling. Candy had gotten married at age 20 and had a couple of children with her first husband. But the marriage didn't work out, and after the divorce,

Candy kind of reinvented herself as a business woman. woman. She started a, well, it depends on who you ask. Might have been a modeling agency type of thing. Might have been an escort service. Either way, she didn't really need Jacques Mosler's money. They just really enjoyed each other's company, at least in the early years. Candice Mosler was a force. She'd been a model in her younger years, trained at the famous Barbizon school where Ms. Dante Sotorius once took classes. And now in her 40s, she still carried herself like a fashion icon. She was blonde and blue-eyed. glam and charming, with a genteel southern accent that could melt butter.

Everybody she met. Men, women, everybody was captivated by her. She could probably talk the Pope and to join in a black metal band. At the time of her husband Jacques's murder, she was pretty much the doion of Houston's wealthy social scene. But she hadn't grown up with money. Her parents had 12 kids, and Candace grew up working hard on the family farm. When she was 12, her mom died in childbirth with baby number 13,

who was still born. Poor little thing. And Candy's dad never really recovered. He developed a pretty serious drinking problem, and eventually he turned the kids over to relatives. Candice pretty much raised herself, and she was kind of an eccentric kid. She liked to wear her nightgowns all over town, because as she put it, she like pretended to be a princess. She was definitely as beautiful as one. And in high school, Candice's granddad started pressuring her to try and find a husband.

Basically, is a meal ticket out of poverty. It's sad, but that wasn't unusual at all that. then. This was the 1930s. The depression had been going on for five or six years by now and people did what they had to do. So when at age 19, Candy met an engineer named Norman Johnson, 10 years older than she was, she married him fast. And a year later, she had her first child, a little boy. But the stay-at-home mom life was not her cup of tea. She hated it. So she started volunteering with the USO at Fort Benning, where she and other young women would throw parties for the soldiers. It was at one of those parties where she met a young officer named Winthrop Rockefeller.

Yeah, those Rockefellers. Winthrop was Big Daddy John D's son. Talk about some money. Damn. And according to many who knew her at the time, Candace and Winthrop developed a very close relationship. How close? Well, she named her second child, a daughter, Rita Rockefeller Johnson. Forever after, there'd be questions about whether she was actually Winthrop's daughter. rather than Candy's husband Normans, but Candy would never say one way or the other.

Oddly enough, hubby Norman didn't seem super bothered by the whole thing, or maybe he didn't even know. In the early 40s, anyway, he and Candy moved to New Orleans for Norman's work, and their marriage fell apart shortly after. Norman picked up stakes and moved to Colorado, and she stayed in Norlands with the kids where she really started to come into her own. She went to the Barbizon School of Modeling. She started booking modeling jobs and design in sexy undies. And after she graduated from Barbazahn, she opened her own business, the Candace modeling and self-improvement school.

Women could learn how to do their hair and makeup, how to project an air of self-confidence, how to talk classy. Yeah, the brochure said they would imbue self-confidence, grace, poise, and elegance of speech that will make you a person a real distinction. Sign me up, bitches. I know. I think I could use that. Candy taught a lot. lot of the seminars herself. She had a popular one on the right way for ladies to wear hats. But like Whitney said a minute ago, rumor had it. She was teaching some other stuff too, stuff that didn't appear in the course catalog. Rumor had it. Candice was the madam of a

successful escort service with soldiers as the main clientele. Is it true? We don't know for sure, but the rumor was very persistent. Didn't slow candy down though. She was one of those people who seemed to be powered by some kind of magical cold fusion or something, just endless energy and probably made of Teflon. She never slowed down. And one of her many side projects was volunteering with the New Orleans Opera. One of her jobs was to try to talk wealthy people into big, fat donations. And this was how, in 1947, she met Jacques Mosler.

Jacques had immigrated with his parents from Romania as a kid, and his early life was a little bit rocky. In his 20s, he ran a used car or dealership, and when he was only 21, he got arrested for larceny when police found a stolen car on the lot. No record of a conviction, but, you know, it's an interesting little blip in his history. At some point, though, he switched gears

from selling cars to loaning money, and after a brief detour to fight in World War I, that was where he eventually made his millions. By the time he met Candace, he was 52 and just divorced. They hit it off, got married two years later, and Jacques treated her like a queen. He built her a huge three-story mansion, and he hired a full staff to take care of it and pamper candy. She had her own personal ladies made, for God's sakes.

