WEBVTT - Ron Smith: No One is Perfect 0:00:00.640 --> 0:00:05.279 This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised. 0:00:12.280 --> 0:00:14.440 They made fun of her at every turn. She was 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:17.160 very unhappy about that. That kind of led to her 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:20.120 rebelling in a way later on that Okay, if you're 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:22.759 not going to accept me, I'm going to scandalize you 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:24.720 women at every turn if I can. 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:34.599 I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor 0:00:34.680 --> 0:00:35.680 in Austin, Texas. 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:36.639 I'm also the. 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:39.880 Co host of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:43.680 and throughout my career, research for my many audio and 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:47.760 book projects has taken me around the world. On Wicked Words, 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:50.240 I sit down with the people I've met along the way, 0:00:50.720 --> 0:00:55.920 amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, and podcasters who have investigated and 0:00:55.960 --> 0:00:59.600 reported on notorious true crime cases. This is about the 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:03.200 choice as writers make both good and bad, and it's 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:07.160 a deep dive into the unpublished details behind their stories. 0:01:09.160 --> 0:01:12.760 Thirty years before the oj Simpson trial, a different murder 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:16.039 case captured the attention of the country. When a successful 0:01:16.080 --> 0:01:20.440 Florida businessman is brutally killed in the nineteen sixties, His 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:25.160 wife and her nephew become suspects, and their disturbing relationship 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:29.240 makes Headlines author Ron Smith tells me about his book 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:35.080 No One Is Perfect. Let's talk about this time period. 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:39.640 We are in nineteen sixty four Florida. Where in Florida 0:01:39.880 --> 0:01:42.440 and what is it like for the haves and the 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:44.200 have nots in the state. 0:01:44.720 --> 0:01:47.960 The story occurs primarily in the Miami area, although the 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:52.720 murder occurred on Key Biscayne Island. But in nineteen sixty four, 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:55.080 it was I kind of joke and call at the 0:01:55.160 --> 0:01:59.520 age before Technicolor really took over our lives. It was 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:02.880 really still kind of a black and white era. And 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:05.400 I say that having lived through it. You know, the 0:02:05.480 --> 0:02:10.320 sexual mores were very different, fashion was very different. Everything 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:13.400 was still pretty square in those days. One of the 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:17.760 benchmarks I use is nineteen sixty four. Just a few 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:21.440 months before this murder occurred, the Beatles appeared on the 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:24.600 Ed Sullivan Show. And if you know anything about the 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:28.520 launching of a new era in everything, fashion, music, the 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:31.959 whole bit, sixty four was really kind of a launch 0:02:32.000 --> 0:02:34.160 pad for a lot of those things to happen. But 0:02:34.880 --> 0:02:39.079 that being said, in Florida, in the South, things were 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:42.440 still very tense in a lot of ways. You had 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:46.520 people that were very intolerant of any kind of change 0:02:46.560 --> 0:02:48.760 at the time. If a kid came to school with 0:02:48.800 --> 0:02:51.280 any kind of hair over his ear, even he was 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:54.320 sent home to get a haircut. Sixty four was kind 0:02:54.320 --> 0:02:57.320 of from that point on, everything became a whole lot 0:02:57.360 --> 0:02:59.400 more fun in the world for a kid who grew 0:02:59.480 --> 0:03:00.080 up in those. 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:03.840 So for the family at the center of this the 0:03:03.919 --> 0:03:07.160 Massler family, tell me the dynamics between them. 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:10.440 Both of the characters in this story were really rags 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:14.960 to richest type stories. Jacques Mosler was a Romanian immigrant, 0:03:15.360 --> 0:03:19.079 a Jewish immigrant that was born in eighteen ninety six. 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:23.040 He came to the United States in nineteen hundred and 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:25.480 so it was one of those stories whereas it so 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:29.560 often is the case, the second generation of the immigrants 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:34.640 family prospered and really caught on with American society much 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:37.920 more easily than their parents did. So there were three 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:42.560 children in this family. At some point the parents divorced. 0:03:43.320 --> 0:03:46.200 The father moved to New York City, the mother and 0:03:46.280 --> 0:03:49.280 the three children moved to Chicago, which is kind of 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:53.360 an important point in what Jack mostra became in the 0:03:53.360 --> 0:03:56.760 rest of his life to support his family. He had 0:03:56.800 --> 0:04:00.240 no education, He was a newsboy on the street in 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:05.560 downtown Chicago. And if you know anything about downtown Chicago 0:04:05.680 --> 0:04:10.440 in the nineteen tens, it was controlled by organized crime. 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:14.600 There was a fellow named Big Jim Colossimo, which he 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:19.200 preceded al Capone in running the rackets in Chicago. And 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:22.239 so Jack Mosler was this young boy that was selling 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:26.800 newspapers on the corner in downtown Chicago. These newstands also 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:30.880 sold numbers, the lottery tickets. It was the numbers racket. 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:34.039 And so even though he was a young boy, he 0:04:34.120 --> 0:04:38.920 had direct contact with organized crime. And one thing about 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:41.680 Jack Mosler was that he had a real innate sense 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:46.800 of mathematics. As he grew older, the Mob recognized that 0:04:46.880 --> 0:04:49.679 he had these talents. Now none of this, of course, 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:53.279 is documented because it is the Mob, of course, but 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:56.760 by the time he was seventeen years old, he was 0:04:56.800 --> 0:05:00.440 living in New Orleans working as a finance manager for 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:04.400 automobile dealerships, which tells you he must have been pretty 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:06.479 talented to be sent down there at such a young 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:09.880 age and to be given that kind of responsibility. At 0:05:09.920 --> 0:05:13.200 some point he disassociated himself from the Mob, and I'm 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:16.719 not sure how that really happened. But he became pretty 0:05:16.760 --> 0:05:20.880 much a legitimate businessman, although his business was a little 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:25.560 bit shady. He started his own loan company. He started 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:30.159 a company called Mossler Acceptance Corporation. And for people that 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:34.200 aren't familiar with the term acceptance means, it means it's 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:38.120 a loan company that will accept the risk of borrowers 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:41.760 who aren't really good credit risk, but they will own 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:45.160 you the money at a very high interest rate. And 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:47.720 so he began to make a lot of money just 0:05:47.800 --> 0:05:51.000 on the margins and the interest that he was charging. 0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:55.120 He was also quite an entrepreneur in that when cars 0:05:55.160 --> 0:05:58.440 came to be repossessed, he actually started one of the 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:02.599 first rental auto companies in the United States using his 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:03.880 repossessed vehicles. 0:06:04.040 --> 0:06:07.200 Oh that's so smart. Is that the origin of rental cars? 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:10.360 Essentially he was one of the first. Wow. I don't 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:13.160 know if all the others began with repossessed vehicles or not, 0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:17.640 but yeah, he was just a very clever man. And 0:06:17.760 --> 0:06:22.760 so over the next thirty years or so his business grew. 