Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: They made fun of her at every turn. She was
Speaker 2: very unhappy about that. That kind of led to her
Speaker 2: rebelling in a way later on that Okay, if you're
Speaker 2: not going to accept me, I'm going to scandalize you
Speaker 2: women at every turn if I can.
Speaker 3: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 3: in Austin, Texas.
Speaker 1: I'm also the.
Speaker 3: Co host of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right,
Speaker 3: and throughout my career, research for my many audio and
Speaker 3: book projects has taken me around the world. On Wicked Words,
Speaker 3: I sit down with the people I've met along the way,
Speaker 3: amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, and podcasters who have investigated and
Speaker 3: reported on notorious true crime cases. This is about the
Speaker 3: choice as writers make both good and bad, and it's
Speaker 3: a deep dive into the unpublished details behind their stories.
Speaker 3: Thirty years before the oj Simpson trial, a different murder
Speaker 3: case captured the attention of the country. When a successful
Speaker 3: Florida businessman is brutally killed in the nineteen sixties, His
Speaker 3: wife and her nephew become suspects, and their disturbing relationship
Speaker 3: makes Headlines author Ron Smith tells me about his book
Speaker 3: No One Is Perfect. Let's talk about this time period.
Speaker 3: We are in nineteen sixty four Florida. Where in Florida
Speaker 3: and what is it like for the haves and the
Speaker 3: have nots in the state.
Speaker 2: The story occurs primarily in the Miami area, although the
Speaker 2: murder occurred on Key Biscayne Island. But in nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 2: it was I kind of joke and call at the
Speaker 2: age before Technicolor really took over our lives. It was
Speaker 2: really still kind of a black and white era. And
Speaker 2: I say that having lived through it. You know, the
Speaker 2: sexual mores were very different, fashion was very different. Everything
Speaker 2: was still pretty square in those days. One of the
Speaker 2: benchmarks I use is nineteen sixty four. Just a few
Speaker 2: months before this murder occurred, the Beatles appeared on the
Speaker 2: Ed Sullivan Show. And if you know anything about the
Speaker 2: launching of a new era in everything, fashion, music, the
Speaker 2: whole bit, sixty four was really kind of a launch
Speaker 2: pad for a lot of those things to happen. But
Speaker 2: that being said, in Florida, in the South, things were
Speaker 2: still very tense in a lot of ways. You had
Speaker 2: people that were very intolerant of any kind of change
Speaker 2: at the time. If a kid came to school with
Speaker 2: any kind of hair over his ear, even he was
Speaker 2: sent home to get a haircut. Sixty four was kind
Speaker 2: of from that point on, everything became a whole lot
Speaker 2: more fun in the world for a kid who grew
Speaker 2: up in those.
Speaker 3: So for the family at the center of this the
Speaker 3: Massler family, tell me the dynamics between them.
Speaker 2: Both of the characters in this story were really rags
Speaker 2: to richest type stories. Jacques Mosler was a Romanian immigrant,
Speaker 2: a Jewish immigrant that was born in eighteen ninety six.
Speaker 2: He came to the United States in nineteen hundred and
Speaker 2: so it was one of those stories whereas it so
Speaker 2: often is the case, the second generation of the immigrants
Speaker 2: family prospered and really caught on with American society much
Speaker 2: more easily than their parents did. So there were three
Speaker 2: children in this family. At some point the parents divorced.
Speaker 2: The father moved to New York City, the mother and
Speaker 2: the three children moved to Chicago, which is kind of
Speaker 2: an important point in what Jack mostra became in the
Speaker 2: rest of his life to support his family. He had
Speaker 2: no education, He was a newsboy on the street in
Speaker 2: downtown Chicago. And if you know anything about downtown Chicago
Speaker 2: in the nineteen tens, it was controlled by organized crime.
Speaker 2: There was a fellow named Big Jim Colossimo, which he
Speaker 2: preceded al Capone in running the rackets in Chicago. And
Speaker 2: so Jack Mosler was this young boy that was selling
Speaker 2: newspapers on the corner in downtown Chicago. These newstands also
Speaker 2: sold numbers, the lottery tickets. It was the numbers racket.
Speaker 2: And so even though he was a young boy, he
Speaker 2: had direct contact with organized crime. And one thing about
Speaker 2: Jack Mosler was that he had a real innate sense
Speaker 2: of mathematics. As he grew older, the Mob recognized that
Speaker 2: he had these talents. Now none of this, of course,
Speaker 2: is documented because it is the Mob, of course, but
Speaker 2: by the time he was seventeen years old, he was
Speaker 2: living in New Orleans working as a finance manager for
Speaker 2: automobile dealerships, which tells you he must have been pretty
Speaker 2: talented to be sent down there at such a young
Speaker 2: age and to be given that kind of responsibility. At
Speaker 2: some point he disassociated himself from the Mob, and I'm
Speaker 2: not sure how that really happened. But he became pretty
Speaker 2: much a legitimate businessman, although his business was a little
Speaker 2: bit shady. He started his own loan company. He started
Speaker 2: a company called Mossler Acceptance Corporation. And for people that
Speaker 2: aren't familiar with the term acceptance means, it means it's
Speaker 2: a loan company that will accept the risk of borrowers
Speaker 2: who aren't really good credit risk, but they will own
Speaker 2: you the money at a very high interest rate. And
Speaker 2: so he began to make a lot of money just
Speaker 2: on the margins and the interest that he was charging.
Speaker 2: He was also quite an entrepreneur in that when cars
Speaker 2: came to be repossessed, he actually started one of the
Speaker 2: first rental auto companies in the United States using his
Speaker 2: repossessed vehicles.
Speaker 3: Oh that's so smart. Is that the origin of rental cars?
Speaker 2: Essentially he was one of the first. Wow. I don't
Speaker 2: know if all the others began with repossessed vehicles or not,
Speaker 2: but yeah, he was just a very clever man. And
Speaker 2: so over the next thirty years or so his business grew.
Speaker 2: He opened offices in Dallas and in Houston. Of course
Speaker 2: he was in New Orleans, and then he opened another
Speaker 2: one in Miami. And what was happening was car dealders
Speaker 2: were sending him customers that their own legitimate lenders would
Speaker 2: not handle, and the Master Acceptance Corporation would take these
Speaker 2: people on as borrowers. So he just became very, very
Speaker 2: wealthy over a period of thirty years or so.
Speaker 3: What happened if you Ron Smith could not pay back
Speaker 3: the loan to Mossler's company? Is this like a very
Speaker 3: violent ending situation or what were the repercussions.
Speaker 2: It could be if you just relinquished the vehicle and yeah,
Speaker 2: nothing bad would happen, but a lot of people protested,
Speaker 2: as you can imagine. And to your point, Mossler actually
Speaker 2: always had bodyguards around him. There were guys with guns,
Speaker 2: and those guys with guns got him in trouble a
Speaker 2: time or two in his life, nothing that he couldn't
Speaker 2: get over. But yes, he always had people around him
Speaker 2: to protect him from borrowers who were very disgruntled and
Speaker 2: unhappy with him.
