1
00:00:00,640 --> 00:00:05,279
Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

2
00:00:12,280 --> 00:00:14,440
Speaker 2: They made fun of her at every turn. She was

3
00:00:14,520 --> 00:00:17,160
Speaker 2: very unhappy about that. That kind of led to her

4
00:00:17,280 --> 00:00:20,120
Speaker 2: rebelling in a way later on that Okay, if you're

5
00:00:20,160 --> 00:00:22,759
Speaker 2: not going to accept me, I'm going to scandalize you

6
00:00:22,880 --> 00:00:24,720
Speaker 2: women at every turn if I can.

7
00:00:30,760 --> 00:00:34,599
Speaker 3: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor

8
00:00:34,680 --> 00:00:35,680
Speaker 3: in Austin, Texas.

9
00:00:35,920 --> 00:00:36,639
Speaker 1: I'm also the.

10
00:00:36,600 --> 00:00:39,880
Speaker 3: Co host of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right,

11
00:00:40,120 --> 00:00:43,680
Speaker 3: and throughout my career, research for my many audio and

12
00:00:43,800 --> 00:00:47,760
Speaker 3: book projects has taken me around the world. On Wicked Words,

13
00:00:47,880 --> 00:00:50,240
Speaker 3: I sit down with the people I've met along the way,

14
00:00:50,720 --> 00:00:55,920
Speaker 3: amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, and podcasters who have investigated and

15
00:00:55,960 --> 00:00:59,600
Speaker 3: reported on notorious true crime cases. This is about the

16
00:00:59,680 --> 00:01:03,200
Speaker 3: choice as writers make both good and bad, and it's

17
00:01:03,240 --> 00:01:07,160
Speaker 3: a deep dive into the unpublished details behind their stories.

18
00:01:09,160 --> 00:01:12,760
Speaker 3: Thirty years before the oj Simpson trial, a different murder

19
00:01:12,840 --> 00:01:16,039
Speaker 3: case captured the attention of the country. When a successful

20
00:01:16,080 --> 00:01:20,440
Speaker 3: Florida businessman is brutally killed in the nineteen sixties, His

21
00:01:20,560 --> 00:01:25,160
Speaker 3: wife and her nephew become suspects, and their disturbing relationship

22
00:01:25,400 --> 00:01:29,240
Speaker 3: makes Headlines author Ron Smith tells me about his book

23
00:01:29,600 --> 00:01:35,080
Speaker 3: No One Is Perfect. Let's talk about this time period.

24
00:01:35,240 --> 00:01:39,640
Speaker 3: We are in nineteen sixty four Florida. Where in Florida

25
00:01:39,880 --> 00:01:42,440
Speaker 3: and what is it like for the haves and the

26
00:01:42,560 --> 00:01:44,200
Speaker 3: have nots in the state.

27
00:01:44,720 --> 00:01:47,960
Speaker 2: The story occurs primarily in the Miami area, although the

28
00:01:48,080 --> 00:01:52,720
Speaker 2: murder occurred on Key Biscayne Island. But in nineteen sixty four,

29
00:01:52,800 --> 00:01:55,080
Speaker 2: it was I kind of joke and call at the

30
00:01:55,160 --> 00:01:59,520
Speaker 2: age before Technicolor really took over our lives. It was

31
00:01:59,600 --> 00:02:02,880
Speaker 2: really still kind of a black and white era. And

32
00:02:02,920 --> 00:02:05,400
Speaker 2: I say that having lived through it. You know, the

33
00:02:05,480 --> 00:02:10,320
Speaker 2: sexual mores were very different, fashion was very different. Everything

34
00:02:10,400 --> 00:02:13,400
Speaker 2: was still pretty square in those days. One of the

35
00:02:13,400 --> 00:02:17,760
Speaker 2: benchmarks I use is nineteen sixty four. Just a few

36
00:02:17,800 --> 00:02:21,440
Speaker 2: months before this murder occurred, the Beatles appeared on the

37
00:02:21,600 --> 00:02:24,600
Speaker 2: Ed Sullivan Show. And if you know anything about the

38
00:02:24,720 --> 00:02:28,520
Speaker 2: launching of a new era in everything, fashion, music, the

39
00:02:28,560 --> 00:02:31,959
Speaker 2: whole bit, sixty four was really kind of a launch

40
00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:34,160
Speaker 2: pad for a lot of those things to happen. But

41
00:02:34,880 --> 00:02:39,079
Speaker 2: that being said, in Florida, in the South, things were

42
00:02:39,120 --> 00:02:42,440
Speaker 2: still very tense in a lot of ways. You had

43
00:02:42,520 --> 00:02:46,520
Speaker 2: people that were very intolerant of any kind of change

44
00:02:46,560 --> 00:02:48,760
Speaker 2: at the time. If a kid came to school with

45
00:02:48,800 --> 00:02:51,280
Speaker 2: any kind of hair over his ear, even he was

46
00:02:51,320 --> 00:02:54,320
Speaker 2: sent home to get a haircut. Sixty four was kind

47
00:02:54,320 --> 00:02:57,320
Speaker 2: of from that point on, everything became a whole lot

48
00:02:57,360 --> 00:02:59,400
Speaker 2: more fun in the world for a kid who grew

49
00:02:59,480 --> 00:03:00,080
Speaker 2: up in those.

50
00:03:01,639 --> 00:03:03,840
Speaker 3: So for the family at the center of this the

51
00:03:03,919 --> 00:03:07,160
Speaker 3: Massler family, tell me the dynamics between them.

52
00:03:07,680 --> 00:03:10,440
Speaker 2: Both of the characters in this story were really rags

53
00:03:10,520 --> 00:03:14,960
Speaker 2: to richest type stories. Jacques Mosler was a Romanian immigrant,

54
00:03:15,360 --> 00:03:19,079
Speaker 2: a Jewish immigrant that was born in eighteen ninety six.

55
00:03:19,160 --> 00:03:23,040
Speaker 2: He came to the United States in nineteen hundred and

56
00:03:23,160 --> 00:03:25,480
Speaker 2: so it was one of those stories whereas it so

57
00:03:25,639 --> 00:03:29,560
Speaker 2: often is the case, the second generation of the immigrants

58
00:03:29,600 --> 00:03:34,640
Speaker 2: family prospered and really caught on with American society much

59
00:03:34,680 --> 00:03:37,920
Speaker 2: more easily than their parents did. So there were three

60
00:03:38,000 --> 00:03:42,560
Speaker 2: children in this family. At some point the parents divorced.

61
00:03:43,320 --> 00:03:46,200
Speaker 2: The father moved to New York City, the mother and

62
00:03:46,280 --> 00:03:49,280
Speaker 2: the three children moved to Chicago, which is kind of

63
00:03:49,280 --> 00:03:53,360
Speaker 2: an important point in what Jack mostra became in the

64
00:03:53,360 --> 00:03:56,760
Speaker 2: rest of his life to support his family. He had

65
00:03:56,800 --> 00:04:00,240
Speaker 2: no education, He was a newsboy on the street in

66
00:04:00,280 --> 00:04:05,560
Speaker 2: downtown Chicago. And if you know anything about downtown Chicago

67
00:04:05,680 --> 00:04:10,440
Speaker 2: in the nineteen tens, it was controlled by organized crime.

68
00:04:11,320 --> 00:04:14,600
Speaker 2: There was a fellow named Big Jim Colossimo, which he

69
00:04:14,760 --> 00:04:19,200
Speaker 2: preceded al Capone in running the rackets in Chicago. And

70
00:04:19,240 --> 00:04:22,239
Speaker 2: so Jack Mosler was this young boy that was selling

71
00:04:22,480 --> 00:04:26,800
Speaker 2: newspapers on the corner in downtown Chicago. These newstands also

72
00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:30,880
Speaker 2: sold numbers, the lottery tickets. It was the numbers racket.

73
00:04:31,560 --> 00:04:34,039
Speaker 2: And so even though he was a young boy, he

74
00:04:34,120 --> 00:04:38,920
Speaker 2: had direct contact with organized crime. And one thing about

75
00:04:39,000 --> 00:04:41,680
Speaker 2: Jack Mosler was that he had a real innate sense

76
00:04:41,760 --> 00:04:46,800
Speaker 2: of mathematics. As he grew older, the Mob recognized that

77
00:04:46,880 --> 00:04:49,679
Speaker 2: he had these talents. Now none of this, of course,

78
00:04:49,760 --> 00:04:53,279
Speaker 2: is documented because it is the Mob, of course, but

79
00:04:53,600 --> 00:04:56,760
Speaker 2: by the time he was seventeen years old, he was

80
00:04:56,800 --> 00:05:00,440
Speaker 2: living in New Orleans working as a finance manager for

81
00:05:00,680 --> 00:05:04,400
Speaker 2: automobile dealerships, which tells you he must have been pretty

82
00:05:04,440 --> 00:05:06,479
Speaker 2: talented to be sent down there at such a young

83
00:05:06,520 --> 00:05:09,880
Speaker 2: age and to be given that kind of responsibility. At

84
00:05:09,920 --> 00:05:13,200
Speaker 2: some point he disassociated himself from the Mob, and I'm

85
00:05:13,200 --> 00:05:16,719
Speaker 2: not sure how that really happened. But he became pretty

86
00:05:16,760 --> 00:05:20,880
Speaker 2: much a legitimate businessman, although his business was a little

87
00:05:20,880 --> 00:05:25,560
Speaker 2: bit shady. He started his own loan company. He started

88
00:05:25,600 --> 00:05:30,159
Speaker 2: a company called Mossler Acceptance Corporation. And for people that

89
00:05:30,200 --> 00:05:34,200
Speaker 2: aren't familiar with the term acceptance means, it means it's

90
00:05:34,240 --> 00:05:38,120
Speaker 2: a loan company that will accept the risk of borrowers

91
00:05:38,360 --> 00:05:41,760
Speaker 2: who aren't really good credit risk, but they will own

92
00:05:41,800 --> 00:05:45,160
Speaker 2: you the money at a very high interest rate. And

93
00:05:45,240 --> 00:05:47,720
Speaker 2: so he began to make a lot of money just

94
00:05:47,800 --> 00:05:51,000
Speaker 2: on the margins and the interest that he was charging.

95
00:05:51,680 --> 00:05:55,120
Speaker 2: He was also quite an entrepreneur in that when cars

96
00:05:55,160 --> 00:05:58,440
Speaker 2: came to be repossessed, he actually started one of the

97
00:05:58,440 --> 00:06:02,599
Speaker 2: first rental auto companies in the United States using his

98
00:06:02,720 --> 00:06:03,880
Speaker 2: repossessed vehicles.

99
00:06:04,040 --> 00:06:07,200
Speaker 3: Oh that's so smart. Is that the origin of rental cars?

100
00:06:07,279 --> 00:06:10,360
Speaker 2: Essentially he was one of the first. Wow. I don't

101
00:06:10,360 --> 00:06:13,160
Speaker 2: know if all the others began with repossessed vehicles or not,

102
00:06:13,960 --> 00:06:17,640
Speaker 2: but yeah, he was just a very clever man. And

103
00:06:17,760 --> 00:06:22,760
Speaker 2: so over the next thirty years or so his business grew.

104
00:06:23,040 --> 00:06:26,320
Speaker 2: He opened offices in Dallas and in Houston. Of course

105
00:06:26,360 --> 00:06:28,279
Speaker 2: he was in New Orleans, and then he opened another

106
00:06:28,360 --> 00:06:31,679
Speaker 2: one in Miami. And what was happening was car dealders

107
00:06:31,760 --> 00:06:36,080
Speaker 2: were sending him customers that their own legitimate lenders would

108
00:06:36,080 --> 00:06:40,200
Speaker 2: not handle, and the Master Acceptance Corporation would take these

109
00:06:40,240 --> 00:06:43,920
Speaker 2: people on as borrowers. So he just became very, very

110
00:06:43,960 --> 00:06:46,320
Speaker 2: wealthy over a period of thirty years or so.

111
00:06:47,040 --> 00:06:51,240
Speaker 3: What happened if you Ron Smith could not pay back

112
00:06:51,400 --> 00:06:55,279
Speaker 3: the loan to Mossler's company? Is this like a very

113
00:06:55,400 --> 00:07:00,680
Speaker 3: violent ending situation or what were the repercussions.

114
00:07:00,400 --> 00:07:04,680
Speaker 2: It could be if you just relinquished the vehicle and yeah,

115
00:07:05,000 --> 00:07:08,160
Speaker 2: nothing bad would happen, but a lot of people protested,

116
00:07:08,240 --> 00:07:12,680
Speaker 2: as you can imagine. And to your point, Mossler actually

117
00:07:12,720 --> 00:07:16,760
Speaker 2: always had bodyguards around him. There were guys with guns,

118
00:07:16,960 --> 00:07:19,760
Speaker 2: and those guys with guns got him in trouble a

119
00:07:19,760 --> 00:07:22,240
Speaker 2: time or two in his life, nothing that he couldn't

120
00:07:22,240 --> 00:07:25,680
Speaker 2: get over. But yes, he always had people around him

121
00:07:25,720 --> 00:07:29,320
Speaker 2: to protect him from borrowers who were very disgruntled and

122
00:07:29,400 --> 00:07:30,320
Speaker 2: unhappy with him.