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:26.320 He opened offices in Dallas and in Houston. Of course 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:28.279 he was in New Orleans, and then he opened another 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:31.679 one in Miami. And what was happening was car dealders 0:06:31.760 --> 0:06:36.080 were sending him customers that their own legitimate lenders would 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:40.200 not handle, and the Master Acceptance Corporation would take these 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:43.920 people on as borrowers. So he just became very, very 0:06:43.960 --> 0:06:46.320 wealthy over a period of thirty years or so. 0:06:47.040 --> 0:06:51.240 What happened if you Ron Smith could not pay back 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:55.279 the loan to Mossler's company? Is this like a very 0:06:55.400 --> 0:07:00.680 violent ending situation or what were the repercussions. 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:04.680 It could be if you just relinquished the vehicle and yeah, 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:08.160 nothing bad would happen, but a lot of people protested, 0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:12.680 as you can imagine. And to your point, Mossler actually 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:16.760 always had bodyguards around him. There were guys with guns, 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:19.760 and those guys with guns got him in trouble a 0:07:19.760 --> 0:07:22.240 time or two in his life, nothing that he couldn't 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:25.680 get over. But yes, he always had people around him 0:07:25.720 --> 0:07:29.320 to protect him from borrowers who were very disgruntled and 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:30.320 unhappy with him. 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:34.000 So all of this is setting him up to sound 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:37.880 like somebody who is a strong man, a complete jerk, 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:41.119 maybe not a good husband, not potentially a good father. 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:44.200 Is that true? What was his personal life like? 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:47.720 Well, his first marriage, which occurred in New Orleans. In 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:52.680 nineteen seventeen, he married a local girl. They had four children, 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:55.840 they were all daughters, and by all indications, he was 0:07:55.880 --> 0:07:57.840 a good father. He was a pretty good man. He 0:07:58.000 --> 0:08:02.480 was active in society there New Orleans. He was involved 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:06.280 in a lot of the civic organizations. It wasn't until 0:08:06.320 --> 0:08:09.640 he met Candace Massler that he probably became that jerk 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:12.960 that you described. I guess I would leave the story 0:08:13.000 --> 0:08:16.160 in about for Jock Mossler. In nineteen forty seven, he 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:19.840 was still happily married. He was still a pillar of society, 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:22.200 if you will, there in New Orleans. And then, of 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:24.800 course he met this woman named Candace Massler. 0:08:28.120 --> 0:08:31.000 So let's talk about First of all, I guess about 0:08:31.040 --> 0:08:34.160 the way that they meet, And I'm assuming is it 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:37.080 start under scandalous circumstances? 0:08:37.160 --> 0:08:38.280 Is he's still married? 0:08:38.679 --> 0:08:40.880 Yes, I guess I probably need to back up and 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:44.079 tell you the story of Candace Sure. She was born 0:08:44.200 --> 0:08:48.719 in nineteen twenty in a little town in Georgia called Buchanan. 0:08:48.840 --> 0:08:51.520 It was on the far west side of the state 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:56.959 in Georgia, almost Alabama. I believe her father was a sharecropper. 0:08:58.000 --> 0:09:01.120 She always said that he was a farmer. But there 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:04.319 wasn't any record of him ever being a very successful farmer. 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:07.880 She was one of nine children, which wasn't unusual on 0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:11.120 farming families in those days. They need as many hands 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:13.599 in the field as they could get, so she was 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:15.960 kind of in the middle of that group of nine children. 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:20.040 When she was twelve years old, her mother died in childbirth, 0:09:20.800 --> 0:09:23.439 and so that left her father to be responsible for 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:27.520 six or seven minor children. Her father kind of fell 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:31.520 apart with the death of his wife. He just basically 0:09:31.559 --> 0:09:35.440 abandoned the family and moved away to another town, which 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:39.679 left the six minor children in the care of her grandparents. 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:44.520 One of her grandparents, her grandfather was a Mormon bishop 0:09:45.160 --> 0:09:49.000 if you can imagine in rural Georgia back in those days. Well, 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:52.400 the kids lived with them, and Candace was She was 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:55.760 always fantasizing, and I guess if you put yourself in 0:09:55.800 --> 0:09:59.080 her position, with all the terrible things that had happened 0:09:59.120 --> 0:10:01.680 in her life. She was a big fan of movie 0:10:01.720 --> 0:10:05.720 magazines and fashion magazines. She used to tell the people 0:10:05.720 --> 0:10:08.439 in her family that one day I'm going to be famous, 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:11.120 and one day I'm going to design these clothes for 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:14.640 these movie stars. And so she always had big dreams 0:10:14.720 --> 0:10:17.040 even as a kid. Well, by the time she was 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:20.559 seventeen years old, the depression was going on and her 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:25.200 grandfather encouraged her to get married, and so he found 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:28.520 a man for her to marry, a man named Norman Johnson, 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:31.440 who is twelve years older than her. You can imagine 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:34.560 she was not very happy being in this arranged marriage. 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:38.439 The man that she married had a job in Aniston, Alabama, 0:10:38.480 --> 0:10:42.240 which was not far away from Buchanan where she grew up, 0:10:42.440 --> 0:10:44.440 but they were just dirt poor. He worked in a 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:47.559 concrete plant, didn't make any money to speak of, and 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:51.160 she had her child. Her first child in nineteen forty 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:55.760 was a son that was named Norman Johnson Junior. But again, 0:10:55.840 --> 0:10:59.439 this restlessness was always in her spirit. She always wanted 0:10:59.480 --> 0:11:02.280 to get out of this loveless marriage, and so in 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:06.240 nineteen forty one, when World War Two began, she signed 0:11:06.280 --> 0:11:09.679 up to be a hostess with the US SO the 0:11:09.840 --> 0:11:13.160 organization that would host the soldiers. There was a man 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:15.720 who was one of the most well known people in 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:19.240 America at the time. He was one of the Rockefellers. 0:11:19.600 --> 0:11:22.439 His name was Win Rockefeller and he was a soldier 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:26.040 stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, which was only about eighty 0:11:26.080 --> 0:11:29.240 miles away from where she lived. Well, as fate would 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:31.840 have it, she was a hostess at a party that 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:35.560 Win Rockefeller and a bunch of soldiers from Fort Benning 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:39.800 were bussed up to attend. Some kind of love connection 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:43.280 was made at this USO dance. Within about a year, 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:45.640 she was pregnant with Rockefeller's child. 0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:48.680 Oh my gosh, that's not where I thought you were 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:49.719 heading at all. No. 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:50.640 Wow. 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:54.720 So Rockefeller was aware of this, but he was sent 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:56.160 off to war in the Pacific. 0:11:56.520 --> 0:11:59.000 Was he married, Sorry to interrupt you. Was he married? Okay, 0:11:59.040 --> 0:12:00.000 he was not married at the time. 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:03.440 No, but he was extremely well known. He was like 0:12:03.480 --> 0:12:08.000 an early version of JFK. Junior, you might say. When 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:10.240 he joined the army, all of the magazines in the 0:12:10.280 --> 0:12:13.280 country were always taking photographs of him to be on 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:15.599 the cover of him as a soldier, because it was 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:18.960 great publicity for the war effort. But by the time 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:21.720 the child was born, it was a little girl named Rita. 