Drive to Kill: The divorce had cost her everything – her kids, her home, her financial security. Then her ex found a new lover. That’s when Dana cracked.
An Attitude Adjustment: It was meant to be fun, a late-night excursion to a supposedly haunted house. This night, the horror turns out to be real.
Bad Blood: In a quiet parochial house in Ireland, a war is brewing between the housekeeper and the gardener. There will be casualties.
Orange is the New Green: The divorce was done, a settlement agreed. Then Mary Ellen had an idea. Why settle for half when you can have it all?
Lady Fingers: Henry and Joseph work long hours for scant pay. Their wives have found an easier way to make money. Henry takes exception.
Knives, Drugs, and Money: A juvenile gigolo extorts money from his gay lover. That’s all fine and dandy until the lover refuses to pay. Then things turn bloody.
Hunting Humans: What’s a hunter to do when he tires of the same old game? Load up the guns, load up the truck, go looking for a new kind of prey.
Murder Most Vile Volume 53
Gone Girls
Growing up in a family of limited means, in the rural backwater of Eunice, Louisiana, Mary Horton had always had some strikes against her. But Mary was never going to let that hold her back. A determined, committed, and above all, kind young woman, she excelled academically and was popular among her classmates. She was elected Homecoming Queen in her senior year. By the time she arrived at McNeese University, there were no fewer than five sororities vying for her to join their ranks. She also created quite a stir among the male contingent on campus. They were falling over themselves to date the pretty blonde. Mary turned them all down. She did not want to be distracted from her studies.
But then there was Felix Vail, tall, handsome, and athletic, with piercing blue eyes and a blond buzzcut. He was also persistent, and that tenacity eventually paid off. After the umpteenth time of asking, Mary agreed to go out with him. Thus began a passionate relationship that ran hot and heavy but burned out fast. By late 1960, Mary was expressing doubts about her new beau. She detected a coldness in him, a cruel streak. She decided to end the relationship.
Felix, however, was not about to let go of the woman he called the love of his life. He put on such a pathetic display of contrition that Mary decided to give him a second chance. When he proposed, she said yes. They were married in 1961 and returned to Mary’s hometown, where she began her career as a teacher. A year later, she gave birth to the couple’s son, William “Bill” Vail.
Mary was besotted with her baby boy, but the feeling wasn’t exactly shared by the child’s father. He seemed totally uninterested in his son. That uncaring, cruel streak had emerged again. Just one year into the marriage, and Mary was beginning to wonder whether she’d made a mistake. To her mother, she confided that she was thinking of asking Felix for a divorce. The only thing holding her back was her staunch religious beliefs. She’d made a commitment before God. She did not take that lightly.
That decision, whether to divorce or stay married, would ultimately be taken out of Mary Vail’s hands on October 28, 1962. That was the day that she and Felix took his boat out on the Calcasieu River, and only he returned. Felix was in a panic, saying that Mary had fallen overboard when he swerved to avoid a floating log. He had dived into the water to try and save her, but could not locate her in the dark. He’d therefore raced the boat back to the jetty to get help.
A search was launched for Mary that night. It would be tragically resolved two days later, when her body was pulled from the water. Immediately, suspicions were raised. Mary had severe bruising to her head, and a scarf was wrapped around her throat and stuffed into her mouth. Then the police learned that Felix had recently added a double indemnity clause to his wife’s life insurance and had already made inquiries as to when he might expect his payout. One day after Mary’s funeral, Felix was arrested on suspicion of her murder.
Felix Vail would remain in police custody for three days. During that time, he was put through several lengthy interrogations, all the while maintaining his innocence. Offered the chance to take a polygraph and clear his name, he refused. That only reinforced the belief that he’d murdered Mary. But then the medical examiner changed his ruling from “undisclosed” to “accidental death,” and a sympathetic D.A. decided not to press charges.
Felix was off the hook. He left town soon after, taking his four-month-old son with him to his home state of Mississippi. There, he handed the boy off to his parents while he hit the road to California. He would remain here throughout the decade as the hippie movement took hold. It was an ethos that appealed to Felix: plenty of drugs, lots of free love. Gone was the young man with the severe crewcut that Mary had fallen for. In his place was a bearded beatnik with lanky blond locks.
Back in Mississippi, meanwhile, Bill Vail was thriving under the care of his grandparents. Then, one day in 1968, Felix showed up and announced that he was taking his son back to California with him. His motive for this sudden parental instinct is unclear. Felix had never wanted children and had never bonded with the boy. Now the child was thrown into the midst of his father’s haphazard world, where he often went unfed and uncared for, where he did not attend school, where he was routinely given marijuana and LSD.
Felix was dating a woman named Robin Sinclair at this time, but he abandoned her when she told him that she was pregnant, running back to Mississippi with Bill. Robin gave birth to their daughter alone. When Felix returned to San Francisco and tried to reconcile with her, Robin refused to see him. That was a wise move. It would spell disaster for the next woman in Felix’s life.
