© Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office via AP
Nearly 54 years after a young woman died in southwest Louisiana, Felix Vail, her husband, is going on trial, accused of killing her.
Nearly 54 years after a young woman died in southwest Louisiana, Felix Vail, her husband, is going on trial, accused of killing her.
For more than half a century, Felix Vail's love life has left a trail of dead bodies and missing persons.
His first wife, Mary Horton Vail, died while out fishing with him. Her body was found in the Calcasieu River with four inches of her scarf stuffed into her mouth and down her throat. When police pulled her body from the water near Lake Charles, La., the day before Halloween in 1962, her corpse was covered in bruises and crabs had burrowed into her scalp. She was 22 years old, with a 4-month-old son at home.
Eleven years later, he was dating a girl named Sharon Hensley, who disappeared into thin air in 1973. She was never heard from again.
A decade after Hensley's disappearance, Vail remarried, this time to Annette Craver. Much like Hensley, she disappeared, in 1984. Also much like Hensley, she was never heard from again.
Though the circumstances in each case were strange — and family members of each woman think Vail had a hand in their demise — he has never faced criminal charges in any of the three cases. He was arrested following his first wife's death but never prosecuted, according to the Associated Press.
He has never been put on trial.
Until now.
Comment: While not all relationships with psychopaths end in murder, the dynamic plays out like clockwork. Read Sandra Brown's Women Who Love Psychopaths. It could save your life!