Speaker 3: So all of this is setting him up to sound
Speaker 3: like somebody who is a strong man, a complete jerk,
Speaker 3: maybe not a good husband, not potentially a good father.
Speaker 1: Is that true? What was his personal life like?
Speaker 2: Well, his first marriage, which occurred in New Orleans. In
Speaker 2: nineteen seventeen, he married a local girl. They had four children,
Speaker 2: they were all daughters, and by all indications, he was
Speaker 2: a good father. He was a pretty good man. He
Speaker 2: was active in society there New Orleans. He was involved
Speaker 2: in a lot of the civic organizations. It wasn't until
Speaker 2: he met Candace Massler that he probably became that jerk
Speaker 2: that you described. I guess I would leave the story
Speaker 2: in about for Jock Mossler. In nineteen forty seven, he
Speaker 2: was still happily married. He was still a pillar of society,
Speaker 2: if you will, there in New Orleans. And then, of
Speaker 2: course he met this woman named Candace Massler.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about First of all, I guess about
Speaker 3: the way that they meet, And I'm assuming is it
Speaker 3: start under scandalous circumstances?
Speaker 1: Is he's still married?
Speaker 2: Yes, I guess I probably need to back up and
Speaker 2: tell you the story of Candace Sure. She was born
Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty in a little town in Georgia called Buchanan.
Speaker 2: It was on the far west side of the state
Speaker 2: in Georgia, almost Alabama. I believe her father was a sharecropper.
Speaker 2: She always said that he was a farmer. But there
Speaker 2: wasn't any record of him ever being a very successful farmer.
Speaker 2: She was one of nine children, which wasn't unusual on
Speaker 2: farming families in those days. They need as many hands
Speaker 2: in the field as they could get, so she was
Speaker 2: kind of in the middle of that group of nine children.
Speaker 2: When she was twelve years old, her mother died in childbirth,
Speaker 2: and so that left her father to be responsible for
Speaker 2: six or seven minor children. Her father kind of fell
Speaker 2: apart with the death of his wife. He just basically
Speaker 2: abandoned the family and moved away to another town, which
Speaker 2: left the six minor children in the care of her grandparents.
Speaker 2: One of her grandparents, her grandfather was a Mormon bishop
Speaker 2: if you can imagine in rural Georgia back in those days. Well,
Speaker 2: the kids lived with them, and Candace was She was
Speaker 2: always fantasizing, and I guess if you put yourself in
Speaker 2: her position, with all the terrible things that had happened
Speaker 2: in her life. She was a big fan of movie
Speaker 2: magazines and fashion magazines. She used to tell the people
Speaker 2: in her family that one day I'm going to be famous,
Speaker 2: and one day I'm going to design these clothes for
Speaker 2: these movie stars. And so she always had big dreams
Speaker 2: even as a kid. Well, by the time she was
Speaker 2: seventeen years old, the depression was going on and her
Speaker 2: grandfather encouraged her to get married, and so he found
Speaker 2: a man for her to marry, a man named Norman Johnson,
Speaker 2: who is twelve years older than her. You can imagine
Speaker 2: she was not very happy being in this arranged marriage.
Speaker 2: The man that she married had a job in Aniston, Alabama,
Speaker 2: which was not far away from Buchanan where she grew up,
Speaker 2: but they were just dirt poor. He worked in a
Speaker 2: concrete plant, didn't make any money to speak of, and
Speaker 2: she had her child. Her first child in nineteen forty
Speaker 2: was a son that was named Norman Johnson Junior. But again,
Speaker 2: this restlessness was always in her spirit. She always wanted
Speaker 2: to get out of this loveless marriage, and so in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty one, when World War Two began, she signed
Speaker 2: up to be a hostess with the US SO the
Speaker 2: organization that would host the soldiers. There was a man
Speaker 2: who was one of the most well known people in
Speaker 2: America at the time. He was one of the Rockefellers.
Speaker 2: His name was Win Rockefeller and he was a soldier
Speaker 2: stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, which was only about eighty
Speaker 2: miles away from where she lived. Well, as fate would
Speaker 2: have it, she was a hostess at a party that
Speaker 2: Win Rockefeller and a bunch of soldiers from Fort Benning
Speaker 2: were bussed up to attend. Some kind of love connection
Speaker 2: was made at this USO dance. Within about a year,
Speaker 2: she was pregnant with Rockefeller's child.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, that's not where I thought you were
Speaker 3: heading at all. No.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So Rockefeller was aware of this, but he was sent
Speaker 2: off to war in the Pacific.
Speaker 1: Was he married, Sorry to interrupt you. Was he married? Okay,
Speaker 1: he was not married at the time.
Speaker 2: No, but he was extremely well known. He was like
Speaker 2: an early version of JFK. Junior, you might say. When
Speaker 2: he joined the army, all of the magazines in the
Speaker 2: country were always taking photographs of him to be on
Speaker 2: the cover of him as a soldier, because it was
Speaker 2: great publicity for the war effort. But by the time
Speaker 2: the child was born, it was a little girl named Rita.
Speaker 2: He was off in the Pacific theater and Candace was
Speaker 2: left alone there with her husband Norman. Now, at some
Speaker 2: point Norman realized that this other little blonde child Rita
Speaker 2: was not his. I don't know when exactly that occurred,
Speaker 2: but by the time the war was over, her marriage
Speaker 2: to Norman Johnson was over, and you asked if he
Speaker 2: was married. He still was not married when the war ended,
Speaker 2: and so Candace was actually in New York City for
Speaker 2: a while where he lived after the war, and they
Speaker 2: continued to see each other. But in nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 2: when Rockefeller married another woman who looked remarkably like Candace,
Speaker 2: he had a thing, I guess for pretty blonde girls.
Speaker 3: I'm assuming the woman that he married is a little
Speaker 3: bit more quote unquote appropriate for someone in his station
Speaker 3: in life.
Speaker 2: She had been an actress, she was well known as well,
Speaker 2: and so the next thing you know, Candace is banished
Speaker 2: from New York and she ends up living in New Orleans.
Speaker 1: Is he supporting the little girl?
Speaker 2: I assume so. But if you put it back in
Speaker 2: the nineteen forties, and this was a man who had
Speaker 2: political aspirations. He later went on to be the governor
Speaker 2: of Arkansas, of all places, and of course his brother,
Speaker 2: Nelson Rockefeller, was also big in politics. So it was
Speaker 2: a political family. He had aims on that kind of
Speaker 2: career and in those days. If it had come out
Speaker 2: that he had a love child, it would have ruined
Speaker 2: those political dreams of his. So that's why Candace was
Speaker 2: banished down to the South, and he was married. And
Speaker 2: to answer your question, certainly, I assumed that he supported
Speaker 2: the child in a very comfortable fashion, because there's no
Speaker 2: signs that Candace was living in poverty in any way,
Speaker 2: but she was in New Orleans. Candace was always big
Speaker 2: about inventing things that had happened in her life that
Speaker 2: never really happened. She used to if you remember, I said,
Speaker 2: as a child, she had dreams of being a fashion designer. Well,
Speaker 2: when she moved back down south, she told all of
Speaker 2: her family and her friends that she had been a
Speaker 2: fashion designer for one of the largest firms in New York.
