Introduction
A ringing phone roused Dr. John Handwerker at 4:45 a.m. on June 29, 1964.

Florida map with Key Biscayne
An answering service informed the
physician of a medical emergency at the home of a millionaire neighbor
in the diamond-dusted island enclave of Key Biscayne, Fla. Handwerker
pulled on trousers and rushed to the home of Jacques Mossler, 69. The
doctor might well have stayed in bed.

Jacques Mossler under blanket
He found Mossler, the shrewd ruler of a
$33 million financial empire, lying splayed on the living room floor,
surrounded by an aura of crimson blood. Dr. Handwerker found no pulse,
no heartbeat. There was nothing he could do because Mosslers murderer
had done his work so thoroughly. The victims chest had been all but
shredded by knifework.
Later that day, Dr. Joseph Davis, the
Dade County medical examiner, catalogued Mosslers fatal injuries. He
had been clubbed on the head at least twice, probably with an oversized
soda bottle and a sculptured glass swan found in the apartment. He had
then been stabbed. The murderer appeared to have been intent on a
sure-thing kill with a direct pricking of the heart.

Dr. Davis in the 1960s
Dr. Davis counted 17 entry wounds on the
left side of Mosslers chest. Two more thrusts penetrated his
breastbone at the center of the chest, and six others were found on the
left side of the body near his heart. In all, the pathologist found 39
knife wounds, and more than a few found their target of the
millionaires heart.

Coroner’s office, mid 1960s
The autopsy also numerous defense-style cuts on Mosslers hands and arms. He had died fighting. The question was: with whom?
Sanctioned Loansharking
Jacques Mossler had lived the American
dream. The son of Romanian immigrants, he grew up in New York and
Chicago, quitting school at age 13 to help support his mother when his
father died young. The enterprising Mossler worked as a newsboy,
hawking papers in the Chicago Loop, and he dabbled in a lucrative
sideline, lending money to kids who found themselves in a temporary
financial fix.

Jacques Mossler, victim
Mossler went around with pockets bulging
with jangling coins – the sweet sound of the young loansharks
vigorish. As he reached adulthood, Mossler graduated from newsboy to
auto mechanic, but that job was a stepping stone. His initiative earned
him an opportunity to sell cars at a Chicago dealership, and he soon
naturally shifted to the financing department. Mossler learned what
Henry Ford knew: Automobiles presented unprecedented financial
opportunities.
In 1895, the year Mossler was born, four
autos were registered in America. There were 8,000 five years later,
469,000 by 1910 and 9.2 million in 1920.
During the 1920s, Ford, Chevrolet and
other manufacturers cranked out cars for a population crazy with
automobiles. Every family had to have one, whether they could afford it
or not. Mossler was positioned to cash in on a companion craze:
consumer credit.
He saw installment loans as a legalized
form of his old street-corner loansharking. Interest was the vigorish
in a starched collar. After the Great Depression, Mossler founded a
string of small financing companies that tapped the expanding
installment loan market. This led him into the related banking and
insurance businesses.
By the end of World War II, Mossler had
assembled more than 40 bank, finance and insurance firms that were
waiting when returning soldiers needed credit to buy houses, cars and
refrigerators. His firms, clustered around Chicago, Houston, South
Florida and New Orleans, included the Mutual National Bank of Chicago,
Central Bank and Trust of Miami and three dozen finance and insurance
subsidiaries of two holding companies, Service Trust and Mossler
Acceptance Corp.
His lending firms used a credit-friendly slogan that echoes in television commercials today: The Yes Banks.
Repo Man

Mossler apartment, outside
When Mossler turned up dead, police
looked into his business relationships and found any number of enemies.
He was a corporate repo man. His firms had repossessed thousands of
automobiles and appliances over the years and foreclosed on untold
numbers of mortgages when lenders were late with payments. He was an
uncompromising businessman - scrupulous, but perhaps heartless.
As Percy Foreman, a prominent attorney,
would say, I believe… that Jacques Mossler was as ruthless in business
as any pirate that ever sailed the seas of commerce.
Of course, investigators also looked
into the victims personal relationships for clues and individuals with
motives to commit murder. And that is where the probe got complicated.
Mossler had led two personal lives. He married in the 1920s, and that
relationship produced four daughters. The couple was divorced in 1947.
And then along came Candy.

