'For a While, Candace Was the Most Famous Woman' in US

Skip Hollandsworth has the wild saga of Texas socialite Candace Mossler
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 12, 2021 10:10 AM CST
'For a While, Candace Was the Most Famous Woman' in US
Stock photo with '60s flair.   (Getty Images)

"It was, in short, the OJ Simpson trial of its era." And yet somehow, Skip Hollandsworth had never heard of it, despite having spent decades on the Texas crime beat. And so Hollandsworth digs deep into the 1964 death of multimillionaire Houston businessman Jacques Mossler, and the subsequent trial of his wife Candace, whose co-defendant was the 22-year-old nephew she was accused of having an affair with. Over several years, Hollandsworth talked to as many people tied to the case and the area as he could muster up more than 50 years later, and it's a rich list. As former Houston Post society columnist Betsy Parish put it to him in a 2017 interview, "For a while, Candace was the most famous woman in America. Everyone was talking about her. And have you heard the rumors about what happened to her next husband?"

The entirety of Hollandsworth's story for Texas Monthly is that titillating. Candace was 25 years Jacques' junior, a lavishly generous socialite, and a blond looker. When her husband was bludgeoned and stabbed 39 times in a Miami apartment they owned, she suggested to police it could have been the work of an angry business associate, a burglar, or a male lover. But it only took a few days for detectives to find out Candace, then in her 40s, was carrying on with nephew Melvin Powers, or Mel, who "was six foot four and built like a linebacker." Says Parish, "It was like a great trashy novel had come to life," and Hollandsworth makes the tale come to life, through the 1965 trial (both were acquitted) beyond, to Candace's next marriage (which ended with her husband of a year falling off a roof, and likely not accidentally), her string of suitors (Chuck Berry wrote a whole chapter in his autobiography about their trysts), and her 1976 drug-related death. (The full story is absolutely worth a read.)

Stories to sink your teeth into.
Get our roundup of longform stories every Saturday.
Sign up
Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X