Speaker 2: She mentioned them by name, and of course somebody had
Speaker 2: done the homework. She never worked for these people. She
Speaker 2: claimed that she was the chief designer for them. Of course,
Speaker 2: at this time she's in her mid twenties and had
Speaker 2: no formal training as a fashion designer. So if this
Speaker 2: had happened today and you had Google, it would be
Speaker 2: very easy to disprove the things that she was putting
Speaker 2: out there for people but in the what is she
Speaker 2: could probably get away with some of it.
Speaker 3: How did that benefit her do you think, I mean,
Speaker 3: did it open any doors for her? Once she was
Speaker 3: in New Orleans, She's a single mother of two kids
Speaker 3: from two different men. After the war, She's not in
Speaker 3: a good situation. I know you said it looked like
Speaker 3: she wasn't you know, in poverty or anything, likely from Rockefeller.
Speaker 3: But was it just for her own self esteem self
Speaker 3: comfort that she lied to people about this or did
Speaker 3: it go anywhere?
Speaker 2: I think it was exactly to build herself up and
Speaker 2: make herself. You know again, if you look at her background,
Speaker 2: the heart scrabble conditions that she grew up in, I
Speaker 2: think it was a good way for her to make
Speaker 2: herself feel better and to as you'll see as the
Speaker 2: rest of her life, she wanted to impress other people
Speaker 2: and make them not even know where she had come from.
Speaker 2: Now I can tie the two together. She and Jock Moussel.
Speaker 2: How they met is anybody's guests. She came up with
Speaker 2: this real met cute kind of story later on that
Speaker 2: she was at the zoo one day And Orleans with
Speaker 2: her children and this man came by with a camera
Speaker 2: and who was taking their pictures, and she went over
Speaker 2: to ask him, you know, what are you doing and
Speaker 2: he said, oh, I've just got this new camera and
Speaker 2: I'm really interested in taking pictures of children and moving objects.
Speaker 2: And you know, it sounds pretty contrived, but that was
Speaker 2: the story she stuck with for the rest of her
Speaker 2: life about how they met. Of course, he was married,
Speaker 2: so don't know the breakdown exactly of the marriage that
Speaker 2: he had with his first wife, but in nineteen forty
Speaker 2: nine he married. He divorced his first wife, and two
Speaker 2: weeks later married Candace.
Speaker 3: When you describe these two people together, is this like
Speaker 3: a explosive attraction, hot and cold, volatile relationship or is
Speaker 3: this sort of two people who have lived as opportunists
Speaker 3: for most of their lives and they found each other.
Speaker 2: I think that's a good way to put it. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 2: when they met again, Candace was in her late twenties
Speaker 2: at this point. I believe she was twenty seven twenty eight.
Speaker 2: He was this very conservative businessman, he'd been married to
Speaker 2: the same woman for almost forty years, his children were
Speaker 2: mostly grown, so I think it was just an attraction
Speaker 2: of here's this really hot chick that comes by and
Speaker 2: she acts interested in him for obvious reasons, because he's very,
Speaker 2: very wealthy. They married in nineteen forty nine. They vacationed
Speaker 2: in Europe for a couple of months. When they came
Speaker 2: back to the States. I think Jacques or Jack as
Speaker 2: his friends called him, didn't feel comfortable living in New
Speaker 2: Orleans anymore with his ex wife and these four children
Speaker 2: of his there, and that's when they moved to Houston,
Speaker 2: he and Kansas, and that kind of set the wheels
Speaker 2: in motion for the rest of his life. For sure.
Speaker 3: What is the It sounds like he is a you know,
Speaker 3: like of Jack of all trade the little bit when
Speaker 3: he moves to Houston, what is his main income source?
Speaker 3: What is that enterprise that he has? And I'm assuming
Speaker 3: he sets up in some incredibly wealthy area of Houston
Speaker 3: and buys a lavish house and all that.
Speaker 2: You're right. He did keep in mind, though, that he
Speaker 2: was Jewish. When they moved to Houston. It was nineteen
Speaker 2: forty nine, and even though he was extremely wealthy, he
Speaker 2: had these loan companies spread out across the country. And
Speaker 2: another thing that he had done after the war, he
Speaker 2: had gotten into the mobile home business because it was
Speaker 2: such a housing explosion that there was a housing shortage
Speaker 2: for these veterans coming home from the war. So he
Speaker 2: not only was selling mobile homes, but he was requiring
Speaker 2: those people to ensure the mobile homes through his insurance company.
Speaker 2: So he was just a very manipulative although nothing unethical
Speaker 2: about that, but he was just a real smart guy
Speaker 2: about plugging in one business into the other. So when
Speaker 2: they moved to Houston, they had to live in a neighborhood.
Speaker 2: It was the home to the predominantly wealthy Jewish people
Speaker 2: in Houston, and there was a pretty good sized Jewish
Speaker 2: community in the city at that time. They lived in
Speaker 2: a home there for about two years. It was a
Speaker 2: neighborhood called Riverside Terrace. It was a nice home. I've
Speaker 2: driven by. It's still there. But Candace the entire time,
Speaker 2: being kind of the social climber that she was, was
Speaker 2: pressuring him to find a home in river Oaks. Now,
Speaker 2: if you're familiar with Houston, river Oaks is the oldest, wealthiest,
Speaker 2: old money neighborhood in the city. In nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 2: she got her way. He bought a home on Willowick
Speaker 2: Road in Houston. It was this big, beautiful red brick
Speaker 2: stately Georgian style mansion that probably had to appeal to
Speaker 2: her memories of growing up in Georgia, with all these
Speaker 2: big homes that she could never afford to have gone into,
Speaker 2: let alone lived in. So by that time she had
Speaker 2: gotten her wish. They were encanced in river Oaks. Been
Speaker 2: a dream of hers to live in a neighborhood like that,
Speaker 2: And of course her two children were still living with
Speaker 2: them at the time, and a remarkable thing happened. One
Speaker 2: of the points I wanted to make was that together
Speaker 2: they were this powerhouse couple, and even though they were
Speaker 2: living in river Oaks, they were still a great deal
Speaker 2: of social prejudice against Jews and river Oaks. Even it
Speaker 2: was quite a feat for them to be living there,
Speaker 2: but they weren't exactly welcomed with open arms. So Kendace
Speaker 2: really tried her best to assimilate into river Oaks cafe society,
Speaker 2: if you will. She was firmly rejected by the wealthy
Speaker 2: women there, partly because of who she was married to,
Speaker 2: partly because of just who she was. She was this
Speaker 2: beautiful woman, but she was extremely You could tell her
Speaker 2: old poor Georgia roots came through loud and clear. Every
Speaker 2: time she talked, they made fun of her at every turn.