Candace Mossler
Born in 1919, Candace Weatherby was a
pixie-like farmers daughter from Georgia. She married young to an older
man, gave birth to two children, then divorced her husband and moved to
New York, where she took up modeling. Candy had a pleasant face and
perfect teeth, which led to steady work as a toothpaste model.
But New York was no place for a divorcee
to raise two kids, so she moved to New Orleans, where - still in her
20s - she opened the Candace Finishing School, Modeling School and
Model Agency. Candys businesses gave her access to that citys cultured
crowd, and she began working as a volunteer fundraiser for the New
Orleans Grand Opera Company. Her duty was to call on the citys
millionaire businessmen to seek donations.
One of the names that turned up on her
solicitation list was Jacques Mossler, who owned a New Orleans bank. In
the fall of 1948, Candy paid him a visit.
Candy Strikes Gold
Mossler proved to be a tough sell. Candy
had him penciled in as a $350 opera donor. He sprung for just $25. But,
he apparently was sold on Candy.
Mossler, then 52, was not an unattractive
man, with a shock of wavy hair, heavy arched eyebrows and
well-proportioned facial features. But Candy, 28, was in another
league. Some years later, Paul Holmes described her in the Chicago Tribune:
She was piquant, vivacious, friendly, and with a flashing smile that
lighted up her mobile features. Her hair was blonde, more white than
yellow… Her clothing was expensive but worn both casually and
tastefully. She was not a petite woman but she was on the smallish side
and slender as a girl. She was a woman who could be equally at home in
a drawing room, a cocktail lounge or a board room.
On May 24, 1949, six months after they
met, Mossler and Candy were married. They set up house in a 28-room
mansion in the exclusive River Oaks section of Houston, where Mosslers
business had its headquarters. The newlyweds needed the space, with six
children between them, along with a small squadron of live-in cooks,
maids, gardeners and chauffeurs.
Jacques Mossler lavished jewels and
designer clothing on his new wife. The couple kept a fleet of the
latest models of luxury automobiles - Jaguars, Cadillacs, Thunderbirds.
They maintained a busy social schedule, both in Houston and Miami,
where they bought an apartment on Key Biscayne.
The Houston Chronicle reported
that Candy “became known as a charming hostess, entertaining visiting
opera stars and other celebrities, and taking active part in civic,
cultural and charitable causes.” The couple donated to the Texas
Childrens Hospital, Houston Grand Opera, Houston Boys Club and the citys
United Fund.
Mossler gave his wife a monthly allowance
of $5,700 to manage the house, and he would add bonuses of $5,000 for
her birthday, their wedding anniversary and other special occasions.
Mossler, a pragmatic businessman, had
had a vasectomy after the birth of his fourth daughter. He apparently
enjoyed an occasional fling, but was paranoid about being blackmailed
over an unwanted pregnancy by a gold digger. The vasectomy became a
contentious issue with the couple because Candy wanted more children.
During a business trip to Chicago in
1957, Mossler read a newspaper story about a horrible murder. A mother
of five young children was shot and killed by her war veteran husband
during a bout of psychosis. The man, who was institutionalized, also
killed the youngest of the children.

Mossler children
Mossler pulled strings in Illinois
government and adopted the four surviving kids, a girl of 6 and three
boys, 5, 3 and 2. They joined the crowd at the Houston mansion.
A Nephew Moves In
Candy Mossler had a soft spot for hard cases.
She once sat on a county grand jury that
indicted a man named Howard Stickney for a double murder. After he was
tried, convicted and sentenced to die, Candy founded a defense fund on
his behalf, convincing her wealthy opera guild friends that capital
punishment was immoral.
In 1956, her brother DeWitt Weatherby was
sent away to prison for life in Georgia for killing a man during a
poker game. Candy and Jacques Mossler spent untold sums of money -above
board and below – to buy political influence on her brothers behalf.
He was paroled in less than five years.

Melvin Powers
In 1961, Candy Mossler took another hard
case. His name was Melvin Lane Powers, son of her older sister,
Elizabeth Weatherby Powers. Mel was a striking physical specimen. He
stood about 6-foot-4 and had the build of a linebacker. He sported
coal-colored hair and had the facial features of a movie star – pouting
lips, bedroom eyes, high cheekbones and a solid jaw. He had one
blemish: disfiguring acne.
Powers was just 20 years old in 1961,
but he could have passed for 35. He dressed in jacket and tie and had
the easy repartee of a salesman. Powers had sold magazine subscriptions
door to door in the southeast after high school, then moved to
Pontiac, Mich., where he fell in with a group of men involved in a
swindle racket. He was jailed for 90 days and was still on probation
when he showed up at Aunt Candys. He arrived in Houston late in 1961,
apparently at his mothers urging. She hoped Candys wealth would help set
him straight.
Candy urged her husband to hire Mel at
one of his Houston financial firms, the Allen Parker Co. She then asked
whether Mel could move into the mansion, to tide him over until he got
on his feet financially. Jacques Mossler reckoned that there was room
for one more kin. Mel moved in.
A Kinky Kind of Love
Jacques Mossler fell ill from a
respiratory infection that lingered for much of 1962. He traveled alone
to Europe for treatment at mineral springs and began spending more time
on Key Biscayne, breathing the healthier ocean air.
At the same time, Candy began to develop
a very close relationship with her nephew. Before long, they crossed a
moral - and legal - taboo. Mel and his Aunt Candy became lovers.
Candy, twice Mels age, would visit his
bedroom at night, after the children and servants were asleep. They
exchanged torrid love letters and stole away for trysts.
During their trips together, Powers
often would introduce Candy as his wife, although he sometimes
acknowledged her as a distant relation seeking succor from a bad
marriage.
Powers also bragged to acquaintances
that Candy had fallen under his sexual trance because he had a knack for
pleasuring her through oral sex. He performed in bed, Powers said, and
Candy treated him to anything he wanted, thanks to her wealthy
husband, whom he referred to – ironically enough – as the old mooch.
Candy and Mels relationship eventually
became an open secret around the Houston mansion. In the late spring of
1963, about 14 months after Mel moved in, Jacques Mossler learned of
his wifes incestuous affair, apparently after he was tipped off by a
servant, then read her diary.
Mossler paid a secret visit to the Harris
County district attorney to see about bringing criminal charges
against Powers for breaking up his home. The authorities apparently
dissuaded him, warning of the potential for scandalous publicity.
On June 20, Mossler told an executive to
fire Powers from his job at the financial firm. That same day, a pair
of investigators from the prosecutor’ s office visited Powers. They
ordered him to vacate the mansion or face arrest. Powers did not go
quietly. He railed against Jacques Mossler and vowed to return one day
as master of the mansion.
A disgusted Mossler retreated alone to
Europe. He eventually returned to the United States, but was too
embarrassed to live in Houston, where rumors of the incest tittered
through high society. Mossler opted for life in Key Biscayne, in a
modest two-bedroom unit at the luxurious Governors Lodge apartment
complex.
His relationship with his wife certainly
was strained. But neither Mossler nor Candy made legal moves to
separate or divorce. Each had financial motivation not to.
Candy would receive only $200,000 if she
sued for divorce under terms of a contract she had signed with Mossler
before marriage. And Mossler knew she could get half of his fortune if
he sought the divorce. So they suffered one another from afar for a
year after the affair was revealed – Jacques in Florida, Candy in
Houston.
Mel Powers had gone into business selling
mobile homes in Texas, with financial backing from Candy. He took an
apartment in Houston, which served as a love nest when Aunt Candy came
calling.
Midnight Migraines
After school let out in late May 1964,
Candy traveled to Key Biscayne with her own daughter, Rita, and three
of the four adopted children. No one knows the nature of the Mosslers
relationship in Key Biscayne, whether contemptuous, cordial or
conjugal.
But soon after Candy arrived in Florida she apparently began experiencing debilitating migraine headaches.
Three times she sought emergency
treatment at Miami s Jackson Memorial Hospital, on June 24, 26 and 29.
Each time she drove herself to the hospital between 1 a.m. and dawn,
taking the children with her and leaving Jacques Mossler home alone
with his boxer dog. The June 29 trip was particularly odd.

DuPont Plaza Hotel
She loaded the children in her red
convertible at 1 a.m., saying she had to mail some letters. She drove
to the DuPont Plaza Hotel, where she bought stamps and posted several
letters. She then went to the hospital for a migraine treatment.
In her two hours there, Candy received
three phone calls from the same man at the nurses station near the
emergency room. The caller was not Jacques Mossler, a nurse would later
say.
Back on Key Biscayne, Mosslers dog woke
neighbors with ferocious barking at 1:30 a.m. This was followed by a
series of thuds, muffled groans and a strange mans voice. The noises
were so troubling that three neighbors went to Mosslers door to check
on him. Their knock went unanswered, and they gave up and went home.
Candy and the children returned at 4:30 a.m., and found Mosslers body in
the living room. Candys teenage daughter, Rita, called police.
A Crime of Passion?
The authorities considered various
motives, including sour business relationships and revenge by someone
who had suffered the repo mans hook. Mosslers wallet was emptied of
about $500 during the deadly assault, so robbery was considered, as
well.
But detectives kept coming back to the
39 stab wounds. Mossler was not merely slain. He was murdered with a
vengeance. Often, such passionate overkill indicates an emotional or
sexual connection between the attacker and victim. Naturally, suspicion
fell on his wife and her lover.
Mossler left a record of the affair in
his own diary, and he clearly understood the stakes. He wrote of Candy
and Mel, ‘ ‘ If they don’ t kill me first, I’ ll have to kill them.’ ‘
Tangible and circumstantial evidence
implicated the lovers. Airline records and eyewitnesses said Powers had
traveled from Houston to Miami before the murder, then back again in
the hours after Mossler was killed. A palm print from Powers turned up
in the Key Biscayne apartment.
A white Chevrolet spotted at the murder
scene was identified as a rental that Candy had provided Powers during
his visit to Miami. The car was located at the Miami airport, where it
had been parked at 5:19 a.m. on June 29, a few hours after the murder
and not long before Powers boarded a flight back home to Houston.
Sixteen fingerprints from Powers turned up in the car, as did flecks of
blood.
On July 3, the day of Jacques Mosslers
funeral, Florida authorities issued a warrant charging Mel Powers with
his murder. Texas Rangers picked him up that afternoon at his trailer
business outside Houston. Police confiscated his clothing and found
traces of blood on trousers he was wearing when he returned from Miami.

Percy Foreman, defense attorney
Candy Mossler and her sister, Elizabeth
Powers, retained Percy Foreman, the famed Texas hired gun defense
attorney, to defend Mel. Foreman demanded a $200,000 retainer, and
Candy put up her jewelry box as collateral.
The gems included an emerald-cut blue
and white diamond ring valued at $20,000, a canary tear drop diamond
pendant worth $12,500, and various other gold and diamond frippery -
all gifts from Jacques Mossler to his wife.
Mossler would have choked at the idea: He had paid for the defense of his accused murderer.
Candy’s Turn
Candy Mossler decided to get out of town.
She arranged to take treatment for her migraines and other undisclosed
medical conditions at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Mayo Clinic Complex
She rented two adjoining apartments
there, and her children joined her. Meanwhile, investigators in Texas
and Florida continued working for months to string together evidence.
Each thread seemed to lead to Mel Powers, Candy Mossler, or both.
Cops turned up four witnesses who
claimed the lovers solicited a hit on the old mooch. The investigators
lined up a long list of witnesses - neighbors, employees, hotel
clerks - who said they saw Mel and Candy share affectionate moments.
Cops found a photographic record of Candy and Mels travels - souvenir
snapshots from nightclubs, ski slopes, concerts.
America s newspapers and magazines took
note of the salacious case, and a drumbeat began to build for
indictment of Candace Mossler. It finally came on July 20, 1965.
She was still living in Rochester but
agreed to fly to Miami to surrender, rather than risk the indignity of a
surprise arrest. Accompanied by a private nurse and wearing a Mayo
Clinic wrist identification band, she flew from Minnesota to Miami
International Airport, where she was treated to a genteel arrest by a
state police commander. A mighty press contingent had gathered at the
airport, and Candy gave them plenty of her toothpaste-model smiles.

