GREENFIELD — A local woman whose daughter went missing 32 years ago will finally get a chance to testify in court against the man she believes is responsible for her daughter’s disappearance and death.
Mary Rose of Newell Court will travel to Louisiana the week of Aug. 8 to testify as a material witness against Felix Vail, the country’s oldest suspected serial killer. Vail, 76, was arrested and charged three years ago with the 1962 murder of his first wife, Mary Horton Vail. Rose believes Vail also killed her daughter, Annette Craver, in 1984 and another woman, Sharon Hensley, 11 years earlier. All three women were romantically involved with Vail at the time of their death or disappearances.
The Louisiana Supreme Court recently upheld a decision allowing prosecutors to introduce evidence of the disappearances of Craver and Hensley during the trial.
Rose, 68, has been pursuing justice for her missing daughter for decades, ever since she learned that Vail’s first wife died while boating with him in the Calcasieu River in 1962. Vail claimed his wife fell out of the boat while fishing; her death was ruled an accidental drowning. However, authorities revisited the case when, nearly 50 years later, a newspaper reporter unearthed the autopsy report that showed Mary Horton Vail had a 4-inch bruise on the back of her neck and a scarf stuffed 4 inches into her mouth. Vail had also purchased a life insurance policy on his wife just months earlier.
It was Rose’s dogged pursuit of Vail that brought the case to the reporter’s attention, and ultimately, to criminal investigators.
Vail was in his early 40s and Rose’s daughter just 16 and already a high school graduate when they met in Houston, Texas. The two began dating after Rose and her daughter moved to Tulsa, Okla. The pair traveled across the country and to Mexico and Central America.
“She thought she was in love with him, and I trusted her. She was very, very bright,” Rose said, adding her daughter was an adventurer and it would’ve be difficult to stop her from leaving. “If I had been more mature, I would’ve suspected that there was something up because he was so much older, and she had money.”
Craver’s father died several years earlier and she was due to receive a large life insurance settlement when she turned 18.
Rose met Vail on a few occasions, but never got to know the man, who she said stayed “in the background.”
“He didn’t let himself be known. I never even had a meal with him … I don’t think he wanted me to know him and eventually he turned Annette against me. She was brainwashed,” she said.
The pair married when Craver was 17. When Craver turned 18, she withdrew more than $98,000 in life insurance money and used some to pay off Vail’s loans. In the fall of 1984, after Craver had deeded her house over to Vail, the couple told neighbors they were going on vacation. Vail returned alone.
After her daughter’s disappearance, Rose drove to Texas where she tracked down Vail’s sister, who had seen her daughter before she went missing. It was from her that Rose learned of the other women.
“I didn’t know when I walked away from there, I was going to find out there were two other victims,” Rose said.
Vail’s sister told Rose about the suspicious drowning death of Vail’s first wife and mentioned that the mother of a woman named Sharon had called Vail’s mother in Mississippi repeatedly, wondering if anyone had heard from her daughter. Vail’s sister couldn’t remember Sharon’s last name.
After tracking down the family of Mary Horton Vail — the first wife who had supposedly drowned — Rose was able to find Sharon’s last name from a newspaper story about the couple’s arrest on charges of drug possession and contributing to the delinquency of a minor in California.
Rose located Sharon Hensley’s mother in North Dakota and asked her if she knew who Felix Vail was. She said yes. The women’s stories were eerily similar. Hensley, who was Vail’s common-law wife, disappeared in 1973, 11 years before Craver.
Neither of the women’s bodies were ever found.
“The story that Felix told her was so similar to the story he told me years later about my daughter’s disappearance,” Rose said. “It was very clear that these girls were no longer alive and he hid their bodies rather than expose them like he did with the drowning — which wasn’t a drowning.”
Once she put those pieces together, Rose went to the FBI. The agency investigated, but eventually the case went cold. Then, years later, in 2010, she heard an interview with investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell on National Public Radio. A reporter for the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., Mitchell’s work had led to the arrest of a man named Edgar Ray Killen, who helped organized the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers.
“I took note of his name and I called him,” Rose said. “It took me a year and a half of doggedly calling, and then finally I called him and said, ‘I’m coming to Mississippi’ and he met me there. And I told him about all three women.”
Mitchell ended up writing a 9,000-word story in 2012 on Vail and the suspicion around the death and disappearances of his wives. Six months later, Vail was located and arrested in Texas.
“I was so happy. It was a dream, a prayer, a vision. I still have the picture of him being handcuffed at the post office on the refrigerator, and I danced that day,” Rose said. “It was joyful occasion for me after 29 years. I had known he was a serial killer, but I only started dreaming and imagining him being arrested after I met Jerry.”
Rose is now the only living parent of the women Vail is suspected of killing and said she feels responsible for bringing justice for their families. She said she hasn’t thought much about what will happen if Vail isn’t convicted, because there is so much evidence against him.
Jury selection for the trial is set to begin Aug. 8 in Lake Charles, La., and Rose will arrive the following day. She plans to stay through the duration of the trial.
“I’m looking forward to it,” she said. “They think the trial will be over by the end of the week. There’s so much evidence, they can’t imagine it’s going to take longer.”
Rose said her ideal outcome would be to see Vail convicted and spend the rest of his life in prison.
“Of course my hope and prayer is that he’ll confess and tell where the bodies of Sharon and Annette are, but I’m not counting on it. I’ll just be glad he’s finally being held accountable,” she said.
There have been a number of delays in Vail’s trail. It was most recently supposed to take place in November 2015, but had to be rescheduled after his attorney stepped down. He is now being represented by a public defender.
After the trial is over, Rose plans to celebrate with friends and family in Texas and Tennessee.
She moved to western Massachusetts in the late 1990s to seek spiritual healing, which she said has helped immensely. On Monday, a crew from ABC’s television show “20/20” came to her Greenfield home and spent 10 hours interviewing her for a segment on Vail’s trial. She said the episode will also feature some of her daughter’s music — Craver wrote poetry and played the guitar. It is scheduled to air tonight at 10 p.m.
“I’m glad it’s getting national exposure, mainly because people who may have also experienced a loss may see it, and other victims might come forward. The Hensley family and the Horton family had no idea that it was not an isolated incident until I found out, and neither did I for eight years, I had no idea about the other two,” she said, adding the message persistence is also important — if something doesn’t feel right, don’t give up.
“I think I can die peacefully even though he’s never confessed and even though I’ve never found my daughter’s body, knowing that I didn’t give up and that he’s finally being held accountable and finally justice is being served for these three women,” Rose said.