Mossler-Powers Preliminary Hearing (1965)

Duration: 1:09

Year Published: 1965

Sound: silent

Description: This unedited footage from Houston’s KPRC-TV captures a preliminary hearing for Candace Mossler and Melvin Lane Powers on July 26, 1965. Mossler and Powers arrive at the Dade County Courthouse in Miami, Florida, to submit pleas of not guilty. Mossler’s children were also in attendance. Circuit Court Judge George Schulz subsequently set the trial date for November 15. Mossler, a Houston socialite, and Powers, her nephew, were accused mof murdering Mossler’s husband, Jacques. Jacques was stabbed and bludgeoned to death on June 30, 1964, at his home in Key Biscayne, Florida. The prosecution argued that Mossler and Powers were lovers hoping to acquire the victim’s multi-million-dollar fortune. According to the New York Times, the Mossler-Powers trial was so lurid that the judge barred spectators under 21. The pair was acquitted in 1966.