Speaker 2: She was very unhappy about that, and that kind of
Speaker 2: led to her rebelling in a way later on that Okay,
Speaker 2: if you're not going to accept me, I'm going to
Speaker 2: scandalize you women, And at every turn if I came.
Speaker 2: She did that in ways of buying her way onto
Speaker 2: the boards of some civic organizations, the opera, the ballet.
Speaker 2: Of course, these women were on some of those same
Speaker 2: boards with her, But her husband just had so much
Speaker 2: money that he could put her on those boards with
Speaker 2: these huge donations that he was making.
Speaker 3: It sounds like Candice and Shack are both social climbers
Speaker 3: or theirs and an idea of accumulating more wealth and
Speaker 3: being more showy, and especially because they both come from
Speaker 3: such humble beginnings. What is their relationship like in the fifties.
Speaker 3: We don't have this inciting incident until sixty four, So
Speaker 3: what is happening right in the fifties. Do they have
Speaker 3: a good relationship.
Speaker 2: I think they tolerated each other, It's the way that
Speaker 2: I would put it. He was still a very conservative
Speaker 2: business man in his soul. He didn't really participate in
Speaker 2: any of these social climbing efforts that she made. He
Speaker 2: had no desire to be part of the rodeo committee
Speaker 2: or things like that. He would use his money to
Speaker 2: put her on some of those boards and things, but
Speaker 2: he just wanted to keep a low profile and he
Speaker 2: truly did operate under the radar for the most part,
Speaker 2: whereas she she wanted to scandalize these people as much
Speaker 2: as they could if they weren't going to accept her,
Speaker 2: and the ways in which she did that were to
Speaker 2: go to these nightclubs that they would never go to.
Speaker 2: She loved rhythm and blues music. She would go to
Speaker 2: clubs in Houston that these River Oaks women would never
Speaker 2: set foot in. She loved to go to clubs because
Speaker 2: her husband wouldn't go with her. She would take young
Speaker 2: men with her. And whether there was any sexual misconduct
Speaker 2: on her part at that time, it's hard to say,
Speaker 2: but I think it's a safe assumption that, yeah, she
Speaker 2: was beginning to just feel her oats socially and sexually
Speaker 2: and do what she wanted to do, and she had
Speaker 2: a husband that pretty much just didn't care, so she
Speaker 2: was doing all these things. She was by the mid fifties,
Speaker 2: she was definitely having affairs. One of those affairs was
Speaker 2: with Chuck Berry.
Speaker 1: Wait, seriously, Chuck Berry, the.
Speaker 2: Singer, seriously whow You can imagine how that went over
Speaker 2: in River Oaks. And she did not hide any of this.
Speaker 2: She threw parties at her home, had this big, huge
Speaker 2: lawn in the back of the mansion. She was always
Speaker 2: throwing lawn parties and one of them had Chuck Berry
Speaker 2: providing the music at one point during the night. And
Speaker 2: this was all recording. It a photograph that made the
Speaker 2: newspapers in Houston. She's up on the balcony of her
Speaker 2: master bedroom suite on the third floor of this house,
Speaker 2: with Chuck Berry standing next to her, wearing no shirt.
Speaker 2: Today that might sound pretty tame, but in nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: nine or whenever it was, you can imagine how that
Speaker 2: just sent the gossip people over the edge.
Speaker 1: That's incredible.
Speaker 3: And I don't know why I can't tear away from
Speaker 3: Chuck Berry because it just seems so out of the blue,
Speaker 3: just like well, I have the same look of shock
Speaker 3: that I had when you talked about when Rockefeller. So
Speaker 3: I know that her Husbandques must have been at least
Speaker 3: irritated that she's going out. I know it doesn't seem
Speaker 3: like he cares, but that she's going out and doing
Speaker 3: stuff with other men. Did this just send him through
Speaker 3: the roof that she is clearly in some sort of
Speaker 3: a compromising position in the newspapers with a black singer
Speaker 3: who is very famous.
Speaker 2: There's no record of how he reacted, although one thing
Speaker 2: that is on the record, he began to spend a
Speaker 2: lot more time at his other offices in other cities.
Speaker 2: By this time, he owned a couple of banks in Chicago,
Speaker 2: he owned a couple of banks in Miami. He still
Speaker 2: retained ownership of his loan companies. I think he was
Speaker 2: probably mortified by some of her behavior because he was
Speaker 2: this very conservative guy. But there's no indication that he
Speaker 2: did anything to rein her in.
Speaker 1: Why would he stay married to her.
Speaker 3: They don't have children together, right, because there's his four
Speaker 3: kids in New Orleans and her two kids from other men.
Speaker 3: So what is keeping him from divorcing her, keeping all
Speaker 3: of his money and you know, then marrying some other
Speaker 3: young twenty something year old when now he's in his
Speaker 3: sixties at this point.
Speaker 2: I think it's called a prenup agreement, is what kept
Speaker 2: them together.
Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't think that prenups were that old.
Speaker 1: Okay, so in the forties.
Speaker 2: They married in nineteen forty nine, and there was a
Speaker 2: prenup agreement. Wow. The prenup agreement called for if she
Speaker 2: were to divorce him, she would receive a flat fee
Speaker 2: of two hundred thousand dollars. If he were to divorce her,
Speaker 2: she would receive one half of his estate. Well, he's
Speaker 2: a very wealthy guy giving way half of his estate
Speaker 2: to this woman that he probably was becoming very distasteful
Speaker 2: with at that point. He just wasn't willing to do it.
Speaker 1: That's an awful agreement.
Speaker 3: I mean, does that That seem like a terrible agreement
Speaker 3: on his part.
Speaker 2: Sometimes very smart guys do very dumb things.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's get to the other player in this story
Speaker 3: before we talk about what happens to Jacques.
Speaker 2: Okay. In nineteen sixty two, Candace had a nephew that
Speaker 2: was the son of her sister Elizabeth. He was a
Speaker 2: young man named Melvin Lane Powers, and he was only
Speaker 2: nineteen years old when he got into trouble with the law.
Speaker 2: He had fallen in with this band of people that
Speaker 2: were scamming people going door to door selling magazine subscriptions,
Speaker 2: and to make a long story short, he was arrested
Speaker 2: up in Pontiac, Michigan in nineteen sixty one. They called
Speaker 2: him a grifter in the newspaper accounts of it. So
Speaker 2: he spent six months in the county jail. And Elizabeth,
Speaker 2: his mother, called Candace, her sister, and said, Hey, he's
Speaker 2: going to get just right back into trouble if he
Speaker 2: stays up there, He's going to fall back into these
Speaker 2: scammers that he's been in cahoots with. So do you
Speaker 2: think Jack could find him a joke, maybe repossessing cars
Speaker 2: or something down in Houston, to get him away from them.