123
00:07:30,800 --> 00:07:34,000
Speaker 3: So all of this is setting him up to sound

124
00:07:34,200 --> 00:07:37,880
Speaker 3: like somebody who is a strong man, a complete jerk,

125
00:07:38,200 --> 00:07:41,119
Speaker 3: maybe not a good husband, not potentially a good father.

126
00:07:41,640 --> 00:07:44,200
Speaker 1: Is that true? What was his personal life like?

127
00:07:44,600 --> 00:07:47,720
Speaker 2: Well, his first marriage, which occurred in New Orleans. In

128
00:07:47,800 --> 00:07:52,680
Speaker 2: nineteen seventeen, he married a local girl. They had four children,

129
00:07:52,720 --> 00:07:55,840
Speaker 2: they were all daughters, and by all indications, he was

130
00:07:55,880 --> 00:07:57,840
Speaker 2: a good father. He was a pretty good man. He

131
00:07:58,000 --> 00:08:02,480
Speaker 2: was active in society there New Orleans. He was involved

132
00:08:02,480 --> 00:08:06,280
Speaker 2: in a lot of the civic organizations. It wasn't until

133
00:08:06,320 --> 00:08:09,640
Speaker 2: he met Candace Massler that he probably became that jerk

134
00:08:09,720 --> 00:08:12,960
Speaker 2: that you described. I guess I would leave the story

135
00:08:13,000 --> 00:08:16,160
Speaker 2: in about for Jock Mossler. In nineteen forty seven, he

136
00:08:16,240 --> 00:08:19,840
Speaker 2: was still happily married. He was still a pillar of society,

137
00:08:19,880 --> 00:08:22,200
Speaker 2: if you will, there in New Orleans. And then, of

138
00:08:22,240 --> 00:08:24,800
Speaker 2: course he met this woman named Candace Massler.

139
00:08:28,120 --> 00:08:31,000
Speaker 3: So let's talk about First of all, I guess about

140
00:08:31,040 --> 00:08:34,160
Speaker 3: the way that they meet, And I'm assuming is it

141
00:08:34,280 --> 00:08:37,080
Speaker 3: start under scandalous circumstances?

142
00:08:37,160 --> 00:08:38,280
Speaker 1: Is he's still married?

143
00:08:38,679 --> 00:08:40,880
Speaker 2: Yes, I guess I probably need to back up and

144
00:08:40,920 --> 00:08:44,079
Speaker 2: tell you the story of Candace Sure. She was born

145
00:08:44,200 --> 00:08:48,719
Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty in a little town in Georgia called Buchanan.

146
00:08:48,840 --> 00:08:51,520
Speaker 2: It was on the far west side of the state

147
00:08:51,720 --> 00:08:56,959
Speaker 2: in Georgia, almost Alabama. I believe her father was a sharecropper.

148
00:08:58,000 --> 00:09:01,120
Speaker 2: She always said that he was a farmer. But there

149
00:09:01,160 --> 00:09:04,319
Speaker 2: wasn't any record of him ever being a very successful farmer.

150
00:09:04,600 --> 00:09:07,880
Speaker 2: She was one of nine children, which wasn't unusual on

151
00:09:08,000 --> 00:09:11,120
Speaker 2: farming families in those days. They need as many hands

152
00:09:11,120 --> 00:09:13,599
Speaker 2: in the field as they could get, so she was

153
00:09:13,679 --> 00:09:15,960
Speaker 2: kind of in the middle of that group of nine children.

154
00:09:16,400 --> 00:09:20,040
Speaker 2: When she was twelve years old, her mother died in childbirth,

155
00:09:20,800 --> 00:09:23,439
Speaker 2: and so that left her father to be responsible for

156
00:09:23,520 --> 00:09:27,520
Speaker 2: six or seven minor children. Her father kind of fell

157
00:09:27,559 --> 00:09:31,520
Speaker 2: apart with the death of his wife. He just basically

158
00:09:31,559 --> 00:09:35,440
Speaker 2: abandoned the family and moved away to another town, which

159
00:09:35,559 --> 00:09:39,679
Speaker 2: left the six minor children in the care of her grandparents.

160
00:09:40,760 --> 00:09:44,520
Speaker 2: One of her grandparents, her grandfather was a Mormon bishop

161
00:09:45,160 --> 00:09:49,000
Speaker 2: if you can imagine in rural Georgia back in those days. Well,

162
00:09:49,120 --> 00:09:52,400
Speaker 2: the kids lived with them, and Candace was She was

163
00:09:52,440 --> 00:09:55,760
Speaker 2: always fantasizing, and I guess if you put yourself in

164
00:09:55,800 --> 00:09:59,080
Speaker 2: her position, with all the terrible things that had happened

165
00:09:59,120 --> 00:10:01,680
Speaker 2: in her life. She was a big fan of movie

166
00:10:01,720 --> 00:10:05,720
Speaker 2: magazines and fashion magazines. She used to tell the people

167
00:10:05,720 --> 00:10:08,439
Speaker 2: in her family that one day I'm going to be famous,

168
00:10:08,800 --> 00:10:11,120
Speaker 2: and one day I'm going to design these clothes for

169
00:10:11,200 --> 00:10:14,640
Speaker 2: these movie stars. And so she always had big dreams

170
00:10:14,720 --> 00:10:17,040
Speaker 2: even as a kid. Well, by the time she was

171
00:10:17,120 --> 00:10:20,559
Speaker 2: seventeen years old, the depression was going on and her

172
00:10:20,600 --> 00:10:25,200
Speaker 2: grandfather encouraged her to get married, and so he found

173
00:10:25,240 --> 00:10:28,520
Speaker 2: a man for her to marry, a man named Norman Johnson,

174
00:10:28,559 --> 00:10:31,440
Speaker 2: who is twelve years older than her. You can imagine

175
00:10:31,440 --> 00:10:34,560
Speaker 2: she was not very happy being in this arranged marriage.

176
00:10:34,920 --> 00:10:38,439
Speaker 2: The man that she married had a job in Aniston, Alabama,

177
00:10:38,480 --> 00:10:42,240
Speaker 2: which was not far away from Buchanan where she grew up,

178
00:10:42,440 --> 00:10:44,440
Speaker 2: but they were just dirt poor. He worked in a

179
00:10:44,480 --> 00:10:47,559
Speaker 2: concrete plant, didn't make any money to speak of, and

180
00:10:47,960 --> 00:10:51,160
Speaker 2: she had her child. Her first child in nineteen forty

181
00:10:51,920 --> 00:10:55,760
Speaker 2: was a son that was named Norman Johnson Junior. But again,

182
00:10:55,840 --> 00:10:59,439
Speaker 2: this restlessness was always in her spirit. She always wanted

183
00:10:59,480 --> 00:11:02,280
Speaker 2: to get out of this loveless marriage, and so in

184
00:11:02,360 --> 00:11:06,240
Speaker 2: nineteen forty one, when World War Two began, she signed

185
00:11:06,280 --> 00:11:09,679
Speaker 2: up to be a hostess with the US SO the

186
00:11:09,840 --> 00:11:13,160
Speaker 2: organization that would host the soldiers. There was a man

187
00:11:13,520 --> 00:11:15,720
Speaker 2: who was one of the most well known people in

188
00:11:15,760 --> 00:11:19,240
Speaker 2: America at the time. He was one of the Rockefellers.

189
00:11:19,600 --> 00:11:22,439
Speaker 2: His name was Win Rockefeller and he was a soldier

190
00:11:22,640 --> 00:11:26,040
Speaker 2: stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, which was only about eighty

191
00:11:26,080 --> 00:11:29,240
Speaker 2: miles away from where she lived. Well, as fate would

192
00:11:29,240 --> 00:11:31,840
Speaker 2: have it, she was a hostess at a party that

193
00:11:31,960 --> 00:11:35,560
Speaker 2: Win Rockefeller and a bunch of soldiers from Fort Benning

194
00:11:35,640 --> 00:11:39,800
Speaker 2: were bussed up to attend. Some kind of love connection

195
00:11:40,000 --> 00:11:43,280
Speaker 2: was made at this USO dance. Within about a year,

196
00:11:43,400 --> 00:11:45,640
Speaker 2: she was pregnant with Rockefeller's child.

197
00:11:46,120 --> 00:11:48,680
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, that's not where I thought you were

198
00:11:48,760 --> 00:11:49,719
Speaker 3: heading at all. No.

199
00:11:50,160 --> 00:11:50,640
Speaker 1: Wow.

200
00:11:50,960 --> 00:11:54,720
Speaker 2: So Rockefeller was aware of this, but he was sent

201
00:11:54,800 --> 00:11:56,160
Speaker 2: off to war in the Pacific.

202
00:11:56,520 --> 00:11:59,000
Speaker 1: Was he married, Sorry to interrupt you. Was he married? Okay,

203
00:11:59,040 --> 00:12:00,000
Speaker 1: he was not married at the time.

204
00:12:00,400 --> 00:12:03,440
Speaker 2: No, but he was extremely well known. He was like

205
00:12:03,480 --> 00:12:08,000
Speaker 2: an early version of JFK. Junior, you might say. When

206
00:12:08,040 --> 00:12:10,240
Speaker 2: he joined the army, all of the magazines in the

207
00:12:10,280 --> 00:12:13,280
Speaker 2: country were always taking photographs of him to be on

208
00:12:13,320 --> 00:12:15,599
Speaker 2: the cover of him as a soldier, because it was

209
00:12:15,679 --> 00:12:18,960
Speaker 2: great publicity for the war effort. But by the time

210
00:12:19,000 --> 00:12:21,720
Speaker 2: the child was born, it was a little girl named Rita.

211
00:12:22,280 --> 00:12:25,120
Speaker 2: He was off in the Pacific theater and Candace was

212
00:12:25,200 --> 00:12:29,280
Speaker 2: left alone there with her husband Norman. Now, at some

213
00:12:29,400 --> 00:12:33,800
Speaker 2: point Norman realized that this other little blonde child Rita

214
00:12:34,440 --> 00:12:37,680
Speaker 2: was not his. I don't know when exactly that occurred,

215
00:12:38,480 --> 00:12:41,440
Speaker 2: but by the time the war was over, her marriage

216
00:12:41,440 --> 00:12:45,600
Speaker 2: to Norman Johnson was over, and you asked if he

217
00:12:45,679 --> 00:12:48,240
Speaker 2: was married. He still was not married when the war ended,

218
00:12:48,280 --> 00:12:51,600
Speaker 2: and so Candace was actually in New York City for

219
00:12:51,640 --> 00:12:55,240
Speaker 2: a while where he lived after the war, and they

220
00:12:55,440 --> 00:12:58,440
Speaker 2: continued to see each other. But in nineteen forty eight,

221
00:12:58,800 --> 00:13:03,760
Speaker 2: when Rockefeller married another woman who looked remarkably like Candace,

222
00:13:04,240 --> 00:13:06,600
Speaker 2: he had a thing, I guess for pretty blonde girls.

223
00:13:06,920 --> 00:13:09,280
Speaker 3: I'm assuming the woman that he married is a little

224
00:13:09,320 --> 00:13:12,800
Speaker 3: bit more quote unquote appropriate for someone in his station

225
00:13:12,920 --> 00:13:13,440
Speaker 3: in life.

226
00:13:13,480 --> 00:13:16,800
Speaker 2: She had been an actress, she was well known as well,

227
00:13:16,840 --> 00:13:20,160
Speaker 2: and so the next thing you know, Candace is banished

228
00:13:20,160 --> 00:13:23,920
Speaker 2: from New York and she ends up living in New Orleans.

229
00:13:24,280 --> 00:13:26,320
Speaker 1: Is he supporting the little girl?