Sharon Hensley was ten years younger than Felix, a beautiful brunette who, like him, was committed to the hippie way of life. She and Felix met in 1970 and soon fell into a vagabond lifestyle, wandering the countryside, sleeping in the open, sustaining themselves by picking fruit or relying on the kindness of strangers. Eight-year-old Bill was dragged along for the ride, longing for the day when he could return to his grandparents’ farm. Then, one night, while he lay on the ground pretending to be asleep, he overheard a conversation between his dad and Sharon. Felix was telling Sharon that he’d killed his first wife. Sharon seemed incredulous, telling him that it was okay to feel guilt. “No,” Felix assured her, “You don’t understand. I killed her.”
This overheard conversation totally changed Bill’s perception of his father. The next day, while Felix and Sharon were passed out, he walked into town, entered a police station, and told the duty officer that he was hungry and that his dad had been forcing him to take drugs. Felix and Sharon were arrested as a result, with Felix sentenced to six months for drug possession and for corrupting the morals of a minor. Bill, meanwhile, was sent back to Mississippi, where his grandparents were granted sole custody.
Felix’s incarceration presented Sharon with the perfect opportunity to escape his clutches. Unfortunately, she did not take it. She was waiting for him when he was released. In 1972, the pair showed up at Sharon’s family home in North Dakota, shocking her parents with her appearance. Sharon was rake-thin and unkempt, her brunette locks knotted and unwashed, clumps of hair under her armpits, her clothes dirty and threadbare. It was a long way removed from the teenager who’d dreamed of becoming a fashion model. She also seemed to be totally under the control of her companion. Whenever someone asked Sharon a question, it was Felix who answered. Eventually, Sharon’s dad snapped and told him to shut up and let her talk. She and Felix left the next day, ignoring her parents’ desperate pleas for her to stay. It was the last time they’d see their daughter.
Sharon’s mom, Peggy, did have one last telephone conversation with her, though. That was in 1973, when Sharon told her that she and Felix were going to be traveling to South America. A year later, in March 1974, Peggy received a letter from Felix telling him that he had not seen Sharon for a year. According to him, she’d left him to join a couple of Australians on a round-the-world yacht trip. Before she departed, she’d burned all her identity documents, saying that she wanted to become a new person and cut all ties with the past. Peggy did not believe a word of it. She was convinced that her daughter had come to harm and that Felix Vail was responsible. With no evidence to back up this belief, the police were not prepared to take up the case.
Over the years that followed, Felix continued his nomadic life, living in multiple states and worming his way into the affections of several women. Some he married, but they were clever enough to dump him after just a short time. Annette Craver was not so wise. After all, she was just 15 when the 41-year-old Vail showed up in her life in 1981.
Annette was in an emotionally vulnerable state at this time, still struggling to cope with the tragic death of her father, in an auto wreck two years earlier. Then, one day, she and her mom were holding a yard sale, and Vail rode up on his motorcycle. He was easy to talk to, a good listener, the father figure that Annette had been yearning for. She found herself confiding her deepest feelings in him. But of course, Vail was only paying lip service. His real intention was to seduce the teenager. The only thing standing in his way was Annette’s mom, Mary Rose. It was by a twist of fate that this barrier would be removed.
Mary Rose had been struggling to find a job. With the bills stacking up, she was getting desperate. When an opportunity did arise, it was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, hours away from her home in Texas. Still, Mary Rose felt that she had to accept. The problem was that Annette was months away from graduation, and Mary Rose did not want to disrupt that.
Eventually, a plan was conceived. Mary Rose would move to Tulsa. Annette would stay behind with relatives in Texas and would join her mother after she finished high school. This was just the opportunity that Vail needed to wheedle his way into the young girl’s heart. By the time Annette graduated high school and was reunited with her mother, she and the 40-something Vail were a couple. When Vail announced that they were going on a cross-country trip on his motorcycle, Mary Rose begged her daughter to stay. But Annette was smitten, and Mary Rose was afraid of pushing her too hard. Having lost her husband, she couldn’t bear the thought of losing her daughter too.
And so, Vail and his teenage lover departed on their trip, with their only source of support the small allowance that Annette received from her father’s estate. During this time, they traveled to Mexico and California, where Vail was arrested on a parole violation and served six months in jail. Annette also became pregnant during the road trip and underwent an abortion. Then they were back in Tulsa with alarming news for Mary Rose. They were getting married.
Annette was just 17 years old, meaning that she would require her mother’s permission to wed. Initially, Mary Rose refused. But then Annette told her that she and Vail would just go to Mexico and get married there. Pushed into a corner, fearful of losing her daughter, Mary Rose eventually backed down. Annette and Felix were married on August 15, 1983. A few months later, the bride turned 18 and came into a $98,000 bequest from her father’s estate. Felix, of course, knew that this money was coming his wife’s way. It was probably why he’d married her. He immediately embarked on a spending spree.
In April 1984, less than a year after Felix and Annette’s wedding, Mary Rose arrived home to find her daughter on her doorstep. Annette was in tears, saying that her marriage was over. She was divorcing Felix and had plans to go to college. Mary Rose could hardly hide her delight at the news.
