This Fortean Times article from 2001 describes the infamous case of Candy Jones, a fashion model who became a MKULTRA victim. It is one of the the most documented case of the fashion world mixing with mind control.

How a leading American fashion model came to be experimented upon by the CIA mind control team

To the world she was one of the most successful American fashion models of the 1940s – but she led a secret life as a Manchurian Candidate-style agent for the US intelligence services during the Cold War. Colin Bennett analyses this tale of multiple personality, conspiracy, hypnotic mind-control and fantasy life. Additional research by Bob Rickard.

On 31 December 1972, in the lavish apartment suite of a New York lawyer friend, the well-known 61-year-old radio presenter Long John Nebel married Candy Jones, 47, an internationally famous fashion model. The guests on this happy occasion certainly had plenty of things to talk about. The five men who broke into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate office building in Washington DC the previous summer were facing charges of burglary, conspiracy and wire-tapping. Already, there were rumours that this affair might go all the way to the White House. Though the guests were no doubt happy, the Vietnam campaign still had two years to run, and almost all Americans knew what the result was going to be.

Nebel was the Art Bell of his day, and his all-night radio show had an audience of several millions, but that night, his mind was not on Watergate or Vietnam. He had just married a woman whose face had graced the covers of 11 major national magazines in a single month in 1943. During the Pacific campaign in World War II, photos of Candy in a white polka-dot bathing suit adorned the interiors of ships, tanks, and foxholes.

It had been a lightning courtship – barely 28 days – so Nebel did not know his wife all that well. During the reception, he noticed a curious change come over her; within a very short time, she lost all her natural charm and exuberance. Her voice changed to that of another woman entirely and her normally fluid posture stiffened. Dining in the Ho Ho Chinese restaurant later that evening, Nebel noticed the transformation again; it was as if she were uncomfortable with the Chinese decor, wall-mirrors and candles.

While preparing for bed, Candy began speaking again in the voice Nebel had heard earlier. Even more alarming, this strange personality within Candy had a completely different attitude towards him; ‘she’ sounded cruel, mocking and cold. When Nebel asked her about it, Candy was astonished; she hadn’t noticed the emergence of another voice or personality.

However, a few weeks after their marriage, she did tell Nebel that she had worked for the FBI for some time, adding mysteriously that she might have to go out of town on occasion without giving a reason. This left Nebel wondering whether there was a connection between the ‘other’ personality within Candy and the strange trips she said she made for the FBI.

Candy was born Jessica Wilcox in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1925. She grew into a striking blonde, some six feet four inches (1.93m) in height. Her classic American ice-queen face was fashionable before the more accessible faces of Grace Kelly, Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe came about. Though she was brought up in a fairly affluent environment, her father and her manic depressive mother physically, if not sexually, abused her. (1) Once, her divorced father, on a home visit, crushed her fingers in a nutmeg grater, and her vicious mother beat her on the legs so badly that Candy had to wear thick stockings to conceal the welts. She was not allowed to associate with other children and was often shut in darkened rooms by her mother. It was within such rooms that the very young, panic-stricken Candy developed a family of fantasy figures to keep her company.

In her prison gloom, she visualised these characters appearing in the twilight reflections of a large wall mirror. The name of one of these magical friends was Arlene, and she was to figure crucially in Candy’s later life. Unlike the other figures of this imagined world, Arlene didn’t fade away with Candy’s childhood. As a secondary personality, she grew up and matured with Candy. Arlene’s personality was a sort of mirror-reverse of Candy’s. She had some of the characteristics of Candy’s mother: she was tough and ruthless, sarcastic and cruel, with a grating low voice, quite different from Candy’s own.

This was the voice that Nebel first heard on his wedding day. When she was herself, Candy was the most loving, sociable and charming of women; when she was Arlene, she could become dangerously vicious, even attempting one night to strangle her new husband in a professional military-style manner. Nebel concluded, not unreasonably, that the mind of his new wife had been grossly interfered with. Candy seemed to be mortally afraid of anything Chinese; she was also afraid of doctors, psychiatrists and dentists, all of whom used drugs of one sort or another. Drugs were what Candy was afraid of above all things; whenever drugs were mentioned, in any respect, Candy’s ‘protector’ Arlene would appear, to vehemently deny that such things should ever enter “her” (Candy’s) body.

Nebel discovered that the changes within Candy had a long history and their trail led right into the heart of an organisation that many of his telephone callers had been talking about for years: the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America. Nebel then took a grave risk: for many years, he had been an amateur hypnotist, and he decided to put Candy in a light trance, ask a few simple questions, and tape the results. There begins one of the most amazing tales of our time, as told in Donald Bain’s book, The Control of Candy Jones.