And Candy took to the Houston scene like a duck to water. She had that devastating Southern charm, plus experience raising money for charity, so she threw herself into the fundraising game. hosting big, lavish parties and squeezing every cent she could squeeze out of Houston's rich folks. According to True Crime Legend and potential friend of the show, call us, Skip Hollinsworth, it didn't take long for Houston to get wind of the rumors about candy's sexy little side hustle in New Orleans. But surprisingly, it didn't get her ousted from her perch as queen of the social scene. As Skip wrote in his article, The Notorious Mrs. Mosler, quote, was hard for the city's social crowd to condemn someone whose philanthropy often went above and

beyond. She volunteered at multiple hospitals. She took a special interest in the Houston Boys Club, donating $15,000 to build bathhouses for the kids at the Youth Center's pool. In January 1957, Jacques called her from a business trip in Chicago to tell her he'd just read about four local siblings, ages two through six, who'd been left homeless after their father shot their mother and stabbed their baby brother to death. Oh, my God. Candice soon boarded a flight to the city, and she and Jacques signed custody papers for all four children.

The adoption would become final later. Wow. Talk about walking the walk. Yeah. Most of the time, it seems like sickeningly rich people tend to donate to charity for the optics and the tax breaks more than the actual good it does, but Candy actually adopted those four kids. And she wasn't the type to just drop them in a nanny's lap and forget they existed.

Seems like she was a pretty involved mom, despite her busy schedule. It was all kind of a fairy tale until two things happened. First, those health problems of Jacquess that Candy later told the detectives about, the ones that had sent him off to Europe by himself for medical treatment, and then got him craving lots of solo time in the ocean air of Key Biscayne. And then, in 1961, Candy's sister, Babe, called her in a panic. Her 20-year-old son, Melvin, was in trouble. He was in jail, for defrauding old ladies out of her.

of $20,000 worth of fake magazine subscriptions. Real class email. Anyway, his sentence was pretty pathetic, only 90 days. But his mama was understandably freaking out about the direction his life was headed in, and she figured what could be better for him than to go stay with his rich auntie candy in Houston? This is like the Texas equivalent of the Fresh Prince. I can see it now. It is.

In West Philadelphia, born and raise on the... playground is where I spent most of my days. Sorry. Okay. That's burned into the memory of every gen Xer. I was going to finish it and then I was like, we can't. We don't have time. Maybe in the post show for the patrons. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, you know, he could spend time with all the cousins and maybe Candy's husband Jacques could take him under his wing, find him a job. Candice was all for it. Sure, send him down here. We'll take care of him. And take care of him. She did. But we'll get to that in a minute.

Back to the first days of the murder investigation. As we mentioned earlier, Candy seemed pretty hell-bent on steering the investigation in a particular direction. The Jacques is a secret homosexual direction, right from the start. That's why she brought up her late hubby's employee-slash-former- roommate, Vincent Calta-Gerone. But when they spoke to Vincent, he laughed at the suggestion that they were romantically or sexually involved. It's like, no, no, that wasn't it. when he'd started his job at Jacques's company, he'd been promised a furnished apartment as part of his contract. Asking him to move in with him was just a way for Jacques to save the company some

cash. It was just typical Jacques behavior. Unless it was on fancy houses or trips or jewelry for candy and the kids, Jacques never liked to spend a penny if he didn't have to. And it hadn't lasted long, Vincent told him. He eventually moved out and got an apartment of his own. And the detectives couldn't find a shred of evidence that Jacques ever went to gay bars or anything like that. Turns out, Candy's lover's quarrel gone wrong theory had no legs. Jacques might not have been leading a secret life in the closet after all, but our girl Candy had some capital S secrets for sure. For the past two years, she'd been living a double life, and what a second life it was. Candy was having an affair on Jacques, but we're not talking

about your garden variety, booty call with the pool boy kind of affair. For one thing, Candy's Paramore was 20-something years younger than she was. And for another, he was her nephew Melvin. Yeah. Her sister's 20-year-old son. Mel was a handsome young fella, but he'd never managed to get any traction in his life. He was always skipping school, getting himself into one kind of trouble or another, but he had one thing going for him. He was movie star hot. And apparently, Auntie Candice couldn't help but notice. She turned that thousand-watt southern charm on Mel and he was putty in her hands. So much so that he let her completely reinvent him. Candy let him know early on that before she'd let him get his hands

on the goods, she'd have to make a few little changes. No big deal, nothing major or anything. She just made him get surgery to pin his ears back, derm abrasion to sand down some acne scars on his face, a tonsillectomy so he wouldn't snore in bed. And y'all, you might need to sit down for this next one, she made him get circumcised. My hand to God, I'm not making this up. Ms. Candy wasn't having it unless he took off the little turtle neck first. Good gravy. Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.

