America's Oldest Serial Killer?Until Death Do Us Part

More than 5 decades after his first wife’s death, Felix Vail is convicted of her murder—and suspected in the disappearances of other women in his life.

- Jeff Truesdell

After dark on Oct. 28, 1962, new parents Mary and Felix Vail left their 3-month old son with a sitter and headed out on a boat on the Calxasieu River near their home in Lake Charles, La. Vail would later say Mary spotted a stump in the water and fell overboard as he swerved to miss it—and that his desperate attempts to save her failed. When her body washed up two days later, her death was ruled an accidental drowning despite the brusies on her head and neck, the scarf in her mouth and the double-indemnity insurance policy her husband had taken out on the 22-year-old young mother and former homecoming queen. “I never believed,” says Mary’s younger brother Will, “it was an accident.”

Nearly 54 years after Mary Vail’s death, a jury agreed. On Aug. 12, 2016, Felix Vail, 77, was convicted of murdering Mary; he is facing life without parole and maintains his innocence. But during his trial prosecutors revealed that Vail is also suspected in the mysterious vanishings of at least two more women—Sharon Hensley in 1973 and Annette Craver in 1984—making him the nation’s oldest suspected serial killer. “This is not a choirboy we’re talking about,” says Calcasieu Parish D.A. John DeRosier. “I’m convinced that there are other victims somewhere.”