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308 - A Blur of Entertainment

January 06, 2022 /

This episode of My Favorite Murder covers the stories of Blanche Monnier and Candy Mossler. The hosts, Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, discuss the shocking details of Blanche's 25-year captivity in her mother's attic and the scandalous life of Candy Mossler, who was accused of murdering her husband.

Blanche Monnier was locked away by her mother for 25 years after refusing to marry a wealthy suitor. The story begins when an anonymous letter alerts authorities to her situation, leading to her rescue from a filthy attic where she lived in squalor. Karen and Georgia detail the horrific conditions Blanche endured and the eventual trial of her mother.

In contrast, Candy Mossler's story involves her marriage to millionaire Jacques Mossler and the subsequent murder that shocked Houston. After Jacques is found dead, Candy becomes a prime suspect due to her alleged affair with her nephew, Melvin Lane Powers. The hosts recount the sensational trial that followed, filled with scandal and intrigue.

Throughout the episode, the hosts reflect on the societal implications of both stories, discussing themes of control, betrayal, and the darker sides of family dynamics. They also touch on the media frenzy surrounding Candy's trial and her attempts to regain her social standing after the scandal.

The episode concludes with a discussion about the lasting impact of these stories and the complexities of the individuals involved, leaving listeners with a sense of the bizarre realities of human behavior.

TLDR

Blanche Monnier was imprisoned by her mother for 25 years; Candy Mossler was accused of murdering her husband amid scandalous affairs.