230
00:13:26,720 --> 00:13:29,440
Speaker 2: I assume so. But if you put it back in

231
00:13:29,480 --> 00:13:32,360
Speaker 2: the nineteen forties, and this was a man who had

232
00:13:32,400 --> 00:13:36,120
Speaker 2: political aspirations. He later went on to be the governor

233
00:13:36,160 --> 00:13:39,800
Speaker 2: of Arkansas, of all places, and of course his brother,

234
00:13:39,880 --> 00:13:43,400
Speaker 2: Nelson Rockefeller, was also big in politics. So it was

235
00:13:43,440 --> 00:13:46,480
Speaker 2: a political family. He had aims on that kind of

236
00:13:46,600 --> 00:13:49,800
Speaker 2: career and in those days. If it had come out

237
00:13:49,840 --> 00:13:52,680
Speaker 2: that he had a love child, it would have ruined

238
00:13:52,720 --> 00:13:56,800
Speaker 2: those political dreams of his. So that's why Candace was

239
00:13:56,840 --> 00:14:00,840
Speaker 2: banished down to the South, and he was married. And

240
00:14:00,960 --> 00:14:04,960
Speaker 2: to answer your question, certainly, I assumed that he supported

241
00:14:05,320 --> 00:14:08,680
Speaker 2: the child in a very comfortable fashion, because there's no

242
00:14:08,800 --> 00:14:11,760
Speaker 2: signs that Candace was living in poverty in any way,

243
00:14:11,920 --> 00:14:15,880
Speaker 2: but she was in New Orleans. Candace was always big

244
00:14:15,920 --> 00:14:19,080
Speaker 2: about inventing things that had happened in her life that

245
00:14:19,320 --> 00:14:23,320
Speaker 2: never really happened. She used to if you remember, I said,

246
00:14:23,360 --> 00:14:27,520
Speaker 2: as a child, she had dreams of being a fashion designer. Well,

247
00:14:27,560 --> 00:14:29,680
Speaker 2: when she moved back down south, she told all of

248
00:14:29,680 --> 00:14:32,280
Speaker 2: her family and her friends that she had been a

249
00:14:32,320 --> 00:14:36,120
Speaker 2: fashion designer for one of the largest firms in New York.

250
00:14:36,840 --> 00:14:39,360
Speaker 2: She mentioned them by name, and of course somebody had

251
00:14:39,360 --> 00:14:42,080
Speaker 2: done the homework. She never worked for these people. She

252
00:14:42,200 --> 00:14:45,480
Speaker 2: claimed that she was the chief designer for them. Of course,

253
00:14:45,520 --> 00:14:47,640
Speaker 2: at this time she's in her mid twenties and had

254
00:14:47,680 --> 00:14:52,000
Speaker 2: no formal training as a fashion designer. So if this

255
00:14:52,080 --> 00:14:54,200
Speaker 2: had happened today and you had Google, it would be

256
00:14:54,320 --> 00:14:58,160
Speaker 2: very easy to disprove the things that she was putting

257
00:14:58,200 --> 00:15:00,560
Speaker 2: out there for people but in the what is she

258
00:15:00,600 --> 00:15:02,240
Speaker 2: could probably get away with some of it.

259
00:15:02,640 --> 00:15:04,920
Speaker 3: How did that benefit her do you think, I mean,

260
00:15:04,960 --> 00:15:07,000
Speaker 3: did it open any doors for her? Once she was

261
00:15:07,000 --> 00:15:09,600
Speaker 3: in New Orleans, She's a single mother of two kids

262
00:15:09,600 --> 00:15:12,720
Speaker 3: from two different men. After the war, She's not in

263
00:15:12,760 --> 00:15:14,480
Speaker 3: a good situation. I know you said it looked like

264
00:15:14,560 --> 00:15:18,000
Speaker 3: she wasn't you know, in poverty or anything, likely from Rockefeller.

265
00:15:18,080 --> 00:15:21,400
Speaker 3: But was it just for her own self esteem self

266
00:15:21,400 --> 00:15:23,880
Speaker 3: comfort that she lied to people about this or did

267
00:15:23,880 --> 00:15:24,800
Speaker 3: it go anywhere?

268
00:15:25,120 --> 00:15:27,400
Speaker 2: I think it was exactly to build herself up and

269
00:15:27,480 --> 00:15:30,680
Speaker 2: make herself. You know again, if you look at her background,

270
00:15:30,760 --> 00:15:33,600
Speaker 2: the heart scrabble conditions that she grew up in, I

271
00:15:33,640 --> 00:15:35,920
Speaker 2: think it was a good way for her to make

272
00:15:35,960 --> 00:15:38,680
Speaker 2: herself feel better and to as you'll see as the

273
00:15:38,680 --> 00:15:41,320
Speaker 2: rest of her life, she wanted to impress other people

274
00:15:41,600 --> 00:15:44,280
Speaker 2: and make them not even know where she had come from.

275
00:15:47,560 --> 00:15:50,200
Speaker 2: Now I can tie the two together. She and Jock Moussel.

276
00:15:50,520 --> 00:15:54,560
Speaker 2: How they met is anybody's guests. She came up with

277
00:15:54,600 --> 00:15:58,120
Speaker 2: this real met cute kind of story later on that

278
00:15:58,520 --> 00:16:00,640
Speaker 2: she was at the zoo one day And Orleans with

279
00:16:00,640 --> 00:16:03,840
Speaker 2: her children and this man came by with a camera

280
00:16:03,880 --> 00:16:06,400
Speaker 2: and who was taking their pictures, and she went over

281
00:16:06,440 --> 00:16:08,160
Speaker 2: to ask him, you know, what are you doing and

282
00:16:08,200 --> 00:16:11,000
Speaker 2: he said, oh, I've just got this new camera and

283
00:16:11,080 --> 00:16:14,640
Speaker 2: I'm really interested in taking pictures of children and moving objects.

284
00:16:14,680 --> 00:16:18,200
Speaker 2: And you know, it sounds pretty contrived, but that was

285
00:16:18,280 --> 00:16:20,440
Speaker 2: the story she stuck with for the rest of her

286
00:16:20,480 --> 00:16:23,400
Speaker 2: life about how they met. Of course, he was married,

287
00:16:23,960 --> 00:16:27,080
Speaker 2: so don't know the breakdown exactly of the marriage that

288
00:16:27,120 --> 00:16:29,840
Speaker 2: he had with his first wife, but in nineteen forty

289
00:16:29,960 --> 00:16:33,800
Speaker 2: nine he married. He divorced his first wife, and two

290
00:16:33,880 --> 00:16:36,160
Speaker 2: weeks later married Candace.

291
00:16:36,680 --> 00:16:40,280
Speaker 3: When you describe these two people together, is this like

292
00:16:40,520 --> 00:16:47,240
Speaker 3: a explosive attraction, hot and cold, volatile relationship or is

293
00:16:47,280 --> 00:16:50,640
Speaker 3: this sort of two people who have lived as opportunists

294
00:16:50,640 --> 00:16:53,520
Speaker 3: for most of their lives and they found each other.

295
00:16:53,920 --> 00:16:55,880
Speaker 2: I think that's a good way to put it. Okay, Yeah,

296
00:16:55,920 --> 00:17:00,880
Speaker 2: when they met again, Candace was in her late twenties

297
00:17:00,920 --> 00:17:04,800
Speaker 2: at this point. I believe she was twenty seven twenty eight.

298
00:17:05,480 --> 00:17:09,399
Speaker 2: He was this very conservative businessman, he'd been married to

299
00:17:09,440 --> 00:17:14,320
Speaker 2: the same woman for almost forty years, his children were

300
00:17:14,320 --> 00:17:17,160
Speaker 2: mostly grown, so I think it was just an attraction

301
00:17:17,280 --> 00:17:20,480
Speaker 2: of here's this really hot chick that comes by and

302
00:17:20,560 --> 00:17:24,480
Speaker 2: she acts interested in him for obvious reasons, because he's very,

303
00:17:24,560 --> 00:17:28,760
Speaker 2: very wealthy. They married in nineteen forty nine. They vacationed

304
00:17:28,760 --> 00:17:31,200
Speaker 2: in Europe for a couple of months. When they came

305
00:17:31,240 --> 00:17:34,640
Speaker 2: back to the States. I think Jacques or Jack as

306
00:17:34,640 --> 00:17:37,840
Speaker 2: his friends called him, didn't feel comfortable living in New

307
00:17:37,960 --> 00:17:41,159
Speaker 2: Orleans anymore with his ex wife and these four children

308
00:17:41,240 --> 00:17:43,840
Speaker 2: of his there, and that's when they moved to Houston,

309
00:17:43,960 --> 00:17:46,600
Speaker 2: he and Kansas, and that kind of set the wheels

310
00:17:46,600 --> 00:17:49,840
Speaker 2: in motion for the rest of his life. For sure.

311
00:17:50,520 --> 00:17:52,719
Speaker 3: What is the It sounds like he is a you know,

312
00:17:52,800 --> 00:17:54,520
Speaker 3: like of Jack of all trade the little bit when

313
00:17:54,520 --> 00:17:58,919
Speaker 3: he moves to Houston, what is his main income source?

314
00:17:59,000 --> 00:18:01,800
Speaker 3: What is that enterprise that he has? And I'm assuming

315
00:18:01,840 --> 00:18:05,400
Speaker 3: he sets up in some incredibly wealthy area of Houston

316
00:18:05,480 --> 00:18:07,159
Speaker 3: and buys a lavish house and all that.

317
00:18:07,680 --> 00:18:10,120
Speaker 2: You're right. He did keep in mind, though, that he

318
00:18:10,160 --> 00:18:13,200
Speaker 2: was Jewish. When they moved to Houston. It was nineteen

319
00:18:13,600 --> 00:18:17,920
Speaker 2: forty nine, and even though he was extremely wealthy, he

320
00:18:18,040 --> 00:18:21,400
Speaker 2: had these loan companies spread out across the country. And

321
00:18:21,800 --> 00:18:24,439
Speaker 2: another thing that he had done after the war, he

322
00:18:24,520 --> 00:18:27,520
Speaker 2: had gotten into the mobile home business because it was

323
00:18:27,560 --> 00:18:31,480
Speaker 2: such a housing explosion that there was a housing shortage

324
00:18:31,480 --> 00:18:34,800
Speaker 2: for these veterans coming home from the war. So he

325
00:18:34,880 --> 00:18:37,640
Speaker 2: not only was selling mobile homes, but he was requiring

326
00:18:37,680 --> 00:18:41,720
Speaker 2: those people to ensure the mobile homes through his insurance company.

327
00:18:42,280 --> 00:18:46,000
Speaker 2: So he was just a very manipulative although nothing unethical

328
00:18:46,040 --> 00:18:48,480
Speaker 2: about that, but he was just a real smart guy

329
00:18:48,520 --> 00:18:51,920
Speaker 2: about plugging in one business into the other. So when

330
00:18:51,960 --> 00:18:54,800
Speaker 2: they moved to Houston, they had to live in a neighborhood.

331
00:18:54,880 --> 00:18:58,560
Speaker 2: It was the home to the predominantly wealthy Jewish people

332
00:18:58,600 --> 00:19:01,919
Speaker 2: in Houston, and there was a pretty good sized Jewish

333
00:19:01,920 --> 00:19:04,919
Speaker 2: community in the city at that time. They lived in

334
00:19:04,960 --> 00:19:06,800
Speaker 2: a home there for about two years. It was a

335
00:19:06,840 --> 00:19:10,199
Speaker 2: neighborhood called Riverside Terrace. It was a nice home. I've

336
00:19:10,280 --> 00:19:13,840
Speaker 2: driven by. It's still there. But Candace the entire time,

337
00:19:13,960 --> 00:19:17,879
Speaker 2: being kind of the social climber that she was, was

338
00:19:17,920 --> 00:19:22,280
Speaker 2: pressuring him to find a home in river Oaks. Now,

339
00:19:22,400 --> 00:19:26,360
Speaker 2: if you're familiar with Houston, river Oaks is the oldest, wealthiest,

340
00:19:26,440 --> 00:19:30,200
Speaker 2: old money neighborhood in the city. In nineteen fifty two,

341
00:19:30,760 --> 00:19:33,240
Speaker 2: she got her way. He bought a home on Willowick

342
00:19:33,320 --> 00:19:37,080
Speaker 2: Road in Houston. It was this big, beautiful red brick

343
00:19:37,240 --> 00:19:41,679
Speaker 2: stately Georgian style mansion that probably had to appeal to

344
00:19:41,720 --> 00:19:44,800
Speaker 2: her memories of growing up in Georgia, with all these

345
00:19:44,800 --> 00:19:48,080
Speaker 2: big homes that she could never afford to have gone into,

346
00:19:48,200 --> 00:19:52,280
Speaker 2: let alone lived in. So by that time she had

347
00:19:52,320 --> 00:19:55,800
Speaker 2: gotten her wish. They were encanced in river Oaks. Been

348
00:19:55,840 --> 00:19:58,440
Speaker 2: a dream of hers to live in a neighborhood like that,

349
00:19:58,960 --> 00:20:01,639
Speaker 2: And of course her two children were still living with

350
00:20:01,720 --> 00:20:06,320
Speaker 2: them at the time, and a remarkable thing happened. One

351
00:20:06,359 --> 00:20:09,080
Speaker 2: of the points I wanted to make was that together

352
00:20:09,240 --> 00:20:12,960
Speaker 2: they were this powerhouse couple, and even though they were

353
00:20:13,000 --> 00:20:15,160
Speaker 2: living in river Oaks, they were still a great deal

354
00:20:15,200 --> 00:20:19,199
Speaker 2: of social prejudice against Jews and river Oaks. Even it

355
00:20:19,280 --> 00:20:21,200
Speaker 2: was quite a feat for them to be living there,

356
00:20:21,200 --> 00:20:25,480
Speaker 2: but they weren't exactly welcomed with open arms. So Kendace

357
00:20:25,520 --> 00:20:30,440
Speaker 2: really tried her best to assimilate into river Oaks cafe society,

358
00:20:30,480 --> 00:20:33,760
Speaker 2: if you will. She was firmly rejected by the wealthy

359
00:20:33,800 --> 00:20:36,919
Speaker 2: women there, partly because of who she was married to,

360
00:20:37,480 --> 00:20:40,159
Speaker 2: partly because of just who she was. She was this

361
00:20:40,240 --> 00:20:43,920
Speaker 2: beautiful woman, but she was extremely You could tell her

362
00:20:43,960 --> 00:20:47,080
Speaker 2: old poor Georgia roots came through loud and clear. Every

363
00:20:47,119 --> 00:20:49,879
Speaker 2: time she talked, they made fun of her at every turn.