Like, oh, oh, nephew, take off your pants. Oh, I'm not touching that thing. I could just, oh, my God. Yeah, circumcision. Sure. Totally normal thing to ask your adult nephew to do, no problem. But apparently, once she'd had Mel all tuned up to her specifications, they were at it hotter and heavier than a humid Texas summer. They wrote each other's sappy letters. They had sex at the mansion, at Candy and Jacques Beach House, at the family ranch outside the

city. Melvin liked to flex to anybody who would listen about the potent sexual hold he allegedly had on candy. Apparently, he had no shame whatsoever about knocking boots with his auntie, which, okay, I'm sorry. I don't think you have a hold on her so much as she has a hold on you. My dude, she made you get circumcised. I know. Seriously, who's leading who around? Oh, God. How this didn't get back to his mama, I have no idea. Yeah, I mean, I have to assume it didn't, because if I found out my brother was having an affair with my kid, I'd have to murder him on the spot. I'm sure you all understand.

Yeah. But Melvin didn't seem worried about it. He was proud of his cougar aunt slash girlfriend, despite the fact that she probably changed his diapers when he was a baby. Yeah. Yeah. And if you think I'm about to make some kind of crass fetish joke, you are sadly mistaken. I'm better than that.

Let's just move on. Okay. Please. The affair was an open secret in Houston. At least, everybody in town seemed to know about it except for Jacques. Jacques actually gave Mel a job as a repo man, which he took to like he was born for it. He was an easygoing, charming guy, the kind who could repo people stuff without getting his ass kicked. He was a natural.

But Candy and Mel were walking a tightrope. And it couldn't last forever. And in the summer of 1963, Jacques finally found. figured out what was going on between his wife and her nephew. One of his staff walked right in on Candy and Mel in the middle of one of their sessions. He fired Melvin the same day, had a couple of burly security guards taken by the collar and boot him out of the house, then Jacques left to go stay at his condo in Key Biscayne.

So, of course, everybody that knew in Houston was popping popcorn at this latest chapter in drama, but Candy was in damage control. mode and she wouldn't admit there was anything amiss. She told everybody that Jacques had kicked Mel out over a business dispute. Mel was starting his own business and Jack was annoyed about losing his best repo man. Honey, it had nothing to do with an affair. Where'd you hear that? Oh, people do talk. It's just ridiculous. Jacques and I've never been happier. Now here, darling, have some more mint Juulip. In fact, Candy said she and Jacques missed each other so much that she and the kids would be going down to keep his game soon for a visit. And this campers brings us back to where we started

the story. Jacques dead on the floor of his apartment, Candy and the four kids coming back from the hospital to find him, and detectives digging into Jacques's life to try and find out who killed him. The gay lover theory didn't pan out. Neither did any of the leads they chased down. on disgruntled former employees or pissed off customers. But this new info about Candy and Melvin was hot as a pistol. It had real potential, especially when you add the fact that Candy made out like a bandit from Jacques's death. She got about $7 million, the equivalent about $60 million in today's money. Candace put on a good show at the funeral at Arlington National Cemetery,

weeping and surrounded by her kids. But the more the police investigated, the more those were starting to look like Cross. One good lead was the car one of Jacques's neighbors had seen driving away from the scene on the night of the murder, a white Chevy Impala. The investigators knew that Jacques's company handled a lot of car loans, and he was notorious for repossessing him if a customer missed a payment, then handing the keys to candy. As a result, she had a revolving stable of new to her cars to drive around. On a hunch, detectives combed through the records of Jacques's company, and lo and behold, the company had repo to white Chevy Impala, right around the time of the murder. And when they spoke to some of Jacques and Candy's household staff, they learned that, yep, one of them had driven the car down to Key Biscayne and handed it over to Candace, six days before the murder. In fact, on the day she'd taken possession of the car, she'd just come back from a trip to the Bahamas. The employee had met Candy and the others at the airport and handed her the keys to the Chevy. When the detectives asked Candy about the car,

she said that, yes, she'd had one for a few days, but she didn't really like it, so she handed it back to the company, a few days before Jacques's murder. But when they spoke to the company, huh, they didn't seem to have any record of that. So the police put a bolo out on the car. Guess where they found it? In the parking lot at the Miami airport. Guess what else they just found out? That on June 29th, the day of the murder, Candy's nephew-slash-lova, Melvin Powers, had bought himself a one-way airline ticket from Houston to Miami, about 20 minutes away from Kibis King. And one of the flight attendants told him that he hadn't brought any luggage with him, just a briefcase. A bit odd, isn't it? Not only that, but the detectives found several witnesses