Speaker 2: And so Candace said, well, of course we can, so
Speaker 2: that she without asking Jack, she has him come down
Speaker 2: and move into the mansion in Houston. He's nineteen and
Speaker 2: by this point she's about forty forty two years old.
Speaker 2: As time goes by, Jock is very reluctant to give
Speaker 2: this guy a job because he's got no real education,
Speaker 2: he has no real marketable skills, and he's also got
Speaker 2: a pretty boorish, bullying type of a personality. He's a
Speaker 2: big dude, he's about six foot four, and he's very
Speaker 2: intimidating at some point, Candace and her nephew begin an
Speaker 2: incestuous affair. One of the most icky parts of this
Speaker 2: I told you earlier. When this story happened in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty four, I was a kid. I didn't really understand
Speaker 2: what they were talking about on the news accounts when
Speaker 2: they talked about incest between this couple. But she was
Speaker 2: very open about it, much as she had been with
Speaker 2: a Chuck Berry story and other things. They were going
Speaker 2: out to restaurants and clubs together, they took vacations together.
Speaker 2: She was in the society columns all the time, and
Speaker 2: it was often mentioning mel as her escort, so it
Speaker 2: wasn't a great deal of effort on her part to
Speaker 2: hide the fact that they were going out together. Now,
Speaker 2: nobody really dreamed that they were sleeping together. But it
Speaker 2: took a while, but Jacques finally woke up to this
Speaker 2: and the gossip got to him. Even the household staff
Speaker 2: told him what was going on, because every time he
Speaker 2: was out of town, the two of them were spending
Speaker 2: time in the same bedroom in the mansion. So even
Speaker 2: the household staff got disgusted and finally went to Jock
Speaker 2: and told him what was going on. At that point,
Speaker 2: he evicted Mel from the mansion. Mel threatened him on
Speaker 2: the way out the door, saying, essentially, one day, you
Speaker 2: better always be looking over your shoulder because I'm going
Speaker 2: to be coming for you one day. And so you
Speaker 2: would think that that might have ended the affair, but
Speaker 2: it did not. Candace rented an apartment for him just
Speaker 2: a few blocks away from where she was living, and
Speaker 2: they continued to see each other, and by this time
Speaker 2: it was pretty common knowledge through at least the River
Speaker 2: Oak society that you know what was going on. Candace
Speaker 2: always tried to pass mel Off as Jacques's protege, that
Speaker 2: he was teaching him the business, and that was really
Speaker 2: not true at all.
Speaker 3: Just to make sure everybody's clear, this is not Jacques's
Speaker 3: nephew and her nephew by marriage. This is her sister's son.
Speaker 3: So they are related, they're blood relatives. Does the sister
Speaker 3: know at this point that her sister is sleeping with
Speaker 3: her son.
Speaker 2: I don't think so, although it became known later, and
Speaker 2: it was it was very strange that even her family,
Speaker 2: her siblings, were well aware of what was going on,
Speaker 2: and they seemed to be okay with it.
Speaker 3: So they are together and so tell me what the
Speaker 3: next step is. Because we all know now that Jacka's
Speaker 3: going to end up dead sometime soon. What changes to
Speaker 3: make that happen? Is it Mel making this threat?
Speaker 2: Not really, I don't think he was necessarily afraid of
Speaker 2: Mel at that point, but he was just I think
Speaker 2: he just felt so humiliated that he just felt like,
Speaker 2: I've got to get out of town. So he moved
Speaker 2: to Miami and leased this apartment on Keep Us Gain.
Speaker 2: It was a very modest apartment, but he was running
Speaker 2: his businesses from Florida and he would only come to
Speaker 2: Houston on occasion. Now, he had made the mistake earlier
Speaker 2: on in their marriage of putting canvas on the board
Speaker 2: of his businesses, so they had to bump into each
Speaker 2: other when he came to town for board meetings. But
Speaker 2: I can't imagine how uncomfortable that might have been for
Speaker 2: everybody else in the room. But for the most part,
Speaker 2: he remained in Florida and they had adopted four children.
Speaker 2: Back in the fifties, there was this really tragic story
Speaker 2: in Chicago where Jock had a bank, and just to
Speaker 2: cut to the chase on how that happened, these four
Speaker 2: children came from a family where the father was mentally stable,
Speaker 2: killed their mother, killed one of their siblings, and he
Speaker 2: was committed to a mental institution, leaving these four children
Speaker 2: as wards of the state. So Jacques was in town
Speaker 2: read the story and he called Candace and he said, hey,
Speaker 2: let's adopt these kids. So by the time the story
Speaker 2: moves to Florida, there are these four children that are
Speaker 2: part of the family.
Speaker 1: Now, okay, well what ends up happening next?
Speaker 3: Now they're separated because she's in Texas, right and he's
Speaker 3: in Key Biscayne, Florida.
Speaker 1: When does this all happen? And what part does Mel
Speaker 1: play in this?
Speaker 2: Mel was in Houston by this time. Candace had set
Speaker 2: him up in a mobile homes lot where he sold
Speaker 2: mobile homes, and by all accounts, he was doing pretty
Speaker 2: well with it. He wasn't nearly the wealthy as the
Speaker 2: masters were, but he was doing well for a kid
Speaker 2: from Alabama. So the affairs continuing, Jacques is considering getting
Speaker 2: a divorce despite this onerous prenuptial agreement. He had a
Speaker 2: horse attorney who was counseling him and said, one thing
Speaker 2: you need to start doing is keeping a diary of
Speaker 2: all the conversations that you have with her. The lawyer
Speaker 2: had led him to believe that because of this incestuous
Speaker 2: behavior that they might be able to avoid the prenuptial
Speaker 2: agreement in a divorce court. But so Jock is keeping
Speaker 2: this diary, and after one particularly heated discussion on the
Speaker 2: phone with Candace, he writes into the diary, and it
Speaker 2: was the last entry that he ever made. I guess
Speaker 2: I'm going to have to kill Candace and Mail before
Speaker 2: they kill me. In May of nineteen sixty four, Candace
Speaker 2: comes to visit in Miami with the four younger children
Speaker 2: and her older daughter, Rita, who is the Rockefeller child.
Speaker 2: They're visiting him in his apartment. The apartment is too
Speaker 2: small to hold all these people. It's only two bedrooms,
Speaker 2: so they had taken a hotel room nearby for the
Speaker 2: children to stay in, but they were using his apartment
Speaker 2: there as a base of operations. It was near the beach,
Speaker 2: and so one night May thirty first, the last day
Speaker 2: of the month, she and the children make this game
Speaker 2: out of it's time to pay the bills. The first
Speaker 2: of the month is tomorrow, So as she tells the story,
Speaker 2: one kid would address the envelope, the other would put
Speaker 2: a stamp on the envelope, the other would put the
Speaker 2: return address on it, pass it to her where she
Speaker 2: was writing out checks. Well, when they finished this exercise,
Speaker 2: she realized that she didn't have any stamps. As hokey
Speaker 2: as this may sound, she says, it's midnight, and she
Speaker 2: says to Jaque, I'm going to take the children and
Speaker 2: go buy some stamps and get these bills in the mailbox.
