[1] Following service in the merchant marine and U.S. Navy, Chandler worked three years from 1959 for The News-Herald in Panama City, Florida.
"[1][2] He worked for New Orleans' afternoon newspaper The States-Item 1962–1964 and then on contract with Life magazine, initially regarding the Kennedy assassination.
[1] Chandler ran for Governor of Louisiana in the 1971 Democratic Party primary "hoping to prove that a candidate could win the governorship without taking any campaign contributions"[1]—and finished twelfth with 0.62% of the vote.
[1] Chandler's books include Brothers in Blood (1975), a history of the Cosa Nostra; The Natural Superiority of Southern Politicians, (1977); 100 Tons of Gold about a mysterious gold horde in New Mexico; Henry Flagler: The Astonishing Life and Times of the Visionary Robber Baron Who Founded Florida (1986); The Binghams of Louisville (1988), a controversial biography of Robert Worth Bingham (who married Flagler's widow a year before her death); and The Jefferson Conspiracies (1994), about the death of Meriwether Lewis (released several months after Chandler's death).
Chandler lived in New Orleans during the late 1960s and 1970s where he resided in an apartment in a building owned by Clay Shaw.