Reporting: The Armored Lady

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"The long-awaited Candy Mossier murder trial began here Monday," wrote the Chicago Daily News correspondent in Miami, "and it gives every sign of being one of the most lurid and bloodstained among latter-day criminal cases. Whichever way the murder trial goes, it is all mixed up with big money and wheeler-dealerism." Added the Houston Chronicle's man in Miami: "Woven through the fabric of the case are the threads of love, hate, greed, savage passion, intrigue, incest and perversion."

It all adds up to an ideal recipe for bringing out the ham in the nation's press. Some 40 reporters from around the U.S. were covering the trial last week, and still more were expected. Until the jury was impaneled late last week after protracted argument, the press focused its attention on blonde, blue-eyed Candace Mossier, 45, who is accused along with her nephew, Melvin Powers, 24, of complicity in the bludgeoning and stabbing of her millionaire husband Jacques Mossier in 1964. And Candy was taking no chances on reporters' losing interest; she regaled them with the sorrows of her life and the peculiarities of her husband.

Veneers of Honey. For some of the press, Candy's soft, breathless Southern accent carried conviction. "She is remarkable for her poise, her wealth, her tenacious hold on the vestiges of a vanished youth and the bouncy, unquenchable optimism with which she faces an ordeal that will surely tarnish her and could end in a one-way walk to Florida's death chamber," wrote Paul Holmes of the Chicago Tribune. "She is remarkable for an outgoing disposition that makes it appear she seeks friends for friendship only and neither needs nor wants sympathy. She is remarkable for her gaiety, her effervescence, and for an underlying intelligence that is her ultimate armor."

Fascinated in a somewhat different fashion, Hearst's Jim Bishop drew a less flattering portrait: "The lady is 60 inches of wrought iron. It is blonde and pale and unyielding. It isn't something that God wrought. Candace did it. From the day long ago, when the little Georgia belle found out females have an earthy attraction for males, Candace has coated that little body with so many veneers of honey and passion that if the real Candace stood up, Mrs. Mossier would probably disown her."

Private interviews with Candy could be had for the asking. "We are sitting in a big living room, her infant grandson crawling on the floor nearby, fascinated with the photographer's cameras and cases," wrote the New York Daily News's Theo Wilson after a chat in Candy's apartment. "It is the end of the first week of Candy's trial and she has been hearing the words adultery, fornication and incest used openly in court nearly every day." What she might have been reading was just as bad. Wrote Jim Bishop: "Some claim to have seen photos of Candace embracing her Negro chauffeur . . . Other photos show the swinging grandma almost nude on a bed."