364
00:20:50,080 --> 00:20:53,080
Speaker 2: She was very unhappy about that, and that kind of

365
00:20:53,200 --> 00:20:56,760
Speaker 2: led to her rebelling in a way later on that Okay,

366
00:20:56,760 --> 00:20:58,840
Speaker 2: if you're not going to accept me, I'm going to

367
00:20:58,880 --> 00:21:02,120
Speaker 2: scandalize you women, And at every turn if I came.

368
00:21:02,640 --> 00:21:05,760
Speaker 2: She did that in ways of buying her way onto

369
00:21:05,800 --> 00:21:09,680
Speaker 2: the boards of some civic organizations, the opera, the ballet.

370
00:21:10,160 --> 00:21:12,280
Speaker 2: Of course, these women were on some of those same

371
00:21:12,320 --> 00:21:15,720
Speaker 2: boards with her, But her husband just had so much

372
00:21:15,800 --> 00:21:19,000
Speaker 2: money that he could put her on those boards with

373
00:21:19,119 --> 00:21:22,000
Speaker 2: these huge donations that he was making.

374
00:21:22,440 --> 00:21:26,080
Speaker 3: It sounds like Candice and Shack are both social climbers

375
00:21:26,240 --> 00:21:29,520
Speaker 3: or theirs and an idea of accumulating more wealth and

376
00:21:29,600 --> 00:21:33,480
Speaker 3: being more showy, and especially because they both come from

377
00:21:33,520 --> 00:21:38,119
Speaker 3: such humble beginnings. What is their relationship like in the fifties.

378
00:21:38,200 --> 00:21:41,359
Speaker 3: We don't have this inciting incident until sixty four, So

379
00:21:41,880 --> 00:21:44,080
Speaker 3: what is happening right in the fifties. Do they have

380
00:21:44,119 --> 00:21:45,160
Speaker 3: a good relationship.

381
00:21:45,400 --> 00:21:47,720
Speaker 2: I think they tolerated each other, It's the way that

382
00:21:47,760 --> 00:21:51,000
Speaker 2: I would put it. He was still a very conservative

383
00:21:51,040 --> 00:21:55,760
Speaker 2: business man in his soul. He didn't really participate in

384
00:21:55,800 --> 00:21:59,080
Speaker 2: any of these social climbing efforts that she made. He

385
00:21:59,160 --> 00:22:01,880
Speaker 2: had no desire to be part of the rodeo committee

386
00:22:01,960 --> 00:22:04,520
Speaker 2: or things like that. He would use his money to

387
00:22:04,560 --> 00:22:06,919
Speaker 2: put her on some of those boards and things, but

388
00:22:07,280 --> 00:22:09,320
Speaker 2: he just wanted to keep a low profile and he

389
00:22:09,400 --> 00:22:13,280
Speaker 2: truly did operate under the radar for the most part,

390
00:22:13,560 --> 00:22:17,560
Speaker 2: whereas she she wanted to scandalize these people as much

391
00:22:17,560 --> 00:22:20,440
Speaker 2: as they could if they weren't going to accept her,

392
00:22:21,160 --> 00:22:24,080
Speaker 2: and the ways in which she did that were to

393
00:22:24,160 --> 00:22:26,600
Speaker 2: go to these nightclubs that they would never go to.

394
00:22:26,800 --> 00:22:29,720
Speaker 2: She loved rhythm and blues music. She would go to

395
00:22:29,760 --> 00:22:32,920
Speaker 2: clubs in Houston that these River Oaks women would never

396
00:22:32,960 --> 00:22:37,399
Speaker 2: set foot in. She loved to go to clubs because

397
00:22:37,400 --> 00:22:40,320
Speaker 2: her husband wouldn't go with her. She would take young

398
00:22:40,400 --> 00:22:44,720
Speaker 2: men with her. And whether there was any sexual misconduct

399
00:22:44,760 --> 00:22:46,840
Speaker 2: on her part at that time, it's hard to say,

400
00:22:46,960 --> 00:22:49,679
Speaker 2: but I think it's a safe assumption that, yeah, she

401
00:22:49,840 --> 00:22:54,040
Speaker 2: was beginning to just feel her oats socially and sexually

402
00:22:54,760 --> 00:22:57,040
Speaker 2: and do what she wanted to do, and she had

403
00:22:57,040 --> 00:23:00,239
Speaker 2: a husband that pretty much just didn't care, so she

404
00:23:00,320 --> 00:23:02,800
Speaker 2: was doing all these things. She was by the mid fifties,

405
00:23:02,840 --> 00:23:06,760
Speaker 2: she was definitely having affairs. One of those affairs was

406
00:23:06,800 --> 00:23:07,880
Speaker 2: with Chuck Berry.

407
00:23:08,119 --> 00:23:10,040
Speaker 1: Wait, seriously, Chuck Berry, the.

408
00:23:09,960 --> 00:23:13,680
Speaker 2: Singer, seriously whow You can imagine how that went over

409
00:23:13,880 --> 00:23:17,000
Speaker 2: in River Oaks. And she did not hide any of this.

410
00:23:17,800 --> 00:23:20,600
Speaker 2: She threw parties at her home, had this big, huge

411
00:23:20,680 --> 00:23:23,320
Speaker 2: lawn in the back of the mansion. She was always

412
00:23:23,359 --> 00:23:26,320
Speaker 2: throwing lawn parties and one of them had Chuck Berry

413
00:23:26,359 --> 00:23:30,479
Speaker 2: providing the music at one point during the night. And

414
00:23:30,520 --> 00:23:33,119
Speaker 2: this was all recording. It a photograph that made the

415
00:23:33,119 --> 00:23:36,600
Speaker 2: newspapers in Houston. She's up on the balcony of her

416
00:23:36,960 --> 00:23:39,840
Speaker 2: master bedroom suite on the third floor of this house,

417
00:23:40,200 --> 00:23:43,040
Speaker 2: with Chuck Berry standing next to her, wearing no shirt.

418
00:23:43,720 --> 00:23:47,359
Speaker 2: Today that might sound pretty tame, but in nineteen fifty

419
00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:50,040
Speaker 2: nine or whenever it was, you can imagine how that

420
00:23:50,119 --> 00:23:52,879
Speaker 2: just sent the gossip people over the edge.

421
00:23:53,280 --> 00:23:54,240
Speaker 1: That's incredible.

422
00:23:54,359 --> 00:23:56,520
Speaker 3: And I don't know why I can't tear away from

423
00:23:56,600 --> 00:23:59,600
Speaker 3: Chuck Berry because it just seems so out of the blue,

424
00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:01,600
Speaker 3: just like well, I have the same look of shock

425
00:24:01,680 --> 00:24:05,000
Speaker 3: that I had when you talked about when Rockefeller. So

426
00:24:05,520 --> 00:24:09,920
Speaker 3: I know that her Husbandques must have been at least

427
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:12,200
Speaker 3: irritated that she's going out. I know it doesn't seem

428
00:24:12,200 --> 00:24:14,000
Speaker 3: like he cares, but that she's going out and doing

429
00:24:14,080 --> 00:24:17,320
Speaker 3: stuff with other men. Did this just send him through

430
00:24:17,359 --> 00:24:20,480
Speaker 3: the roof that she is clearly in some sort of

431
00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:25,320
Speaker 3: a compromising position in the newspapers with a black singer

432
00:24:25,359 --> 00:24:26,639
Speaker 3: who is very famous.

433
00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:30,280
Speaker 2: There's no record of how he reacted, although one thing

434
00:24:30,280 --> 00:24:32,919
Speaker 2: that is on the record, he began to spend a

435
00:24:32,960 --> 00:24:35,960
Speaker 2: lot more time at his other offices in other cities.

436
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:39,639
Speaker 2: By this time, he owned a couple of banks in Chicago,

437
00:24:39,960 --> 00:24:42,639
Speaker 2: he owned a couple of banks in Miami. He still

438
00:24:42,680 --> 00:24:46,439
Speaker 2: retained ownership of his loan companies. I think he was

439
00:24:46,520 --> 00:24:50,840
Speaker 2: probably mortified by some of her behavior because he was

440
00:24:50,840 --> 00:24:55,280
Speaker 2: this very conservative guy. But there's no indication that he

441
00:24:55,320 --> 00:24:57,040
Speaker 2: did anything to rein her in.

442
00:24:57,560 --> 00:24:59,120
Speaker 1: Why would he stay married to her.

443
00:24:59,320 --> 00:25:02,640
Speaker 3: They don't have children together, right, because there's his four

444
00:25:02,720 --> 00:25:05,720
Speaker 3: kids in New Orleans and her two kids from other men.

445
00:25:06,320 --> 00:25:10,160
Speaker 3: So what is keeping him from divorcing her, keeping all

446
00:25:10,200 --> 00:25:13,320
Speaker 3: of his money and you know, then marrying some other

447
00:25:13,560 --> 00:25:15,720
Speaker 3: young twenty something year old when now he's in his

448
00:25:15,960 --> 00:25:17,000
Speaker 3: sixties at this point.

449
00:25:17,280 --> 00:25:19,680
Speaker 2: I think it's called a prenup agreement, is what kept

450
00:25:19,760 --> 00:25:20,240
Speaker 2: them together.

451
00:25:20,400 --> 00:25:23,399
Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't think that prenups were that old.

452
00:25:23,440 --> 00:25:24,879
Speaker 1: Okay, so in the forties.

453
00:25:25,040 --> 00:25:27,159
Speaker 2: They married in nineteen forty nine, and there was a

454
00:25:27,200 --> 00:25:31,000
Speaker 2: prenup agreement. Wow. The prenup agreement called for if she

455
00:25:31,080 --> 00:25:33,760
Speaker 2: were to divorce him, she would receive a flat fee

456
00:25:33,800 --> 00:25:37,240
Speaker 2: of two hundred thousand dollars. If he were to divorce her,

457
00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:40,920
Speaker 2: she would receive one half of his estate. Well, he's

458
00:25:40,920 --> 00:25:43,800
Speaker 2: a very wealthy guy giving way half of his estate

459
00:25:43,880 --> 00:25:47,920
Speaker 2: to this woman that he probably was becoming very distasteful

460
00:25:48,240 --> 00:25:51,680
Speaker 2: with at that point. He just wasn't willing to do it.

461
00:25:51,880 --> 00:25:53,280
Speaker 1: That's an awful agreement.

462
00:25:53,440 --> 00:25:56,200
Speaker 3: I mean, does that That seem like a terrible agreement

463
00:25:56,240 --> 00:25:56,840
Speaker 3: on his part.

464
00:25:57,040 --> 00:26:00,439
Speaker 2: Sometimes very smart guys do very dumb things.

465
00:26:00,560 --> 00:26:03,560
Speaker 3: Okay, let's get to the other player in this story

466
00:26:03,600 --> 00:26:05,679
Speaker 3: before we talk about what happens to Jacques.

467
00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:10,040
Speaker 2: Okay. In nineteen sixty two, Candace had a nephew that

468
00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:14,080
Speaker 2: was the son of her sister Elizabeth. He was a

469
00:26:14,119 --> 00:26:18,560
Speaker 2: young man named Melvin Lane Powers, and he was only

470
00:26:18,680 --> 00:26:22,160
Speaker 2: nineteen years old when he got into trouble with the law.