Candace Mossler, escorted
I cant believe this is happening to me,
she said through gleaming incisors. Turning to the lawmen, she added,
What you should be doing is finding the man who really did this murder.
That is what the Dade County taxpayers are paying you for.
She added, This is Russia. They would convict Jesus Christ.
Time magazine published a droll
item about the case that called Mossler lissome and lippy. The story
noted that both Mel and Candy had been released on $50,000 bonds. The
writer concluded, While Mel discreetly headed for Atlanta, Candace
emerged from jail as other inmates showered her with hearty
obscenities. Smiling and blowing kisses, the irrepressible widow jounced
off to Houston. It promises to be some trial.
And so it was.
Circus Trial, Circa ’66
The celebrity trials of today have
nothing on the circus that began in a Miami courtroom on January 17,
1966. Mel Powers and Candy Mossler were tried together for murder, and
execution was a sentencing option for Judge George Schulz in the event
of a conviction. The subject matter was expected to be so offensive
that Schulz closed the courtroom to anyone under 21.
Most of the countrys biggest newspapers
and magazines sent their best correspondents to record all the
salacious details – among them, Theo Wilson for the New York Daily News, Paul Holmes for the Chicago Tribune and Lewis H. Lapham for the Saturday Evening Post.
Holmes wrote that the trial was
lubricated by sex, nourished by sex, varnished by sex. Like many
members of the press, he clearly was smitten by Candy.
He wrote, She is remarkable for her
poise, her wealth, her tenacious hold on the vestiges of a varnished
youth, and the bouncy, unquenchable optimism with which she cheerfully
faces an ordeal that will surely tarnish her and could end in a one-way
walk to Florida s death chamber. She is remarkable for an outgoing
disposition which makes it appear she seeks friends for friendship only
and neither needs nor wants sympathy. She is remarkable for her
gaiety, her ceaseless effervescence, and for an underlying, alert
intelligence that is her ultimate armor.