Speaker 2: He says, fine. So this all occurs about midnight. He
Speaker 2: goes out and sits out on the balcony for a
Speaker 2: while by himself, and about twelve thirty he sees a
Speaker 2: car headlights coming down the street. It's a car that
Speaker 2: he recognizes because it's one of the cars from his
Speaker 2: repossession lot in Miami, and he just assumes it's Candae
Speaker 2: coming back without the children, probably going to spend the
Speaker 2: night in the second bedroom there at the apartment. Well
Speaker 2: it's not canvas. He goes on and goes to bed
Speaker 2: because he wants to avoid her. But he's in his
Speaker 2: bedroom getting dressed or undressed actually, and he hears his
Speaker 2: dog barking in at the door. But the dog quiets
Speaker 2: down almost immediately and at the door opens and he
Speaker 2: hears someone talking to the dog, and it's obviously someone
Speaker 2: that the dog recognizes, because the dog settles down. Well,
Speaker 2: he opens his bedroom door and he recognizes this big,
Speaker 2: large person in the darkness that we can assume was
Speaker 2: Melbourn Lane Powers. Jacques is completely undressed at this point.
Speaker 2: He's wearing only an undershirt and he panics and he's wondering,
Speaker 2: I need to get away from this guy. And he
Speaker 2: makes a bolt for the sliding glass balcony door of
Speaker 2: the apartment and he's hoping, I guess that he can
Speaker 2: get to that door and call out for someone outside
Speaker 2: to come help him, or maybe someone in the other
Speaker 2: apartments below him will come and help. Well, he doesn't
Speaker 2: make it to the door. He's bashed over the head
Speaker 2: with what was later believed to be a coat bottle,
Speaker 2: and then he is stabbed thirty nine times.
Speaker 1: H thirty nine times.
Speaker 2: Wow. But this is where the story gets very odd.
Speaker 2: After the murder, the murderer wraps the body up in
Speaker 2: a blanket and leaves him there. And there are witnesses
Speaker 2: in the apartment I guess you could call them ear
Speaker 2: witnesses that hear this big set of footprints going down
Speaker 2: the outdoor stairway, and at four o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 2: Candace comes back to the apartment with the children in
Speaker 2: tow and they see the light on underneath the doorway
Speaker 2: of the apartment and she says, oh, I guess daddy's
Speaker 2: up late reading tonight. They open the door, they find
Speaker 2: the body, and she sends the children downstairs, and for
Speaker 2: thirty minutes, they go off the air. They don't call
Speaker 2: the police, they don't call an ambulance. No one knows
Speaker 2: what's going on in the apartment for thirty minutes. And
Speaker 2: the first phone call she makes is not to the
Speaker 2: police or an ambulance. She calls Jock's personal physician. Now
Speaker 2: he's dead. I don't know what good a doctor is
Speaker 2: going to do at that point, but the physician tells her, Candice,
Speaker 2: you need to hang up, you need to call the police,
Speaker 2: which they do. Finally, when the police arrive, her story
Speaker 2: is so full of holes they know immediately that she's
Speaker 2: lying to them. She claims that this was a robbery
Speaker 2: gone bad. I had left several hundred dollars out on
Speaker 2: the kitchen counter. It's not there anymore. I had some
Speaker 2: very expensive jewelry in the bedroom it's not there anymore.
Speaker 2: When they begin to press her on like even a
Speaker 2: description of what the jewelry looked like, she kind of
Speaker 2: blanked out them and couldn't even give a description of it.
Speaker 2: So then she begins to tell them that, you know,
Speaker 2: it was a robbery, and the cops say, no, this
Speaker 2: a robber is not going to stab somebody thirty nine times.
Speaker 2: We believe that whoever killed him must have known him,
Speaker 2: And so then they began to delve into did he
Speaker 2: have any enemies? Did you know of anybody that was
Speaker 2: looking to harm him, and she said, oh, he was
Speaker 2: in the repossession business. There are all kinds of people
Speaker 2: that would have liked to have killed him, which they
Speaker 2: thought was a very odd answer. But she never, of course,
Speaker 2: mentions mail powers. And when they discount the burglary story,
Speaker 2: then she tries to float an entirely new theory, which is,
Speaker 2: I think my husband is now a homo sexual. He
Speaker 2: had gone to Europe, and when he came back from
Speaker 2: Europe he was acting very strange. Just the other night
Speaker 2: I answered the phone and it was somebody from Texas.
Speaker 2: It was one of his Texas boyfriends. The cops didn't
Speaker 2: really buy that story. Either. But I have to mention
Speaker 2: here there was an awful lot of corruption in the
Speaker 2: Miami Dade Sheriff's Department in those days. The lead detective
Speaker 2: on the Moss case turned out to be somebody who
Speaker 2: was in the pocket of the gangster that ran all
Speaker 2: of the gambling enterprises in Miami. He wasn't the only
Speaker 2: one on the force that had connections to organized crime.
Speaker 2: It was just kind of, yeah, you do your thing
Speaker 2: outside of work. That being said, they were very good detectives.
Speaker 2: They were very thorough. They wanted to catch the killer.
Speaker 2: Mail Powers made it pretty easy for them. In the apartment,
Speaker 2: the killer had left bloody handprints by the kitchen sink.
Speaker 2: They immediately matched those handprints to mel because he had
Speaker 2: a prior record from his arrest in Michigan. Within about
Speaker 2: seven hours they had that identified. Then the car that
Speaker 2: he was driving, this white Chevy, was found parked at
Speaker 2: the airport garage, about fifty feet away from a police
Speaker 2: substation that was inside the airport. Then they find inside
Speaker 2: the white Chevy a parking stub that showed that the
Speaker 2: car had entered the garage at five point thirty nine
Speaker 2: in the morning. So the detectives who are pretty sharp.
Speaker 2: One of them goes into the airlines, and I believe
Speaker 2: it was National Airline in those days, had daily flights
Speaker 2: to Houston from Miami. He goes to the manager of
Speaker 2: the airline desk and asks, can I look at your
Speaker 2: manifest for the last couple of days, particularly this morning,
Speaker 2: and he finds the name m. Mossler Powers as a
Speaker 2: passenger on the flight leaving at seven point thirty in
Speaker 2: the morning after the murder going back to Houston. He
Speaker 2: digs a little deeper and he finds that the same
Speaker 2: person flew from Houston to Miami the night of the
Speaker 2: murder and arrived about three hours before the murder occurred.