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:25.120 He was off in the Pacific theater and Candace was 0:12:25.200 --> 0:12:29.280 left alone there with her husband Norman. Now, at some 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:33.800 point Norman realized that this other little blonde child Rita 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:37.680 was not his. I don't know when exactly that occurred, 0:12:38.480 --> 0:12:41.440 but by the time the war was over, her marriage 0:12:41.440 --> 0:12:45.600 to Norman Johnson was over, and you asked if he 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:48.240 was married. He still was not married when the war ended, 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:51.600 and so Candace was actually in New York City for 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:55.240 a while where he lived after the war, and they 0:12:55.440 --> 0:12:58.440 continued to see each other. But in nineteen forty eight, 0:12:58.800 --> 0:13:03.760 when Rockefeller married another woman who looked remarkably like Candace, 0:13:04.240 --> 0:13:06.600 he had a thing, I guess for pretty blonde girls. 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:09.280 I'm assuming the woman that he married is a little 0:13:09.320 --> 0:13:12.800 bit more quote unquote appropriate for someone in his station 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:13.440 in life. 0:13:13.480 --> 0:13:16.800 She had been an actress, she was well known as well, 0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:20.160 and so the next thing you know, Candace is banished 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:23.920 from New York and she ends up living in New Orleans. 0:13:24.280 --> 0:13:26.320 Is he supporting the little girl? 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:29.440 I assume so. But if you put it back in 0:13:29.480 --> 0:13:32.360 the nineteen forties, and this was a man who had 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:36.120 political aspirations. He later went on to be the governor 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:39.800 of Arkansas, of all places, and of course his brother, 0:13:39.880 --> 0:13:43.400 Nelson Rockefeller, was also big in politics. So it was 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:46.480 a political family. He had aims on that kind of 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:49.800 career and in those days. If it had come out 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:52.680 that he had a love child, it would have ruined 0:13:52.720 --> 0:13:56.800 those political dreams of his. So that's why Candace was 0:13:56.840 --> 0:14:00.840 banished down to the South, and he was married. And 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:04.960 to answer your question, certainly, I assumed that he supported 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:08.680 the child in a very comfortable fashion, because there's no 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:11.760 signs that Candace was living in poverty in any way, 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:15.880 but she was in New Orleans. Candace was always big 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:19.080 about inventing things that had happened in her life that 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:23.320 never really happened. She used to if you remember, I said, 0:14:23.360 --> 0:14:27.520 as a child, she had dreams of being a fashion designer. Well, 0:14:27.560 --> 0:14:29.680 when she moved back down south, she told all of 0:14:29.680 --> 0:14:32.280 her family and her friends that she had been a 0:14:32.320 --> 0:14:36.120 fashion designer for one of the largest firms in New York. 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:39.360 She mentioned them by name, and of course somebody had 0:14:39.360 --> 0:14:42.080 done the homework. She never worked for these people. She 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:45.480 claimed that she was the chief designer for them. Of course, 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:47.640 at this time she's in her mid twenties and had 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:52.000 no formal training as a fashion designer. So if this 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:54.200 had happened today and you had Google, it would be 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:58.160 very easy to disprove the things that she was putting 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:00.560 out there for people but in the what is she 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:02.240 could probably get away with some of it. 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:04.920 How did that benefit her do you think, I mean, 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:07.000 did it open any doors for her? Once she was 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:09.600 in New Orleans, She's a single mother of two kids 0:15:09.600 --> 0:15:12.720 from two different men. After the war, She's not in 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:14.480 a good situation. I know you said it looked like 0:15:14.560 --> 0:15:18.000 she wasn't you know, in poverty or anything, likely from Rockefeller. 0:15:18.080 --> 0:15:21.400 But was it just for her own self esteem self 0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:23.880 comfort that she lied to people about this or did 0:15:23.880 --> 0:15:24.800 it go anywhere? 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:27.400 I think it was exactly to build herself up and 0:15:27.480 --> 0:15:30.680 make herself. You know again, if you look at her background, 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:33.600 the heart scrabble conditions that she grew up in, I 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:35.920 think it was a good way for her to make 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:38.680 herself feel better and to as you'll see as the 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:41.320 rest of her life, she wanted to impress other people 0:15:41.600 --> 0:15:44.280 and make them not even know where she had come from. 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:50.200 Now I can tie the two together. She and Jock Moussel. 0:15:50.520 --> 0:15:54.560 How they met is anybody's guests. She came up with 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:58.120 this real met cute kind of story later on that 0:15:58.520 --> 0:16:00.640 she was at the zoo one day And Orleans with 0:16:00.640 --> 0:16:03.840 her children and this man came by with a camera 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:06.400 and who was taking their pictures, and she went over 0:16:06.440 --> 0:16:08.160 to ask him, you know, what are you doing and 0:16:08.200 --> 0:16:11.000 he said, oh, I've just got this new camera and 0:16:11.080 --> 0:16:14.640 I'm really interested in taking pictures of children and moving objects. 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:18.200 And you know, it sounds pretty contrived, but that was 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:20.440 the story she stuck with for the rest of her 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:23.400 life about how they met. Of course, he was married, 0:16:23.960 --> 0:16:27.080 so don't know the breakdown exactly of the marriage that 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:29.840 he had with his first wife, but in nineteen forty 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:33.800 nine he married. He divorced his first wife, and two 0:16:33.880 --> 0:16:36.160 weeks later married Candace. 0:16:36.680 --> 0:16:40.280 When you describe these two people together, is this like 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:47.240 a explosive attraction, hot and cold, volatile relationship or is 0:16:47.280 --> 0:16:50.640 this sort of two people who have lived as opportunists 0:16:50.640 --> 0:16:53.520 for most of their lives and they found each other. 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:55.880 I think that's a good way to put it. Okay, Yeah, 0:16:55.920 --> 0:17:00.880 when they met again, Candace was in her late twenties 0:17:00.920 --> 0:17:04.800 at this point. I believe she was twenty seven twenty eight. 0:17:05.480 --> 0:17:09.399 He was this very conservative businessman, he'd been married to 0:17:09.440 --> 0:17:14.320 the same woman for almost forty years, his children were 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:17.160 mostly grown, so I think it was just an attraction 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:20.480 of here's this really hot chick that comes by and 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:24.480 she acts interested in him for obvious reasons, because he's very, 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:28.760 very wealthy. They married in nineteen forty nine. They vacationed 0:17:28.760 --> 0:17:31.200 in Europe for a couple of months. When they came 0:17:31.240 --> 0:17:34.640 back to the States. I think Jacques or Jack as 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:37.840 his friends called him, didn't feel comfortable living in New 0:17:37.960 --> 0:17:41.159 Orleans anymore with his ex wife and these four children 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:43.840 of his there, and that's when they moved to Houston, 0:17:43.960 --> 0:17:46.600 he and Kansas, and that kind of set the wheels 0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:49.840 in motion for the rest of his life. For sure. 0:17:50.520 --> 0:17:52.719 What is the It sounds like he is a you know, 0:17:52.800 --> 0:17:54.520 like of Jack of all trade the little bit when 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:58.919 he moves to Houston, what is his main income source? 