A Million Dollar Murder

 

When Mossler turned up dead, police looked into his business relationships and found any number of enemies. He was a corporate repo man. His firms had repossessed thousands of automobiles and appliances over the years and foreclosed on untold numbers of mortgages when lenders were late with payments. He was an uncompromising businessman - scrupulous, but perhaps heartless.

As Percy Foreman, a prominent attorney, would say, I believe... that Jacques Mossler was as ruthless in business as any pirate that ever sailed the seas of commerce.

Of course, investigators also looked into the victims personal relationships for clues and individuals with motives to commit murder. And that is where the probe got complicated. Mossler had led two personal lives. He married in the 1920s, and that relationship produced four daughters. The couple was divorced in 1947.

And then along came Candy.

Born in 1919, Candace Weatherby was a pixie-like farmers daughter from Georgia. She married young to an older man, gave birth to two children, then divorced her husband and moved to New York, where she took up modeling. Candy had a pleasant face and perfect teeth, which led to steady work as a toothpaste model.

But New York was no place for a divorcee to raise two kids, so she moved to New Orleans, where - still in her 20s - she opened the Candace Finishing School, Modeling School and Model Agency. Candys businesses gave her access to that citys cultured crowd, and she began working as a volunteer fundraiser for the New Orleans Grand Opera Company. Her duty was to call on the citys millionaire businessmen to seek donations.

One of the names that turned up on her solicitation list was Jacques Mossler, who owned a New Orleans bank. In the fall of 1948, Candy paid him a visit.