who'd seen mail at the hotel bar of a holiday inn not far from Jacques Mosler's condo that day. A bar called the Stuffed Shirt Lounge, by the way. I just had to share that little detail, because I love it. Like, STUFT shirt, Stift shirt. And this is an interesting little detail, one that gave me the chills the first time I read it. He was at that bar off and on all throughout the day, and the first time he just went up to the bar and asked for an empty glass soda bottle. An empty bottle.

And why would he need a heavy glass bottle? Was he looking for something he could use as a bludgeoning weapon? Y'all have seen those old-style bottles that hold soda, right? Like soda for a whiskey and soda, not like a bottle of Pepsi. Those things are big and heavy and can do some serious damage to your skull. Right. The bartender remembered him coming in late. that night, too, around 1 a.m. and ordering a double scotch. By 4 a.m., right as Candace

and the kids were stumbling upon Jacques's murdered body, Mel was back at the Miami airport, buying his one-way ticket back to Houston. Feel that investigation, picking up steam campers? It's like a freight train. And when they flew over to Houston to interview Melvin, their spidey senses twanged even harder. Melvin said he hadn't been anywhere near Kibus Kane, the night shock was murdered. He was right here in Houston. He went and saw a movie that night. But for some weird reason, he couldn't see to remember the name of the movie he'd seen or the theater where he saw it, and it was obvious to everybody in the room that he was lying like a carpet. And they arrested him on the spot,

charged him with capital murder. When they searched his office later that night, they found pictures of him and Candace out partying together, looking very snugly, and a stack of sappy love letters from her to him. Quoting from Skip Hollinsworth article here, one of the letters said, My darling, the image of your face is before me. The face she'd made him. sandblast the acne scars off of before she'd touch it remember i can almost feel your face against mine i could not think of life without you i love you i need you i long for you gross just normal messages from your aunt right that's just like that's just normal auntie messages come on So unsurprisingly, investigators soon started looking real hard at candy.

Did Melvin just decide on his own to take out his love rival or had Auntie put him up to it? They wanted to sit her down for a good old-fashioned interrogation. But when they went to find her, they were told she'd checked herself into St. Luke's Hospital for treatment for nervous strain. She had private security guards outside her room and while she didn't seem interested in talking with police, she was fine to take time out from her busy treatment regimen to talk to the press. When one reporter asked her if she thought Mel had murdered Jacques, Candy said, and I quote, Oh, poo, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

If an atomic bomb were to fall, Mel would have been the first to drag Jacques and the children out of the wreckage. I apologize to the southern states. Okay. Candy, honey, sweetheart, baby. if an atomic bomb fell, there wouldn't be any wreckage to drag you out of. But, okay. As for those vicious rumors that she was, quote, carrying on with her nephew, well, those were just absurd. Those letters they found, well, that was just how Candy talked to all her closest friends and family members.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I know I tell my brother I'm longing for him all the time that I can almost feel his face against mine. And I can't even finish that blech. I mean, candy, come on, girl. Also, I'm going to start answering every accusation thrown at me from now and with, oh, poo. I just feel like there's nothing you can say back to that. It's bulletproof. You know, if Jody Arias had gotten up on that witness stand and just said, oh, poo to every question,

she'd be walking around for you today. Yeah, I think if you have to say it like you are currently holding or about to be holding a mint julep, though. like you have to definitely oh yeah you can't just say oh poo in like a yank accent it's got to be it's got to be a southern oh poo i agree candy seemed to think this whole thing you know the investigation into her husband's brutal murder was an affront to truth justice and the american way when a reporter asked her if she was worried she'd be arrested she said how can something like this happen in this country i don't know how they can do this i guess some people could cast reflections on Jesus Christ himself.

Wow. Uh-huh. Yes, Candy, you're Jesus Christ in this scenario. Oh, yeah. Like, remember that part in the Bible where Jesus was persecuted for seducing his nephew? Damn Philistines. She also said, this is great. When one of the reporters asked her what she had to say for herself about all the gross, like,

incest and adultery and whatnot, she said, I swear to God, well, nobody's perfect. Just. Holy shit, this woman. She should have said Po-Buddy's Nurefect. That's way funnier and probably I would have been like, oh, she's innocent. She didn't do any of this. Oh, poo. Pooh-Buddy's Nurefect.

