Gone by Mitchell Jerry

Author:Mitchell, Jerry [Mitchell, Jerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Clarion-Ledger
Published: 2012-11-07T23:00:00+00:00

Silent Sorrow

In 1993, the FBI began investigating Felix Vail.

The case fell to already busy Jim Bell, a national expert in serial killings who worked with the agency.

Mary Craver Rose spoke on the telephone a number of times with Bell, who began looking into the 1962 death of Mary Horton Vail, the 1973 disappearance of Sharon Hensley and the 1984 disappearance of Annette Craver Vail.

Mary obtained copies of letters Felix and his mother had written the Hensley family. What struck her were the similarities in stories that Felix had given for the disappearances of both women.

According to Felix, both women had left because they had wanted to disappear and “start over.”

Within a year or so, Bell stopped working with the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, and the case grew cold again.

One night, Mary played songs that Annette wrote, including Sunset in Winter: “I’m dying, leaving orange tears, blood upon your face … Throw me gilded kisses, silent sorrow, but do not stay up and wait for me, for I may not return.”

Tears streaked down her cheeks. She knew Annette would never return.

* * * *

About a year after Annette Vail’s disappearance, Felix Vail began spending time with Beth Field.

She was attracted to his intelligence, and the pair grew close, according to a 1993 statement she gave Annette’s mother.

While they dated, Felix repeatedly called her a “whore,” she said.

During a December 1987 argument, he became violent, slapping and kicking her, she said. She challenged Felix, telling him there was no justification for physical violence, and she said he replied, “If you quit behaving like a whore, I’ll quit hitting you.”

She discussed the issue with a therapist, she said. “I finally told this woman, ‘It’s all very nice, but one of us is going to be dead before this works.’”

Beth took the advice of a close friend and attended an intensive 10-day meditation course in August 1988 on Colorado’s Western Slope. To her surprise, Felix came, too.

After the course, she received a telephone call from Mary Craver Rose, sharing details about the disappearance of her daughter, Annette, and the drowning of Felix’s first wife. Mary believed he was behind both.

After that conversation, Beth said she evaluated the situation. “Each time I was with Felix, it was with the full awareness of not just the possibility, but the probability that he had taken Annette’s life as well as his first wife’s.”

When the subject of Annette’s disappearance arose, Felix said he had been camping with her and that she decided she wanted to get away from her mother and that he had helped her set up an opportunity for her to change her name and move on, Beth recalled.

Whenever she asked Felix about the disappearance, he denied involvement, she said. “Then one time he said, ‘What if I said yes?’”

Four months after the meditation course, Felix entered her home unannounced. Already drunk, he became abusive, calling her a whore again, she said.

This time, he hit her so hard he broke her eardrum, according to the protective order she filed in an Oklahoma court.

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