Episode

1:32:17
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Clap it. Ready? 2022 let's do this thing one two three hello where are you oh i was way up there oh hello
00:01:57
like that. Yeah. Oh, I get it. And welcome to My Favorite Murder. The podcast. That's Karen Kilgariff.
00:02:04
And that's 2022's Georgia Hardstart. Oh, I'm a brand new lady. Look at her go. Look at me go. I got pantyhose
00:02:12
and I'm fucking doing it. Long blonde hair. You wouldn't recognize her. She's brand new. I'm a brand
00:02:19
new lady in 2022. Pantyhose. I don't know. Something about like that reminded me of the 80s. Like,
00:02:27
working women now wear pantyhose. Yeah, pantyhose and high top Reeboks. Let's do this thing.
00:02:34
Go to the office. It's a brand new you. We're swinging briefcases on the subway.
00:02:39
Hey, watch it, lady. You're stepping on my toes with your Reeboks. What's up? Let's do this.
00:02:48
What if we did the whole podcast just continually encouraging each other to do it?
00:02:54
Yeah, you get that, Karen. And you go get it, girl. And you slay, girl. Slay. Take it here.
00:02:59
Take it there. And bring it around. And bring it into 2022. I feel very positive about this new year.
00:03:05
How do you feel? Okay. I feel I haven't given it much thought, to be honest with you.
00:03:11
Oh, really? You've been busy? Too busy? Too busy. I guess I'm not a like. Maybe I'm depressed.
00:03:18
Because I'm not. Could be. I think I'm a little depressed. Because I'm not really a like.
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I guess I've been like, new year, new me. thing, but I don't have it right now in my system. Not feeling it. More of a, well,
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but have you been relaxing? Is it part of that? Oh, that could be it. Yeah. I've definitely had,
00:03:37
we had three weeks off, which was great. You and I, um, we pre-recorded everything. So we actually
00:03:44
got to take that break and there was a lot of nothing going on, which was really nice for me.
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And yeah, so maybe I'm still in the downward motion and it's not depression. It's just
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laziness. I mean, could be. It's like, as long as it's, I mean, look, there's always crying,
00:04:02
especially some of these holiday commercials. I've just been like, Nora's favorite thing is
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look over and then poke me and I'll be like, so what if I'm crying about this one thing? Cause
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it's just like, well, you get it out now. Wow. Commercials. Oh yeah. Kind of anything that
00:04:18
wants you to feel that way. I'll absolutely go there times too. Have you, since you're home with
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your, what, 14-year-old niece. Soon to be 15. Oh, my God. And your sister. Have you guys been,
00:04:30
were you watching the Hallmark Christmas movies that were on and amazing? We didn't do that.
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Ah. Is that what you were doing? I was just like randomly turning them on, like, you know,
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watching HGTV and then flipping around and stuff. And they are so good and bad. Like,
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they're exactly what you'd think. You know, there's Chad Michael Murray, and he's the carpenter,
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and he needs to become this thing and they are all on Christmas and they need to save Christmas at Christmas
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town or whatever. It's really... And there's the beautiful girl and there's her friend and then
00:05:02
there's the one. She's like a book editor but she's home for the holidays. Yes. But she's sad because
00:05:08
it's just her and her mom this year. Right. And that was her high school boyfriend.
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It's basically that movie with Reese Witherspoon. What's that one? Sweet Home Alabama.
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Like so much Christmas in your fucking it's like sticking your face in a christmas tree yeah tense and great eyeliner
00:05:25
like that's all it is yeah and sometimes it's like there's often a goofy best friend or an
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old best friend or some kind of very minor low-key conflict of like yeah fitting back into
00:05:39
the hometown or we're in a new town because i'm a busy gal with fucking pantyhose and shoulder pads
00:05:46
Pantyhose. From the city. And now I going back to my slow it down time Can I slow it down with these super tight pantyhose on I don know And then there Chad Michael Murray to help her unroll those pantyhose Oh that right Right down The sexiest move in sex
00:06:04
You know when a man takes you by the waist and then takes those control top pantyhose and begins
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rolling them down your hip. They make that noise. That's why there's that scene in every porn.
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that's right speaking of porn you know one thing i another thing i watched that was so delightful
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and enjoyable was a bunch of porn yes always shoulder pad porn it's totally my thing
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80s movies aka shoulder pad porn uh mcgruber has a tv show did you watch it no there's like
00:06:41
I didn't know that. I think it's on Peacock. There's like, you know, a six episode MacGruber, which I had just found the movie recently with
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Vince and was like, oh, shit, I love this. Yeah. And there's a TV show and it's so good and like light and like exactly stupid and dumb
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and what you need. Yeah. And help me out because now I can't get Chad Michael Murray's name out of my head.
00:07:05
He's in it. No, it's Ryan Phillippe. Is that what you're saying? No. He's in it.
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Yeah, he's in it. He's in it for sure. I just thought you were talking about the other cheeky, like, jaw-chizzle blonde guy.
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Yes, the other classically hot guy. But then there's the classically hot guy that actually is subverting that look because he's so funny.
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Will Forte. Yes, Will Forte. Oh. Who is, and this is, now I'm going to seem like a hypocrite, but I've met him before.
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And if anyone's a fan of Will Forte, you need to know that he is the sweetest, nicest, coolest, most normal person in real life.
00:07:43
Thank you, Jesus. From day one. Has to be. Right? And because here's my thing. I never expected him to be like that because he's really, really good looking, in my opinion.
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Okay. That's your type? Like the blonde kind of? What is it? He has a little bit.
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What is it? Well, I don't know. He looks like probably someone I went to grammar school with. Therefore, I think he's cute.
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He's totally cute. He's totally cute. I just he always looked to me like the kind of guy who wouldn't be nice because why would he have to be?
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Because he's really good looking. He's funny. So then, of course, he's nice because.
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Yes. Oh, well, that's not been my experience. Oh, right. In the least. But he was the exception to the rule to the point where he always says hi.
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And it's that kind of thing where I'm just like, I knew you in like 1998. Yeah. You don't need to do that anymore.
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But he does. But this whole story, I wish the story seemed credible. But since I started out not being able to say his name right off the top of my head, it seems like I'm fake.
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You were fluttered and you were thinking about Ryan Phillippe and just got complicated.
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And, you know, things are complicated. That's for sure. Well, Lawrence Fishburne is in it, too.
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and he it's just oh i mean he's like the actor you know and he's in mcgruber and it's like
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so that's awesome yeah he i wonder if he's a fan is our friend kirsten wigg in it i've never met
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her i'm just saying that oh yeah she is the fucking lady star oh i'm so glad i mean yeah
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she was in the movie but exactly like there's nobody not in it that you're like they have to
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Yeah, it's like they all came back. It's so heartwarming. That's the best. Okay, I have to watch that.
00:09:26
I didn't realize they'd made a TV show of that. You heard it here first. You heard it here first, for sure.
00:09:32
I definitely did. I don't know if anyone else did. But we're going to change that to I heard it here first.
00:09:38
Yes. What have we been watching? Well, I think I've said this already, but the thing that Nora and I do is we watch Modern Family together.
00:09:45
Right. She's seen every single one of them, literally knows them by heart. but that's kind of our go-to when we yeah we kind of like surf around yeah all right well
00:09:56
oh i'm watching game of thrones still i watch so much game of thrones karen oh yeah that's right
00:10:02
you you you texted me when they killed the king of the north i was gonna be like should we say
00:10:07
spoiler but it's it's been so long that that's not a if you haven't watched it no no everyone dies
00:10:13
Many, many die. Yeah. Guess what? Spoiler. In Game of Thrones and in life, we're all going to die.
00:10:21
Yeah. I text you all caps. They killed the King of the North. Because I wasn't expecting that to be the Red Wedding.
00:10:27
I thought because people are getting married later. So I thought those were going to be the Red Wedding things.
00:10:32
Not the one that it ended up being. And I was blown away. I'm sure everyone else was too.
00:10:37
Yep. You know. It was a real shocker when it actually happened. Yeah. And when was it 2011 or whatever?
00:10:46
Look, I was a wee babe of 31. I didn't have time. No, no, you were doing other stuff.
00:10:53
Yeah. No, it's so good. I mean, that's the thing. They set you up to think, you know, what's going to happen.
00:10:59
And then they boom. But I think they were one of the first shows like that, that were like, oh, we'll kill anybody.
00:11:05
You can't, you cannot trust that anyone would be here next week. Don't get attached.
00:11:10
All right. But I am attached to Aria. So I know she lasts, but I know nothing lasts in Game of Thrones.
00:11:19
Very mature outlook, but you're going to be happy about things. Okay. All right.
00:11:25
Good to know. You're just going to be. Okay. In general. I'll take it. I'll take it.
00:11:29
That's my prediction for you. And Therius. What's his name? Who? What's... I'll forget it.
00:11:37
Peter Dinklage? Yes. Yes. Peter Dinklage. Who was it? Yes. Yes. What's his name? Theron.
00:11:44
Theron. Theron? Theron No that not right either Tyrion Tyrion Tyrion I attached to him as well Well you should be Okay but I not going to get my heart broken
00:11:57
like right now. Not this second. Okay. Of course later, yeah. Sure. Sure. Later, yeah. It's so far in the past
00:12:06
that there's no way they're not dead now. You know what I mean? So if I was like, are they still
00:12:10
alive? It would be stupid. Right. I mean, no, I think Tyrion lives on to this day.
00:12:16
you gotta kind of out in a field somewhere with a sword no no it's good you're gonna
00:12:22
it's very satisfying okay and there's a part i'm gonna i'm gonna want you to circle back to me
00:12:28
okay i can text you all caps yes you can okay night or day truly i'm scared lots a lot of
00:12:37
things happen but you know i liked it there were lots of different opinions when that thing ended
00:12:42
Here's the thing these days. Everybody thinks that they could write television. Everybody thinks that because they watch television.
00:12:50
Right. And because they have watched television and because maybe they took a creative writing class.
00:12:55
But actually plotting out and writing television is fucking hard. And the way they were doing it is like there were so many characters and so much going on.
00:13:06
And they started with the books and then went off like everything about that is the most dangerous way to make television.
00:13:12
which is there's the fans that like the books. Right. So then you're not doing the book thing anymore.
00:13:19
Like there's all these ways to let people down. And well, I have, I was never pissed off.
00:13:25
No expectations. I'm here for the ride. Great. Muting the sword fights because they're gross and boring.
00:13:32
And otherwise, there's a lot of clanging, a lot of clanging. But this is the attitude we're looking for in 2022.
00:13:38
to just kind of like the openness and the releasing the the taking in and and letting
00:13:45
back out okay things all right right deep breaths breathe it out and in you know the
00:13:50
drill it usually is out and in yeah they gotta be or in and out depending on like where you're
00:13:57
standing that's right i'm trying to think of like one thing that i'm not about tv oh no i was just
00:14:06
to say like something I've watched on this break or something I've been doing, but it's been a lot
00:14:12
of kind of been doing a lot of like movies and then reruns and think like rewatching and stuff
00:14:18
because yeah, there's I've started things and then I've been like, this isn't doing it for me.
00:14:24
Yeah, but I know that my demands are very specific. Yeah, very irritating. so and you're watching with other people now so it's like it has to be everyone has to be into it
00:14:36