0:17:59.000 --> 0:18:01.800 What is that enterprise that he has? And I'm assuming 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:05.400 he sets up in some incredibly wealthy area of Houston 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:07.159 and buys a lavish house and all that. 0:18:07.680 --> 0:18:10.120 You're right. He did keep in mind, though, that he 0:18:10.160 --> 0:18:13.200 was Jewish. When they moved to Houston. It was nineteen 0:18:13.600 --> 0:18:17.920 forty nine, and even though he was extremely wealthy, he 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:21.400 had these loan companies spread out across the country. And 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:24.439 another thing that he had done after the war, he 0:18:24.520 --> 0:18:27.520 had gotten into the mobile home business because it was 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:31.480 such a housing explosion that there was a housing shortage 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:34.800 for these veterans coming home from the war. So he 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:37.640 not only was selling mobile homes, but he was requiring 0:18:37.680 --> 0:18:41.720 those people to ensure the mobile homes through his insurance company. 0:18:42.280 --> 0:18:46.000 So he was just a very manipulative although nothing unethical 0:18:46.040 --> 0:18:48.480 about that, but he was just a real smart guy 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:51.920 about plugging in one business into the other. So when 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:54.800 they moved to Houston, they had to live in a neighborhood. 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:58.560 It was the home to the predominantly wealthy Jewish people 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:01.919 in Houston, and there was a pretty good sized Jewish 0:19:01.920 --> 0:19:04.919 community in the city at that time. They lived in 0:19:04.960 --> 0:19:06.800 a home there for about two years. It was a 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:10.199 neighborhood called Riverside Terrace. It was a nice home. I've 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:13.840 driven by. It's still there. But Candace the entire time, 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:17.879 being kind of the social climber that she was, was 0:19:17.920 --> 0:19:22.280 pressuring him to find a home in river Oaks. Now, 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:26.360 if you're familiar with Houston, river Oaks is the oldest, wealthiest, 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:30.200 old money neighborhood in the city. In nineteen fifty two, 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:33.240 she got her way. He bought a home on Willowick 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:37.080 Road in Houston. It was this big, beautiful red brick 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:41.679 stately Georgian style mansion that probably had to appeal to 0:19:41.720 --> 0:19:44.800 her memories of growing up in Georgia, with all these 0:19:44.800 --> 0:19:48.080 big homes that she could never afford to have gone into, 0:19:48.200 --> 0:19:52.280 let alone lived in. So by that time she had 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:55.800 gotten her wish. They were encanced in river Oaks. Been 0:19:55.840 --> 0:19:58.440 a dream of hers to live in a neighborhood like that, 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:01.639 And of course her two children were still living with 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:06.320 them at the time, and a remarkable thing happened. One 0:20:06.359 --> 0:20:09.080 of the points I wanted to make was that together 0:20:09.240 --> 0:20:12.960 they were this powerhouse couple, and even though they were 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:15.160 living in river Oaks, they were still a great deal 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:19.199 of social prejudice against Jews and river Oaks. Even it 0:20:19.280 --> 0:20:21.200 was quite a feat for them to be living there, 0:20:21.200 --> 0:20:25.480 but they weren't exactly welcomed with open arms. So Kendace 0:20:25.520 --> 0:20:30.440 really tried her best to assimilate into river Oaks cafe society, 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:33.760 if you will. She was firmly rejected by the wealthy 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:36.919 women there, partly because of who she was married to, 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:40.159 partly because of just who she was. She was this 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:43.920 beautiful woman, but she was extremely You could tell her 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:47.080 old poor Georgia roots came through loud and clear. Every 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:49.879 time she talked, they made fun of her at every turn. 0:20:50.080 --> 0:20:53.080 She was very unhappy about that, and that kind of 0:20:53.200 --> 0:20:56.760 led to her rebelling in a way later on that Okay, 0:20:56.760 --> 0:20:58.840 if you're not going to accept me, I'm going to 0:20:58.880 --> 0:21:02.120 scandalize you women, And at every turn if I came. 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:05.760 She did that in ways of buying her way onto 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:09.680 the boards of some civic organizations, the opera, the ballet. 0:21:10.160 --> 0:21:12.280 Of course, these women were on some of those same 0:21:12.320 --> 0:21:15.720 boards with her, But her husband just had so much 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:19.000 money that he could put her on those boards with 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:22.000 these huge donations that he was making. 0:21:22.440 --> 0:21:26.080 It sounds like Candice and Shack are both social climbers 0:21:26.240 --> 0:21:29.520 or theirs and an idea of accumulating more wealth and 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:33.480 being more showy, and especially because they both come from 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:38.119 such humble beginnings. What is their relationship like in the fifties. 0:21:38.200 --> 0:21:41.359 We don't have this inciting incident until sixty four, So 0:21:41.880 --> 0:21:44.080 what is happening right in the fifties. Do they have 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:45.160 a good relationship. 0:21:45.400 --> 0:21:47.720 I think they tolerated each other, It's the way that 0:21:47.760 --> 0:21:51.000 I would put it. He was still a very conservative 0:21:51.040 --> 0:21:55.760 business man in his soul. He didn't really participate in 0:21:55.800 --> 0:21:59.080 any of these social climbing efforts that she made. He 0:21:59.160 --> 0:22:01.880 had no desire to be part of the rodeo committee 0:22:01.960 --> 0:22:04.520 or things like that. He would use his money to 0:22:04.560 --> 0:22:06.919 put her on some of those boards and things, but 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:09.320 he just wanted to keep a low profile and he 0:22:09.400 --> 0:22:13.280 truly did operate under the radar for the most part, 0:22:13.560 --> 0:22:17.560 whereas she she wanted to scandalize these people as much 0:22:17.560 --> 0:22:20.440 as they could if they weren't going to accept her, 0:22:21.160 --> 0:22:24.080 and the ways in which she did that were to 0:22:24.160 --> 0:22:26.600 go to these nightclubs that they would never go to. 0:22:26.800 --> 0:22:29.720 She loved rhythm and blues music. She would go to 0:22:29.760 --> 0:22:32.920 clubs in Houston that these River Oaks women would never 0:22:32.960 --> 0:22:37.399 set foot in. She loved to go to clubs because 0:22:37.400 --> 0:22:40.320 her husband wouldn't go with her. She would take young 0:22:40.400 --> 0:22:44.720 men with her. And whether there was any sexual misconduct 0:22:44.760 --> 0:22:46.840 on her part at that time, it's hard to say, 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:49.679 but I think it's a safe assumption that, yeah, she 0:22:49.840 --> 0:22:54.040 was beginning to just feel her oats socially and sexually 0:22:54.760 --> 0:22:57.040 and do what she wanted to do, and she had 0:22:57.040 --> 0:23:00.239 a husband that pretty much just didn't care, so she 0:23:00.320 --> 0:23:02.800 was doing all these things. She was by the mid fifties, 0:23:02.840 --> 0:23:06.760 she was definitely having affairs. One of those affairs was 0:23:06.800 --> 0:23:07.880 with Chuck Berry. 0:23:08.119 --> 0:23:10.040 Wait, seriously, Chuck Berry, the. 0:23:09.960 --> 0:23:13.680 Singer, seriously whow You can imagine how that went over 0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:17.000 in River Oaks. And she did not hide any of this. 0:23:17.800 --> 0:23:20.600 She threw parties at her home, had this big, huge 0:23:20.680 --> 0:23:23.320 lawn in the back of the mansion. She was always 0:23:23.359 --> 0:23:26.320 throwing lawn parties and one of them had Chuck Berry 0:23:26.359 --> 0:23:30.479 providing the music at one point during the night. And 0:23:30.520 --> 0:23:33.119 this was all recording. It a photograph that made the 0:23:33.119 --> 0:23:36.600 newspapers in Houston. She's up on the balcony of her 0:23:36.960 --> 0:23:39.840 master bedroom suite on the third floor of this house, 0:23:40.200 --> 0:23:43.040 with Chuck Berry standing next to her, wearing no shirt. 0:23:43.720 --> 0:23:47.359 Today that might sound pretty tame, but in nineteen fifty 0:23:47.440 --> 0:23:50.040 nine or whenever it was, you can imagine how that 0:23:50.119 --> 0:23:52.879 just sent the gossip people over the edge. 0:23:53.280 --> 0:23:54.240 That's incredible. 0:23:54.359 --> 0:23:56.520 And I don't know why I can't tear away from 0:23:56.600 --> 0:23:59.600 Chuck Berry because it just seems so out of the blue, 0:23:59.640 --> 0:24:01.600 just like well, I have the same look of shock 0:24:01.680 --> 0:24:05.000 that I had when you talked about when Rockefeller. So 0:24:05.520 --> 0:24:09.920 I know that her Husbandques must have been at least 0:24:10.000 --> 0:24:12.200 irritated that she's going out. I know it doesn't seem 0:24:12.200 --> 0:24:14.000 like he cares, but that she's going out and doing 0:24:14.080 --> 0:24:17.320 stuff with other men. Did this just send him through 0:24:17.359 --> 0:24:20.480 the roof that she is clearly in some sort of 0:24:20.520 --> 0:24:25.320 a compromising position in the newspapers with a black singer 0:24:25.359 --> 0:24:26.639 who is very famous. 