Twisted fate leads orphans to Houston

Candace’s children, Norman and Rita, were teenagers regularly involved in their busy teenage worlds. Some more young ones to call her own was precisely what Candace felt a strong craving for… at the moment. There was a mammoth problem, however… pregnancy didn’t fit so well into Candace’s charmed lifestyle. Being pregnant was time consuming, inconvenient, and pretty darned difficult, not to mention body altering.

Beginning in the 1950s, there was a dawning of a “baby scoop” era. Adoptions were “hot”, growing in popularity, if one could describe them this way. Maternity homes were staying filled with expecting teenage mothers, adoption agencies were bombarded with applications for these babies. The Mosslers had put feelers out into adopting a child. They were among tens of thousands (and swiftly growing) other couples who sought to have children but were unable to have their own.

Soon, a twisted fate changed every thing for the Mosslers. A tragic event with barely imaginable extraordinary circumstances, combined with determination and tenacity and some political clout on the part of Jacques Mossler, paved the way for the couple to grow their core family by four children overnight, in January 1957.

On the cold and snowy evening of Jan. 11, 1957, just before midnight, Chicago police came across a car stranded in a snowbank in a Melrose Park suburb, at 26th Avenue and Lake Street. An adult male and five children were in the car… the children were miserably cold (temperatures were in the single digits), and they were undoubtedly traumatized and frightened, yet still uncannily calm.

“Mommy is dead at home. Daddy shot her,” six-year-old Martha matter-of-factly told the police.

The man driving the vehicle, 35-year-old Leonard Glenn, told police that he did in fact shoot his wife. And he also confessed to cutting his 6-month-old son, Alexander, who was in the back of the stranded car, in a critical condition. Also in the vehicle were Glenn’s other children, Martha, five-year-old Daniel, four-year-old Christopher, and two-year-old Edward. Their mother, 33-year-old Betty, was deceased at the family’s apartment, on North Mozart Street in west Chicago.

Authorities rushed Alexander to a local hospital, where he died a few hours later, succombing to an abdominal wound where he had been cut with a knife. Authorities also later found the body of Betty (who had been pregnant) in a cot in a bedroom she had been sharing with Christopher, Martha and Alexander when she was shot to death.

Leonard had a long history of mental instability. He had spent a few months in a Chicago mental institution between 1953 and 1954, and was released at his wife’s request and per medical clearance.

A tragic story indeed, the children had apparently lived with and experienced the insanity of their father and his actions for a while, as testimony showed patterns of domesetic abuse between their mother and father. After killing their mother, Leonard calmly prepared breakfast for the children the following morning while her dead body lay untouched in the house. He instructed the kids to play in the home, telling them their mother was okay but didn’t feel well. While the kids were playing a jumping game, Leonard’s loaded hunting rifle (which had been propped up in the corner on the rickety floor of their duplex) fell, causing a single bullet to be fired. Leonard convinced himself that the stray bullet had hit baby Alexander and so he proceeded to cut him open, attempting to remove a bullet that was never there.

The police took the surviving children from the car to a juvenile home and later they were released to a maternal aunt.

Whilst this tragedy was unfolding, Jacques Mossler was in Chicago on a business trip. He read about the homicides in newspapers, and was meaningfully moved by the plight of the surviving children. He wanted to share his world with these children and out of a tragedy came a quite amazing story… one that was hailed in media outlets all over the country as a “real life fairy tale,” however odd that description seemed considering the events that unfolded to lead the children from Chicago to Houston, Texas.

Jacques spoke with Candace about the situation and she was immediately enthused to help them as well, both of the Mosslers hoping to somehow gain custody of the children. Candace hopped on a flight to Chicago while Jacques worked his magic within the judicial system (he had considerable political influence locally, as he was the chairman of one of the largest banks in Chicago), ultimately convincing the Cook Country judge handling the childrens’ case to allow them to be considered for adoption of the children. The judge okayed the proposition.

Within three short weeks, the Mosslers and their new children were headed via airplane to Houston, the Mosslers’ having received temporary custody of the kids with plans calling for permanent custody. In June 1957, Family Court officials from Cook County visited the children in the Mossler’s home and were impressed enough to give full blessing for the permanent adoption. The adoption was legally signed off on soonafter and was complete in September 1957. Jack and Candace were now the legal parents of Martha, Daniel, Edward and Christopher.