Also, like, a big part of the Bible is, in fact, Jesus being persecuted. I just want to throw that out there to candy because, like, that was a whole thing that happened. I don't know. Maybe I'm just overreacting, but like, yikes. As the investigation shugged along for the next year or so, Candace eventually checked herself out of St. Luke's and moved to Rochester, Minnesota. She made trips to the Mayo Clinic for her migraines, and she kept on beating her, Jacques was a secret gay drum to anybody who would listen.

She told reporters that Jacques had been, quote, unstable for the last few months of his life, and that he'd been, quote, receiving love letters on pink stationary from a man, God forbid, who was also tried to blackmail him for $75,000. pink stationary well case closed gay for sure thanks again to skip hollinsworth for that quote by the way the 60s were terrible it sounds like god god forbid a man writes on pink paper what meanwhile the investigators never found a shred of evidence to back up any of Candice's claims. As far as they could tell, she was the one having an affair, however much she might insist that she loved Jacques for Jacques, not for his money. Candy really knew how to play the

press. On the one-year anniversary of the murder, she took the kids to Arlington to put roses on his grave and brought along a professional photographer, because of course she did. She had the pictures sent out to the press, along with a list of all Candy's health issues and a statement that her doctors had warned her she was too sick to travel, but she'd done it anyway, just so she and the kids could be at Jacques's graveside. She said she wanted to make sure that Jacques Mosler is never forgotten. Well, the investigators sure hadn't forgotten him. They were still working the case. Mel was sitting in jail on the Capitol murder charge, but they were still looking hard at Candace. They felt they were amassing plenty of evidence that she and Melvin Powers had conspired together

to kill Jacques, over the course of a couple years, in fact. And in 1965, they brought the case to a grand jury who indicted Ms. Candy on the same charge as Mel. Capital murder. Capital, meaning there was potential for the death penalty. But being arrested for her husband's murder didn't do anything to squash Candy's Southern Charm. When inmates at the jail yelled nasty things at her, Candy just smiled and blew him kisses. Soon enough, though, Candy was allowed to stay out on bail during the trial. Different rules for rich folks and all that sort of thing.

Yeah. The trial, which started in the winter of 1966, was the trial of the century at the time, and the media went absolutely apeshit nuts over it. Everybody was obsessed. It was like a trashy TV movie come to life. This was before everybody in the world was aware of true crime, but Candy and Mel's trial was standing room only. They were trying the two defendants together, and I'm sure everybody in the gallery was watching them the whole time thinking,

Ew. Well, everybody except the all-male jury, that is. According to Skip Hollinsworth, Candy started working her magic on them from day one. She'd sit at the defense table weeping prettily and kind of toying with her necklace and casting occasional doe-eyed glances at the jury box. All 12 of them were locked on her for the entire trial. They couldn't stop staring. Candy and Mel's defense basically was to dirty up the victim.

He was a ruthless, practically sociopathic businessman. He had thousands of enemies. He got so many threats that he slept with an axe next to his bed. And the defense took up Candy's narrative about Jacques's alleged secret gay life. He was a pervert, the defense attorney said. He was obsessed with picking up younger men. He had, quote, every conceivable sex deviation that anybody has ever had. Ooh, I doubt that very much.

And real nice, including being gay under the umbrella of sex deviation. I know it's 1966 and all, but. gross, dude. The attorney wrapped up his opening statement by saying, if each of the 39 wounds on the body of the deceased had been inflicted by a separate person, that is 39 different people, there would still

be three times as many people in the state of Florida with enough reason to want the death of Jacques Mosler. Jesus, man, you'd think he was Hitler or something. And of course, there was no proof of any of this. It was just a strategy to muddy up the waters. The prosecutors

tried to frame Candace as a femme fatality. dangerous and seductive. And unlike the defense's total failure to provide any proof that Jacques was stepping out with younger men, the prosecution did have plenty of witnesses to Candy's sexcapades with Melvin. They paraded witness after witness in front of the jury to swear they'd found candy and Mel in compromising positions. Apparently, they liked it dangerous, liked getting it on in places where they might get caught. Apparently they did get caught, like a lot. Plus, they brought in a bunch of Mel's coworkers to talk about how Mel was constantly bragging about his sexual spengali like hold on candy. All he had to do was, um, go downtown, you know what I mean? And she'd do

whatever he wanted, to buy him whatever he wanted. As they listened to all this, candy sat stony-faced, and Mel just kind of grinned, like a kid who just got caught stealing from the cookie jar. The judge, slightly red-faced himself, ordered everybody under 21 out of the courtroom. Which the teenagers were super pissed about. Oh, yeah. By the time the last witness stepped off the witness stand, they practically had to take a fire extinguisher to it to put out the flames. This was soap opera stuff.