especially a 14 year old girl who's not probably into very like very much stuff that you're into
00:14:41
yes so that makes it harder it's kind of like when Nora's still when she's still up and in the front
00:14:48
room with us yeah then then we're everything's kind of catered toward what she likes because
00:14:53
we just are trying to keep her in the room as long as possible but then she's got to peel off
00:14:58
so she can go snapchat it up. It's so hilarious. It's like, and my, we, we have to talk about,
00:15:06
oh, we can't take it personally because she's an adult, you know, she's a, she's a teen,
00:15:11
but it's like, why are you in there? Why don't you want to be out here with us? It'd probably feel better if she went in there to read a book rather than talk to other people.
00:15:20
Right. Yeah. She's definitely picking her friends over us, which like, that's how it is. Who gives
00:15:25
of shit about your mom and your aunt. Right. But she needs to know that these are the days to hold
00:15:31
on to. And we won't, although we'll want to. Right. These are the days to remember.
00:15:38
And because they will not last forever. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. There's a thank
00:15:42
you and you're welcome in that Billy Joel song. That song makes me cry. Do you know that?
00:15:48
Really? Yeah. Well, that's funny. Uh, yeah. It's beautiful. The man knows how to write a song and has since like 1972.
00:16:05
Billy Joel is the man. He knows his shit. There was a TV show I was watching and one of his songs from the 70s was very astutely put on the soundtrack.
00:16:17
It was one of those TV shows that had a very good sound, like music producer. Yeah.
00:16:22
So they had a huge budget is what you're saying. Yeah. And they could they can actually play the real Billy Joel song. And I was just like, nice one. Nice pick. And also his voice, like the clarity of his singing voice is real effective. It gets you does. All right. Um, what else? Yeah. So on my way up, because I drove up for this break.
00:16:48
Oh, I am. Yes. Do it. Yes. Yeah. So I had to I had to prep a bunch of podcasts for me drive. Yeah. Okay. So you know that crazy story out of South Carolina about the lawyer who the Murdoch family, the Murdoch's Murdoch's Murdoch's Murdoch's pronounced Murdoch.
00:17:11
I learned. So there is a reporter, a young woman named Mandy Matney. And she has been covering
00:17:21
this story since the first part of the story broke. And I think at this point, there's like
00:17:26
20 parts of the story. It's the first part where he kills the girl in the boating accident or when
00:17:32
the two, it's so wild. It's the craziest story. So first of all, that's misinformation because
00:17:38
He didn't kill. We didn't kill anybody. Not the dad but the son right The son OK yes So there a boating accident A teenage girl dies in this boating accident And that basically what begins this journey
00:17:52
And Mandy Matney is a reporter, tries to look into it. But the son who was driving the boat is the son of the Murdoch family.
00:18:03
Right. Who they have been what is essentially the equivalent of the DA in this county in South Carolina for like 100 years or more.
00:18:13
Yeah. It's like a big, rich family, generations of wealth. Very powerful in the legal community.
00:18:19
Huge. She uncovers, basically starts pulling a thread that is one of the most unbelievable stories you've ever heard.
00:18:27
And we've all heard parts of it. Now, my dad, home Jim, sent me this Guardian article.
00:18:33
And he was like, you have to read this. This is crazy. Did you know about it? And I was like, well, I heard things here or there.
00:18:40
This article is basically this comprehensive thing because the person who wrote the article has been listening to Mandy Matney's podcast.
00:18:47
So the podcast is called The Murdoch Murders. And there's like 25 episodes of it.
00:18:54
They're half hour each. So you can binge it like crazy. And it's she's been covering the story since the beginning.
00:19:01
She is the reporter. So it's really cool because aside from the fact that you're hearing this mind blowing story and this kind of old boy network being blown apart.
00:19:13
Yes. It's this young woman reporter who's basically doing it with her Fitz news.
00:19:20
Amazing news website that she works for. And like on the weekly, things are changing and things are coming out.
00:19:26
Like currently things are happening. Yes. It's a breaking story that she has been reporting on from the beginning.
00:19:34
Right. It's with like old buried shit and like crit and twist. Oh, I can't. Okay.
00:19:38
I'm going to totally listen to that. Yeah. It's like a kind of a jaw dropper. And also in the first couple episodes, she starts, she talks about after her first episode,
00:19:49
she, she gets on there and is like, people keep talking about my vocal fry. There's nothing I can do about it.
00:19:55
it's really mean that you're saying that. And I was laughing so hard. I was just like,
00:20:00
oh, honey, move on. I love you. It's just the beginning of quote unquote feedback that you're
00:20:07
going to get. Just keep going. Just keep going. It's not feedback. Good for her. Good for you.
00:20:12
So if you haven't heard the Murdoch murders, you absolutely have to listen to it. Okay. Yeah.
00:20:18
Can I do one real quick that I listened to throughout, like whenever I was cleaning
00:20:22
something throughout the, um, what, not the pandemic, but our, our vacation. Same different,
00:20:30
same fucking thing. So have you heard of the podcast heavyweight? I don't, I don't know.
00:20:37
It's hosted by this dude, Jonathan Goldstein, who is so lovely and funny and curious. And
00:20:43
each episode, he basically interviews a person who had this moment in their life that was pivotal
00:20:50
and are trying to sort through it by like kind of understanding it. And usually there's another person involved that then Jonathan Goldstein goes and gets a hold of so they can like exchange.
00:21:01
Like there's an episode with Moby. It's people's life stories, almost a little bit like this American life, but but told through the voice of whoever was there, not the person who experienced it.
00:21:15
Oh, I want to figure it out. It's really fucking good. And like there's some guy had gotten hit by a car on his bicycle and had it ruined his life.
00:21:24
He couldn't walk for years. And he was and then he wanted to meet the guy who hit him and had been like 10 years.
00:21:30
And they sit them down in a room together and they're crying and apologizing and thinking.
00:21:36
It's like the most beautiful cry, cry, cry. Oh, my God. I know. It's stuff like that.
00:21:40
If but Georgia, if I'm crying while I'm watching like an AT&T commercial, do you think I am going to be OK?
00:21:49
No, but it's like a good cry. It's like there's like a humanity behind these stories that like, yeah, like this is how life really is.
00:21:57
It's really beautiful. Oh, good. OK, so just amazing storytelling. Yes. Really great storytelling, really.
00:22:05
And then there's some that are funny. They're always like touching a little bit and they're always like life lesson.
00:22:10
So yeah, check out Heavyweight. I really love it. Cool. I love that. Hey, speaking of podcasts, should we do Exactly Right Corner and talk about all the podcasts
00:22:19
on our network, or at least some of them? Let's do it. Woo-hoo! Real quick, Murder Squad continues their winter distraction series with guest Dr. Anne Burgess.
00:22:29
She is who the character of Wendy Carr in the show Mindhunter is based on, which is
00:22:34
just she is a badass. So awesome. And also over on I Said No Gifts with Bridger Weininger, if you're watching SNL and you're blown away by the newest cast member who does the impression of Trump, his name is James Austin Johnson.
00:22:47
He's a comic. I don't know if he's originally from L.A., but I know him from here.
00:22:52
So talented and hilarious. And he is on I Said No Gifts this week. Love it. Yeah.
00:22:58
And we have the new merch in the merch stores, this satin pajamas that have you and I and our pets on them.
00:23:05
I have been looking at those for so long because they are hanging on a hook with all my vintage
00:23:11
nighties like next to my bed. So every time I fall asleep at night, I see our faces and like
00:23:15
our animals and all the adorable stuff by the artist. The art on the pajamas is by Rachel
00:23:22
Flannery, who's a friend of the podcast and this really talented artist. I love all her work,
00:23:27
Rack Flan on Instagram. So check those out on myfavoritemurder.com and the store.
00:23:32
Do you need silk pajamas? Of course. The answer just might be yes. Ask yourself.
00:23:39
And then also last week we put out... the monthly episode of MFM animated by Nick Terry.
00:23:46
And this episode is so fricking good. It's sarcasm through the mail. And it's based on a story from the,
00:23:53
my favorite murder of many. So the number 250, it is, it's another beauty by Nick Terry.
00:24:00
He's just so talented. How does he do it? He has a life and a job. I don't know.
00:24:04
A marriage to tend to. And yet he still makes us these beautiful, beautiful animated,
00:24:09
go to YouTube, MFM animated, The exactly right YouTube page. That's right. Do it.
00:24:15
Good times. Good times. Do it. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. It's 2026.
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Use code MFM15 for $15 off your first purchase at thirdlove.com. Goodbye. So today, I'm first, right?
00:27:25
Yeah. Yeah. Today, I'm going to tell you a story about a French woman named Blanche Monir.
00:27:32
So this is also known as the story of the sequestration de Poitiers. So. What's that mean?
00:27:40
It's a sequestered woman in Poitiers, France. Okay. All right. Sequest. We can all relate.
00:27:48
sequestered so i first heard about this in an all that's interesting article written by gina
00:27:54
de miro i also got info from info i got info information information that's right from a
00:28:02
history daily article written by lily rowan a ranker article by inigo gonzalez two chicago
00:28:09
tribune staff articles and then like these are all old-timey magazines magazines these are all
00:28:14
Old-timey newspaper articles, one from like the New York Times, Brooklyn Life article, also written by E.M. Milzener.
00:28:23
So here's where we start. On May 23rd, 1901, the attorney. Yeah, the beginning of the 19s.
00:28:33
The Attorney General of Paris receives an unsigned letter that reads, Monsieur, Attorney General.
00:28:41
Monsieur. Monsieur, Attorney General. I have the honor to inform you of an exceptionally serious occurrence.
00:28:49
I speak of a spinster who is locked up in Madame Monet's house. Monet's? M-O-N-N-I-E-R-S.
00:28:59
Monet. I mean, I can't pretend that I would be able to pronounce. There's only a couple words I know because I took French one.
00:29:06
That's right. When I was a freshman. That means you're the expert here, though. I mean, I know Monsieur.
00:29:13
Yeah. That's about it. Monsieur. Madame Monnier's house, half starved and living on a putrid litter for the past 25 years in a word in her own filth.
00:29:25
What? Yeah, so he gets that letter. But of course he knows that the Monnier are a well known and respected family in the community of Potier France which is a couple hours outside of Paris So the attorney general tells a few police officers to go over to the house and check
00:29:43
things out. But be really careful, of course, because if the contents of the letter turn out to be
00:29:48
fake, it could look really bad on the officers, like, you know, blaming a well-to-do family
00:29:54
for something. You know, those rich people don't like to be blamed for having a lady hidden away somewhere.
00:30:00
That's right. God forbid. God forbid. But on the other hand, the spinster that they named in the letter had basically disappeared off the face of the planet.
00:30:08
So they knew it was a real woman. So maybe the letter was true because no one had seen her in years.
00:30:14
So when the officers are finally able to force their way into the home to search, they're appalled at what they find.
00:30:22
Boom. Let's go back real quick. Oh, how exciting was that? Great. So, Louis and Emile Monnier live in Poitiers, France, which is about four hours away from Paris. According to the Chicago Tribune, the Monnier family has, quote, lived in Poitiers.
00:30:39
My God. Lived in Poitiers. Lived in that town. Thank you. I love you. For over half a century.
00:30:49
And quote, they belong to the most respected families of the city and always enjoy the reputation of being among the most refined and genteel.
00:30:58
So they're like bourgeois and shit. Right? Yeah. Did I get that right? Bourgeois.
00:31:07
Bourgeois. Bourgeois. Louise is a key figure in the mother is a key figure in Parisian high society.
00:31:14
She's known for her charitable works. She even received a community award for her generosity to the city.
00:31:20
The husband, Emile, had been the head of a local arts facility. They're both very well known in town and respected.
00:31:28
In the mid-1800s, their daughter, Blanche, is born, and they also have a son named Marcel.
00:31:34
So by the time Blanche is in her 20s, people just can't help but notice how beautiful she is.
00:31:40
But they also say that she's gentle and she's good natured, a really lovely woman.
00:31:47
The New York Times describes her as being a, quote, beautiful, tall brunette with a wealth of hair.
00:31:53
Interesting. And big, brilliant eyes. She is, quote, belle of the neighborhood of Poitiers and is sought by more than one, end quote.
00:32:03
So she's a gal. Two? It could be three. Could it be? It could be any number above one.
00:32:13
Above one. In 1876, at 25 years old, after her father and the head of the household dies, Blanche is expected to pick a suitor to marry so she can be taken care of since her father's dead.
00:32:28
Unfortunately for her mother, she's fallen in love with an attorney and he's poor.
00:32:34
So I know. Tough. tough so when blanche tells her mom about this louise is not pleased at all of course she doesn't
00:32:42
approve of this guy he is not only much older than her but he's not from the same social class
00:32:48
he's quote penniless um but they've fallen in love this is just like downton abbey but oh my god
00:32:56
or similar i think he had money though anyway sorry right but you're right and louise is worried