0:24:27.000 --> 0:24:30.280 There's no record of how he reacted, although one thing 0:24:30.280 --> 0:24:32.919 that is on the record, he began to spend a 0:24:32.960 --> 0:24:35.960 lot more time at his other offices in other cities. 0:24:36.520 --> 0:24:39.639 By this time, he owned a couple of banks in Chicago, 0:24:39.960 --> 0:24:42.639 he owned a couple of banks in Miami. He still 0:24:42.680 --> 0:24:46.439 retained ownership of his loan companies. I think he was 0:24:46.520 --> 0:24:50.840 probably mortified by some of her behavior because he was 0:24:50.840 --> 0:24:55.280 this very conservative guy. But there's no indication that he 0:24:55.320 --> 0:24:57.040 did anything to rein her in. 0:24:57.560 --> 0:24:59.120 Why would he stay married to her. 0:24:59.320 --> 0:25:02.640 They don't have children together, right, because there's his four 0:25:02.720 --> 0:25:05.720 kids in New Orleans and her two kids from other men. 0:25:06.320 --> 0:25:10.160 So what is keeping him from divorcing her, keeping all 0:25:10.200 --> 0:25:13.320 of his money and you know, then marrying some other 0:25:13.560 --> 0:25:15.720 young twenty something year old when now he's in his 0:25:15.960 --> 0:25:17.000 sixties at this point. 0:25:17.280 --> 0:25:19.680 I think it's called a prenup agreement, is what kept 0:25:19.760 --> 0:25:20.240 them together. 0:25:20.400 --> 0:25:23.399 Oh, I didn't think that prenups were that old. 0:25:23.440 --> 0:25:24.879 Okay, so in the forties. 0:25:25.040 --> 0:25:27.159 They married in nineteen forty nine, and there was a 0:25:27.200 --> 0:25:31.000 prenup agreement. Wow. The prenup agreement called for if she 0:25:31.080 --> 0:25:33.760 were to divorce him, she would receive a flat fee 0:25:33.800 --> 0:25:37.240 of two hundred thousand dollars. If he were to divorce her, 0:25:37.920 --> 0:25:40.920 she would receive one half of his estate. Well, he's 0:25:40.920 --> 0:25:43.800 a very wealthy guy giving way half of his estate 0:25:43.880 --> 0:25:47.920 to this woman that he probably was becoming very distasteful 0:25:48.240 --> 0:25:51.680 with at that point. He just wasn't willing to do it. 0:25:51.880 --> 0:25:53.280 That's an awful agreement. 0:25:53.440 --> 0:25:56.200 I mean, does that That seem like a terrible agreement 0:25:56.240 --> 0:25:56.840 on his part. 0:25:57.040 --> 0:26:00.439 Sometimes very smart guys do very dumb things. 0:26:00.560 --> 0:26:03.560 Okay, let's get to the other player in this story 0:26:03.600 --> 0:26:05.679 before we talk about what happens to Jacques. 0:26:06.000 --> 0:26:10.040 Okay. In nineteen sixty two, Candace had a nephew that 0:26:10.200 --> 0:26:14.080 was the son of her sister Elizabeth. He was a 0:26:14.119 --> 0:26:18.560 young man named Melvin Lane Powers, and he was only 0:26:18.680 --> 0:26:22.160 nineteen years old when he got into trouble with the law. 0:26:22.920 --> 0:26:24.840 He had fallen in with this band of people that 0:26:24.880 --> 0:26:29.679 were scamming people going door to door selling magazine subscriptions, 0:26:30.400 --> 0:26:33.000 and to make a long story short, he was arrested 0:26:33.080 --> 0:26:36.960 up in Pontiac, Michigan in nineteen sixty one. They called 0:26:37.000 --> 0:26:40.639 him a grifter in the newspaper accounts of it. So 0:26:41.080 --> 0:26:45.480 he spent six months in the county jail. And Elizabeth, 0:26:45.920 --> 0:26:49.920 his mother, called Candace, her sister, and said, Hey, he's 0:26:49.920 --> 0:26:51.840 going to get just right back into trouble if he 0:26:51.920 --> 0:26:54.840 stays up there, He's going to fall back into these 0:26:55.040 --> 0:26:58.399 scammers that he's been in cahoots with. So do you 0:26:58.440 --> 0:27:01.800 think Jack could find him a joke, maybe repossessing cars 0:27:01.880 --> 0:27:04.880 or something down in Houston, to get him away from them. 0:27:04.880 --> 0:27:07.520 And so Candace said, well, of course we can, so 0:27:07.640 --> 0:27:11.480 that she without asking Jack, she has him come down 0:27:11.520 --> 0:27:14.959 and move into the mansion in Houston. He's nineteen and 0:27:15.000 --> 0:27:18.480 by this point she's about forty forty two years old. 0:27:18.920 --> 0:27:22.800 As time goes by, Jock is very reluctant to give 0:27:22.840 --> 0:27:26.240 this guy a job because he's got no real education, 0:27:26.400 --> 0:27:29.640 he has no real marketable skills, and he's also got 0:27:29.640 --> 0:27:33.760 a pretty boorish, bullying type of a personality. He's a 0:27:33.800 --> 0:27:37.000 big dude, he's about six foot four, and he's very 0:27:37.000 --> 0:27:41.760 intimidating at some point, Candace and her nephew begin an 0:27:41.800 --> 0:27:46.080 incestuous affair. One of the most icky parts of this 0:27:46.240 --> 0:27:48.520 I told you earlier. When this story happened in nineteen 0:27:48.600 --> 0:27:51.840 sixty four, I was a kid. I didn't really understand 0:27:51.840 --> 0:27:55.320 what they were talking about on the news accounts when 0:27:55.320 --> 0:27:59.600 they talked about incest between this couple. But she was 0:27:59.720 --> 0:28:01.679 very open about it, much as she had been with 0:28:01.680 --> 0:28:04.800 a Chuck Berry story and other things. They were going 0:28:04.840 --> 0:28:08.400 out to restaurants and clubs together, they took vacations together. 0:28:09.040 --> 0:28:12.280 She was in the society columns all the time, and 0:28:12.359 --> 0:28:15.919 it was often mentioning mel as her escort, so it 0:28:15.960 --> 0:28:17.760 wasn't a great deal of effort on her part to 0:28:17.840 --> 0:28:20.520 hide the fact that they were going out together. Now, 0:28:20.600 --> 0:28:23.679 nobody really dreamed that they were sleeping together. But it 0:28:23.760 --> 0:28:26.320 took a while, but Jacques finally woke up to this 0:28:26.480 --> 0:28:29.879 and the gossip got to him. Even the household staff 0:28:29.960 --> 0:28:32.679 told him what was going on, because every time he 0:28:32.800 --> 0:28:35.120 was out of town, the two of them were spending 0:28:35.160 --> 0:28:38.240 time in the same bedroom in the mansion. So even 0:28:38.280 --> 0:28:41.600 the household staff got disgusted and finally went to Jock 0:28:41.640 --> 0:28:45.000 and told him what was going on. At that point, 0:28:45.040 --> 0:28:48.560 he evicted Mel from the mansion. Mel threatened him on 0:28:48.600 --> 0:28:51.160 the way out the door, saying, essentially, one day, you 0:28:51.240 --> 0:28:55.040 better always be looking over your shoulder because I'm going 0:28:55.120 --> 0:28:57.760 to be coming for you one day. And so you 0:28:57.760 --> 0:29:00.320 would think that that might have ended the affair, but 0:29:00.520 --> 0:29:03.960 it did not. Candace rented an apartment for him just 0:29:04.000 --> 0:29:07.120 a few blocks away from where she was living, and 0:29:07.160 --> 0:29:09.760 they continued to see each other, and by this time 0:29:09.800 --> 0:29:12.720 it was pretty common knowledge through at least the River 0:29:12.760 --> 0:29:15.800 Oak society that you know what was going on. Candace 0:29:15.800 --> 0:29:20.400 always tried to pass mel Off as Jacques's protege, that 0:29:20.520 --> 0:29:23.160 he was teaching him the business, and that was really 0:29:23.200 --> 0:29:23.920 not true at all. 0:29:24.760 --> 0:29:28.360 Just to make sure everybody's clear, this is not Jacques's 0:29:28.560 --> 0:29:34.040 nephew and her nephew by marriage. This is her sister's son. 0:29:34.520 --> 0:29:37.560 So they are related, they're blood relatives. Does the sister 0:29:37.720 --> 0:29:41.000 know at this point that her sister is sleeping with 0:29:41.120 --> 0:29:41.600 her son. 0:29:42.080 --> 0:29:45.200 I don't think so, although it became known later, and 0:29:45.280 --> 0:29:48.280 it was it was very strange that even her family, 0:29:48.360 --> 0:29:50.840 her siblings, were well aware of what was going on, 0:29:50.920 --> 0:29:52.239 and they seemed to be okay with it. 0:29:52.560 --> 0:29:55.280 So they are together and so tell me what the 0:29:55.320 --> 0:29:57.960 next step is. Because we all know now that Jacka's 0:29:58.000 --> 0:30:01.720 going to end up dead sometime soon. What changes to 0:30:01.800 --> 0:30:04.640 make that happen? Is it Mel making this threat? 0:30:05.000 --> 0:30:07.520 Not really, I don't think he was necessarily afraid of 0:30:07.560 --> 0:30:10.920 Mel at that point, but he was just I think 0:30:10.960 --> 0:30:13.959 he just felt so humiliated that he just felt like, 0:30:14.000 --> 0:30:15.800 I've got to get out of town. So he moved 0:30:15.840 --> 0:30:19.880 to Miami and leased this apartment on Keep Us Gain. 0:30:20.200 --> 0:30:22.960 It was a very modest apartment, but he was running 0:30:23.000 --> 0:30:25.880 his businesses from Florida and he would only come to 0:30:25.920 --> 0:30:28.840 Houston on occasion. Now, he had made the mistake earlier 0:30:28.880 --> 0:30:31.960 on in their marriage of putting canvas on the board 0:30:32.000 --> 0:30:35.200 of his businesses, so they had to bump into each 0:30:35.240 --> 0:30:37.440 other when he came to town for board meetings. But 0:30:37.720 --> 0:30:39.960 I can't imagine how uncomfortable that might have been for 0:30:40.040 --> 0:30:42.440 everybody else in the room. But for the most part, 0:30:42.480 --> 0:30:46.320 he remained in Florida and they had adopted four children. 0:30:46.440 --> 0:30:49.400 Back in the fifties, there was this really tragic story 0:30:49.440 --> 0:30:53.800 in Chicago where Jock had a bank, and just to 0:30:53.840 --> 0:30:56.560 cut to the chase on how that happened, these four 0:30:56.640 --> 0:31:00.640 children came from a family where the father was mentally stable, 0:31:01.160 --> 0:31:05.600 killed their mother, killed one of their siblings, and he 0:31:05.680 --> 0:31:08.960 was committed to a mental institution, leaving these four children 0:31:09.600 --> 0:31:12.960 as wards of the state. So Jacques was in town 0:31:13.120 --> 0:31:16.000 read the story and he called Candace and he said, hey, 0:31:16.040 --> 0:31:18.720 let's adopt these kids. So by the time the story 0:31:18.760 --> 0:31:21.480 moves to Florida, there are these four children that are 0:31:21.800 --> 0:31:22.720 part of the family. 0:31:22.800 --> 0:31:26.120 Now, okay, well what ends up happening next? 0:31:26.200 --> 0:31:29.240 Now they're separated because she's in Texas, right and he's 0:31:29.280 --> 0:31:31.480 in Key Biscayne, Florida. 