But unfortunately for the prosecution, the evidence was mostly circumstantial. There was no murder weapon. Nobody had ever found that glass bottle Mel took from the hotel bar. There were no eyewitnesses. There was a palm print on the kitchen counter that did match Mel's palm, but nobody could say for sure that it was put there the night of the murder. And remember, this is way pre-DNA, so they couldn't really do much

with that hair. They did have one ace in the hole, though. The investigators had found no fewer than five different men who claimed that Mel and Candace had tried to hire them to kill Jacques. One guy was a coworker of Mel's, said

Mel asked him to do it, and made a little stabbing motion with a letter opener to make sure there was no doubt about what he was asking. The co-worker said, uh no the next guy was a dude named Billy Mulvey who described himself on the stand as a quote

known thief and dope addict hey I like his honesty candy had just cold called this guy out of the blue one afternoon and asked him to meet her at a bar she said she'd heard about him when she served on a grand jury

hold up oh my god this bitch is shot for Hitman while she's sitting on a jury. That is, I have to say, in 20 plus years of true crime obsession, that is a brand new one on me. Oh, for sure. Bananas. That is something else.

Billy actually said he'd do the job for her for 25K. His master plan was to put dynamite in Jacques's car, which, I mean, I guess it would work if you did it right, but it seems a little overdramatic to be, like, very much, like, coyote and the road runner to me. It is a little wily coyote. Yeah, it's very dramatic, very like wily coyote, like Looney Tunes, like Elmer Fudd style. Anyway, he got arrested before he could do it.

He was still in jail when Mel was arrested in 1964, and they ended up sharing a cell. Billy later said Mel confessed to him. This guy really got under candy skin at the trial. Well, he was testifying, she came out of receipt and yelled, I have never seen or heard of this man in my life. That genteel southern facade can crack a little bit sometimes, baby Keenett. Bachelor number three was a gas station attendant.

Man, they were getting real desperate by this point. This guy testified that Mel asked him to kill Jacques, take his body to Mexico, and I... Shit, you know, I can't make this shit up. Dump it in a volcano. Okay. James Bond villain, settle down. The defense, of course, hammered home what a bunch of sketchy losers these potential hitman were. And to be fair, I mean, they weren't exactly a parade of Florida's best and brightest.

It was Florida. I'm kidding. I love Florida. Sorry, I just insulted a whole state. Even the reporters covering the case were skeptical, calling them, quote, rascals and nitwit. who might just be lying to get plea deals in their own cases or a free trip to Miami. I don't know, though. I mean, five of them who didn't know each other, five random people are going to get up there

and make up suspiciously similar stories. It just seems kind of unlikely to me. But it seems like the all-male jury were looking for any reason they could grab onto to a quick candy. That sweet little woman, as her attorney called her, and by extension, Mel, aka, that in innocent boy. And her attorney, the best money could buy, of course, accused the sheriff's office of bribery, saying they cut deals with Jacques's daughters from his first marriage, got them to make up some incriminating testimony about Candy and Mel. If they both went to jail,

he argued the daughters could inherit all Jack's money. Was there any proof of any of this stuff? Oh, hell no. But Candice was just so pretty, y'all, and she seemed so sweet. during the closing arguments she sat at the defense table looking like Bambi holding for some reason a little bouquet of flowers like

Oh god by the way the government had frozen all candy's assets pending the outcome of the trial so she had to pay her pricey attorney by hawking some of the jewelry and furs Jacques had bought her after three days of

deliberation the jury bless their hearts found Candace's Mosler and Melvin Powers, not guilty of capital murder. Wowy, wow, wow. Candy kissed every one of the jurors and thanked them all personally. In ten days after the verdict came down, a book about Candy came out, and a Hollywood producer wanted to buy the rights to her story.

Caching. She moved right back to Houston, built an eight-foot stone wall around her property to cock-block the looky-lose and tried to get on with her life. her old friends in the Houston social set weren't having it though most of them wouldn't be caught dead talking to her so I guess it wasn't all gravy but she and Mel were still spending plenty of time together shopping going to shows and ball games and fancy restaurants allegedly he bought her an engagement ring on a trip to Sweden

but Candace still insisted they weren't romantically involved it was just ordinary family time like you do matter of fact Candy told her few remaining friends she hardly even saw Melvin anymore He was too busy with his new career as a commercial property developer, something he turned out to be really good at to everyone's surprise. He bought a rundown building for a couple thousand dollars and ended up flipping it for over a hundred grand a year later. After that, he was off to the races.

