hotlinked
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.
Vail was arrested in June 2013 and charged with second-degree murder in the 1962 death of Mary Horton Vail, KLPC reported.
"We feel like we have sufficient evidence to demonstrate that this death was, in fact, a homicide. We feel like we can prove that in court," Calcasieu District Attorney John DeRosier told the station in 2013. "It is never too late. You know, when you drop out that anchor, it may have a long rope, but eventually justice is going to take care of it and it's going to catch up with you."
His trial began Monday.
The amount of time that has passed since the victim's death isn't the only thing that's strange about the trial. Also unusual is the fact that the jury in Vail's case will hear testimony concerning not just the death of Mary Horton Vail, for which he is charged, but of the other two women, for which he is not charged. The courts allowed this based partly on legal doctrine derived from a British murder case at the turn of the 20th century.
Family members of both Hensley and Annette Craver Vail testified at the trial on Thursday.
Part of Vail's defense team's argument is that the entire prosecution is fundamentally flawed because of the passage of time.
Everyone who investigated Vail in 1963 has since died, public defender Andrew Casanave told the Associated Press, adding that the prosecution's case will have to be based entirely upon "supposition, innuendo, rumor and sympathy."
The prosecution disagreed.
During his opening statement on Monday, DeRosier, the district attorney, said the prosecution would tell a story that "plays out in three chapters" - Mary Horton, Sharon Hensley and Annette Craver - by bringing family members of each woman to the stand, the American Press reported.
We'll do the same.
the article is way too long to post click here to read it in full...