Speaker 2: With a little more digging, they find a bartender that
Speaker 2: identified mail Powers as the person who had come into
Speaker 2: his bar killing time, apparently before he went to the
Speaker 2: apartment to kill Jock. So within four days, Mail Powers
Speaker 2: is arrested. Unfortunately for the prosecutors, they did not read
Speaker 2: them any miranda rights. Oh no, they did not even
Speaker 2: have a valid arrest warrant yet. Because all of this
Speaker 2: was occurring on the fourth of July weekend, the courthouse
Speaker 2: was closed. The prosecutors in Miami couldn't even find a
Speaker 2: judge that could issue his arrest warrant. And then, to
Speaker 2: top it all off, the coupdo gra was that they
Speaker 2: finally got a confession out of mel In which he
Speaker 2: admitted killing Mossler. They re tape recorded that confession, but
Speaker 2: again they did not read him as rights, so before
Speaker 2: the trial even begins, the confession is thrown out.
Speaker 3: I mean, now, is he implicating Candace in this and
Speaker 3: admitting to an affair with his aunt not to.
Speaker 2: The police know. He said that Candace is simply his
Speaker 2: business partner. He said that he flew into Miami all
Speaker 2: the time to talk to Jacques about business things, which
Speaker 2: was not true, but they didn't know that at that point.
Speaker 2: But one thing he specifically refused to do in his
Speaker 2: confession was implicate Candace. He says, I know you want
Speaker 2: me to tell on somebody else, and I'm not going
Speaker 2: to do it. So when they get to trial, Candace
Speaker 2: had hired to represent Mail Powers, one of the most
Speaker 2: famous trial lawyers in the United States in those days,
Speaker 2: a man named Percy Foreman Percy. The saying in Houston
Speaker 2: was that if you hired Percy, it was an admission
Speaker 2: of guilt, but he would get you off, and that
Speaker 2: was typically the case. So when they get to trial,
Speaker 2: Percy had no affection for the truth. He gets up
Speaker 2: and makes his opening statement. It makes a ton of
Speaker 2: wild remarks about Jock Mossler defaming his character. He was
Speaker 2: recruiting young boys out of nightclubs under the name of
Speaker 2: doctor Wilson. He was just making things up. But you've
Speaker 2: got this jury of people that they don't know that
Speaker 2: it's not true. The prosecution made a key mistake in
Speaker 2: my opinion, in that they decided to try both Candace
Speaker 2: and Mel together. They still had, even without the confession,
Speaker 2: a lot of evidence against Mel his fingerprints, there was
Speaker 2: blood in this white Chevy that he was driving to
Speaker 2: the airport. When they picked him up in River Oaks.
Speaker 2: They found blood on the clothes that he had worn
Speaker 2: to Miami. He was guilty, red handed, even without a confession.
Speaker 3: But they didn't have anything against Cantas. What one thing
Speaker 3: did They have.
Speaker 2: Nothing really other than they knew that she was in
Speaker 2: cahoots with him. Now she had created an alibi for
Speaker 2: herself on the night of the murder at a hospital.
Speaker 2: She was always complaining of migraine headaches for four nights
Speaker 2: in a row. Leading up to the murder, she went
Speaker 2: to the emergency room of a hospital there in Miami,
Speaker 2: and then on the night of the murder, after buying
Speaker 2: these stamps with the children, she went to the same
Speaker 2: hospital and she stayed there until four in the morning,
Speaker 2: well after the murder had occurred. But she kept getting
Speaker 2: phone calls all night long from somebody, and they assumed
Speaker 2: it was mel giving her an up to date report
Speaker 2: on where he stood in the murder. But they had
Speaker 2: nothing on her that was tangible to convict her with.
Speaker 2: So what they decided to do was they started sainting
Speaker 2: the jails and the they found a bunch of people
Speaker 2: that would testify that Candace had approached them to be
Speaker 2: the hit man to kill Jock Mossler, which sounded like
Speaker 2: a believable story until he started putting these characters on
Speaker 2: the stand. One guy was an habitual heroin attic. He
Speaker 2: called the authorities himself and said, I know Candace Master,
Speaker 2: and I met with her before I came to prison.
Speaker 2: This last time, she offered me money to kill Jock.
Speaker 2: And then there were a couple of other people, one
Speaker 2: who had worked on the mast ranch in Galveston, but
Speaker 2: they were all such disreputable characters that you can imagine
Speaker 2: how the defense attorneys made mincemeat of these guys on
Speaker 2: the stand, and it really just made Candace look like
Speaker 2: a sympathetic figure before it was over with that she
Speaker 2: the cops were picking on her and trying to railroad
Speaker 2: her into this conviction, so it was a crucial mistake
Speaker 2: on their part. The trial went on for a full month,
Speaker 2: and Candace, being the diva that she was throughout the trial,
Speaker 2: was always commanding attention in her own way. She fainted
Speaker 2: a couple of times, had to be carried out of
Speaker 2: the courtroom, almost threw up one time, and all of
Speaker 2: these things happened, of course when there was testimony being
Speaker 2: given that was unfavorable to her. You could read her
Speaker 2: like a book. But the gallery of the trial was
Speaker 2: always filled with a lot of old women who would
Speaker 2: stand in line for two or three hours if they
Speaker 2: had to, to get a seat in the courtroom each day,
Speaker 2: and they were her groupies. They would applaud her when
Speaker 2: she walked in, and they would compliment her on the
Speaker 2: way that she was dressed and the diamonds that she
Speaker 2: was wearing, and she played it to the hilt. But
Speaker 2: the trial goes on. When they get to the final arguments,
Speaker 2: everybody in the world knows that Candace is not going
Speaker 2: to be convicted.
Speaker 3: Here the surprise was that neither was mel and neither
Speaker 3: takes the stand right.
Speaker 2: No, of course they wouldn't testify. There was always this
Speaker 2: jockey and going on between the attorneys representing the two.
Speaker 2: They each had their own defense team, and they didn't
Speaker 2: like each other. Candace's attorney was a fellow from Houston
Speaker 2: named Clyde Woodie, who went on to be quite famous
Speaker 2: later himself. Woody and Percy Foreman did not like each other.
Speaker 2: And so you had these guys all sitting at the
Speaker 2: same defense table in the courtroom, and they would see
Speaker 2: that each other and they would try to out grandstand
Speaker 2: one another and make the other one look silly if
Speaker 2: they could. It was not conducive to a great defense,
Speaker 2: but nonetheless, at worked they were both acquitted, and Candace,
Speaker 2: being glory the attention hog that she was. She called
Speaker 2: a press conference immediately after that at the hotel where
Speaker 2: she had been staying. I failed to mention too, this
Speaker 2: was a nationally covered media trial. It was the OJ
Speaker 2: Simpson trial in its own way, before satellite dishes. But
Speaker 2: she calls this press conference. She has her attorneys there,
Speaker 2: she has all of her children standing behind her. Mail
Speaker 2: powers are seated next to her. The reporters are calling
Speaker 2: out for them to kiss each other. She didn't know
Speaker 2: when to leave well enough alone. She had to pontificate
Speaker 2: about how this was all of miscarriage of justice and
Speaker 2: she was just so for her poor children that she
Speaker 2: was going to be able to go home with them.