00:33:02
about what people around town will say if she marries this penniless lawyer. It's going to be
00:33:06
completely disgraceful for Blanche to marry someone of this class. In Poitiers, it's super
00:33:12
intense. People talk. Sure. Gossip. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. You know how they are. Talk and gossip.
00:33:22
Louise demands that her daughter find a better suitor, aka a richer one. And Blanche tells her
00:33:27
mom, it's not going to happen. I'm in love. And she threatens to elope with this man.
00:33:32
Yeah. But Louise doesn't give in. Instead, she locks Blanche in a nine by 12 foot room in the attic. She tells Blanche that she will be released just as soon as she agrees to marry someone else. But Blanche refuses to give in to her mother's demands. And so she stays in the locked room.
00:33:51
in the beginning Blanche spends a lot of her time screaming for help and when the neighbor is here
00:33:56
they ask Louise what's going on and she says that her daughter has gone insane oh yeah after and
00:34:03
they believe it I think it's a time when that just you know was an okay excuse for women to have
00:34:09
disappeared because they went insane you know they were just insane and that's yeah it's very
00:34:15
like a gothic novel. Right. It's very, and it's also like women, they're insane.
00:34:21
They're very crazy. It's very apt to happen. Yeah, you know. After a few years, the screaming stops
00:34:28
and the attic window is boarded up. Louise tells her neighbors that Blanche has gone off
00:34:34
to live in an insane asylum. According to the Chicago Tribune, quote, the neighbors sympathize with Louise
00:34:42
and tactfully respect the sad mystery which surrounds the fate of Blanche. They gradually cease to speak of Blanche
00:34:50
and finally almost forget the very existence of the unfortunate girl. But Blanche has not gone off to an insane asylum.
00:34:59
Instead, she's kept in the attic where she does not see the light of day. The only interaction she has is with her mom, her brother, and the servants.
00:35:08
She's rarely fed, and when she is fed, it's table scraps, and she's not allowed to wear clothes or bathe whoa guess how long she's in there for
00:35:19
25 years no yeah no yeah after like year 17 wouldn you be like okay i date oh yeah but i feel like at that point it like they had to keep their little secret Like even after a year or two I think she wasting away
00:35:38
They can't just bring her back into society. Right. Yes, exactly. They've kind of, this is a, they're at an impasse, mother and daughter.
00:35:48
And also, I bet you the mother was kind of intense to have done it in the first place
00:35:54
and then held to it in that way. Yes, absolutely. Like there's not a lot. There's some imbalance of chemicals going on in this household.
00:36:04
Throughout the household. Right. So 25 years go by and no one has even thought of Blanche in quite some time.
00:36:11
Then on the 23rd of May 1901, as we talked about in the beginning of this story, the attorney general of Paris receives the unsigned letter telling him of the, quote, spinster who is locked up in Madame Monnier's house,
00:36:25
half starved and living on a putrid litter for the past 25 years in her own filth.
00:36:31
So the attorney general then sends the police officers. They're finally able to get into the house.
00:36:39
Luis's son, Marcel, lives across the street with his wife and daughter. He says, you can't come in to look at it.
00:36:45
But finally, they're able to search the house without the permission. I think whatever a search warrant is back in those days, they got one.
00:36:51
once inside they're immediately hit with the smell of something awful following the stench
00:36:58
the officers arrive at a padlock door leading to the attic the officers break the lock and inside
00:37:05
they find complete darkness they can't see anything but they can smell something and it's rancid
00:37:11
it's so bad that the officers immediately like we need to open a window but the windows boarded up
00:37:17
and hidden behind heavy curtains. Oh, no. An officer later detailed what happened next.
00:37:24
Quote, We immediately gave the order to open the window. This was done with great difficulty,
00:37:29
for the old dark-colored curtains fell down in a heavy shower of dust. To open the shutters, it was necessary to remove them from their hinges.
00:37:39
As soon as the light entered the room, we noticed in the back, lying on a bed, her head and body covered by a repulsively filthy blanket, a woman identified as Mademoiselle Blanche Monnier.
00:37:53
Okay. Can I tell you what I'm thinking of right now? Yes. Did you ever see the movie Pet Sematary?
00:37:59
It's exactly that. And there's a photo of this woman and it looks like that scene.
00:38:06
Yeah. And they must have torn it. Like Stephen King must have known about the story because it's like the same thing.
00:38:12
Okay. Hey, those cops all would have had to go to an insane asylum. Totally. Just standing in the room like, what's going on in here?
00:38:21
And then the curtain comes down. And by the description of the curtain, it meant that they could tell the window hadn't been open in literal decades.
00:38:34
He goes on to say that the unfortunate woman was lying completely naked on a rotten straw mattress.
00:38:40
All around her was formed a sort of crust made from excrement, fragments of meat, vegetables, fish, and rotten bread.
00:38:49
No. We also saw oyster shells and bugs running across Mademoiselle Monnier's bed.
00:38:55
End quote. So she just, they, the mother held her in abject filth. In pitch blackness.
00:39:04
Pitch black, no clothes allowed. Your own daughter that you raised from 25 years old.
00:39:11
Like there must have been something going on before that, right? You don't just like snap, do you?
00:39:15
Yeah, exactly. There's, yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. I don't like this at all. No, I knew you wouldn't.
00:39:22
On the floor are swarms of rodents eating pieces of rotting food scattered around.
00:39:27
And the room is covered with words and drawings scratched into the wall. Oh, my God.
00:39:33
But because the smell is so bad, the officers, they can't do any more investigating.
00:39:37
Blanche is rushed to the hospital because they have to just leave the room immediately because of immediate PTSD.
00:39:43
Sorry, can I just say, and I know this is a small detail, but to me, what puts it over the top is oysters.
00:39:50
Like, this is a disgusting situation. Yeah, yeah. You're throwing seafood onto the top of that?
00:39:57
Yeah. Nightmare. Yeah, yeah. And weren't oysters like a poor person's food back then?
00:40:02
So she was literally getting like the scraps. Yeah. Like what people didn't want to eat.
00:40:07
Yeah. Yeah. So Blanche's rushed to the hospital and Louise and her son, Marcel, are carted away to jail.
00:40:14
Once word gets out that the wealthy and respected Louise has been keeping her daughter locked up in a room for 25 fucking years, the public is outraged.
00:40:25
A crowd gathers outside the Monnier house and Marcel's wife and daughter have to go into hiding.
00:40:31
At the hospital, Blanche is bathed and examined. Doctors are worried that she's not going to make it. She's skeletal and so malnourished that she only weighs 44 pounds.
00:40:44
Oh, my God. Yeah. According to Brooklyn Life, Blanche's nails are three inches long and her, quote, hair is matted into the semblance of a bar of iron.
00:40:55
oh and according to ranker she is quote unable to speak properly and is completely delirious
00:41:01
but some say she was eventually lucid once they kind of took care of her and someone said she
00:41:08
remarked quote how lovely it is to breathe fresh air again god meanwhile louise and marcel are
00:41:15
interrogated by police at first they say they had to lock blanche away because she is quote foul
00:41:21
angry overly excited and full of rage Me too Lock her away But officers don believe the Monnieres They hadn experienced
00:41:33
any of those reactions when they found Blanche and she started coming around. They said that at
00:41:38
the hospital, Blanche had been completely calm and happy when she was finally given a bath.
00:41:43
And so Marcel and Louise's story just doesn't add up. Eventually, the Monnieres start to open up.
00:41:50
Marcel, the son, blames everything on his mother, saying that Luis had complete control over the family and their finances.
00:41:59
He tells officers that he had tried to save Blanche, but he couldn't because of Luis.
00:42:04
So instead, he just tried to make her as comfortable as possible. He didn't try very hard.
00:42:09
He really didn't do a great job of that. He didn't. I'm sure he was terrified of his mother, too, though, you know?
00:42:15
I mean, that's just it. This could it could have been him. the mother could have been terrified of him. He could have like, there's the possibilities, right?
00:42:24
Right. Like you just don't know at this point, you don't know what the details, what's going on in that house. Yeah. Yeah, totally. So Louise actually confesses the truth,
00:42:34
but she never faces any legal consequences because 15 days after her arrest, 73 year old Louise
00:42:41
has a heart attack and dies in her jail cell. Oh, wow. So you kind of wonder like, oh, maybe
00:42:48
then Blanche would have been found and freed anyways. But then again, maybe Marcel would
00:42:52
have murdered her and got rid of her body. So, you know, like once the mom died, if to not let
00:42:58
the story get out, anything could have happened. Who knows? I mean, I doubt he would have freed
00:43:03
her and been like, see everyone, she's fine. Be like, and let the story get out. But if you're,
00:43:09
if we're going to take him at his word that it was all the mom, then he would have. It is,
00:43:13
it's just as possible right i mean it's like how yeah but but she might not have died you know like
00:43:19
she could have died from the shock 15 days later if she had just been living her normal life she
00:43:23
might not have had a heart attack so it would have gone on you know yeah that could have been from
00:43:27
shock also one would like to think like even you know you told the story of your sister hitting you
00:43:33
with a barbie or whatever but if your mother locked her into a room yeah for years you would
00:43:39
do something about that absolutely absolutely you would you would you would actually do something
00:43:44
about it yeah like day two day two yeah not like year 25 no exactly they give her a day in there
00:43:53
lee you deserve it a little bit a day or two yeah throw some sister revenge yeah but then i'd be
00:44:01
like you know i don't have anyone to play with right now so this kind of sucks no one looks good
00:44:06
in this story on the family side. I'm just saying. Absolutely not. Before she died, she made sure to
00:44:11
change her will to put all the family's money toward caring for Blanche. Her last words were
00:44:16
reportedly, oh, my poor Blanche. But it just everyone thinks that on her deathbed, she was
00:44:22
worried about her public image. So she did all these things to make it seem like she was taking
00:44:26
care of her daughter. Yeah. And it's like, well, yeah, you clearly didn't. After the servants all
00:44:33
say that Luis forced them to keep Blanche imprisoned in the attic. So they had servants
00:44:38
there that were like contributing to keeping her there. Marcel is the only one to go on trial and
00:44:44
he's found guilty of helping his mother keep Blanche captive and is sentenced to 15 months in prison.
00:44:52
Oh, okay. But the thing is, he's an attorney. So he appeals the sentence. Sure. He knows exactly
00:44:58
what to say. He says Blanche could have left any at any time and no one forced her to stay there.
00:45:05
She's like she was chained to a wall and right and like writing on the walls about being held
00:45:11
captive. So yeah, it's highly unlikely that you're just going to let yourself starve right
00:45:17
to the brink of death and sit in filth. And at this time in France, though, it wasn't a crime to not help free someone that you didn't in prison.
00:45:28
So if someone else imprisoned someone, not your problem, essentially. Yeah, I get it.
00:45:34
Yeah. So technically, he hadn't done anything wrong. And the court agrees and Marcel is freed.
00:45:40
The public's really angry at it and him and his family have to go into hiding. Eventually, Blanche is able to gain weight and speak in short sentences,
00:45:48
but spending half of her life locked up in a room, of course, has done a lot of damage to her psyche.
00:45:54
And she's so traumatized that she never makes a full recovery. She lives at her final days in a sanatorium before she dies 12 years later in 1913.
00:46:06
To this day, no one knows who wrote the letter about Blanche's living conditions to the attorney general.
00:46:12
One of the servants. It's been rumored that it was one of the servants or one of the servants told someone they know and they told someone like the servants didn't even do it.
00:46:22
Or some people also think that the brother Marcel finally gained enough courage to go to the police, but neither theory has ever been confirmed.
00:46:30
And that is the story of Blanche Monair, who was in prison in her mother's attic for 25 years.
00:46:38
I need to see that picture, even though I kind of don't want to. Want me to show it to you?
00:46:42
yeah oh no no no no the poor woman that is yeah horrifying horrifying that's truly
00:46:56
what horror movies are based on and made out of yes that's a horror movie yeah totally
00:47:02
now we need the heavyweights version where it's those policemen telling the story oh my gosh can
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00:48:57
Great. That was creepy. Yeah. Sorry about that. No, no. That's why I'm here. That's why I show up to work.
00:49:06
That's my, that's why I like this job so much. Okay. So my story, uh, the reason I'm doing this story this week is because someone named Tyler
00:49:16
Jones on Twitter at Tyler underscore Jones 92 sent all of us a tweet that said, quote,
00:49:24
please do this story. It's a wild ride. And we all know you love a Texas Monthly article.
00:49:29
Yes. Right. Which is very true. Yeah. And the main reason we love those articles is because the great journalist Skip Hollinsworth
00:49:36