0:31:31.520 --> 0:31:34.280 When does this all happen? And what part does Mel 0:31:34.400 --> 0:31:34.800 play in this? 0:31:35.560 --> 0:31:38.280 Mel was in Houston by this time. Candace had set 0:31:38.360 --> 0:31:42.080 him up in a mobile homes lot where he sold 0:31:42.120 --> 0:31:44.600 mobile homes, and by all accounts, he was doing pretty 0:31:44.600 --> 0:31:46.800 well with it. He wasn't nearly the wealthy as the 0:31:46.840 --> 0:31:48.920 masters were, but he was doing well for a kid 0:31:48.920 --> 0:31:54.720 from Alabama. So the affairs continuing, Jacques is considering getting 0:31:54.720 --> 0:31:59.760 a divorce despite this onerous prenuptial agreement. He had a 0:32:00.080 --> 0:32:03.000 horse attorney who was counseling him and said, one thing 0:32:03.040 --> 0:32:06.320 you need to start doing is keeping a diary of 0:32:06.360 --> 0:32:09.280 all the conversations that you have with her. The lawyer 0:32:09.280 --> 0:32:12.200 had led him to believe that because of this incestuous 0:32:12.200 --> 0:32:15.520 behavior that they might be able to avoid the prenuptial 0:32:15.560 --> 0:32:19.000 agreement in a divorce court. But so Jock is keeping 0:32:19.400 --> 0:32:23.800 this diary, and after one particularly heated discussion on the 0:32:23.800 --> 0:32:27.000 phone with Candace, he writes into the diary, and it 0:32:27.040 --> 0:32:29.400 was the last entry that he ever made. I guess 0:32:29.440 --> 0:32:31.920 I'm going to have to kill Candace and Mail before 0:32:31.960 --> 0:32:35.600 they kill me. In May of nineteen sixty four, Candace 0:32:35.640 --> 0:32:38.840 comes to visit in Miami with the four younger children 0:32:39.000 --> 0:32:43.000 and her older daughter, Rita, who is the Rockefeller child. 0:32:43.320 --> 0:32:46.000 They're visiting him in his apartment. The apartment is too 0:32:46.000 --> 0:32:49.080 small to hold all these people. It's only two bedrooms, 0:32:49.640 --> 0:32:52.200 so they had taken a hotel room nearby for the 0:32:52.280 --> 0:32:55.120 children to stay in, but they were using his apartment 0:32:55.200 --> 0:32:58.240 there as a base of operations. It was near the beach, 0:32:58.560 --> 0:33:01.360 and so one night May thirty first, the last day 0:33:01.400 --> 0:33:03.880 of the month, she and the children make this game 0:33:03.960 --> 0:33:06.440 out of it's time to pay the bills. The first 0:33:06.440 --> 0:33:09.920 of the month is tomorrow, So as she tells the story, 0:33:10.160 --> 0:33:12.640 one kid would address the envelope, the other would put 0:33:12.640 --> 0:33:14.720 a stamp on the envelope, the other would put the 0:33:14.760 --> 0:33:17.360 return address on it, pass it to her where she 0:33:17.480 --> 0:33:20.920 was writing out checks. Well, when they finished this exercise, 0:33:21.000 --> 0:33:24.160 she realized that she didn't have any stamps. As hokey 0:33:24.200 --> 0:33:27.880 as this may sound, she says, it's midnight, and she 0:33:27.960 --> 0:33:30.880 says to Jaque, I'm going to take the children and 0:33:30.920 --> 0:33:33.680 go buy some stamps and get these bills in the mailbox. 0:33:34.680 --> 0:33:38.360 He says, fine. So this all occurs about midnight. He 0:33:38.440 --> 0:33:40.440 goes out and sits out on the balcony for a 0:33:40.480 --> 0:33:44.920 while by himself, and about twelve thirty he sees a 0:33:45.000 --> 0:33:48.040 car headlights coming down the street. It's a car that 0:33:48.080 --> 0:33:51.280 he recognizes because it's one of the cars from his 0:33:51.560 --> 0:33:56.920 repossession lot in Miami, and he just assumes it's Candae 0:33:57.320 --> 0:34:00.640 coming back without the children, probably going to spend the 0:34:00.760 --> 0:34:04.920 night in the second bedroom there at the apartment. Well 0:34:05.200 --> 0:34:07.360 it's not canvas. He goes on and goes to bed 0:34:07.360 --> 0:34:09.839 because he wants to avoid her. But he's in his 0:34:09.880 --> 0:34:14.359 bedroom getting dressed or undressed actually, and he hears his 0:34:14.520 --> 0:34:18.120 dog barking in at the door. But the dog quiets 0:34:18.120 --> 0:34:21.400 down almost immediately and at the door opens and he 0:34:21.400 --> 0:34:24.400 hears someone talking to the dog, and it's obviously someone 0:34:24.400 --> 0:34:28.160 that the dog recognizes, because the dog settles down. Well, 0:34:28.200 --> 0:34:31.160 he opens his bedroom door and he recognizes this big, 0:34:31.280 --> 0:34:34.560 large person in the darkness that we can assume was 0:34:34.760 --> 0:34:39.000 Melbourn Lane Powers. Jacques is completely undressed at this point. 0:34:39.120 --> 0:34:43.400 He's wearing only an undershirt and he panics and he's wondering, 0:34:43.840 --> 0:34:46.279 I need to get away from this guy. And he 0:34:46.320 --> 0:34:49.200 makes a bolt for the sliding glass balcony door of 0:34:49.239 --> 0:34:52.279 the apartment and he's hoping, I guess that he can 0:34:52.320 --> 0:34:54.880 get to that door and call out for someone outside 0:34:54.920 --> 0:34:57.359 to come help him, or maybe someone in the other 0:34:57.400 --> 0:35:01.240 apartments below him will come and help. Well, he doesn't 0:35:01.280 --> 0:35:04.239 make it to the door. He's bashed over the head 0:35:04.320 --> 0:35:07.360 with what was later believed to be a coat bottle, 0:35:08.239 --> 0:35:12.000 and then he is stabbed thirty nine times. 0:35:12.440 --> 0:35:14.640 H thirty nine times. 0:35:14.840 --> 0:35:18.800 Wow. But this is where the story gets very odd. 0:35:19.600 --> 0:35:22.759 After the murder, the murderer wraps the body up in 0:35:22.800 --> 0:35:26.719 a blanket and leaves him there. And there are witnesses 0:35:26.719 --> 0:35:28.680 in the apartment I guess you could call them ear 0:35:28.719 --> 0:35:32.719 witnesses that hear this big set of footprints going down 0:35:33.120 --> 0:35:36.760 the outdoor stairway, and at four o'clock in the morning, 0:35:37.719 --> 0:35:41.000 Candace comes back to the apartment with the children in 0:35:41.040 --> 0:35:44.200 tow and they see the light on underneath the doorway 0:35:44.480 --> 0:35:47.680 of the apartment and she says, oh, I guess daddy's 0:35:47.760 --> 0:35:51.120 up late reading tonight. They open the door, they find 0:35:51.160 --> 0:35:56.000 the body, and she sends the children downstairs, and for 0:35:56.120 --> 0:35:58.560 thirty minutes, they go off the air. They don't call 0:35:58.600 --> 0:36:02.399 the police, they don't call an ambulance. No one knows 0:36:02.440 --> 0:36:05.239 what's going on in the apartment for thirty minutes. And 0:36:05.719 --> 0:36:08.120 the first phone call she makes is not to the 0:36:08.120 --> 0:36:12.640 police or an ambulance. She calls Jock's personal physician. Now 0:36:12.680 --> 0:36:15.680 he's dead. I don't know what good a doctor is 0:36:15.680 --> 0:36:19.360 going to do at that point, but the physician tells her, Candice, 0:36:19.400 --> 0:36:21.280 you need to hang up, you need to call the police, 0:36:21.800 --> 0:36:25.520 which they do. Finally, when the police arrive, her story 0:36:25.600 --> 0:36:28.520 is so full of holes they know immediately that she's 0:36:28.600 --> 0:36:31.600 lying to them. She claims that this was a robbery 0:36:31.680 --> 0:36:34.719 gone bad. I had left several hundred dollars out on 0:36:34.760 --> 0:36:38.319 the kitchen counter. It's not there anymore. I had some 0:36:38.520 --> 0:36:42.200 very expensive jewelry in the bedroom it's not there anymore. 0:36:42.440 --> 0:36:44.440 When they begin to press her on like even a 0:36:44.480 --> 0:36:47.640 description of what the jewelry looked like, she kind of 0:36:47.640 --> 0:36:49.960 blanked out them and couldn't even give a description of it. 0:36:50.040 --> 0:36:52.640 So then she begins to tell them that, you know, 0:36:52.880 --> 0:36:55.759 it was a robbery, and the cops say, no, this 0:36:56.120 --> 0:36:58.880 a robber is not going to stab somebody thirty nine times. 0:36:59.520 --> 0:37:01.879 We believe that whoever killed him must have known him, 0:37:02.040 --> 0:37:04.480 And so then they began to delve into did he 0:37:04.560 --> 0:37:07.799 have any enemies? Did you know of anybody that was 0:37:08.040 --> 0:37:10.400 looking to harm him, and she said, oh, he was 0:37:10.400 --> 0:37:12.759 in the repossession business. There are all kinds of people 0:37:12.800 --> 0:37:15.359 that would have liked to have killed him, which they 0:37:15.360 --> 0:37:17.960 thought was a very odd answer. But she never, of course, 0:37:18.040 --> 0:37:22.840 mentions mail powers. And when they discount the burglary story, 0:37:23.400 --> 0:37:26.279 then she tries to float an entirely new theory, which is, 0:37:26.680 --> 0:37:29.319 I think my husband is now a homo sexual. He 0:37:29.400 --> 0:37:31.960 had gone to Europe, and when he came back from 0:37:31.960 --> 0:37:35.040 Europe he was acting very strange. Just the other night 0:37:35.560 --> 0:37:38.960 I answered the phone and it was somebody from Texas. 0:37:39.600 --> 0:37:42.479 It was one of his Texas boyfriends. The cops didn't 0:37:42.520 --> 0:37:45.040 really buy that story. Either. But I have to mention 0:37:45.160 --> 0:37:47.160 here there was an awful lot of corruption in the 0:37:47.160 --> 0:37:51.440 Miami Dade Sheriff's Department in those days. The lead detective 0:37:51.480 --> 0:37:54.879 on the Moss case turned out to be somebody who 0:37:54.960 --> 0:37:57.480 was in the pocket of the gangster that ran all 0:37:57.520 --> 0:38:01.440 of the gambling enterprises in Miami. He wasn't the only 0:38:01.480 --> 0:38:04.760 one on the force that had connections to organized crime. 0:38:04.800 --> 0:38:07.040 It was just kind of, yeah, you do your thing 0:38:07.080 --> 0:38:10.759 outside of work. That being said, they were very good detectives. 0:38:10.760 --> 0:38:13.840 They were very thorough. They wanted to catch the killer. 0:38:14.200 --> 0:38:17.920 Mail Powers made it pretty easy for them. In the apartment, 0:38:18.520 --> 0:38:22.520 the killer had left bloody handprints by the kitchen sink. 0:38:23.000 --> 0:38:27.399 They immediately matched those handprints to mel because he had 0:38:27.400 --> 0:38:31.000 a prior record from his arrest in Michigan. Within about 0:38:31.000 --> 0:38:34.640 seven hours they had that identified. Then the car that 0:38:34.719 --> 0:38:38.359 he was driving, this white Chevy, was found parked at 0:38:38.360 --> 0:38:42.240 the airport garage, about fifty feet away from a police 0:38:42.280 --> 0:38:46.480 substation that was inside the airport. Then they find inside 0:38:46.520 --> 0:38:50.080 the white Chevy a parking stub that showed that the 0:38:50.080 --> 0:38:52.480 car had entered the garage at five point thirty nine 0:38:52.520 --> 0:38:55.280 in the morning. So the detectives who are pretty sharp. 