Speaker 3: Wow, oh man, And so does she get everything? Does
Speaker 3: she get all of the money because they're not divorced?
Speaker 3: Oh yes, oh my gosh, all of it? And what
Speaker 3: do you think the tag was on that? How much
Speaker 3: money are we talking about?
Speaker 2: Well, in its day it was probably about ten million dollars,
Speaker 2: which today who knows? It was a lot of money.
Speaker 2: And again, growing up in Houston, I used to see
Speaker 2: things that she would do with her money. She would
Speaker 2: take billboards out on the freeways in Houston when the
Speaker 2: Rodeo would come to town with a big photograph of Candice
Speaker 2: wearing a cowboy hat, all these expensive outfits and welcoming
Speaker 2: to people to the rodeo, Welcome to Houston. She was
Speaker 2: not popular with anybody that she served on any of
Speaker 2: those committees with but she was bound to get attention.
Speaker 2: The rest of her life was really sad. She and
Speaker 2: Mail did stay together after all of.
Speaker 3: This, Oh my gosh, seriously really yeah, for about.
Speaker 2: Two or three years. He's living in the mansion there
Speaker 2: on Willowick Road and River Oaks with her. The thing
Speaker 2: that always found me, I found so disgusting was that
Speaker 2: she had these young children. They're living in the house
Speaker 2: with all this going on. Eventually she sent them all
Speaker 2: to school in Switzerland so that two of them could
Speaker 2: have the mention to themselves. She and Mail broke up.
Speaker 2: She claimed that he beat her up one night he
Speaker 2: went to Mexico was arrested when he tried to come
Speaker 2: back into the country because there was a warrant for
Speaker 2: his arrest. But then she dropped the charges when she
Speaker 2: realized that they were both going to have to testify.
Speaker 2: She was going to have to testify against him. She
Speaker 2: didn't like where that was going, with the kinds of
Speaker 2: questions that she might be asked about their life together
Speaker 2: for all these years, so they broke up. She remarried
Speaker 2: another man. He didn't come to a happy ending either.
Speaker 2: He ran some nightclubs. He was about twenty years younger
Speaker 2: than she was. They had an argument one night, he
Speaker 2: went out and got drunk. He came back and she
Speaker 2: had locked him out of the house. So he went
Speaker 2: to the back of the house and was trying to
Speaker 2: climb up to the third floor, where the bedroom was.
Speaker 2: He almost made it, but there was a slate roof
Speaker 2: and he started to slide. He lost his grip. He
Speaker 2: fell three stories and landed head first on a metal table.
Speaker 2: It did not kill him, but it's severely It did
Speaker 2: severe brain damage, and so she eventually divorced him because
Speaker 2: they couldn't live together. He was always in rehab for
Speaker 2: the rest of his life, and she herself died in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven of a drug.
Speaker 1: Overdose intentional or accidental.
Speaker 2: No, I believe it was accidental. By this point, she
Speaker 2: was doctor shopping like nobody's business. She had a lot
Speaker 2: of doctors in Houston and another one in Miami. She
Speaker 2: would always buy them expensive things like Jaguar xkes and
Speaker 2: things that just for them prescribing the medicine that she wanted.
Speaker 2: She ended up dying in a hotel room at the
Speaker 2: Fountain Blue in Miami. She fell as sleep rolled over
Speaker 2: onto a pillow, and she was so heavily sedated self
Speaker 2: sedated that she could not breathe and wasn't alert enough
Speaker 2: to roll over and start breathing again, and so she
Speaker 2: died at the age of fifty seven.
Speaker 1: Ron there's nobody good in this story.
Speaker 3: I mean, the cops, I know you in the book
Speaker 3: have redeemable characters, but just looking on from the outside,
Speaker 3: the cops are bumbling. The prosecutor is not making good decisions.
Speaker 3: You have mel, you have Candace, and then you have
Speaker 3: quite frankly, not a very sympathetic victim in Jock Muscler.
Speaker 3: So where do you go in a book to make
Speaker 3: people want to get to the end of the book?
Speaker 3: What is that thing that you have to get across
Speaker 3: about why this story is important?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's important. It was important to me
Speaker 2: personally because, as I said earlier, that was the story
Speaker 2: that really taught me how to follow criminal trials and
Speaker 2: just how they're really a microcosm of the human condition
Speaker 2: of you have a lot of bad people in the world.
Speaker 2: Obviously you have some people that are vindicated at trial,
Speaker 2: but that wasn't the case here. Obviously. I think it
Speaker 2: was just a matter of I wanted to tell this
Speaker 2: story simply because it had a lot of historical context.
Speaker 2: I tried throughout the book to tie it into some
Speaker 2: topical events that were going on at the same time.
Speaker 2: A lot of people would have no idea if they've
Speaker 2: never heard of Candace musterl just how well known she
Speaker 2: was because of this murder trial. There was one newspaper
Speaker 2: editor who made the remark that only Candice Master could
Speaker 2: knock Jaqueline Kennedy off the front page, and it was
Speaker 2: true as despicable it was. There were also newspapers in
Speaker 2: the country that midway through the trial began to stop
Speaker 2: covering it because of the salacious material that readers were
Speaker 2: complaining that I don't want to read about these ancestual relationships,
Speaker 2: but I can tell you, living in Houston, boy, it
Speaker 2: was on the news every night and be laid it.
Speaker 3: Up well in this I'm ment I feel like I'm
Speaker 3: really throwing out a wild pitch here, But tell me
Speaker 3: that Rita and the other kids got her money and
Speaker 3: somebody did something good with all of this money that
Speaker 3: just seemed to cause so much trauma in so many
Speaker 3: family lives.
Speaker 2: Yes, that did happen, especially with Rita. After Candace died,
Speaker 2: there was a probate hearing in which it was finally
Speaker 2: confirmed that she was the child of Winthrop Rockefeller. Candace
Speaker 2: had a falling out with three of the four children
Speaker 2: that had been adopted. Her own son died within a
Speaker 2: few months after her death, so that really left Rita
Speaker 2: and these the adopted children. She disinherited two of the boys.
Speaker 2: The daughter, Martha, moved away and really wanted nothing much
Speaker 2: to do with Candace. But Rita was put in place
Speaker 2: to run the banks. She was, by all accounts, a
Speaker 2: very good business person, and she currently livesically on Kivas
Speaker 2: Gain and one of the high rise towers there, and
Speaker 2: she and her husband are very generous with a lot
Speaker 2: of the charities, particularly those having to do with the
Speaker 2: Red Cross and heart disease. So I can say that, yes,
Speaker 2: the money was eventually used for some good things.
Speaker 3: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
Speaker 3: audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Speaker 3: Is Wicked, and American Sherlock, and Don't Forget. There are
Speaker 3: twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast, Tenfold More
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Speaker 3: been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alexis M. Morosi.
Speaker 3: Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed
Speaker 3: by On Bradley. Curtis heath is our composer. Artwork by
Speaker 3: Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgarriff and
Speaker 3: Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram at tenfold More
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