writes for Texas Monthly. I believe he's actually like an executive editor or something.
00:49:42
Probably. He's very high up there. And he wrote the article that Tyler Jones 92 sent.
00:49:48
So it's a perfect. Skip Hollinsworth. Friend of the family too. Friend of the family.
00:49:53
But also like the thing about Skip Hollinsworth's articles is that he, I'm just retelling his article.
00:50:02
And we say this every time we do this. The same thing with the amazing bank robber story.
00:50:07
It turned out to be that woman, which is one of my favorite stories of all time.
00:50:11
Skip Hollinsworth's article, his journalism, his research. Yeah. And I'm just basically giving you a CliffsNotes version of it so that you can go and read it.
00:50:20
Right. And what I, I think we've promoted this before, but Texas Monthly has a podcast network now.
00:50:28
Yeah. They have their own podcast, which you should absolutely go and explore because the journalism
00:50:33
for Texas Monthly is excellent and amazing. Their stories are incredible. and he and skip hollandsworth has a podcast called tom brown's body right which i started listening
00:50:45
to that's really good really it's very sad it's about a teenage boy in a small town in texas that
00:50:52
went missing in the investigation around right his uh what do you eventually find out is murder
00:50:59
but also i didn't know i don't know that i knew this but skip hollandsworth wrote a new york times
00:51:06
best-selling and award-winning book called The Midnight Assassin, The Hunt for America's First
00:51:11
Serial Killer. And that's about the Austin Servant Girl slayer. I covered a long time ago.
00:51:19
Servant Annihilator, right? The Servant Annihilator, yep. And that story is from 1885.
00:51:24
Yeah, crazy. And that book, you can also get it on audiobook. I just downloaded it for my drive home.
00:51:31
Yes. so anyway we love skip hollinsworth his work is incredible and yeah you know we we're so grateful
00:51:39
for all of the journalists and especially the crime journalists but the journalists in general
00:51:43
yeah they go out and they find those amazing stories um that we then take and just kind of
00:51:49
retell for you yeah bastardize i think they call this well it's kind of you know it's kind of like
00:51:54
hey did you know about this right did you hear this listen to this story it's like yeah it's like
00:52:00
being at a party obviously and being like did you hear this let me tell you the story i read about
00:52:04
yeah and in my party story voice it's a party story that then we're just pointing you toward
00:52:11
great sources of amazing journalism yeah this podcast is a party story essentially
00:52:16
yeah so skip hollandsworth's article from the texas monthly is the the research for the story
00:52:22
i'm about to tell you along with there's um there was an article from the new york times by douglas
00:52:28
Martin. There was a Houston Chronicle article that did not have a byline. And then as always,
00:52:34
Wikipedia, which these days, every time I go on there, they need donations. So if you have $5
00:52:39
and you're the kind of person that uses Wikipedia all the time, which we are, please donate to them,
00:52:45
keep them around. We need them. Yes. Very much. Yes. Okay. So this is, this is the story of Houston socialite Candy Mossler and the murder of Jacques Mossler.
00:52:59
Okay. So we're going to go to June of 1964. So it's the swing in 60s. Yes. Houston, Texas socialite Candice Candy Mossler is, and I'm guessing at that name pronunciation.
00:53:14
Yeah. Let hope I right Mossley I think it Mossley It Mossley mosley she visiting her husband millionaire businessman jacques mosler at their condo in key biscayne florida which is near miami
00:53:29
um so therefore adopted children are also on the trip with candy and um they're down there because
00:53:36
her husband jacques heads several banks he has loan companies he also owns insurance companies
00:53:42
And he's in Florida for work because three of his banks are headquartered there in Miami.
00:53:48
Okay. So the kids spend their days playing at the beach and enjoying the sunshine.
00:53:54
Unfortunately, Candy's suffering from debilitating headaches. So she visits the local hospital on four separate occasions for treatment.
00:54:02
The last of these four hospital visits takes place on the night of June 29th, 1964, and into the early morning hours of June 30th.
00:54:12
So Candy brings all four kids with her, and she also runs errands along the way.
00:54:19
So first she stops at a hotel to mail some letters. Then she treats the kids to burgers at a diner.
00:54:26
And finally, then she goes to the hospital where she gets an injection for her headache pain.
00:54:31
Candy and the kids get back to the condo around 4.30 in the morning. Oh, my God.
00:54:38
Uh-huh. Like, when have you ever? When have you ever in your life? After a rave when I was 16.
00:54:46
I remember one time I snuck back up after everyone went to bed so I could watch Letterman when I was like 12.
00:54:52
And my dad woke up. So it was 12.30 at night. And when my dad woke up and found me, he acted like I was shooting up drugs in the front row.
00:55:01
What are you doing? He went insane. And so that's usually if you're a kid and you're up at 430 in the morning, something is terribly wrong.
00:55:12
That's just my history. Absolutely. OK, so they get back to the condo and they find Jacques dead on the living room floor.
00:55:20
His body's wrapped in an orange blanket. His head shows signs of blunt force trauma.
00:55:25
and when they unwrap him from the blanket, they find he's been stabbed in the abdomen 39 times.
00:55:34
Holy shit. So when the police arrive and they examine the body, they see this, they know it's overkill,
00:55:40
and so they immediately question immediate family, which is Candy. Right. So let's talk about Candy Mossler.
00:55:46
She is born Candace Weatherby on February 18th, 1920 in Buchanan, Georgia, which is 55 miles west of Atlanta.
00:55:55
She's the sixth of 12 kids in a poor farming family. So she grows up no phone, no radio.
00:56:03
She works on the farm like all her brothers and sisters, picking cotton, planting crops, tending to chickens, like works on the farm.
00:56:11
I feel like you have that many kids to have workers on the farm. Yeah. Right. Or just because you don't have birth control.
00:56:17
Sure. There's no choice. Yeah. So from the beginning, Candy dreams of more. She is said to have always been putting on a show, dressing up, pretending she's a princess, you know, kind of having to live in a fantasy world.
00:56:32
So in 1932, when she's 12 years old, her mother dies giving birth to her 13th child who also dies.
00:56:40
So just tragic. Her dad falls into a deep depression, starts drinking. He's unable to handle 12 kids on his own, obviously.
00:56:50
So he moves out of Buchanan. he leaves the younger children with different family members and the older kids are left to
00:56:58
fend for themselves. 12 year old Candace ends up living with her grandfather, but she essentially
00:57:03
has to raise herself. Yeah. So it's a very tough childhood. Yeah. As a teenager, her grandfather
00:57:11
encourages her to find herself a husband to take care of her. Sure. How encouraging. So that's when
00:57:18
she meets a family friend named Norman Johnson. So Norman's a civil engineer. He's 10 years older
00:57:24
than her. They get married in 1939 when Candace is 19, and they move to Anniston, Alabama,
00:57:31
and they have a son named Norman Jr. But Candy very soon grows bored with the stay-at-home mom
00:57:38
life. She starts volunteering at the USO nearby at Fort Benning. She hosts parties for soldiers,
00:57:45
and she meets and befriends lots of soldiers there, most notably Winthrop Rockefeller.
00:57:52
Oh, so yeah. Winthrop is the son of billionaire John D. Rockefeller. We've all heard about him and his center in New York City.
00:58:03
Yeah. His net worth in 1937 was $1.4 billion. I don't know. Today is $19,301,000,000.
00:58:14
dollars. Oh my god. Made of money. So Winthrop and Candy grow very close. So much so that when
00:58:23
Candy has her second baby, Rita, in 1943, lots of people wonder if the baby is Norman's or
00:58:31
Winthrop's. The actual paternity is never tested, never proven. No one knows. In the mid-40s,
00:58:40
Norman gets a job at a shipyard. The family moves to New Orleans, but soon after, Norman and Candy get a divorce.
00:58:49
So Norman moves to Boulder, Colorado. Candy stays in New Orleans with her two kids and fends for herself, which she's obviously used to doing.
00:58:57
She finds work as a model for local department stores. She also designs her own line of lingerie.
00:59:03
So she's clearly a very smart woman and a very beautiful woman. She's like immediately a working model.
00:59:09
as a mother of two And getting this work inspires Candace to travel to New York City and attend the Barbizon School of Modeling which apparently was open in the 40s
00:59:21
Wow. All right. I had no idea. I thought that was just an 80s thing, but it's been around for a long time.
00:59:28
So when she finishes up there, she moves back to New Orleans and she decides to open her own
00:59:32
modeling school for young girls. In addition to teaching girls how to do their hair, their makeup,
00:59:38
and maintain a thin figure. Can't, right? Dreams do come true, everybody. She also promises to give her students, quote, self-confidence, grace, poise, and elegance
00:59:50
of speech that will make you a person of real distinction, unquote. And actually, there's newspaper ads for this modeling school that feature Candy's face
01:00:01
in them. Oh, my God. And I guess the thing of the school is they would throw a parade down Canal Street.
01:00:07
and all the students would like show off their different talents. Do like a modeling thing at the end of it.
01:00:13
Just like stick a book on your head, take a walk down Canal Street and let the people of New Orleans know how thin you are.
01:00:22
So like rumors are swirling around town that the modeling school isn't Candy's only means of income.
01:00:31
People are saying she makes money as a sex worker herself and that she has set up an escort service under the guise of teaching dance lessons.
01:00:40
Oh, no. So apparently men go in for the dance lesson. They're partnered up with a woman.
01:00:46
And then after they dance, there's like, I guess, adjoining bedrooms that they split off into.
01:00:53
They do a quick shuffle into the adjoining. Yeah, like one and two and three and flambador.
01:00:58
so despite these rumors candy just she has her head held high she's doing her business yeah
01:01:08
no shame in her game she volunteers for local arts organizations like the new orleans opera
01:01:15
helping to solicit donations and she's very good at persuading um new orleans wealthy elite to give
01:01:23
large sums of money to the opera although there's one donor that candace meets in 1947
01:01:27
who thinks the opera is boring and will only commit to giving $25. But he is very interested in 27-year-old Candace, and that man is Jacques Mossler.
01:01:39
So we'll talk about him for a second. Originally from Romania, Jacques and his family emigrate to Buffalo, New York when he's a child.
01:01:48
And in his late teens, somewhere around 1913, he moves to New Orleans and starts his own used car dealership in his teens.
01:01:57
All right. Right. You got working hard. But then in 1916, a doctor reports his car being stolen from the hospital parking lot and authorities discover it in a garage at Jacques dealership.
01:02:10
Oops. And so the 21 year old is arrested for grand larceny. It's unclear if he's ever convicted for that crime, because soon after his arrest, he joins the army and is shipped off to fight World War One.
01:02:23
damn when he returns from war he sells the dealership he opens a loan company it starts off small
01:02:30
but then it becomes successful and then that allows him to open more loan companies
01:02:36
and he opens insurance firms and finally banks so he is a wheeler dealer when you own the bank
01:02:44
you're wealthy yeah you're doing pretty good or did he buy the bank was the bank for sale
01:02:50
like how did it work back then I don't know He's 22 years old in 1917, and he marries his first wife.
01:02:57
He has four kids with his first wife. 30 years later, 1947, Jacques files for divorce.
01:03:04
And he basically focuses his efforts just on business. And that's what he's all about.
01:03:11
He has spent the past 30 years becoming a multimillionaire. So he's very well known in these elite social circles.
01:03:19
But he mostly keeps to himself until he meets Candace when she's still sitting for the opera.
01:03:27
So a few weeks after obtaining Jacques $25 donation, Candy and Jacques bump happened to bump into each other at the zoo.
01:03:36
So everyone knows that Jacques takes a walk every day for his lunch break at the zoo.
01:03:43
Okay. So whether it's just a weird coincidence that this supermodel candy is also at the zoo at lunchtime, it doesn't matter because running into each other, they immediately start dating and they get married two years later in May of 1949 in Fort Lauderdale.
01:04:00
So the next year, the newlyweds relocate to Houston. Houston is undergoing this massive upgrade thanks to the oil boom.
01:04:12
And the Mosslers build a three-story mansion on three acres of land in River Oaks, which is Houston's wealthiest neighborhood at the time.
01:04:23
Could it still be? Probably. Their seven-car garage is filled with... Seven-car garage?
01:04:29
garage. Yep. And it has all luxury cars in it. Oh my God. They have a full staff at their home,
01:04:36
butlers, maids, gardeners, the whole shebang. So when they first moved to town, of course,
01:04:41
Candy's a stranger, but that doesn't last long. She throws herself into every philanthropic
01:04:46
effort that she can find. She volunteers at hospitals. She throws benefit parties
01:04:51
for the, for the Houston opera. She's going from opera to opera. She knows that's where the elite
01:04:57
hang definitely at the opera you know she cuts very generous checks for causes like like theater companies and heart disease research and the houston boys club because fuck the Houston girls Yeah Those boys need money The boys need it
01:05:16
So soon word gets out around town that Candace in her past life may or may not have been an escort in New Orleans.
01:05:25