Candace Mossler interviewed
On dull days, Candy Mossler gave
exclusive interviews to this reporter or that, including Holmes. During
the six-week trial, Candy treated dozens of reporters to
favor-currying exclusives. Richard Gerstein, the top states attorney
for the Miami area, opted to lead the prosecution team. Arthur Huttoe
and Gerald Kogan assisted. Each defendant also had three-lawyer teams,
leaving little elbowroom inside the courtroom rail.
The big dog was Powers lead lawyer,
Percy Foreman, a physically imposing Texan with personality and bluster
as outsized as his home state. By Foremans count, he had defended
1,000 accused murderers. Eight in 10 had been acquitted – again, by
Foremans count.
He was a master of diversion and
flyspecking in the courtroom. In one trial after another, he strove to
deflect focus from his client by casting aspersions on some other
player - the accuser, the lover, the police or even society.
He ate juries alive by planting and
cultivating seeds of reasonable doubt - in the style of Johnnie
Cochranes mantra at the O.J. Simpson murder trial, If the glove doesnt
fit, you must acquit.
Harvey St. Jean and Henry Carr, both
veteran criminal defense attorneys, joined Foreman at Powers table.
Clyde Woody, a Houston lawyer, was Candys lead counsel, and he was
assisted by the venerable Walter Gwinn and Marian Rosen, a young lawyer
who was one of the few women in the courtroom.
In that era, just one in 20 people called
for jury duty in Florida was a woman, due to a state law that has
since been amended. Attorneys questioned 77 prospective jurors before
the first female candidate appeared.
Defense attorneys marshaled their
preemptory challenges to impanel an all-male jury, apparently believing
that men were more likely to appreciate Candys charms.
The 12 men ranged in age from 25 to 63.
There were nine whites and three blacks. Seven were Protestants, two
Catholics and two Jews. One man, a 47-year-old hairdresser who would be
elected foreman, professed no faith. Most came from blue collar
professions - bus driver, construction worker, aircraft mechanic,
letter carrier, lumberman and truck driver.
Disparaging the Victim
Speaking for the prosecution team in
opening remarks, Arthur Huttoe set up the case in black and white: The
motive for this murder was a personal hatred of the deceased by Melvin
Lane Powers and a sordid, illicit love affair between the deceaseds
wife, Candace Mossler, and her sisters son, Melvin Lane Powers.
Jurors shifted nervously.
Huttoe said that when Jacques Mossler
sacked Powers and booted him from the mansion, the young man told him,
Ill be back and you will regret this the longest day of your life.
Other defense attorneys used opening
statements to zero in on flaws in evidence, even before it was
presented. Yes, Powers palm print was found in Mosslers Key Biscayne
apartment, they noted, but so were 26 finger- and palm prints that had
not been identified. And the source of a dyed black hair found in the
right palm of the victim also had not been accounted for.
When his colleagues had finished, Percy
Foreman slowly unfurled his angular body from behind the defense table.
True to form, he lit into the victim. Foreman understood that Mel and
Candy would be judged harshly by the jury. He tried to trump any shock
the jurors felt about incest by introducing another titillating sexual
detail: Jacques Mossler was a homosexual, Foreman declared, and this
forced his poor wife to seek companionship elsewhere.
This provided Foreman with a strawman
suspect - a forsaken homosexual lover, perhaps with dyed black hair, who
was so emotionally overwrought he stabbed Mossler 39 times.
Foreman said dozens of people had real
or imaginary justification to murder the buccaneer businessman. But he
saved most of his bluster for the homosexual angle. He promised to call
witnesses who would lay bare the secret erotic lifestyle of the
millionaire.
Prosecutors spent three weeks presenting
their case against Mel and Candy. Evidence against Powers was
formidable - fingerprints, the rented automobile, blood.
Judge Schulz hobbled prosecutors by
refusing to allow as evidence a nine-page letter that Powers wrote to
Candy from prison. Candys diary also was ruled inadmissible. But a
number of witnesses testified to the couples sexual relationship,
including two men who recounted Powers bragging about his sexual grip
on Candy.
Gerstein and his colleagues Huttoe and
Kogan made a feasible murder case against Powers, although the evidence
against Candy was purely circumstantial. Then they went too far.
‘Humanity at Its Worst’
// <
Candace Mossler waves, after court
Judge Schulz summoned Mel and Candy to
stand before him. He declared them free and ordered their $50,000 bonds
released. Schulz dismissed the jury without offering the customary
gratitude. As the jurors filed out, Candy rushed over and kissed them,
one by one.
Prosecutor Gerstein told reporters, This is the American system of justice, and I cannot complain against it.
Life Goes On
Outside the courtroom, Mel and Candy embraced and kissed. A reporter asked whether they planned to marry.
Of course not, Candy said.

Aunt Candy & Nephew Mel
It was the truth. Their affair ended not
long after the trial. Mossler told intimates that her nephew was too
emotionally immature and prone toward jealous rage. Mels version was
that he was simply ready to move on to someone nearer his age. Candy
had Jacques money to console her.
Mossler left $1 million trust funds for each of the children – his own,
Candys, and their adopted orphans. But Candy got most of the $33
million estate, and she parlayed his business investments into a far
greater fortune over the next 10 years.
Five years after the trial, she married
Barnett Garrison, a Houston electrician. He was 33 and she 52. They
lived together briefly in the old Mossler mansion in Houston.
Thirteen months after the marriage,
Garrison was crippled in a fall from the room of the house. The couple
had been fighting that night and Garrison went out drinking alone. He
returned late without keys and apparently tried to climb up to Candys
third-floor bedroom. Candy divorced him.
For his part, Mel Powers went into a
career as a real estate developer. In the early 1980s he built the Arena
Tower and Arena Theater in suburban Houston, a pair of 19-story
buildings. He lived in a penthouse atop one of them, until the
buildings went into foreclosure.
His financial life has had boom-and-bust
cycles. One year he bought a 165-foot yacht; the next he filed for
bankruptcy. He was alive and well in his mid-60s at last word. No so
Candy Mossler.
In late October 1976, she was staying in a
penthouse suite at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami while in town for a
bank board meeting. She called for a doctor for a migraine treatment
just after midnight.
Deeply sedated, she died in her sleep.
The body was found the next morning. Her corpse was flown back toTexas,
where she was buried. Candy Mossler died with a net worth estimated at
well over $100 million. But her murdered husband, Jacques Mossler, won a
more prestigious eternal rest. He is buried at Arlington National
Cemetery near Washington, D.C.
Tonight is the 50th anniversary of the murder of Jacques Mossler - - he is missed. And to correct the last paragraph of this article, Candace Mossler is buried not in Texas, but together with her husband in Arlington National Cemetery. I know as I was there. AD June 29, 2014
ReplyDeleteI'd love to talk to you. I'm Skip Hollandsworth, a writer for Texas Monthly magazine.
Deleteshollandsworth@texasmonthly.com
Was Candace murdered?
ReplyDeleteI doubt she was murdered, but it sounds like a Michael Jackson type deal where maybe she was given too much of a drug.
DeleteA cunning manipulator, she will have a diagnosis according to modern criteria
ReplyDeleteWe lived about two blocks from the apartment building Mrs. Mossler lived in and she was on our paper route. I don't remember there being kids with her. We knew the neighborhood kids for blocks around, but no one knew her kids. There is a church in that area that had a big empty lot next to it. All the kids played there, baseball, sledding, kite flying, whatever. Her kids likely would have played there too, which is why it puzzles me that if they were there for a year, that we didn't know them. They would have been close to us in age. If they were in school, they would have gone to Sunset Terrace Elementary. Of course there were whispers around the neighborhood about her regarding the murder, and rumors that she liked to party, but we were little kids so not much was said in front of us. She was a good paper customer, always paid when we came to collect, which was a big deal because lots of people duck the paper kid on collection day. Plus she gave tips. She used to wear a neck brace and for some reason I thought she had been in a car accident and that's why she was at Mayo. I guess she could have been in an accident while in Rochester. But what I remember best was there used to be a popular band in Rochester called the Mustangs. Mrs. Mossler had some kind of party (birthday I think) and hired the Mustangs to play. They were set up in the front yard of the building and every kid in the neighborhood for blocks around were standing on the sidewalk gawking. We'd never seen such a thing. I never would have thought she was in her 50s then, and you know how kids are with "old" people. She didn't look it. Until I started reading about her recently, I didn't know how old she was then and if someone asked me now I would have said in her middle 30s. I would like to think Candy Mossler didn't have anything to do with her husband's murder because we liked her.
ReplyDeletei hope her and her nephew are burning in HELL
ReplyDeleteMe too
DeleteHe's not!
DeleteI was friends with her son Dan.
ReplyDeletewe went to Kellogg Junior High in Rochester.I always liked Candice but Mel always made me nervous.
I worked for Mel for many years and was dear friends with him until the end. It upsets me that people write stuff they think is true but don't actually know the truth!
ReplyDelete