Unfortunately, Annette’s resolve would not hold. Felix showed up again like a bad penny and cajoled, coerced, and threatened her to come back to him. To Mary Rose, it must have appeared that this man had cast some sort of spell on her daughter. As Annette explained to her, she could not be without Felix. He was the wisest man she’d ever met. She could not make any decision without consulting him first.
And so, Annette and Felix were back together, and they soon embarked on another of their road trips. This time, Felix returned alone. Asked where his wife was, he said that she had gone to Denver to visit friends. When Mary Rose got to hear of this, she contacted Felix, demanding to know Annette’s whereabouts. To her, Felix told a different story. He said that he and Annette had split by mutual agreement and that she’d decided to go to Mexico. He’d put her on a bus, he said, and had not seen her since. Then he added a detail that made this far-fetched tale even more unbelievable. He said that Annette was carrying $50,000 in cash when they parted.
On October 22, 1984, Mary Rose Craver went to a police station and filed a missing person report on her daughter. Mary Rose was forthright in her opinion of what had happened to Annette. She believed that she had come t harm and that Felix Vail was responsible or that he at least knew more than he was saying. A short while later, Vail received a visit from a detective and repeated the story that he’d told Mary Rose.
Vail’s story had one big hole in it. Customs and Immigration had no record of Annette Vail crossing the US/Mexico border. Confronted with this detail, Felix had a ready answer. He said that she had left the country on false papers. He then stated that Annette had wanted to get away from Mary Rose, who he described as an abusive, controlling mother. Vail was then asked to take a polygraph, which he refused. Still, the police had nothing on him and were forced to let him go. Two weeks after that interview, Vail filed for divorce from his wife, citing abandonment.
But Vail had made a powerful adversary in Mary Rose Craver. Over the next six years, she never stopped looking for Annette, following up on any scant lead she could find. In 1990, she tracked down one of Vail’s sisters in Texas and arranged to meet with her. It was now that she learned more of her former son-in-law’s history. His first wife had died in a supposed drowning accident. Another of his former companions, Sharon Hensley, had disappeared. That did not bode well for her chances of finding Annette alive. Mary Rose finally had to admit to herself that her daughter was probably dead. She was determined that Felix Vail would not get away with it.
Mary Rose began her quest for justice by tracking down the brother of Mary Horton, Felix’s first wife. From him, she learned the details of Mary’s death and the family’s continued belief that Felix had murdered her. Then she contacted Peggy Hensley, and the two mothers met and exchanged notes on their daughters’ disappearances. They were certain that Sharon and Annette were the victims of a serial killer. Unfortunately, the authorities did not agree with them. In the state of Oklahoma, murder charges cannot be brought without a body.
More frustrating years passed. Peggy Hensley died in June 2009, without ever seeing justice for her daughter. That same year, Bill Vail died of cancer. He was just 47 years old. Only Mary Rose remained to continue the fight, but she was as determined as ever. In 2011, she was listening to a radio program where investigative journalist Jerry Mitchell was being interviewed. Mitchell had been involved in several high-profile cases involving the assassinations of civil rights leaders. Mary Rose contacted him and asked if he was interested in investigating a serial killer from his home state of Mississippi. Mitchell was intrigued and promised to look into it. His findings formed the basis of an article that would blow the case wide open.
Felix, it seemed, had been less than discreet about his many improprieties. This was a man who liked to boast that he’d bedded hundreds of women. He also liked to talk about his more nefarious deeds. Bill had once heard him telling Sharon that he’d murdered Bill’s mother. He’d told that same story to several other witnesses. Some of those individuals came forward after the article was published.
Their stories were remarkably similar. One man said that Felix had told it to him while they were driving to work one day. He said that he’d decided to murder Mary because she had wanted another child, and he didn’t want one. “I didn't even want the one we had. And I didn’t want to be occupied with this poor bitch,” he said. He’d gone on to describe how he’d struck Mary on the head, then strangled her with a scarf before throwing her into the water. The man wasn’t sure whether to believe him. Nonetheless, he was so disgusted by Vail’s callous attitude that he never drove with him again.
Another witness had first-hand knowledge of Mary’s tragic end. Isaac Abshire Jr. had been present when her corpse was laid out on the jetty. His father had taken some photographs of the body. He’d kept them all these years in an envelope marked “KEEP.” Now, Isaac handed that envelope over to the authorities. One look at the scarf forced into the victim’s mouth and the medical examiner declared that this was categorically not an accident. An exhumation order was then obtained, and a new autopsy sanctioned. It confirmed the M.E.’s initial impression. Mary Vail hadn’t drowned. She had been strangled.
Felix Vail was arrested in Texas in May 2013. Charged with the murder of Mary Horton, he was brought back to Louisiana to stand trial. He entered a not guilty plea, with his defense continuing to insist that Mary’s death was an accident. The physical evidence said different. Vail was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. A subsequent appeal blew up in his face when the court not only rejected his action but added hard labor to the original sentence. Now in his 80s, he remains behind bars, still insisting that he is an innocent man, wrongly convicted.
Sharon Hensley and Annette Craver have never been found, and Felix Vail has never been charged with any crime relating to their disappearances. According to Vail, they are still alive, he knows where they are, but has promised to keep their whereabouts a secret.
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