But these whispers behind her back are no match for the philanthropic good that she's doing in her current life.
01:05:31
Throw money at the problem. Yeah, for real. Also, everyone who meets Candy is immediately charmed by her twinkling blue eyes, her beauty, and her very friendly personality.
01:05:43
She's not the first woman with a questionable past who's married rich. So while some people like to gossip about her possible history, most people just decide to look the other way and say, who gives a shit?
01:05:56
I like her. Yeah. So then in January of 1957, Jacques away on business in Chicago when he hears and this is insane.
01:06:05
He hears about four kids who are orphaned after their father shot their mother and stabbed the youngest child in the family to death.
01:06:13
Oh, my God. Horrifying. So Candy immediately flies to meet him to Chicago and they adopt all four kids and bring them back to Houston.
01:06:23
So this new family is met with a flurry of reporters and photographers upon landing when they get back and Candy's face is plastered all across the news for quote unquote saving these children.
01:06:36
So this is the Mosler family background, which is actually even more horrifying to think about that these kids, these four adopted kids, how they came to be orphans.
01:06:48
Yeah. And then they had to live through the trauma of murder all over again when they get to the condo and find Jacques murdered.
01:06:56
Horrifying. God. Okay. So when the police arrive at the Mossler's Key Biscayne condo the night of the murder, Candy tells them she suspects a robbery has taken place. But then the police note the overkill, the 39 stab wounds, and how that probably indicates a crime of passion.
01:07:16
And that's when Candy has a little bit more to say. She tells the police that Jacques, being the very successful businessman that he is, he's made himself more than a few enemies over the years. Plus, she suspects that her husband may have been leading a double life, sleeping with men behind her back whenever he's out of town.
01:07:36
she says she suspects that it could have been an angry lover that was lashing out at Jacques
01:07:43
so police look into Jacques business dealings to see if they can find someone with a motive
01:07:48
but when they do they come across an unexpected lead according to an anonymous member of the
01:07:54
Mossler's household staff they accuse Candy of being the one that has the affair she's been seen
01:08:02
canoodling with a young man named Melvin Lane Powers. And this turns out to be a bombshell
01:08:08
piece of information because the movie star, handsome Melvin is also Candy's 21 year old
01:08:15
nephew. Oh no. Oh yes. Okay. So basically here's how it went down in late 1961. Candy got a call
01:08:27
from her big sister, Babe, in Arizona. Not enough people named Babe these days. Absolutely not.
01:08:33
Probably because of the pig. But let's change that. So her big sister, Babe, lives in Arizona.
01:08:41
She calls Candy to tell her that her son, Melvin, has just been sentenced to 90 days in jail
01:08:46
for committing fraud. So Melvin, he grew up in Alabama. Then the family moved to Arizona.
01:08:52
He'd always been an aimless boy, quote unquote, an aimless boy. He rarely showed up for school or did his homework. And after getting expelled from being absent too many times, he got himself a job in Michigan selling magazine subscriptions. But when he tries to take advantage of an 89 year old customer by selling him $20,000 worth of stock in a fake, he made up a magazine subscription company and then tried to sell it like a 90 year old man stock in this non-existent company.
01:09:26
he gets caught because I said, I said, man, but it's customer. So it could have been a woman.
01:09:31
Yeah. Whoever it was, they'd been around the block a time or two and they were just like,
01:09:35
hello, police. And so he gets caught. So essentially babe calls her sister hoping that
01:09:42
under Candy's guidance, her son, Mel can turn his life around. So Candy agrees to take her nephew
01:09:49
in. And it's around December 1961 when that happens, um, after his release from jail. So
01:09:56
Mel moved to the Mossler mansion in Houston and Jacques gives Mel a job at one of his loan
01:10:02
companies basically as a repo man. And it turns out he's great at it and he should be right.
01:10:08
And he should be great at it because he's being, being given free room and board in a three-story
01:10:14
mansion. Yeah. That includes having private chef cooked meals. Fuck. Yeah. They give him
01:10:22
his own Thunderbird. Damn. He's living large. Yeah. And rent free. Yeah. There are some odd perks
01:10:32
as well, though. Namely, cosmetic surgeries. At Candy's insistence, Mel has first his tonsils removed.
01:10:42
Then his ears pinned so that they don't stick out anymore because I guess they stuck out.
01:10:48
Yeah. And his acne scars removed. And finally, he gets circumcised. Okay. So. Wow.
01:11:01
So. So. Yeah. Glow up. A glow up for Mel. In Houston. All over. Penis glow up. Head to toe.
01:11:09
Who knew? Glow up from the crotch out. About a year and a half later, in June of 1963, the gravy train for Mel stops very abruptly.
01:11:21
Jacques not only fires Mel, he has security escort him out of that mansion. And soon after, Jacques packs up and leaves Houston for Key Biscayne.
01:11:32
And that's one of the six properties that he owns in the United States. So he's going to go to Florida to get away.
01:11:39
And he moves there alone. So when people ask Candy where Jacques is and what happened, why he decided to kick Mel out of the house, she says it's because Mel wanted to start his own business that conflicted with Jacques' business interests.
01:11:54
And she says Jacques moved to Florida just for business reasons, because he's opening yet another bank in Miami and he needs to be in town to get it up and running.
01:12:04
Sure. Sure. So after he gets kicked out of the Mossler mansion, Mel moves 24 miles south of Houston to Webster, Texas, where he starts a business selling mobile homes.
01:12:17
So this is where police find him on July 3rd, 1964, three days after the murder.
01:12:24
They question him. Mel tells police that on the night of Jacques' murder, he was in Houston at the movies.
01:12:31
But the problem is he doesn't remember what movie he saw and he doesn't remember what theater he saw it in.
01:12:37
Oh, sure. That happens to me all the time. I just forget a thing that just happened.
01:12:41
It's just a blur of entertainment. You're just... He wasn't used to all those pictures coming at him so fast.
01:12:48
Moving pictures? They're talkies? what mel doesn't know is that the police have already looked into him they've been investigating
01:12:57
him for a couple days they learned that on the afternoon of june 29th 1964 mel arrived at the
01:13:03
houston airport with a suitcase bought a one-way ticket to miami and landed there later that day
01:13:09
see that's the thing about being hot is people notice you when you go places people they're like
01:13:14
hey did you see a guy that looks like he should be in the yes i did yes i did it's like did you see
01:13:19
a normal looking guy probably whereas you're sticking out no they were pinned tight back to
01:13:24
his head i saw a hot guy all right yeah everyone it's such a good point everyone's gonna remember
01:13:33
mel yeah him blazing into the airport also why did you buy a one-way ticket absolutely never
01:13:41
fucking do that even what are you doing yeah suspicious okay uh then once he got in miami
01:13:47
According to an eyewitness, he goes to a bar called the Stuffed Shirt Lounge at the Holiday Inn.
01:13:53
Yeah, he does. Genius. Oh, I want to be there now. If anybody's grandma has a matchbook from the Stuffed Shirt Lounge.
01:14:01
Or one of those little stirry things that they... Yes. Or a napkin. Anything. A napkin.
01:14:07
From the Miami Holiday Inn bar, the Stuffed Shirt Lounge. We will pay you a pretty penny for that thing.
01:14:14
Whatever. Literally a penny. But... But it'll be pretty. It'll be right. We'll shine.
01:14:20
Okay. So this bar in the Holiday Inn is right near Jacques' condo. All right. At the bar, Mel asks the bartender for an empty soda bottle.
01:14:31
He leaves, bottle in hand. And then at 1 a.m. the same night, Mel comes back into the bar and orders a double scotch.
01:14:38
See, don't be hot and suspicious. An empty fucking bottle? Like, what are you? That isn't an order.
01:14:44
No, don't just go around in the world acting like people aren't going to be like, I was hoping he'd come back.
01:14:51
Right. And then he did. Right. Or also like, yeah, there was this weird guy who came in that night.
01:14:55
Like, don't be weird and have people remember you because you got an empty bottle.
01:15:01
Also, because if you're hot, but then you turn out to be weird, people remember you even more.
01:15:07
Right. Because that's the weird hot guy. Weird hot guy, which is usually they're either suave or they're just kind of nothing.
01:15:12
But if you're weird and hot, what are you doing? Yeah. Stop it. It's like those ears are pinned back, aren't they?
01:15:19
They used to stick out. Wait a second. You're newly circumcised. Hey, man, that swagger I can tell you recently had surgery.
01:15:29
You have the vibe of a newly circumcised man. And you can't fool me. Oh, God. Okay.
01:15:36
So basically around 430 in the morning, the same time that Candy goes back to the ground.
01:15:42
and discovers Jacques' body, Mel's back at the Miami airport, buying himself a ticket back to
01:15:48
Houston. Dude. Also, don't go at weird times to places. Like, people will remember you.
01:15:54
Can you imagine you're the woman that works at, like, the American Airlines desk,
01:16:00
and here comes, you know, the James Dean of your era? I think that was James Dean.
01:16:10
oh it was james dean he actually had a he had a shoot down here comes basically james dean
01:16:17
who's alive and well at this moment maybe but weird but weird super weird okay so obviously
01:16:25
caught in a lie during questioning police arrest mel and at his webster office and they charge him
01:16:31
with capital murder so with mel behind bars the police obtain a search warrant and scour his office
01:16:37
and they find a photo of Mel and Candy cozied up together at a nightclub and some letters from Candy to Mel
01:16:45
in which she calls him, quote, my darling. And also there's an excerpt that reads, quote,
01:16:51
the image of your face is before me. I can almost feel your face against mine I could not think of life without you I love you I need you I long for you Anti anti Barbie Love anti candy
01:17:06
Anti candy. That's what I meant. Anti candy is giving me the creepiest vibes I've ever.
01:17:13
P.S. How's that circumcision going? As news spreads about Mel's arrest and Candy's possible ties to Jacques' murder,
01:17:22
all of Houston, of course, it's like shockwaves, right? Yeah. Gawkers drive by the River Oaks mansion in droves, hoping to get a glimpse of the now infamous Candy Mossler, so much so that she has to hire security guards and police have to come and direct the heavy traffic in her neighborhood.
01:17:42
Wow. Yeah. But she's not there. She's been admitted to St. Luke's Hospital for something called, quote, nervous strain.
01:17:51
I have that. I have that. Yeah. Can I go to a can I go away to a resort now? Absolutely. Yep. Buy your way into St. Luke's Hospital. She couldn't have had it too bad, though, because she invites journalists to interview her at her bedside. Or I should say she welcomes them. Maybe they showed up and she was like, sounds good to me. Yeah.
01:18:12
She calls her alleged affair with Mel absurd and denies that she or he had anything to do with Jacques murder.
01:18:20
Then she transfers herself to the Mayo Clinic for further medical treatment. Yeah.
01:18:26
And she rents an apartment nearby for her kids and for their nanny. She remains at the Mayo Clinic for the next year while Mel remains behind bars.
01:18:38
Yeah. Wow. She just kind of posts up and the police continue their investigation. Candy only leaves Rochester once during this time, and that's flying to D.C. to visit Jacques grave at the Arlington National Cemetery on the anniversary of his burial.
01:18:55
She insists that she loved Jacques with all her heart and she never was with him for his money, declaring publicly that she, quote, would have been happy with him in a telephone booth.
01:19:06
so then uh candy agrees to one last interview with the miami herald in which she states that
01:19:14
jacques was experiencing a mental decline in the last months of his life also claiming that one of
01:19:20
jacques alleged male lovers had been sending him love letters and even tried to blackmail him
01:19:26
for 75 000 the media frenzy continues and despite her efforts the public's outcry for candy
01:19:33
arrest grows louder and louder because none of this yeah i mean imagine if she were somehow
01:19:42
innocent yeah all of this behavior really says the opposite but maybe the nephew got sent away
01:19:50
nephew got sent away and she was like i gotta fix this with my husband i can't i'm not gonna leave
01:19:56
him for my fucking 21 year old nephew i need to fix this you know you need to go away sends away
01:20:01
the nephew, the nephew's so irate that he, on his own accord, is like, well, maybe if I kill the
01:20:07
husband, she'll be with me and kills him and she has nothing to do with it. But why would she get
01:20:11
home at 4.30 in the morning? Yeah. Here's the thing. If she went to the hospital for like,
01:20:17
she was getting migraines. I mean, like that's what it sounds like to me. Yeah. She's like,
01:20:22
hey kids, if they have a nanny that travels with them, where's the nanny? Or did she not bring them?
01:20:28
I mean, there's just there's so many questions and concerns. Yeah. OK, so on July 20th, 1965, Candy's informed of her impending arrest.
01:20:42
So the outcry actually gets answered. So she agrees to fly from the Mayo Clinic back to Miami to surrender rather than let the news outlets capture a salacious arrest photo.
01:20:54
But when she lands in Miami, the media is there waiting for her, of course. They hit her with a flurry of questions about whether or not she murdered Jacques or whether or not she was sleeping with her nephew, who's half her age.
01:21:07
Candy maintains her composure, smiles and says to reporters, quote, well, nobody's perfect.
01:21:15