471
00:26:22,920 --> 00:26:24,840
Speaker 2: He had fallen in with this band of people that

472
00:26:24,880 --> 00:26:29,679
Speaker 2: were scamming people going door to door selling magazine subscriptions,

473
00:26:30,400 --> 00:26:33,000
Speaker 2: and to make a long story short, he was arrested

474
00:26:33,080 --> 00:26:36,960
Speaker 2: up in Pontiac, Michigan in nineteen sixty one. They called

475
00:26:37,000 --> 00:26:40,639
Speaker 2: him a grifter in the newspaper accounts of it. So

476
00:26:41,080 --> 00:26:45,480
Speaker 2: he spent six months in the county jail. And Elizabeth,

477
00:26:45,920 --> 00:26:49,920
Speaker 2: his mother, called Candace, her sister, and said, Hey, he's

478
00:26:49,920 --> 00:26:51,840
Speaker 2: going to get just right back into trouble if he

479
00:26:51,920 --> 00:26:54,840
Speaker 2: stays up there, He's going to fall back into these

480
00:26:55,040 --> 00:26:58,399
Speaker 2: scammers that he's been in cahoots with. So do you

481
00:26:58,440 --> 00:27:01,800
Speaker 2: think Jack could find him a joke, maybe repossessing cars

482
00:27:01,880 --> 00:27:04,880
Speaker 2: or something down in Houston, to get him away from them.

483
00:27:04,880 --> 00:27:07,520
Speaker 2: And so Candace said, well, of course we can, so

484
00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:11,480
Speaker 2: that she without asking Jack, she has him come down

485
00:27:11,520 --> 00:27:14,959
Speaker 2: and move into the mansion in Houston. He's nineteen and

486
00:27:15,000 --> 00:27:18,480
Speaker 2: by this point she's about forty forty two years old.

487
00:27:18,920 --> 00:27:22,800
Speaker 2: As time goes by, Jock is very reluctant to give

488
00:27:22,840 --> 00:27:26,240
Speaker 2: this guy a job because he's got no real education,

489
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:29,640
Speaker 2: he has no real marketable skills, and he's also got

490
00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:33,760
Speaker 2: a pretty boorish, bullying type of a personality. He's a

491
00:27:33,800 --> 00:27:37,000
Speaker 2: big dude, he's about six foot four, and he's very

492
00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:41,760
Speaker 2: intimidating at some point, Candace and her nephew begin an

493
00:27:41,800 --> 00:27:46,080
Speaker 2: incestuous affair. One of the most icky parts of this

494
00:27:46,240 --> 00:27:48,520
Speaker 2: I told you earlier. When this story happened in nineteen

495
00:27:48,600 --> 00:27:51,840
Speaker 2: sixty four, I was a kid. I didn't really understand

496
00:27:51,840 --> 00:27:55,320
Speaker 2: what they were talking about on the news accounts when

497
00:27:55,320 --> 00:27:59,600
Speaker 2: they talked about incest between this couple. But she was

498
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:01,679
Speaker 2: very open about it, much as she had been with

499
00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:04,800
Speaker 2: a Chuck Berry story and other things. They were going

500
00:28:04,840 --> 00:28:08,400
Speaker 2: out to restaurants and clubs together, they took vacations together.

501
00:28:09,040 --> 00:28:12,280
Speaker 2: She was in the society columns all the time, and

502
00:28:12,359 --> 00:28:15,919
Speaker 2: it was often mentioning mel as her escort, so it

503
00:28:15,960 --> 00:28:17,760
Speaker 2: wasn't a great deal of effort on her part to

504
00:28:17,840 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 2: hide the fact that they were going out together. Now,

505
00:28:20,600 --> 00:28:23,679
Speaker 2: nobody really dreamed that they were sleeping together. But it

506
00:28:23,760 --> 00:28:26,320
Speaker 2: took a while, but Jacques finally woke up to this

507
00:28:26,480 --> 00:28:29,879
Speaker 2: and the gossip got to him. Even the household staff

508
00:28:29,960 --> 00:28:32,679
Speaker 2: told him what was going on, because every time he

509
00:28:32,800 --> 00:28:35,120
Speaker 2: was out of town, the two of them were spending

510
00:28:35,160 --> 00:28:38,240
Speaker 2: time in the same bedroom in the mansion. So even

511
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:41,600
Speaker 2: the household staff got disgusted and finally went to Jock

512
00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:45,000
Speaker 2: and told him what was going on. At that point,

513
00:28:45,040 --> 00:28:48,560
Speaker 2: he evicted Mel from the mansion. Mel threatened him on

514
00:28:48,600 --> 00:28:51,160
Speaker 2: the way out the door, saying, essentially, one day, you

515
00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:55,040
Speaker 2: better always be looking over your shoulder because I'm going

516
00:28:55,120 --> 00:28:57,760
Speaker 2: to be coming for you one day. And so you

517
00:28:57,760 --> 00:29:00,320
Speaker 2: would think that that might have ended the affair, but

518
00:29:00,520 --> 00:29:03,960
Speaker 2: it did not. Candace rented an apartment for him just

519
00:29:04,000 --> 00:29:07,120
Speaker 2: a few blocks away from where she was living, and

520
00:29:07,160 --> 00:29:09,760
Speaker 2: they continued to see each other, and by this time

521
00:29:09,800 --> 00:29:12,720
Speaker 2: it was pretty common knowledge through at least the River

522
00:29:12,760 --> 00:29:15,800
Speaker 2: Oak society that you know what was going on. Candace

523
00:29:15,800 --> 00:29:20,400
Speaker 2: always tried to pass mel Off as Jacques's protege, that

524
00:29:20,520 --> 00:29:23,160
Speaker 2: he was teaching him the business, and that was really

525
00:29:23,200 --> 00:29:23,920
Speaker 2: not true at all.

526
00:29:24,760 --> 00:29:28,360
Speaker 3: Just to make sure everybody's clear, this is not Jacques's

527
00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:34,040
Speaker 3: nephew and her nephew by marriage. This is her sister's son.

528
00:29:34,520 --> 00:29:37,560
Speaker 3: So they are related, they're blood relatives. Does the sister

529
00:29:37,720 --> 00:29:41,000
Speaker 3: know at this point that her sister is sleeping with

530
00:29:41,120 --> 00:29:41,600
Speaker 3: her son.

531
00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:45,200
Speaker 2: I don't think so, although it became known later, and

532
00:29:45,280 --> 00:29:48,280
Speaker 2: it was it was very strange that even her family,

533
00:29:48,360 --> 00:29:50,840
Speaker 2: her siblings, were well aware of what was going on,

534
00:29:50,920 --> 00:29:52,239
Speaker 2: and they seemed to be okay with it.

535
00:29:52,560 --> 00:29:55,280
Speaker 3: So they are together and so tell me what the

536
00:29:55,320 --> 00:29:57,960
Speaker 3: next step is. Because we all know now that Jacka's

537
00:29:58,000 --> 00:30:01,720
Speaker 3: going to end up dead sometime soon. What changes to

538
00:30:01,800 --> 00:30:04,640
Speaker 3: make that happen? Is it Mel making this threat?

539
00:30:05,000 --> 00:30:07,520
Speaker 2: Not really, I don't think he was necessarily afraid of

540
00:30:07,560 --> 00:30:10,920
Speaker 2: Mel at that point, but he was just I think

541
00:30:10,960 --> 00:30:13,959
Speaker 2: he just felt so humiliated that he just felt like,

542
00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:15,800
Speaker 2: I've got to get out of town. So he moved

543
00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:19,880
Speaker 2: to Miami and leased this apartment on Keep Us Gain.

544
00:30:20,200 --> 00:30:22,960
Speaker 2: It was a very modest apartment, but he was running

545
00:30:23,000 --> 00:30:25,880
Speaker 2: his businesses from Florida and he would only come to

546
00:30:25,920 --> 00:30:28,840
Speaker 2: Houston on occasion. Now, he had made the mistake earlier

547
00:30:28,880 --> 00:30:31,960
Speaker 2: on in their marriage of putting canvas on the board

548
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:35,200
Speaker 2: of his businesses, so they had to bump into each

549
00:30:35,240 --> 00:30:37,440
Speaker 2: other when he came to town for board meetings. But

550
00:30:37,720 --> 00:30:39,960
Speaker 2: I can't imagine how uncomfortable that might have been for

551
00:30:40,040 --> 00:30:42,440
Speaker 2: everybody else in the room. But for the most part,

552
00:30:42,480 --> 00:30:46,320
Speaker 2: he remained in Florida and they had adopted four children.

553
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:49,400
Speaker 2: Back in the fifties, there was this really tragic story

554
00:30:49,440 --> 00:30:53,800
Speaker 2: in Chicago where Jock had a bank, and just to

555
00:30:53,840 --> 00:30:56,560
Speaker 2: cut to the chase on how that happened, these four

556
00:30:56,640 --> 00:31:00,640
Speaker 2: children came from a family where the father was mentally stable,

557
00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:05,600
Speaker 2: killed their mother, killed one of their siblings, and he

558
00:31:05,680 --> 00:31:08,960
Speaker 2: was committed to a mental institution, leaving these four children

559
00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:12,960
Speaker 2: as wards of the state. So Jacques was in town

560
00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:16,000
Speaker 2: read the story and he called Candace and he said, hey,

561
00:31:16,040 --> 00:31:18,720
Speaker 2: let's adopt these kids. So by the time the story

562
00:31:18,760 --> 00:31:21,480
Speaker 2: moves to Florida, there are these four children that are

563
00:31:21,800 --> 00:31:22,720
Speaker 2: part of the family.

564
00:31:22,800 --> 00:31:26,120
Speaker 1: Now, okay, well what ends up happening next?

565
00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:29,240
Speaker 3: Now they're separated because she's in Texas, right and he's

566
00:31:29,280 --> 00:31:31,480
Speaker 3: in Key Biscayne, Florida.

567
00:31:31,520 --> 00:31:34,280
Speaker 1: When does this all happen? And what part does Mel

568
00:31:34,400 --> 00:31:34,800
Speaker 1: play in this?

569
00:31:35,560 --> 00:31:38,280
Speaker 2: Mel was in Houston by this time. Candace had set

570
00:31:38,360 --> 00:31:42,080
Speaker 2: him up in a mobile homes lot where he sold

571
00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:44,600
Speaker 2: mobile homes, and by all accounts, he was doing pretty

572
00:31:44,600 --> 00:31:46,800
Speaker 2: well with it. He wasn't nearly the wealthy as the

573
00:31:46,840 --> 00:31:48,920
Speaker 2: masters were, but he was doing well for a kid

574
00:31:48,920 --> 00:31:54,720
Speaker 2: from Alabama. So the affairs continuing, Jacques is considering getting

575
00:31:54,720 --> 00:31:59,760
Speaker 2: a divorce despite this onerous prenuptial agreement. He had a

576
00:32:00,080 --> 00:32:03,000
Speaker 2: horse attorney who was counseling him and said, one thing

577
00:32:03,040 --> 00:32:06,320
Speaker 2: you need to start doing is keeping a diary of

578
00:32:06,360 --> 00:32:09,280
Speaker 2: all the conversations that you have with her. The lawyer

579
00:32:09,280 --> 00:32:12,200
Speaker 2: had led him to believe that because of this incestuous

580
00:32:12,200 --> 00:32:15,520
Speaker 2: behavior that they might be able to avoid the prenuptial

581
00:32:15,560 --> 00:32:19,000
Speaker 2: agreement in a divorce court. But so Jock is keeping

582
00:32:19,400 --> 00:32:23,800
Speaker 2: this diary, and after one particularly heated discussion on the

583
00:32:23,800 --> 00:32:27,000
Speaker 2: phone with Candace, he writes into the diary, and it

584
00:32:27,040 --> 00:32:29,400
Speaker 2: was the last entry that he ever made. I guess

585
00:32:29,440 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 2: I'm going to have to kill Candace and Mail before

586
00:32:31,960 --> 00:32:35,600
Speaker 2: they kill me. In May of nineteen sixty four, Candace

587
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:38,840
Speaker 2: comes to visit in Miami with the four younger children

588
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:43,000
Speaker 2: and her older daughter, Rita, who is the Rockefeller child.

589
00:32:43,320 --> 00:32:46,000
Speaker 2: They're visiting him in his apartment. The apartment is too

590
00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:49,080
Speaker 2: small to hold all these people. It's only two bedrooms,

591
00:32:49,640 --> 00:32:52,200
Speaker 2: so they had taken a hotel room nearby for the

592
00:32:52,280 --> 00:32:55,120
Speaker 2: children to stay in, but they were using his apartment

593
00:32:55,200 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 2: there as a base of operations. It was near the beach,

594
00:32:58,560 --> 00:33:01,360
Speaker 2: and so one night May thirty first, the last day

595
00:33:01,400 --> 00:33:03,880
Speaker 2: of the month, she and the children make this game

596
00:33:03,960 --> 00:33:06,440
Speaker 2: out of it's time to pay the bills. The first

597
00:33:06,440 --> 00:33:09,920
Speaker 2: of the month is tomorrow, So as she tells the story,

598
00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:12,640
Speaker 2: one kid would address the envelope, the other would put

599
00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:14,720
Speaker 2: a stamp on the envelope, the other would put the

600
00:33:14,760 --> 00:33:17,360
Speaker 2: return address on it, pass it to her where she

601
00:33:17,480 --> 00:33:20,920
Speaker 2: was writing out checks. Well, when they finished this exercise,

602
00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:24,160
Speaker 2: she realized that she didn't have any stamps. As hokey

603
00:33:24,200 --> 00:33:27,880
Speaker 2: as this may sound, she says, it's midnight, and she

604
00:33:27,960 --> 00:33:30,880
Speaker 2: says to Jaque, I'm going to take the children and

605
00:33:30,920 --> 00:33:33,680
Speaker 2: go buy some stamps and get these bills in the mailbox.