0:38:55.760 --> 0:38:58.720 One of them goes into the airlines, and I believe 0:38:58.719 --> 0:39:02.320 it was National Airline in those days, had daily flights 0:39:02.360 --> 0:39:05.640 to Houston from Miami. He goes to the manager of 0:39:05.640 --> 0:39:07.759 the airline desk and asks, can I look at your 0:39:07.760 --> 0:39:11.720 manifest for the last couple of days, particularly this morning, 0:39:12.000 --> 0:39:16.319 and he finds the name m. Mossler Powers as a 0:39:16.360 --> 0:39:19.319 passenger on the flight leaving at seven point thirty in 0:39:19.360 --> 0:39:23.120 the morning after the murder going back to Houston. He 0:39:23.200 --> 0:39:25.600 digs a little deeper and he finds that the same 0:39:25.680 --> 0:39:29.440 person flew from Houston to Miami the night of the 0:39:29.560 --> 0:39:33.400 murder and arrived about three hours before the murder occurred. 0:39:33.680 --> 0:39:36.319 With a little more digging, they find a bartender that 0:39:36.440 --> 0:39:39.520 identified mail Powers as the person who had come into 0:39:39.600 --> 0:39:42.840 his bar killing time, apparently before he went to the 0:39:42.880 --> 0:39:47.320 apartment to kill Jock. So within four days, Mail Powers 0:39:47.440 --> 0:39:51.920 is arrested. Unfortunately for the prosecutors, they did not read 0:39:51.960 --> 0:39:55.200 them any miranda rights. Oh no, they did not even 0:39:55.239 --> 0:39:57.960 have a valid arrest warrant yet. Because all of this 0:39:58.120 --> 0:40:01.719 was occurring on the fourth of July weekend, the courthouse 0:40:01.840 --> 0:40:05.040 was closed. The prosecutors in Miami couldn't even find a 0:40:05.160 --> 0:40:07.680 judge that could issue his arrest warrant. And then, to 0:40:07.760 --> 0:40:09.879 top it all off, the coupdo gra was that they 0:40:10.080 --> 0:40:13.040 finally got a confession out of mel In which he 0:40:13.080 --> 0:40:17.000 admitted killing Mossler. They re tape recorded that confession, but 0:40:17.080 --> 0:40:20.360 again they did not read him as rights, so before 0:40:20.400 --> 0:40:23.080 the trial even begins, the confession is thrown out. 0:40:23.480 --> 0:40:26.600 I mean, now, is he implicating Candace in this and 0:40:26.680 --> 0:40:29.759 admitting to an affair with his aunt not to. 0:40:29.840 --> 0:40:32.759 The police know. He said that Candace is simply his 0:40:32.880 --> 0:40:36.000 business partner. He said that he flew into Miami all 0:40:36.040 --> 0:40:39.320 the time to talk to Jacques about business things, which 0:40:39.360 --> 0:40:42.719 was not true, but they didn't know that at that point. 0:40:42.840 --> 0:40:46.319 But one thing he specifically refused to do in his 0:40:46.400 --> 0:40:49.960 confession was implicate Candace. He says, I know you want 0:40:49.960 --> 0:40:52.279 me to tell on somebody else, and I'm not going 0:40:52.320 --> 0:40:55.120 to do it. So when they get to trial, Candace 0:40:55.160 --> 0:40:58.359 had hired to represent Mail Powers, one of the most 0:40:58.360 --> 0:41:01.080 famous trial lawyers in the United States in those days, 0:41:01.080 --> 0:41:05.800 a man named Percy Foreman Percy. The saying in Houston 0:41:05.920 --> 0:41:08.160 was that if you hired Percy, it was an admission 0:41:08.200 --> 0:41:12.080 of guilt, but he would get you off, and that 0:41:12.200 --> 0:41:14.720 was typically the case. So when they get to trial, 0:41:15.040 --> 0:41:18.200 Percy had no affection for the truth. He gets up 0:41:18.239 --> 0:41:20.440 and makes his opening statement. It makes a ton of 0:41:20.480 --> 0:41:24.680 wild remarks about Jock Mossler defaming his character. He was 0:41:24.719 --> 0:41:28.120 recruiting young boys out of nightclubs under the name of 0:41:28.200 --> 0:41:31.200 doctor Wilson. He was just making things up. But you've 0:41:31.239 --> 0:41:33.600 got this jury of people that they don't know that 0:41:33.680 --> 0:41:37.359 it's not true. The prosecution made a key mistake in 0:41:37.360 --> 0:41:41.200 my opinion, in that they decided to try both Candace 0:41:41.320 --> 0:41:45.320 and Mel together. They still had, even without the confession, 0:41:45.360 --> 0:41:49.360 a lot of evidence against Mel his fingerprints, there was 0:41:49.440 --> 0:41:51.880 blood in this white Chevy that he was driving to 0:41:51.920 --> 0:41:55.280 the airport. When they picked him up in River Oaks. 0:41:55.440 --> 0:41:57.520 They found blood on the clothes that he had worn 0:41:57.600 --> 0:42:01.719 to Miami. He was guilty, red handed, even without a confession. 0:42:01.880 --> 0:42:05.080 But they didn't have anything against Cantas. What one thing 0:42:05.120 --> 0:42:05.800 did They have. 0:42:06.120 --> 0:42:09.080 Nothing really other than they knew that she was in 0:42:09.080 --> 0:42:11.759 cahoots with him. Now she had created an alibi for 0:42:11.800 --> 0:42:14.799 herself on the night of the murder at a hospital. 0:42:15.320 --> 0:42:19.080 She was always complaining of migraine headaches for four nights 0:42:19.080 --> 0:42:21.319 in a row. Leading up to the murder, she went 0:42:21.360 --> 0:42:24.760 to the emergency room of a hospital there in Miami, 0:42:24.960 --> 0:42:27.240 and then on the night of the murder, after buying 0:42:27.280 --> 0:42:30.800 these stamps with the children, she went to the same 0:42:30.840 --> 0:42:34.280 hospital and she stayed there until four in the morning, 0:42:35.000 --> 0:42:37.760 well after the murder had occurred. But she kept getting 0:42:37.760 --> 0:42:40.760 phone calls all night long from somebody, and they assumed 0:42:40.760 --> 0:42:43.320 it was mel giving her an up to date report 0:42:43.360 --> 0:42:45.399 on where he stood in the murder. But they had 0:42:45.480 --> 0:42:48.440 nothing on her that was tangible to convict her with. 0:42:48.800 --> 0:42:51.640 So what they decided to do was they started sainting 0:42:51.719 --> 0:42:54.760 the jails and the they found a bunch of people 0:42:54.800 --> 0:42:58.600 that would testify that Candace had approached them to be 0:42:58.760 --> 0:43:02.400 the hit man to kill Jock Mossler, which sounded like 0:43:02.440 --> 0:43:05.920 a believable story until he started putting these characters on 0:43:05.960 --> 0:43:10.799 the stand. One guy was an habitual heroin attic. He 0:43:10.880 --> 0:43:14.879 called the authorities himself and said, I know Candace Master, 0:43:15.040 --> 0:43:16.880 and I met with her before I came to prison. 0:43:16.920 --> 0:43:20.239 This last time, she offered me money to kill Jock. 0:43:20.600 --> 0:43:22.399 And then there were a couple of other people, one 0:43:22.400 --> 0:43:25.440 who had worked on the mast ranch in Galveston, but 0:43:25.560 --> 0:43:29.560 they were all such disreputable characters that you can imagine 0:43:29.560 --> 0:43:32.400 how the defense attorneys made mincemeat of these guys on 0:43:32.400 --> 0:43:35.520 the stand, and it really just made Candace look like 0:43:35.600 --> 0:43:38.800 a sympathetic figure before it was over with that she 0:43:39.040 --> 0:43:41.520 the cops were picking on her and trying to railroad 0:43:41.560 --> 0:43:44.520 her into this conviction, so it was a crucial mistake 0:43:44.600 --> 0:43:47.560 on their part. The trial went on for a full month, 0:43:48.120 --> 0:43:52.760 and Candace, being the diva that she was throughout the trial, 0:43:52.880 --> 0:43:56.640 was always commanding attention in her own way. She fainted 0:43:56.680 --> 0:43:58.600 a couple of times, had to be carried out of 0:43:58.640 --> 0:44:02.719 the courtroom, almost threw up one time, and all of 0:44:02.760 --> 0:44:05.399 these things happened, of course when there was testimony being 0:44:05.440 --> 0:44:10.000 given that was unfavorable to her. You could read her 0:44:10.040 --> 0:44:12.880 like a book. But the gallery of the trial was 0:44:12.920 --> 0:44:15.919 always filled with a lot of old women who would 0:44:15.920 --> 0:44:18.239 stand in line for two or three hours if they 0:44:18.239 --> 0:44:20.560 had to, to get a seat in the courtroom each day, 0:44:20.840 --> 0:44:23.919 and they were her groupies. They would applaud her when 0:44:23.960 --> 0:44:26.719 she walked in, and they would compliment her on the 0:44:26.760 --> 0:44:29.920 way that she was dressed and the diamonds that she 0:44:30.120 --> 0:44:32.759 was wearing, and she played it to the hilt. But 0:44:33.040 --> 0:44:35.719 the trial goes on. When they get to the final arguments, 0:44:35.960 --> 0:44:38.440 everybody in the world knows that Candace is not going 0:44:38.480 --> 0:44:39.200 to be convicted. 0:44:39.239 --> 0:44:42.880 Here the surprise was that neither was mel and neither 0:44:42.920 --> 0:44:43.879 takes the stand right. 0:44:44.160 --> 0:44:46.440 No, of course they wouldn't testify. There was always this 0:44:46.600 --> 0:44:49.600 jockey and going on between the attorneys representing the two. 0:44:49.920 --> 0:44:53.120 They each had their own defense team, and they didn't 0:44:53.200 --> 0:44:56.240 like each other. Candace's attorney was a fellow from Houston 0:44:56.360 --> 0:44:59.640 named Clyde Woodie, who went on to be quite famous 0:44:59.719 --> 0:45:03.160 later himself. Woody and Percy Foreman did not like each other. 0:45:03.200 --> 0:45:05.640 And so you had these guys all sitting at the 0:45:05.680 --> 0:45:09.200 same defense table in the courtroom, and they would see 0:45:09.280 --> 0:45:12.040 that each other and they would try to out grandstand 0:45:12.080 --> 0:45:14.319 one another and make the other one look silly if 0:45:14.320 --> 0:45:17.600 they could. It was not conducive to a great defense, 0:45:17.760 --> 0:45:21.720 but nonetheless, at worked they were both acquitted, and Candace, 0:45:21.840 --> 0:45:25.359 being glory the attention hog that she was. She called 0:45:25.400 --> 0:45:28.399 a press conference immediately after that at the hotel where 0:45:28.440 --> 0:45:31.640 she had been staying. I failed to mention too, this 0:45:31.760 --> 0:45:35.439 was a nationally covered media trial. It was the OJ 0:45:35.560 --> 0:45:39.440 Simpson trial in its own way, before satellite dishes. But 0:45:39.719 --> 0:45:42.960 she calls this press conference. She has her attorneys there, 0:45:43.040 --> 0:45:46.600 she has all of her children standing behind her. Mail 0:45:46.680 --> 0:45:49.720 powers are seated next to her. The reporters are calling 0:45:49.760 --> 0:45:52.120 out for them to kiss each other. She didn't know 0:45:52.120 --> 0:45:55.680 when to leave well enough alone. She had to pontificate 0:45:55.719 --> 0:45:58.879 about how this was all of miscarriage of justice and 0:45:58.960 --> 0:46:01.600 she was just so for her poor children that she 0:46:01.719 --> 0:46:03.319 was going to be able to go home with them. 0:46:03.760 --> 0:46:07.160 Wow, oh man, And so does she get everything? Does 0:46:07.200 --> 0:46:09.320 she get all of the money because they're not divorced? 0:46:09.440 --> 0:46:12.000 Oh yes, oh my gosh, all of it? And what 0:46:12.000 --> 0:46:13.719 do you think the tag was on that? How much 0:46:13.719 --> 0:46:14.840 money are we talking about? 0:46:15.400 --> 0:46:18.920 Well, in its day it was probably about ten million dollars, 0:46:19.239 --> 0:46:22.520 which today who knows? It was a lot of money. 0:46:22.560 --> 0:46:24.799 And again, growing up in Houston, I used to see 0:46:24.920 --> 0:46:27.680 things that she would do with her money. She would 0:46:27.680 --> 0:46:30.360 take billboards out on the freeways in Houston when the 0:46:30.440 --> 0:46:33.920 Rodeo would come to town with a big photograph of Candice 0:46:33.960 --> 0:46:38.120 wearing a cowboy hat, all these expensive outfits and welcoming 0:46:38.160 --> 0:46:41.160 to people to the rodeo, Welcome to Houston. She was 0:46:41.200 --> 0:46:43.840 not popular with anybody that she served on any of 0:46:43.880 --> 0:46:46.680 those committees with but she was bound to get attention. 0:46:47.440 --> 0:46:49.680 The rest of her life was really sad. She and 0:46:49.760 --> 0:46:51.759 Mail did stay together after all of. 0:46:51.680 --> 0:46:55.840 This, Oh my gosh, seriously really yeah, for about. 0:46:55.880 --> 0:46:58.799 Two or three years. He's living in the mansion there 0:46:58.800 --> 0:47:01.879 on Willowick Road and River Oaks with her. The thing 0:47:01.880 --> 0:47:04.799 that always found me, I found so disgusting was that 0:47:04.840 --> 0:47:07.880 she had these young children. They're living in the house 0:47:07.960 --> 0:47:10.839 with all this going on. Eventually she sent them all 0:47:10.840 --> 0:47:13.719 to school in Switzerland so that two of them could 0:47:13.760 --> 0:47:17.080 have the mention to themselves. She and Mail broke up. 0:47:17.680 --> 0:47:20.040 She claimed that he beat her up one night he 0:47:20.120 --> 0:47:22.480 went to Mexico was arrested when he tried to come 0:47:22.480 --> 0:47:25.080 back into the country because there was a warrant for 0:47:25.120 --> 0:47:27.920 his arrest. But then she dropped the charges when she 0:47:28.000 --> 0:47:30.279 realized that they were both going to have to testify. 0:47:30.880 --> 0:47:33.560 She was going to have to testify against him. She 0:47:33.560 --> 0:47:35.520 didn't like where that was going, with the kinds of 0:47:35.680 --> 0:47:39.000 questions that she might be asked about their life together 0:47:39.280 --> 0:47:43.719 for all these years, so they broke up. She remarried 0:47:43.920 --> 0:47:46.760 another man. He didn't come to a happy ending either. 0:47:47.480 --> 0:47:51.000 He ran some nightclubs. He was about twenty years younger 0:47:51.040 --> 0:47:53.400 than she was. They had an argument one night, he 0:47:53.440 --> 0:47:56.560 went out and got drunk. He came back and she 0:47:56.600 --> 0:47:59.120 had locked him out of the house. So he went 0:47:59.120 --> 0:48:00.960 to the back of the house and was trying to 0:48:01.000 --> 0:48:04.279 climb up to the third floor, where the bedroom was. 0:48:04.600 --> 0:48:07.560 He almost made it, but there was a slate roof 0:48:08.320 --> 0:48:11.400 and he started to slide. He lost his grip. He 0:48:11.560 --> 0:48:15.840 fell three stories and landed head first on a metal table. 0:48:16.360 --> 0:48:19.799 It did not kill him, but it's severely It did 0:48:19.840 --> 0:48:24.240 severe brain damage, and so she eventually divorced him because 0:48:24.400 --> 0:48:26.880 they couldn't live together. He was always in rehab for 0:48:26.920 --> 0:48:29.640 the rest of his life, and she herself died in 0:48:29.719 --> 0:48:32.080 nineteen seventy seven of a drug. 0:48:31.880 --> 0:48:35.359 Overdose intentional or accidental. 0:48:35.800 --> 0:48:38.480 No, I believe it was accidental. By this point, she 0:48:38.640 --> 0:48:42.520 was doctor shopping like nobody's business. She had a lot 0:48:42.560 --> 0:48:46.000 of doctors in Houston and another one in Miami. She 0:48:46.040 --> 0:48:50.759 would always buy them expensive things like Jaguar xkes and 0:48:50.880 --> 0:48:54.320 things that just for them prescribing the medicine that she wanted. 0:48:54.520 --> 0:48:56.920 She ended up dying in a hotel room at the 0:48:56.960 --> 0:49:01.279 Fountain Blue in Miami. She fell as sleep rolled over 0:49:01.320 --> 0:49:05.280 onto a pillow, and she was so heavily sedated self 0:49:05.320 --> 0:49:09.680 sedated that she could not breathe and wasn't alert enough 0:49:10.160 --> 0:49:12.600 to roll over and start breathing again, and so she 0:49:12.760 --> 0:49:14.959 died at the age of fifty seven. 0:49:15.400 --> 0:49:17.840 Ron there's nobody good in this story. 0:49:17.960 --> 0:49:21.280 I mean, the cops, I know you in the book 0:49:21.320 --> 0:49:24.560 have redeemable characters, but just looking on from the outside, 0:49:24.680 --> 0:49:28.319 the cops are bumbling. The prosecutor is not making good decisions. 0:49:28.719 --> 0:49:32.120 You have mel, you have Candace, and then you have 0:49:32.440 --> 0:49:36.800 quite frankly, not a very sympathetic victim in Jock Muscler. 0:49:37.280 --> 0:49:40.759 So where do you go in a book to make 0:49:40.840 --> 0:49:42.680 people want to get to the end of the book? 0:49:42.960 --> 0:49:46.080 What is that thing that you have to get across 0:49:46.120 --> 0:49:48.040 about why this story is important? 0:49:48.320 --> 0:49:50.440 Well, I think it's important. It was important to me 0:49:50.600 --> 0:49:53.160 personally because, as I said earlier, that was the story 0:49:53.160 --> 0:49:56.960 that really taught me how to follow criminal trials and 0:49:57.040 --> 0:50:00.680 just how they're really a microcosm of the human condition 0:50:00.880 --> 0:50:04.040 of you have a lot of bad people in the world. 0:50:04.080 --> 0:50:07.320 Obviously you have some people that are vindicated at trial, 0:50:07.360 --> 0:50:10.480 but that wasn't the case here. Obviously. I think it 0:50:10.560 --> 0:50:12.759 was just a matter of I wanted to tell this 0:50:12.880 --> 0:50:17.040 story simply because it had a lot of historical context. 0:50:17.120 --> 0:50:20.160 I tried throughout the book to tie it into some 0:50:20.640 --> 0:50:23.200 topical events that were going on at the same time. 0:50:23.560 --> 0:50:25.560 A lot of people would have no idea if they've 0:50:25.600 --> 0:50:28.440 never heard of Candace musterl just how well known she 0:50:28.760 --> 0:50:32.400 was because of this murder trial. There was one newspaper 0:50:32.520 --> 0:50:36.040 editor who made the remark that only Candice Master could 0:50:36.080 --> 0:50:39.480 knock Jaqueline Kennedy off the front page, and it was 0:50:39.520 --> 0:50:42.840 true as despicable it was. There were also newspapers in 0:50:42.880 --> 0:50:46.080 the country that midway through the trial began to stop 0:50:46.160 --> 0:50:49.759 covering it because of the salacious material that readers were 0:50:49.800 --> 0:50:53.640 complaining that I don't want to read about these ancestual relationships, 0:50:54.600 --> 0:50:56.880 but I can tell you, living in Houston, boy, it 0:50:56.920 --> 0:50:58.680 was on the news every night and be laid it. 0:50:58.680 --> 0:51:02.239 Up well in this I'm ment I feel like I'm 0:51:02.239 --> 0:51:05.080 really throwing out a wild pitch here, But tell me 0:51:05.880 --> 0:51:08.759 that Rita and the other kids got her money and 0:51:08.840 --> 0:51:11.839 somebody did something good with all of this money that 0:51:12.200 --> 0:51:15.640 just seemed to cause so much trauma in so many 0:51:15.640 --> 0:51:16.520 family lives. 0:51:16.920 --> 0:51:21.879 Yes, that did happen, especially with Rita. After Candace died, 0:51:21.920 --> 0:51:25.600 there was a probate hearing in which it was finally 0:51:25.840 --> 0:51:29.960 confirmed that she was the child of Winthrop Rockefeller. Candace 0:51:29.960 --> 0:51:33.160 had a falling out with three of the four children 0:51:33.239 --> 0:51:36.319 that had been adopted. Her own son died within a 0:51:36.360 --> 0:51:39.520 few months after her death, so that really left Rita 0:51:39.560 --> 0:51:43.720 and these the adopted children. She disinherited two of the boys. 0:51:44.080 --> 0:51:47.560 The daughter, Martha, moved away and really wanted nothing much 0:51:47.600 --> 0:51:51.840 to do with Candace. But Rita was put in place 0:51:51.920 --> 0:51:56.000 to run the banks. She was, by all accounts, a 0:51:56.080 --> 0:52:01.560 very good business person, and she currently livesically on Kivas 0:52:01.640 --> 0:52:05.000 Gain and one of the high rise towers there, and 0:52:05.520 --> 0:52:09.520 she and her husband are very generous with a lot 0:52:09.560 --> 0:52:12.759 of the charities, particularly those having to do with the 0:52:12.800 --> 0:52:16.080 Red Cross and heart disease. So I can say that, yes, 0:52:16.680 --> 0:52:26.400 the money was eventually used for some good things. 0:52:30.719 --> 0:52:33.600 If you love historical true crime stories, check out the 0:52:33.640 --> 0:52:36.520 audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That 0:52:36.640 --> 0:52:39.879 Is Wicked, and American Sherlock, and Don't Forget. There are 0:52:39.960 --> 0:52:43.719 twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast, Tenfold More 0:52:43.760 --> 0:52:47.400 Wicked right here in this podcast feed. Scroll back and 0:52:47.440 --> 0:52:50.200 give them a listen if you haven't already. This has 0:52:50.239 --> 0:52:54.759 been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alexis M. Morosi. 0:52:55.120 --> 0:52:59.560 Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed 0:52:59.560 --> 0:53:03.440 by On Bradley. Curtis heath is our composer. Artwork by 0:53:03.640 --> 0:53:08.040 Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgarriff and 0:53:08.120 --> 0:53:12.480 Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram at tenfold More 0:53:12.520 --> 0:53:15.840 Wicked and on Facebook at Wicked Words Pod.