I mean, that is a understatement of the century. It's really true, though. It is true.
01:21:23
So it's you can't say it's not true. OK. OK. So Candy and her nephew Mel, they have a joint trial that begins January 1966 in Miami.
01:21:33
And it's, of course, like the event of the decade. More than 40 national and local news outlets have seats in the courtroom.
01:21:41
People line up around the block to get in. And those lucky enough that do get a seat bring packed lunches so they don't lose their seat.
01:21:49
Wow. Having to get up and go get something to eat. Candy arrives to court dressed to the nines, of course, as one of her defense attorneys would later put it, quote, you would have thought she was a movie star walking the red carpet.
01:22:01
Damn. In their opening statement, the prosecution makes their argument clear. They believe that Candace conspired with her nephew Mel to have Jacques killed while she was at the hospital for her headaches with the kids, thereby giving her a solid alibi.
01:22:17
And now that Jacques is dead, Candace stands to inherit his entire fortune worth at least $7 million then, which is $60 million today.
01:22:30
So Candy and Mel, their lead defense attorney is a lawyer named Percy Foreman, who is a shark of a defense attorney who would later go on to defend James Earl Ray, the man who assassinated Martin Luther King Jr.
01:22:45
Wow. Wow And so Forman argues that Jacques is to blame for his own death bold having business dealings and secret love affairs with shady characters In his opening argument he claims that Jacques was quote as ruthless in business as any pirate who ever sailed the seven seas
01:23:04
and whose, quote, insatiable sex appetite, unquote, left him vulnerable to attacks and blackmail.
01:23:12
So there's zero evidence to back up any of those claims, but that is, he came out the gate.
01:23:18
Yeah. During the trial, Foreman calls no witnesses to the stand. Instead, he lets the prosecutors call their witnesses. These are mostly people who claim to have seen Mel and Candy getting frisky at the Mossler home or on ski trips or at concerts or nightclubs.
01:23:35
And then lots of places. Yeah, just kind of all over the place. Then he picks apart those eyewitness accounts and tried to discredit them while also simultaneously discrediting Jacques.
01:23:48
Witnesses recount seeing Mel and Candy being, quote, too passionate for relatives.
01:23:55
That's all passionate is too passionate. Passion and relatives need not be anywhere near each other.
01:24:03
One witness recalls seeing the two disappear into a trailer at the Mosler Ranch together only to go in after and find the bed, quote, rumpled up, unquote.
01:24:13
One of Mel's co-workers recalls several occasions where Mel bragged about being able to get whatever he wanted from Candy if he gave her oral sex.
01:24:25
The witness's testimonies are so sexually inappropriate that at one point the judge rules that no one under the age of 21 can remain in the courtroom during the proceedings.
01:24:36
X-rated. Saucy. Several witnesses come forward to say that Candace had propositioned them to murder Jacques in the year leading up to his death.
01:24:45
One man known around town for his struggles with drug addiction says Candace offered him $25,000 to kill Jacques.
01:24:53
He planned to do it with a car bomb, but he was arrested for something else before he was able to do that.
01:25:00
He also claims to have encountered Mel in jail after Mel was arrested. And he claims that Mel told him that he killed Jock.
01:25:10
So he basically, he confessed to this other guy. Don't buy that. Doesn't seem the most solid person.
01:25:21
Yeah. In his closing statement, which was five hours long and required three intermissions.
01:25:28
No. Percy Foreman drives home to the jury that Candace is a sweet, innocent woman and that Mel is just an impressionable, innocent young boy slash nephew.
01:25:40
Got it. After three days of deliberation, the jury comes back with a verdict of not guilty for both Mel and Candace.
01:25:49
Shut up. For real. They both break down in tears and later thank each member of the jury.
01:25:56
They go outside, share a quick kiss, hop into a gold Cadillac convertible and drive away.
01:26:04
Okay. They gave each other. Oh, that's like such a fuck you. Yeah. Yeah. Gold Cadillac.
01:26:11
Okay. And they left together. Yeah. I mean, it's just like, yeah. Wow. Yeah. Okay.
01:26:19
So Candy and Mel spend the next two or so years living together back at the Mosler Mansion in Houston.
01:26:26
I just flaunted it at everyone. Well, your old friend Double Jeopardy is in place, so they're free.
01:26:35
They're free and easy. They build an eight-foot stone wall around the house to try and regain some semblance of privacy,
01:26:41
but people still come in from all over to drive by in the hope of catching a glimpse of either of them.
01:26:48
Candy's fellow socialites and friends, of course, are less enthused. They stop inviting her to parties and all charity events, but none of this stops Candy.
01:26:59
She takes over running Jacques' companies and opens a few businesses of her own.
01:27:04
Oh, my God. At one point, she opens her own music publishing company so that she can sell songs she's been writing over the years.
01:27:11
And allegedly, Judy Garland expresses interest in recording some of Candy's music.
01:27:18
What? I mean. Yeah. but you know she did open a music i mean it's just basically like her world
01:27:29
totally totally she also soon begins to regain her social standing she starts of course she
01:27:36
basically goes to charity events and works the scene gets in there starts so she's taking pictures
01:27:43
and like going to events with with harry belafonte with aretha franklin she actually poses for a
01:27:50
picture with Martin Luther King Jr. after making a generous donation to the Southern Christian
01:27:56
Leadership Conference. So she's using, you know, her generosity and, you know, using her money
01:28:05
basically to buy her way back into society. Yeah. All the while, Mel and Candace are still growing
01:28:12
strong. Even if Candace denies their romantic relationship publicly, they're seen at Broadway
01:28:17
performances, baseball games. Mel allegedly buys Candace an engagement ring during his trip to
01:28:24
Switzerland. Oh my God. And he's actually becoming a successful businessman of his own.
01:28:30
He gets into real estate and he buys a piece of property for $2,000, sells it for $110,000.
01:28:41
Like he's in the mix. They're making money. But after a few years together, Mel starts cheating on Candy No What They were so good together I couldn think it No Okay So Mel wants to break up with her but he tells friends that he afraid to because she has a quote crazy streak
01:29:04
She, quote, has a fiery temper and she's unpredictable. So essentially, you know, he's he's kind of he had a good for a while.
01:29:15
Now he wants out. He can make it on his own. Candy has a hunch that Mel's been cheating
01:29:19
because you're not going to get anything by Candy. She's been around a block a time or two.
01:29:23
Absolutely. So they start arguing a lot. During one argument at the old mansion,
01:29:30
Mel allegedly goes into the bathroom, slams the door, and Candy fires three shots from a .45 into the door.
01:29:39
She somehow doesn't hit him. What? I guess it was a huge bathroom. Yeah. It is a mansion.
01:29:45
Yeah. So basically that's, you know, they finally decide to call it quits. Mel moves out of the mansion. He grows out his hair and his mustache. And he basically is a bachelor from then on.
01:29:59
Wow. And he just goes and he goes into his own own business. Candy enjoys a single life herself through the rest of the 60s. She throws parties. She has lots of boyfriends over the years. Most notable is Chuck Berry, who actually writes about his relationship with Candy in his 1987 autobiography.
01:30:21
Oh my god. Yeah. What the fuck is this woman? She's everything in the world. She's all of us and none of us.
01:30:30
Right. In 1971, Candy settles down once more at age 51 and marries an electrical contractor and nightclub owner named Barnett Garrison, who is 32 years old.
01:30:44
Ooh, ooh. Yeah, girl. What's up? Do it. Why not? Do it. If you can. Oh, yeah. Of course, Candy keeps the legend of her, quote, fiery temper alive.
01:30:56
When Barnett starts cheating on Candy, she finds out. Yeah, I know. It's come on, guys.
01:31:03
It's tough. It's tough, especially back in the early 70s. So she finds out that he's going to this go-go bar, which I assume means a strip club.
01:31:13
But it was just kind of like the late 60s. Yeah, like you couldn't take your clothes off, though.
01:31:18
Like a burleski type of thing. But there's still women in cages. So, you know, it's like sexy times.
01:31:24
So she finds out there's one he likes to go to. It mysteriously burns down. Holy shit.
01:31:32
The fire department suspects Candy of arson, essentially. She denies it, saying only that she, quote, certainly would understand doing such a thing.
01:31:42
Yeah. She's like, yeah, bitch. Yeah. I don't like it. No charges are ever filed against her.
01:31:48
And then just over a year later, in August of 1972, Barnett is found bloody and unconscious on the Houston mansion's patio.
01:31:57
No. His gun is beside him, but he looks as though he's been beaten up and fallen from the roof of the house.
01:32:04
Three stories up. Oh, my God. Police enter the home. They find Candace locked herself inside her bedroom.
01:32:10
When they finally get her to open the door, she says she, quote, already shot him, unquote.
01:32:15
But there's no bullet wounds on Barnett's body. And Candy is incoherent, either drunk or high.
01:32:22
Barnett survives his injuries, but he's left in a vegetative state. And he receives care at a nursing home for 25 years.
01:32:31
And dies in 2009. He never recovers. Oh, my God. There's an author named Mickey Herskovitz who's researching Candy's life for a biography and never ends up getting published.
01:32:45
But they did all the research. And he said that he heard from one of Candy's relatives that she'd hired two goons to beat Barnett up for cheating on her.
01:32:55
This has never been proven. And Barnett's injuries and eventual death were ruled accidental.
01:33:01
So it's never proven. Yeah. In 1973, two of Candy's adopted sons filed a lawsuit against her claiming that she'd stolen a portion of their trust fund and had only given them $350 a month.
01:33:14
Oh. They also describe her rampant prescription drug abuse and call her a serial liar.
01:33:21
It's unclear what comes of this lawsuit, if anything. But two years later, in 1975, Candy cuts three of her adopted children out of her will.
01:33:31
She only leaves money to her oldest daughter, Rita, her second child, Norman Jr., and her youngest adopted son, Eddie.
01:33:38
In October 1976, while on a work trip in Miami, Candy is found dead in her suite at the Fountain Blue Hotel at age 62.
01:33:49
She had been given Demerol from her doctor to treat one of her headaches, but she had already taken sleeping pills, and the combination of those drugs caused an overdose.
01:34:02
Mel attends Candy's funeral with his new girlfriend. It's held at Arlington National Cemetery, where she is buried next to Jacques, the man she claimed to love all the way to the end.
01:34:14
Oh, my God. Mel continues on his path of yo-yoing wealth. At one point, he buys himself a 142-foot yacht, which is said to be one of the largest in the Western Hemisphere.
01:34:27
Then he loses everything. Then he gains it back again. So it's crazy. In 2010, Mel passes away at 68 years old.
01:34:40
The death certificate rules his death, a death by pneumonia. He also had a history of prescription drug use.
01:34:48
which may or may not have contributed to his death. With Candy and Mel both dead and those close to the case fading away,
01:34:57
it appears that we will never know for sure what happened to Jacques Mossler. The evidence does point to murder and potentially Mel and Candace being involved in that murder.
01:35:09
Yeah. As the author, Mickey Herskowitz tells Skip Hollinsworth in his article, quote,
01:35:15
It was hard for anyone who met Candy to imagine that she could kill anything, even a flea.
01:35:21
To be honest, she haunts me to this day. And that is the truly crazy story of the notorious Mrs. Mossler as told by Skip Hollinsworth.
01:35:32
Oh, wow. Twists and turns and having sex with your nephew and circumcisions and so many twists and turns.
01:35:41
Alleged, alleged. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. Probably, but allegedly. But seems like lots of people saw it.
01:35:48
But it seems impossible not to for it to be true. Wow. Two wild stories this week.
01:35:57
I mean, crazy stories. And also an episode that almost two hours long as a huge comeback Welcome back 2022 Let go Let do 20 hours and 22 minutes just to make up just to make it like you know let marathon this thing
01:36:16
Let's do it. Come on. No one can stop us. Yeah, this is the first of. Oh, my God.
01:36:23
We're almost at six years. Yep, we are. This month. This month. Holy shit. Six years, Georgia.
01:36:30
I that's the second longest relationship I've ever been in. Hey, girl. Hi. I'm going to get you an engagement ring in Switzerland and get my ears pinned back as
01:36:41
a sign of my love for you. You know what I'm going to get for you? What? Circumcised.
01:36:49
Thank you. You're welcome. Oh, my gosh. Happy New Year, Karen. And Happy New Year to you.
01:36:57
Thank you. Happy New Year to all the new dear. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to all of us.
01:37:03
May it be very nude. Yeah, it's so nice to have had a break, but it's great to be back.
01:37:09
Yeah. We're going to make this year our own. We're going to make it our own. We're going to pin back the ears of this year and show it who's boss.
01:37:18
Let's do it. Let's make this year our nephew lover and do it. We can and we will.
01:37:25
Thanks you guys for listening Yeah Happy New Year Thanks for listening guys happy new year let keep it positive we know it tough but hey
01:37:35
stay sexy and don't get murdered goodbye Elvis do you want a cookie This has been an Exactly Right production.
01:37:53
Our producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton. Associate producer, Alejandra Keck. Engineer and mixer, Stephen.
01:38:00
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Badges