Later, one of his business partners took him out for drinks one night and got a whole earful about his relationship with Candace. Mel wanted to date somebody else and he was ready to break it off with Candy, but he was nervous to do it, he said. Candace had a crazy streak, Mel told him. Quoting from the Skip Hollandworth article, the friend said, Mel said she was unpredictable and had a fiery temper and he wasn't sure what she would do if she found out he'd been with another woman.

She was already suspicious, Mel told his buddy. She'd hired a PI to follow him around. One time, right in front of the kids, she'd had a screaming fit because she thought he'd been making bedroom eyes at their waitress. Another time, she got pissed off at him about something and called the cops on him, accused him of hitting her. The police came, they investigated, they found no evidence of injury on Candy, which was pretty odd considering that she was saying he'd punched her repeatedly in the face,

and she ended up dropping the charges. Not long after that conversation between Mel and his business partner friend, said Fran got a little peek at Candy's unpredictable side himself. He was over at their house when Candy and Mel got into an argument in front of him. Mel got up and went into the main bedroom, then into the little bathroom in there and shut the door. Candace followed him into the bedroom, and a few moments later, the friend,

sitting awkwardly on the couch and waiting for his host to wrap up their argument and come back out, heard three gunshots and the sound of splintering wood. Candice had shot through the bathroom door. Luckily for Mel, he hadn't been standing right behind it. If he had, he'd have been six kinds of dead. Not surprisingly, it wasn't long after that that Mel finally left.

According to Texas Monthly, he basically, turned himself into the South's answer to Hugh Heffner after that. Grew himself a luxurious Tom's Seligy mustache, became a regular at a trendy new bar, started wearing tight jeans, made special for him, and divided his time between commercial real estate and slamming ass all over Houston. Candy started dating again, too, and in 1971 she got married again to a guy named Barnett Garrison, a contractor and nightclub owner 20 years her junior. Candy likes him young, I guess. And much to Barnett's dismay, I'm sure, Candace had not developed any chill since her breakup with Mel. She was still viciously jealous and paranoid about other women.

When she found out Barnett had been hanging out at a strip club in town, said strip club burned mysteriously to the ground one night after closing. The fire investigators who probably had, you know, at least one working brain cell, were convinced Candy had set a fire, but they didn't have enough evidence to prove it. Apparently, this bitch is bulletproof. What did I say? Teflon. Unfortunately, though, the same can't be said for Barnett Garrison. In August of 1972, just a smidge over a year after his marriage to Candace, paramedics arrived to their house to find Barnett lying in a pool of his own blood on the patio.

To quote Texas Monthly, his 9-millimeter automatic pistol, which he carried in a zippered case, was beside him. One of his shoes was beside him. The other was in the yard. He was still alive, barely. He had brain damage, a collapsed lung, broken ribs, and lacerations on his head. Police officers noticed scuff marks on the steep slate roof of the three-story home, which suggested Barnett had fallen off the roof and plunged 40 feet. Holy shit. Yeah, and this is bizarre. When investigators showed up to interview her, Candy had locked all the doors to the house and wouldn't open up. Not at first, anyway. When they finally got her to let them in, she seemed incoherent and either she didn't want to answer any questions or she was too discombobulated. They assumed she was either high or drunk. Candy said she had no idea what her husband had been doing on the roof. But then, out of the blue, she blurted out, I already shot him. This was just weird.

Barnett hadn't been shot, so as hinky as it all felt, there was nothing to prove Barnett's fall was anything other than accidental. They rushed him to the hospital where he slipped into a coma and didn't come out for six weeks. He didn't remember anything about the night of his fall. In fact, his memory in general was pretty badly damaged. Like, he remembered his parents. He remembered graduating from college, but he didn't remember marrying Candace or falling

off the roof of their house. He ended up moving back in with his parents after he got out of the hospital. Later, though, some more info would come out. as journalist and ghost writer Mickey Herskowitz was researching a book about Candice, a book she commissioned him to write, by the way. Herskowitz talked to one of Candy's relatives and got an earful and a half about that night. Candy had caught him cheating on her, the relative said. She was pissed.

She hired two of her cousins, big, mean rednecks, the guy called him, and had them beat the shit out of Barnett. And when he didn't act penitent enough, after the initial beatdown, they threw him off the roof. Holy fuck. Candy filed for divorce from Barnett Garrison in March of 74. Apparently, she'd tried to get him back first, showed up at his parents' house in the middle of the night, and nothing but a nightie in a fur coat, wailing on their front door with one of her stiletto heels. But they wouldn't let her in.

Well, I can't imagine why not. Yeah, me neither. Anyway, after that, Candy had a whole series of flings with various rich and or famous dudes, musicians, including Sammy Davis Jr., of all people, a news anchor, a doctor. Yeah, and she hired this ghost writer to write her life story, I guess thinking he could help her rehab her spicy reputation. Her Squids later said he felt like she was trying to play him from minute one, turning on her vulnerable little girl act and dialing up the Southern Char to 11. We have to wrap this episode up, so I won't go into too much detail here, but basically he ended up finding out that almost everything she told him was a lie. She lied about her age, she told a bunch of hard luck, hallmarked movie-style stories to make herself look like a plucky heroin who triumphed over adversity. And over the next few years, lies seemed to flow out a candace like a waterfall. One of her sons said she was always taking too much of her prescription meds and telling outrageous stories.

She filed a false police report once, claiming somebody. had broken into her hotel room and stolen a couple hundred grand worth of jewelry. The girl was unraveling and her relationship with her kids was suffering, to the point where a couple of them ended up suing her at one point, and she ended up cutting a couple more out of her will. And then, in October of 1976, Candy flew down to Miami for a meeting with her bank, and while she was down there, she called a doctor to get some migraine meds, Demerol, an opioid painkiller, and Fennergan, a nausea med that has a strong sedative effect. The doctor came to her hotel room and injected her with the meds,

but Candace had neglected to tell him that she'd already taken a strong sedative. The next morning, her secretary found her face down on the bed, still in her nightgown, dead of an overdose. She was 62 years old. In a stroke of bizarre irony, she was buried in a plot right next to Jacques Mosler, the man she may very well have conspired to murder, acquittal or no acquittal. Less than 50 people showed up to Candy's funeral, which tells you a lot.

about the reputation she'd acquired in the last years of her life. The preacher who did her eulogy said we should try and forget about all the bad stuff, though. She had a good side, he said. Yeah, she has a good side is what your friend tells you about his unhinged abusive girlfriend after he catches her cut in his breaklines. Exactly. And as for Mel Powers, he ended up at the top of the real estate game in Houston before dying in 2010 of pneumonia and possible prescription drug abuse.

Candy's ghostwriter, Mickey Herskowitz, never finished the book about her life. Her family actually convinced her to scrap the idea, probably the right choice. But he later told Skip Hollinsworth that he used to toss and turn all night, trying to figure out if Candy was involved in Jacques's murder or not. He said, she'd stare at me with those blue eyes and tell me in her little girl voice that she did her best to live a good life. She'd tell me she was not a hateful woman. She'd say that she would never resort to violence.

and she always gave me a long hug when I left and would tell me to come back soon. Did Candy and Mill Murder Shock? I'm going to go out and a limb and say, yeah. I think they did. I'm not sure why the jury opted not to convict them, but the case seemed strong to me, even without the five prospective hitman stories. But, you know, we have to remember it was the 60s,

and Candace was a woman and a beautiful, classy, charming, wealthy woman at that. I think it might have been just too big of a leap for a 1960s jury to think that a woman like that, could be that cold-blooded. And if you didn't think Candy was guilty, it would be hard to convince yourself that Melvin was. So if you want my opinion, they got away with murder. It's a shame.

Jacques wasn't a perfect person. He was a hard ass in business, but he didn't deserve this. His kids missed him. And the thing that really kills me is those four kids, the youngest four that they'd adopted, they'd already seen one parent murder another in their lives. They went through that already.

And then they had to have it happen again. which must have just been unbelievably traumatic. I can't even imagine. Right. Which if she did arrange that, what the hell kind of mother does that? You know? And Jacques, you know, he'd always done everything he could to make Candy happy.

The only consolation we can take from this story is that Candy's life went so totally off the rails after Jacques's death. Sounds to me like she died a broken soul, alienated from the people who'd once loved her, her reputation and shreds. I guess justice can mean a lot of things. And sometimes,

we've just got to take when we can get. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe, until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Christine, Restless Ray, Kelly, Valerie, Emily, Mandy, Amy, and Kat. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back.

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