606
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:38,360
Speaker 2: He says, fine. So this all occurs about midnight. He

607
00:33:38,440 --> 00:33:40,440
Speaker 2: goes out and sits out on the balcony for a

608
00:33:40,480 --> 00:33:44,920
Speaker 2: while by himself, and about twelve thirty he sees a

609
00:33:45,000 --> 00:33:48,040
Speaker 2: car headlights coming down the street. It's a car that

610
00:33:48,080 --> 00:33:51,280
Speaker 2: he recognizes because it's one of the cars from his

611
00:33:51,560 --> 00:33:56,920
Speaker 2: repossession lot in Miami, and he just assumes it's Candae

612
00:33:57,320 --> 00:34:00,640
Speaker 2: coming back without the children, probably going to spend the

613
00:34:00,760 --> 00:34:04,920
Speaker 2: night in the second bedroom there at the apartment. Well

614
00:34:05,200 --> 00:34:07,360
Speaker 2: it's not canvas. He goes on and goes to bed

615
00:34:07,360 --> 00:34:09,839
Speaker 2: because he wants to avoid her. But he's in his

616
00:34:09,880 --> 00:34:14,359
Speaker 2: bedroom getting dressed or undressed actually, and he hears his

617
00:34:14,520 --> 00:34:18,120
Speaker 2: dog barking in at the door. But the dog quiets

618
00:34:18,120 --> 00:34:21,400
Speaker 2: down almost immediately and at the door opens and he

619
00:34:21,400 --> 00:34:24,400
Speaker 2: hears someone talking to the dog, and it's obviously someone

620
00:34:24,400 --> 00:34:28,160
Speaker 2: that the dog recognizes, because the dog settles down. Well,

621
00:34:28,200 --> 00:34:31,160
Speaker 2: he opens his bedroom door and he recognizes this big,

622
00:34:31,280 --> 00:34:34,560
Speaker 2: large person in the darkness that we can assume was

623
00:34:34,760 --> 00:34:39,000
Speaker 2: Melbourn Lane Powers. Jacques is completely undressed at this point.

624
00:34:39,120 --> 00:34:43,400
Speaker 2: He's wearing only an undershirt and he panics and he's wondering,

625
00:34:43,840 --> 00:34:46,279
Speaker 2: I need to get away from this guy. And he

626
00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:49,200
Speaker 2: makes a bolt for the sliding glass balcony door of

627
00:34:49,239 --> 00:34:52,279
Speaker 2: the apartment and he's hoping, I guess that he can

628
00:34:52,320 --> 00:34:54,880
Speaker 2: get to that door and call out for someone outside

629
00:34:54,920 --> 00:34:57,359
Speaker 2: to come help him, or maybe someone in the other

630
00:34:57,400 --> 00:35:01,240
Speaker 2: apartments below him will come and help. Well, he doesn't

631
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:04,239
Speaker 2: make it to the door. He's bashed over the head

632
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:07,360
Speaker 2: with what was later believed to be a coat bottle,

633
00:35:08,239 --> 00:35:12,000
Speaker 2: and then he is stabbed thirty nine times.

634
00:35:12,440 --> 00:35:14,640
Speaker 1: H thirty nine times.

635
00:35:14,840 --> 00:35:18,800
Speaker 2: Wow. But this is where the story gets very odd.

636
00:35:19,600 --> 00:35:22,759
Speaker 2: After the murder, the murderer wraps the body up in

637
00:35:22,800 --> 00:35:26,719
Speaker 2: a blanket and leaves him there. And there are witnesses

638
00:35:26,719 --> 00:35:28,680
Speaker 2: in the apartment I guess you could call them ear

639
00:35:28,719 --> 00:35:32,719
Speaker 2: witnesses that hear this big set of footprints going down

640
00:35:33,120 --> 00:35:36,760
Speaker 2: the outdoor stairway, and at four o'clock in the morning,

641
00:35:37,719 --> 00:35:41,000
Speaker 2: Candace comes back to the apartment with the children in

642
00:35:41,040 --> 00:35:44,200
Speaker 2: tow and they see the light on underneath the doorway

643
00:35:44,480 --> 00:35:47,680
Speaker 2: of the apartment and she says, oh, I guess daddy's

644
00:35:47,760 --> 00:35:51,120
Speaker 2: up late reading tonight. They open the door, they find

645
00:35:51,160 --> 00:35:56,000
Speaker 2: the body, and she sends the children downstairs, and for

646
00:35:56,120 --> 00:35:58,560
Speaker 2: thirty minutes, they go off the air. They don't call

647
00:35:58,600 --> 00:36:02,399
Speaker 2: the police, they don't call an ambulance. No one knows

648
00:36:02,440 --> 00:36:05,239
Speaker 2: what's going on in the apartment for thirty minutes. And

649
00:36:05,719 --> 00:36:08,120
Speaker 2: the first phone call she makes is not to the

650
00:36:08,120 --> 00:36:12,640
Speaker 2: police or an ambulance. She calls Jock's personal physician. Now

651
00:36:12,680 --> 00:36:15,680
Speaker 2: he's dead. I don't know what good a doctor is

652
00:36:15,680 --> 00:36:19,360
Speaker 2: going to do at that point, but the physician tells her, Candice,

653
00:36:19,400 --> 00:36:21,280
Speaker 2: you need to hang up, you need to call the police,

654
00:36:21,800 --> 00:36:25,520
Speaker 2: which they do. Finally, when the police arrive, her story

655
00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:28,520
Speaker 2: is so full of holes they know immediately that she's

656
00:36:28,600 --> 00:36:31,600
Speaker 2: lying to them. She claims that this was a robbery

657
00:36:31,680 --> 00:36:34,719
Speaker 2: gone bad. I had left several hundred dollars out on

658
00:36:34,760 --> 00:36:38,319
Speaker 2: the kitchen counter. It's not there anymore. I had some

659
00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:42,200
Speaker 2: very expensive jewelry in the bedroom it's not there anymore.

660
00:36:42,440 --> 00:36:44,440
Speaker 2: When they begin to press her on like even a

661
00:36:44,480 --> 00:36:47,640
Speaker 2: description of what the jewelry looked like, she kind of

662
00:36:47,640 --> 00:36:49,960
Speaker 2: blanked out them and couldn't even give a description of it.

663
00:36:50,040 --> 00:36:52,640
Speaker 2: So then she begins to tell them that, you know,

664
00:36:52,880 --> 00:36:55,759
Speaker 2: it was a robbery, and the cops say, no, this

665
00:36:56,120 --> 00:36:58,880
Speaker 2: a robber is not going to stab somebody thirty nine times.

666
00:36:59,520 --> 00:37:01,879
Speaker 2: We believe that whoever killed him must have known him,

667
00:37:02,040 --> 00:37:04,480
Speaker 2: And so then they began to delve into did he

668
00:37:04,560 --> 00:37:07,799
Speaker 2: have any enemies? Did you know of anybody that was

669
00:37:08,040 --> 00:37:10,400
Speaker 2: looking to harm him, and she said, oh, he was

670
00:37:10,400 --> 00:37:12,759
Speaker 2: in the repossession business. There are all kinds of people

671
00:37:12,800 --> 00:37:15,359
Speaker 2: that would have liked to have killed him, which they

672
00:37:15,360 --> 00:37:17,960
Speaker 2: thought was a very odd answer. But she never, of course,

673
00:37:18,040 --> 00:37:22,840
Speaker 2: mentions mail powers. And when they discount the burglary story,

674
00:37:23,400 --> 00:37:26,279
Speaker 2: then she tries to float an entirely new theory, which is,

675
00:37:26,680 --> 00:37:29,319
Speaker 2: I think my husband is now a homo sexual. He

676
00:37:29,400 --> 00:37:31,960
Speaker 2: had gone to Europe, and when he came back from

677
00:37:31,960 --> 00:37:35,040
Speaker 2: Europe he was acting very strange. Just the other night

678
00:37:35,560 --> 00:37:38,960
Speaker 2: I answered the phone and it was somebody from Texas.

679
00:37:39,600 --> 00:37:42,479
Speaker 2: It was one of his Texas boyfriends. The cops didn't

680
00:37:42,520 --> 00:37:45,040
Speaker 2: really buy that story. Either. But I have to mention

681
00:37:45,160 --> 00:37:47,160
Speaker 2: here there was an awful lot of corruption in the

682
00:37:47,160 --> 00:37:51,440
Speaker 2: Miami Dade Sheriff's Department in those days. The lead detective

683
00:37:51,480 --> 00:37:54,879
Speaker 2: on the Moss case turned out to be somebody who

684
00:37:54,960 --> 00:37:57,480
Speaker 2: was in the pocket of the gangster that ran all

685
00:37:57,520 --> 00:38:01,440
Speaker 2: of the gambling enterprises in Miami. He wasn't the only

686
00:38:01,480 --> 00:38:04,760
Speaker 2: one on the force that had connections to organized crime.

687
00:38:04,800 --> 00:38:07,040
Speaker 2: It was just kind of, yeah, you do your thing

688
00:38:07,080 --> 00:38:10,759
Speaker 2: outside of work. That being said, they were very good detectives.

689
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:13,840
Speaker 2: They were very thorough. They wanted to catch the killer.

690
00:38:14,200 --> 00:38:17,920
Speaker 2: Mail Powers made it pretty easy for them. In the apartment,

691
00:38:18,520 --> 00:38:22,520
Speaker 2: the killer had left bloody handprints by the kitchen sink.

692
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:27,399
Speaker 2: They immediately matched those handprints to mel because he had

693
00:38:27,400 --> 00:38:31,000
Speaker 2: a prior record from his arrest in Michigan. Within about

694
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:34,640
Speaker 2: seven hours they had that identified. Then the car that

695
00:38:34,719 --> 00:38:38,359
Speaker 2: he was driving, this white Chevy, was found parked at

696
00:38:38,360 --> 00:38:42,240
Speaker 2: the airport garage, about fifty feet away from a police

697
00:38:42,280 --> 00:38:46,480
Speaker 2: substation that was inside the airport. Then they find inside

698
00:38:46,520 --> 00:38:50,080
Speaker 2: the white Chevy a parking stub that showed that the

699
00:38:50,080 --> 00:38:52,480
Speaker 2: car had entered the garage at five point thirty nine

700
00:38:52,520 --> 00:38:55,280
Speaker 2: in the morning. So the detectives who are pretty sharp.

701
00:38:55,760 --> 00:38:58,720
Speaker 2: One of them goes into the airlines, and I believe

702
00:38:58,719 --> 00:39:02,320
Speaker 2: it was National Airline in those days, had daily flights

703
00:39:02,360 --> 00:39:05,640
Speaker 2: to Houston from Miami. He goes to the manager of

704
00:39:05,640 --> 00:39:07,759
Speaker 2: the airline desk and asks, can I look at your

705
00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:11,720
Speaker 2: manifest for the last couple of days, particularly this morning,

706
00:39:12,000 --> 00:39:16,319
Speaker 2: and he finds the name m. Mossler Powers as a

707
00:39:16,360 --> 00:39:19,319
Speaker 2: passenger on the flight leaving at seven point thirty in

708
00:39:19,360 --> 00:39:23,120
Speaker 2: the morning after the murder going back to Houston. He

709
00:39:23,200 --> 00:39:25,600
Speaker 2: digs a little deeper and he finds that the same

710
00:39:25,680 --> 00:39:29,440
Speaker 2: person flew from Houston to Miami the night of the

711
00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:33,400
Speaker 2: murder and arrived about three hours before the murder occurred.

712
00:39:33,680 --> 00:39:36,319
Speaker 2: With a little more digging, they find a bartender that

713
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:39,520
Speaker 2: identified mail Powers as the person who had come into

714
00:39:39,600 --> 00:39:42,840
Speaker 2: his bar killing time, apparently before he went to the

715
00:39:42,880 --> 00:39:47,320
Speaker 2: apartment to kill Jock. So within four days, Mail Powers

716
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:51,920
Speaker 2: is arrested. Unfortunately for the prosecutors, they did not read

717
00:39:51,960 --> 00:39:55,200
Speaker 2: them any miranda rights. Oh no, they did not even

718
00:39:55,239 --> 00:39:57,960
Speaker 2: have a valid arrest warrant yet. Because all of this

719
00:39:58,120 --> 00:40:01,719
Speaker 2: was occurring on the fourth of July weekend, the courthouse

720
00:40:01,840 --> 00:40:05,040
Speaker 2: was closed. The prosecutors in Miami couldn't even find a

721
00:40:05,160 --> 00:40:07,680
Speaker 2: judge that could issue his arrest warrant. And then, to

722
00:40:07,760 --> 00:40:09,879
Speaker 2: top it all off, the coupdo gra was that they

723
00:40:10,080 --> 00:40:13,040
Speaker 2: finally got a confession out of mel In which he

724
00:40:13,080 --> 00:40:17,000
Speaker 2: admitted killing Mossler. They re tape recorded that confession, but

725
00:40:17,080 --> 00:40:20,360
Speaker 2: again they did not read him as rights, so before

726
00:40:20,400 --> 00:40:23,080
Speaker 2: the trial even begins, the confession is thrown out.

727
00:40:23,480 --> 00:40:26,600
Speaker 3: I mean, now, is he implicating Candace in this and

728
00:40:26,680 --> 00:40:29,759
Speaker 3: admitting to an affair with his aunt not to.

729
00:40:29,840 --> 00:40:32,759
Speaker 2: The police know. He said that Candace is simply his

730
00:40:32,880 --> 00:40:36,000
Speaker 2: business partner. He said that he flew into Miami all

731
00:40:36,040 --> 00:40:39,320
Speaker 2: the time to talk to Jacques about business things, which

732
00:40:39,360 --> 00:40:42,719
Speaker 2: was not true, but they didn't know that at that point.

733
00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:46,319
Speaker 2: But one thing he specifically refused to do in his

734
00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:49,960
Speaker 2: confession was implicate Candace. He says, I know you want

735
00:40:49,960 --> 00:40:52,279
Speaker 2: me to tell on somebody else, and I'm not going

736
00:40:52,320 --> 00:40:55,120
Speaker 2: to do it. So when they get to trial, Candace

737
00:40:55,160 --> 00:40:58,359
Speaker 2: had hired to represent Mail Powers, one of the most

738
00:40:58,360 --> 00:41:01,080
Speaker 2: famous trial lawyers in the United States in those days,

739
00:41:01,080 --> 00:41:05,800
Speaker 2: a man named Percy Foreman Percy. The saying in Houston

740
00:41:05,920 --> 00:41:08,160
Speaker 2: was that if you hired Percy, it was an admission

741
00:41:08,200 --> 00:41:12,080
Speaker 2: of guilt, but he would get you off, and that

742
00:41:12,200 --> 00:41:14,720
Speaker 2: was typically the case. So when they get to trial,

743
00:41:15,040 --> 00:41:18,200
Speaker 2: Percy had no affection for the truth. He gets up

744
00:41:18,239 --> 00:41:20,440
Speaker 2: and makes his opening statement. It makes a ton of

745
00:41:20,480 --> 00:41:24,680
Speaker 2: wild remarks about Jock Mossler defaming his character. He was

746
00:41:24,719 --> 00:41:28,120
Speaker 2: recruiting young boys out of nightclubs under the name of

747
00:41:28,200 --> 00:41:31,200
Speaker 2: doctor Wilson. He was just making things up. But you've

748
00:41:31,239 --> 00:41:33,600
Speaker 2: got this jury of people that they don't know that

749
00:41:33,680 --> 00:41:37,359
Speaker 2: it's not true. The prosecution made a key mistake in

750
00:41:37,360 --> 00:41:41,200
Speaker 2: my opinion, in that they decided to try both Candace

751
00:41:41,320 --> 00:41:45,320
Speaker 2: and Mel together. They still had, even without the confession,

752
00:41:45,360 --> 00:41:49,360
Speaker 2: a lot of evidence against Mel his fingerprints, there was

753
00:41:49,440 --> 00:41:51,880
Speaker 2: blood in this white Chevy that he was driving to

754
00:41:51,920 --> 00:41:55,280
Speaker 2: the airport. When they picked him up in River Oaks.

755
00:41:55,440 --> 00:41:57,520
Speaker 2: They found blood on the clothes that he had worn

756
00:41:57,600 --> 00:42:01,719
Speaker 2: to Miami. He was guilty, red handed, even without a confession.

757
00:42:01,880 --> 00:42:05,080
Speaker 3: But they didn't have anything against Cantas. What one thing

758
00:42:05,120 --> 00:42:05,800
Speaker 3: did They have.

759
00:42:06,120 --> 00:42:09,080
Speaker 2: Nothing really other than they knew that she was in

760
00:42:09,080 --> 00:42:11,759
Speaker 2: cahoots with him. Now she had created an alibi for

761
00:42:11,800 --> 00:42:14,799
Speaker 2: herself on the night of the murder at a hospital.

762
00:42:15,320 --> 00:42:19,080
Speaker 2: She was always complaining of migraine headaches for four nights

763
00:42:19,080 --> 00:42:21,319
Speaker 2: in a row. Leading up to the murder, she went

764
00:42:21,360 --> 00:42:24,760
Speaker 2: to the emergency room of a hospital there in Miami,

765
00:42:24,960 --> 00:42:27,240
Speaker 2: and then on the night of the murder, after buying

766
00:42:27,280 --> 00:42:30,800
Speaker 2: these stamps with the children, she went to the same

767
00:42:30,840 --> 00:42:34,280
Speaker 2: hospital and she stayed there until four in the morning,

768
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:37,760
Speaker 2: well after the murder had occurred. But she kept getting

769
00:42:37,760 --> 00:42:40,760
Speaker 2: phone calls all night long from somebody, and they assumed

770
00:42:40,760 --> 00:42:43,320
Speaker 2: it was mel giving her an up to date report

771
00:42:43,360 --> 00:42:45,399
Speaker 2: on where he stood in the murder. But they had

772
00:42:45,480 --> 00:42:48,440
Speaker 2: nothing on her that was tangible to convict her with.

773
00:42:48,800 --> 00:42:51,640
Speaker 2: So what they decided to do was they started sainting

774
00:42:51,719 --> 00:42:54,760
Speaker 2: the jails and the they found a bunch of people

775
00:42:54,800 --> 00:42:58,600
Speaker 2: that would testify that Candace had approached them to be

776
00:42:58,760 --> 00:43:02,400
Speaker 2: the hit man to kill Jock Mossler, which sounded like

777
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:05,920
Speaker 2: a believable story until he started putting these characters on

778
00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:10,799
Speaker 2: the stand. One guy was an habitual heroin attic. He

779
00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:14,879
Speaker 2: called the authorities himself and said, I know Candace Master,

780
00:43:15,040 --> 00:43:16,880
Speaker 2: and I met with her before I came to prison.

781
00:43:16,920 --> 00:43:20,239
Speaker 2: This last time, she offered me money to kill Jock.

782
00:43:20,600 --> 00:43:22,399
Speaker 2: And then there were a couple of other people, one

783
00:43:22,400 --> 00:43:25,440
Speaker 2: who had worked on the mast ranch in Galveston, but

784
00:43:25,560 --> 00:43:29,560
Speaker 2: they were all such disreputable characters that you can imagine

785
00:43:29,560 --> 00:43:32,400
Speaker 2: how the defense attorneys made mincemeat of these guys on

786
00:43:32,400 --> 00:43:35,520
Speaker 2: the stand, and it really just made Candace look like

787
00:43:35,600 --> 00:43:38,800
Speaker 2: a sympathetic figure before it was over with that she

788
00:43:39,040 --> 00:43:41,520
Speaker 2: the cops were picking on her and trying to railroad

789
00:43:41,560 --> 00:43:44,520
Speaker 2: her into this conviction, so it was a crucial mistake

790
00:43:44,600 --> 00:43:47,560
Speaker 2: on their part. The trial went on for a full month,

791
00:43:48,120 --> 00:43:52,760
Speaker 2: and Candace, being the diva that she was throughout the trial,

792
00:43:52,880 --> 00:43:56,640
Speaker 2: was always commanding attention in her own way. She fainted

793
00:43:56,680 --> 00:43:58,600
Speaker 2: a couple of times, had to be carried out of

794
00:43:58,640 --> 00:44:02,719
Speaker 2: the courtroom, almost threw up one time, and all of

795
00:44:02,760 --> 00:44:05,399
Speaker 2: these things happened, of course when there was testimony being

796
00:44:05,440 --> 00:44:10,000
Speaker 2: given that was unfavorable to her. You could read her

797
00:44:10,040 --> 00:44:12,880
Speaker 2: like a book. But the gallery of the trial was

798
00:44:12,920 --> 00:44:15,919
Speaker 2: always filled with a lot of old women who would

799
00:44:15,920 --> 00:44:18,239
Speaker 2: stand in line for two or three hours if they

800
00:44:18,239 --> 00:44:20,560
Speaker 2: had to, to get a seat in the courtroom each day,

801
00:44:20,840 --> 00:44:23,919
Speaker 2: and they were her groupies. They would applaud her when

802
00:44:23,960 --> 00:44:26,719
Speaker 2: she walked in, and they would compliment her on the

803
00:44:26,760 --> 00:44:29,920
Speaker 2: way that she was dressed and the diamonds that she

804
00:44:30,120 --> 00:44:32,759
Speaker 2: was wearing, and she played it to the hilt. But

805
00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:35,719
Speaker 2: the trial goes on. When they get to the final arguments,

806
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:38,440
Speaker 2: everybody in the world knows that Candace is not going

807
00:44:38,480 --> 00:44:39,200
Speaker 2: to be convicted.

808
00:44:39,239 --> 00:44:42,880
Speaker 3: Here the surprise was that neither was mel and neither

809
00:44:42,920 --> 00:44:43,879
Speaker 3: takes the stand right.

810
00:44:44,160 --> 00:44:46,440
Speaker 2: No, of course they wouldn't testify. There was always this

811
00:44:46,600 --> 00:44:49,600
Speaker 2: jockey and going on between the attorneys representing the two.

812
00:44:49,920 --> 00:44:53,120
Speaker 2: They each had their own defense team, and they didn't

813
00:44:53,200 --> 00:44:56,240
Speaker 2: like each other. Candace's attorney was a fellow from Houston

814
00:44:56,360 --> 00:44:59,640
Speaker 2: named Clyde Woodie, who went on to be quite famous

815
00:44:59,719 --> 00:45:03,160
Speaker 2: later himself. Woody and Percy Foreman did not like each other.

816
00:45:03,200 --> 00:45:05,640
Speaker 2: And so you had these guys all sitting at the

817
00:45:05,680 --> 00:45:09,200
Speaker 2: same defense table in the courtroom, and they would see

818
00:45:09,280 --> 00:45:12,040
Speaker 2: that each other and they would try to out grandstand

819
00:45:12,080 --> 00:45:14,319
Speaker 2: one another and make the other one look silly if

820
00:45:14,320 --> 00:45:17,600
Speaker 2: they could. It was not conducive to a great defense,

821
00:45:17,760 --> 00:45:21,720
Speaker 2: but nonetheless, at worked they were both acquitted, and Candace,

822
00:45:21,840 --> 00:45:25,359
Speaker 2: being glory the attention hog that she was. She called

823
00:45:25,400 --> 00:45:28,399
Speaker 2: a press conference immediately after that at the hotel where

824
00:45:28,440 --> 00:45:31,640
Speaker 2: she had been staying. I failed to mention too, this

825
00:45:31,760 --> 00:45:35,439
Speaker 2: was a nationally covered media trial. It was the OJ

826
00:45:35,560 --> 00:45:39,440
Speaker 2: Simpson trial in its own way, before satellite dishes. But

827
00:45:39,719 --> 00:45:42,960
Speaker 2: she calls this press conference. She has her attorneys there,

828
00:45:43,040 --> 00:45:46,600
Speaker 2: she has all of her children standing behind her. Mail

829
00:45:46,680 --> 00:45:49,720
Speaker 2: powers are seated next to her. The reporters are calling

830
00:45:49,760 --> 00:45:52,120
Speaker 2: out for them to kiss each other. She didn't know

831
00:45:52,120 --> 00:45:55,680
Speaker 2: when to leave well enough alone. She had to pontificate

832
00:45:55,719 --> 00:45:58,879
Speaker 2: about how this was all of miscarriage of justice and

833
00:45:58,960 --> 00:46:01,600
Speaker 2: she was just so for her poor children that she

834
00:46:01,719 --> 00:46:03,319
Speaker 2: was going to be able to go home with them.

835
00:46:03,760 --> 00:46:07,160
Speaker 3: Wow, oh man, And so does she get everything? Does

836
00:46:07,200 --> 00:46:09,320
Speaker 3: she get all of the money because they're not divorced?

837
00:46:09,440 --> 00:46:12,000
Speaker 3: Oh yes, oh my gosh, all of it? And what

838
00:46:12,000 --> 00:46:13,719
Speaker 3: do you think the tag was on that? How much

839
00:46:13,719 --> 00:46:14,840
Speaker 3: money are we talking about?

840
00:46:15,400 --> 00:46:18,920
Speaker 2: Well, in its day it was probably about ten million dollars,

841
00:46:19,239 --> 00:46:22,520
Speaker 2: which today who knows? It was a lot of money.

842
00:46:22,560 --> 00:46:24,799
Speaker 2: And again, growing up in Houston, I used to see

843
00:46:24,920 --> 00:46:27,680
Speaker 2: things that she would do with her money. She would

844
00:46:27,680 --> 00:46:30,360
Speaker 2: take billboards out on the freeways in Houston when the

845
00:46:30,440 --> 00:46:33,920
Speaker 2: Rodeo would come to town with a big photograph of Candice

846
00:46:33,960 --> 00:46:38,120
Speaker 2: wearing a cowboy hat, all these expensive outfits and welcoming

847
00:46:38,160 --> 00:46:41,160
Speaker 2: to people to the rodeo, Welcome to Houston. She was

848
00:46:41,200 --> 00:46:43,840
Speaker 2: not popular with anybody that she served on any of

849
00:46:43,880 --> 00:46:46,680
Speaker 2: those committees with but she was bound to get attention.

850
00:46:47,440 --> 00:46:49,680
Speaker 2: The rest of her life was really sad. She and

851
00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:51,759
Speaker 2: Mail did stay together after all of.

852
00:46:51,680 --> 00:46:55,840
Speaker 3: This, Oh my gosh, seriously really yeah, for about.

853
00:46:55,880 --> 00:46:58,799
Speaker 2: Two or three years. He's living in the mansion there

854
00:46:58,800 --> 00:47:01,879
Speaker 2: on Willowick Road and River Oaks with her. The thing

855
00:47:01,880 --> 00:47:04,799
Speaker 2: that always found me, I found so disgusting was that

856
00:47:04,840 --> 00:47:07,880
Speaker 2: she had these young children. They're living in the house

857
00:47:07,960 --> 00:47:10,839
Speaker 2: with all this going on. Eventually she sent them all

858
00:47:10,840 --> 00:47:13,719
Speaker 2: to school in Switzerland so that two of them could

859
00:47:13,760 --> 00:47:17,080
Speaker 2: have the mention to themselves. She and Mail broke up.

860
00:47:17,680 --> 00:47:20,040
Speaker 2: She claimed that he beat her up one night he

861
00:47:20,120 --> 00:47:22,480
Speaker 2: went to Mexico was arrested when he tried to come

862
00:47:22,480 --> 00:47:25,080
Speaker 2: back into the country because there was a warrant for

863
00:47:25,120 --> 00:47:27,920
Speaker 2: his arrest. But then she dropped the charges when she

864
00:47:28,000 --> 00:47:30,279
Speaker 2: realized that they were both going to have to testify.

865
00:47:30,880 --> 00:47:33,560
Speaker 2: She was going to have to testify against him. She

866
00:47:33,560 --> 00:47:35,520
Speaker 2: didn't like where that was going, with the kinds of

867
00:47:35,680 --> 00:47:39,000
Speaker 2: questions that she might be asked about their life together

868
00:47:39,280 --> 00:47:43,719
Speaker 2: for all these years, so they broke up. She remarried

869
00:47:43,920 --> 00:47:46,760
Speaker 2: another man. He didn't come to a happy ending either.

870
00:47:47,480 --> 00:47:51,000
Speaker 2: He ran some nightclubs. He was about twenty years younger

871
00:47:51,040 --> 00:47:53,400
Speaker 2: than she was. They had an argument one night, he

872
00:47:53,440 --> 00:47:56,560
Speaker 2: went out and got drunk. He came back and she

873
00:47:56,600 --> 00:47:59,120
Speaker 2: had locked him out of the house. So he went

874
00:47:59,120 --> 00:48:00,960
Speaker 2: to the back of the house and was trying to

875
00:48:01,000 --> 00:48:04,279
Speaker 2: climb up to the third floor, where the bedroom was.

876
00:48:04,600 --> 00:48:07,560
Speaker 2: He almost made it, but there was a slate roof

877
00:48:08,320 --> 00:48:11,400
Speaker 2: and he started to slide. He lost his grip. He

878
00:48:11,560 --> 00:48:15,840
Speaker 2: fell three stories and landed head first on a metal table.

879
00:48:16,360 --> 00:48:19,799
Speaker 2: It did not kill him, but it's severely It did

880
00:48:19,840 --> 00:48:24,240
Speaker 2: severe brain damage, and so she eventually divorced him because

881
00:48:24,400 --> 00:48:26,880
Speaker 2: they couldn't live together. He was always in rehab for

882
00:48:26,920 --> 00:48:29,640
Speaker 2: the rest of his life, and she herself died in

883
00:48:29,719 --> 00:48:32,080
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven of a drug.

884
00:48:31,880 --> 00:48:35,359
Speaker 1: Overdose intentional or accidental.

885
00:48:35,800 --> 00:48:38,480
Speaker 2: No, I believe it was accidental. By this point, she

886
00:48:38,640 --> 00:48:42,520
Speaker 2: was doctor shopping like nobody's business. She had a lot

887
00:48:42,560 --> 00:48:46,000
Speaker 2: of doctors in Houston and another one in Miami. She

888
00:48:46,040 --> 00:48:50,759
Speaker 2: would always buy them expensive things like Jaguar xkes and

889
00:48:50,880 --> 00:48:54,320
Speaker 2: things that just for them prescribing the medicine that she wanted.

890
00:48:54,520 --> 00:48:56,920
Speaker 2: She ended up dying in a hotel room at the

891
00:48:56,960 --> 00:49:01,279
Speaker 2: Fountain Blue in Miami. She fell as sleep rolled over

892
00:49:01,320 --> 00:49:05,280
Speaker 2: onto a pillow, and she was so heavily sedated self

893
00:49:05,320 --> 00:49:09,680
Speaker 2: sedated that she could not breathe and wasn't alert enough

894
00:49:10,160 --> 00:49:12,600
Speaker 2: to roll over and start breathing again, and so she

895
00:49:12,760 --> 00:49:14,959
Speaker 2: died at the age of fifty seven.

896
00:49:15,400 --> 00:49:17,840
Speaker 1: Ron there's nobody good in this story.

897
00:49:17,960 --> 00:49:21,280
Speaker 3: I mean, the cops, I know you in the book

898
00:49:21,320 --> 00:49:24,560
Speaker 3: have redeemable characters, but just looking on from the outside,

899
00:49:24,680 --> 00:49:28,319
Speaker 3: the cops are bumbling. The prosecutor is not making good decisions.

900
00:49:28,719 --> 00:49:32,120
Speaker 3: You have mel, you have Candace, and then you have

901
00:49:32,440 --> 00:49:36,800
Speaker 3: quite frankly, not a very sympathetic victim in Jock Muscler.

902
00:49:37,280 --> 00:49:40,759
Speaker 3: So where do you go in a book to make

903
00:49:40,840 --> 00:49:42,680
Speaker 3: people want to get to the end of the book?

904
00:49:42,960 --> 00:49:46,080
Speaker 3: What is that thing that you have to get across

905
00:49:46,120 --> 00:49:48,040
Speaker 3: about why this story is important?

906
00:49:48,320 --> 00:49:50,440
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's important. It was important to me

907
00:49:50,600 --> 00:49:53,160
Speaker 2: personally because, as I said earlier, that was the story

908
00:49:53,160 --> 00:49:56,960
Speaker 2: that really taught me how to follow criminal trials and

909
00:49:57,040 --> 00:50:00,680
Speaker 2: just how they're really a microcosm of the human condition

910
00:50:00,880 --> 00:50:04,040
Speaker 2: of you have a lot of bad people in the world.

911
00:50:04,080 --> 00:50:07,320
Speaker 2: Obviously you have some people that are vindicated at trial,

912
00:50:07,360 --> 00:50:10,480
Speaker 2: but that wasn't the case here. Obviously. I think it

913
00:50:10,560 --> 00:50:12,759
Speaker 2: was just a matter of I wanted to tell this

914
00:50:12,880 --> 00:50:17,040
Speaker 2: story simply because it had a lot of historical context.

915
00:50:17,120 --> 00:50:20,160
Speaker 2: I tried throughout the book to tie it into some

916
00:50:20,640 --> 00:50:23,200
Speaker 2: topical events that were going on at the same time.

917
00:50:23,560 --> 00:50:25,560
Speaker 2: A lot of people would have no idea if they've

918
00:50:25,600 --> 00:50:28,440
Speaker 2: never heard of Candace musterl just how well known she

919
00:50:28,760 --> 00:50:32,400
Speaker 2: was because of this murder trial. There was one newspaper

920
00:50:32,520 --> 00:50:36,040
Speaker 2: editor who made the remark that only Candice Master could

921
00:50:36,080 --> 00:50:39,480
Speaker 2: knock Jaqueline Kennedy off the front page, and it was

922
00:50:39,520 --> 00:50:42,840
Speaker 2: true as despicable it was. There were also newspapers in

923
00:50:42,880 --> 00:50:46,080
Speaker 2: the country that midway through the trial began to stop

924
00:50:46,160 --> 00:50:49,759
Speaker 2: covering it because of the salacious material that readers were

925
00:50:49,800 --> 00:50:53,640
Speaker 2: complaining that I don't want to read about these ancestual relationships,

926
00:50:54,600 --> 00:50:56,880
Speaker 2: but I can tell you, living in Houston, boy, it

927
00:50:56,920 --> 00:50:58,680
Speaker 2: was on the news every night and be laid it.

928
00:50:58,680 --> 00:51:02,239
Speaker 3: Up well in this I'm ment I feel like I'm

929
00:51:02,239 --> 00:51:05,080
Speaker 3: really throwing out a wild pitch here, But tell me

930
00:51:05,880 --> 00:51:08,759
Speaker 3: that Rita and the other kids got her money and

931
00:51:08,840 --> 00:51:11,839
Speaker 3: somebody did something good with all of this money that

932
00:51:12,200 --> 00:51:15,640
Speaker 3: just seemed to cause so much trauma in so many

933
00:51:15,640 --> 00:51:16,520
Speaker 3: family lives.

934
00:51:16,920 --> 00:51:21,879
Speaker 2: Yes, that did happen, especially with Rita. After Candace died,

935
00:51:21,920 --> 00:51:25,600
Speaker 2: there was a probate hearing in which it was finally

936
00:51:25,840 --> 00:51:29,960
Speaker 2: confirmed that she was the child of Winthrop Rockefeller. Candace

937
00:51:29,960 --> 00:51:33,160
Speaker 2: had a falling out with three of the four children

938
00:51:33,239 --> 00:51:36,319
Speaker 2: that had been adopted. Her own son died within a

939
00:51:36,360 --> 00:51:39,520
Speaker 2: few months after her death, so that really left Rita

940
00:51:39,560 --> 00:51:43,720
Speaker 2: and these the adopted children. She disinherited two of the boys.

941
00:51:44,080 --> 00:51:47,560
Speaker 2: The daughter, Martha, moved away and really wanted nothing much

942
00:51:47,600 --> 00:51:51,840
Speaker 2: to do with Candace. But Rita was put in place

943
00:51:51,920 --> 00:51:56,000
Speaker 2: to run the banks. She was, by all accounts, a

944
00:51:56,080 --> 00:52:01,560
Speaker 2: very good business person, and she currently livesically on Kivas

945
00:52:01,640 --> 00:52:05,000
Speaker 2: Gain and one of the high rise towers there, and

946
00:52:05,520 --> 00:52:09,520
Speaker 2: she and her husband are very generous with a lot

947
00:52:09,560 --> 00:52:12,759
Speaker 2: of the charities, particularly those having to do with the

948
00:52:12,800 --> 00:52:16,080
Speaker 2: Red Cross and heart disease. So I can say that, yes,

949
00:52:16,680 --> 00:52:26,400
Speaker 2: the money was eventually used for some good things.

950
00:52:30,719 --> 00:52:33,600
Speaker 3: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the

951
00:52:33,640 --> 00:52:36,520
Speaker 3: audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That

952
00:52:36,640 --> 00:52:39,879
Speaker 3: Is Wicked, and American Sherlock, and Don't Forget. There are

953
00:52:39,960 --> 00:52:43,719
Speaker 3: twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast, Tenfold More

954
00:52:43,760 --> 00:52:47,400
Speaker 3: Wicked right here in this podcast feed. Scroll back and

955
00:52:47,440 --> 00:52:50,200
Speaker 3: give them a listen if you haven't already. This has

956
00:52:50,239 --> 00:52:54,759
Speaker 3: been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alexis M. Morosi.

957
00:52:55,120 --> 00:52:59,560
Speaker 3: Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed

958
00:52:59,560 --> 00:53:03,440
Speaker 3: by On Bradley. Curtis heath is our composer. Artwork by

959
00:53:03,640 --> 00:53:08,040
Speaker 3: Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgarriff and

960
00:53:08,120 --> 00:53:12,480
Speaker 3: Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram at tenfold More

961
00:53:12,520 --> 00:53:15,840
Speaker 3: Wicked and on Facebook at Wicked Words Pod.