This episode stands out for the following:

  • 90
    Most shocking
  • 90
    Biggest twist
  • 85
    Most heartbreaking
  • 85
    Most surprising

Episode Highlights

  • Dr. Death the Cowboy
    A charming neurosurgeon deceives patients while leaving a trail of broken bodies.
    “He promised to heal them. Instead, he left a trail of broken bodies.”
    @ 00m 48s
    January 06, 2022
  • The Murdoch Murders Podcast
    A young reporter uncovers a shocking story involving a powerful family and a boating accident.
    “It's the craziest story.”
    @ 17m 32s
    January 06, 2022
  • Heavyweight Podcast
    A podcast exploring pivotal moments in people's lives through heartfelt storytelling.
    “It's really beautiful.”
    @ 21m 58s
    January 06, 2022
  • The Story of Blanche Monnier
    A shocking tale of a woman locked away for 25 years by her mother.
    “She was kept in the attic where she does not see the light of day.”
    @ 34m 59s
    January 06, 2022
  • The Discovery
    Police discover the horrifying truth about Blanche's captivity after receiving an anonymous letter.
    “The officers break the lock and inside they find complete darkness.”
    @ 37m 05s
    January 06, 2022
  • Blanche Monair's Captivity
    Blanche was imprisoned in her mother's attic for 25 years, leading to severe trauma.
    “She's like she was chained to a wall.”
    @ 45m 05s
    January 06, 2022
  • Jacques Mossler's Murder
    Jacques is found dead with signs of brutal overkill, shocking his family.
    “Holy shit.”
    @ 55m 34s
    January 06, 2022
  • Mel's Transformation
    After serving time, Mel moves in with Candy and enjoys a lavish lifestyle.
    “He's living large. Yeah.”
    @ 01h 10m 28s
    January 06, 2022
  • Candy's Hospital Stay
    Candy is admitted for nervous strain amidst the media frenzy surrounding Mel's arrest.
    “She's been admitted to St. Luke's Hospital for something called, quote, nervous strain.”
    @ 01h 17m 43s
    January 06, 2022
  • Candy's Arrest
    Candy agrees to surrender to authorities, facing intense media scrutiny.
    “So she agrees to fly from the Mayo Clinic back to Miami to surrender.”
    @ 01h 20m 42s
    January 06, 2022
  • Not Guilty Verdict
    After a sensational trial, Candy and Mel are found not guilty.
    “They both break down in tears and later thank each member of the jury.”
    @ 01h 25m 49s
    January 06, 2022
  • The Unsolved Case of Jacques Mossler
    With both Candy and Mel dead, the mystery surrounding Jacques Mossler's death remains unsolved.
    “It appears that we will never know for sure what happened to Jacques Mossler.”
    @ 01h 34m 57s
    January 06, 2022

Episode Quotes

  • No.
    308 - A Blur of Entertainment
  • I thought I just hated bras, but I was wearing the wrong size.
    308 - A Blur of Entertainment
  • How lovely it is to breathe fresh air again.
    308 - A Blur of Entertainment
  • Oh my God.
    308 - A Blur of Entertainment
  • I could not think of life without you.
    308 - A Blur of Entertainment
  • What the fuck is this woman?
    308 - A Blur of Entertainment

Key Moments

  • Blanche's Captivity35:19
  • Public Outcry40:14
  • Blanche's Trauma45:48
  • Candy's Affair Rumors1:08:02
  • Candy's Nervous Strain1:17:43
  • Mel's Wealth Fluctuations1:34:15
  • Final Thoughts1:35:25
  • New Year Wishes1:36:54

Tension Over Time

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown