Mom Breaks Into Serial Killer’s House To Find Her Daughter | The Case of Mary Rose & Annette Craver
– Pay attention to the girl looking straight into the camera. To most people, Annette Craver looks like a regular teenage girl, but something isn’t quite right. Her mother, Mary Rose, noticed that her daughter wasn’t the same since she returned from a recent trip to California. What she doesn’t know is that while over there, her innocent daughter tied the knot with a serial killer.
In 1983, 43-year-old Felix Vail, a cult leader, manipulator and serial killer, married 17-year-old Annette Craver, putting her entire being under his control. – There was nothing in her eyes. There was no personality there. It was like a zombie. – But the teenager still had enough sense in her to try to overcome her tyrannical husband.
– She said, “I’m leaving Felix. I want a divorce. I’m going back to school.” – But this was too little too late, because Annette disappeared shortly after. leaving no clues behind. Frustrated by the local police’s lack of action, Mary Rose, Annette’s mother, launched her own investigation, but no one expected how far she was ready to go to find her daughter and stop her son-in-law’s killing spree.
– And she threw out a machete. And I’m like, “What in the world have I gotten myself into?” – You don’t worry about the risks? – September 8th, 1981, it was the end of the summer in Houston, Texas. 15-year-old Annette and her mother Mary were having a yard sale to sell off the last remaining items belonging to Annette’s late father who died in a car crash two years prior.
Unbeknownst to Mary, her daughter was still struggling with the loss of her father. – This is your friend, Annette, and here is your long-awaited tape. Hope you like it. [Music playing] – She spent a lot of time alone. She was always writing poetry and drawing, picked up the guitar. [Singing] – This kind of solitude and isolation concerned Mary.
– Annette, I’m sure, missed her dad more than I realized. I even asked her one time if she thought she needed to see someone to talk, and she said, “No, mom, I’m fine.” – But the truth was that behind her mother’s back, Annette made a new friend, a charming yet much older man she met in the city. At 40-years-old, Felix Vail was even older than Mary herself, so when he showed up at the yard sale talking it up to her daughter, she didn’t think of him as a potential threat.
– I think I may have seen him on his motorcycle. He was just another customer. – Mary was very preoccupied at the time. Since the death of Annette’s father, she simply couldn’t find any work in Houston. She needed to move away to be able to provide for her daughter, but lacked the money to do so until an opportunity arose in the neighboring state in Oklahoma.
The only issue was that Annette, who had already skipped two grades, was about to graduate from high school, and Mary knew that moving away could compromise her progress, so she decided to leave her in the care of a friend for a few months while she temporarily left for work, a decision she’d later come to regret when she learned that the mysterious stranger she met at the yard sale was getting closer and closer to her underage daughter.
– She did mention in letters that Felix stopped by, but I didn’t know that there was intimacy. And then I learned that Felix made many, many visits. I regret that I left, and she even said to me in a letter, “I feel like you abandoned me.” – With Mary away, Felix easily manipulated Annette and convinced her to go on a road trip with him after her graduation.
Meanwhile, Mary saved money for months and was eager to announce to her daughter that she bought a house for them under both of their names. Finally, they would be able to live together again. When she learned that Annette already left, Mary was devastated. – “Oh, my gosh, why didn’t I do this differently?” All the decisions I made that I would do differently now.
– For an entire year, she tried to get in touch with her daughter. She eventually got a few letters, but never from the same place, until the day she received the dreaded call from Annette asking for her approval to marry Felix in California. – I said, “Why don’t you wait till you turn 18? This is a big mistake.
” She said, “I love him, mom, and we’ll go to Mexico and get married.” – Fearing that saying no would push her daughter away, Mary had to make a choice, another difficult decision that still haunts her to this day. – I don’t wanna estrange her from me, and I trusted her. And I didn’t know he was a bad guy, so I fell for it.
– Through her letters, Annette explained to her mother that Felix changed after the wedding. He suddenly became very controlling and even forced her to undergo an illegal abortion after she became pregnant with his child. In shock, her mother tried to convince her to come back, and eventually Annette found the courage within herself to break free from Felix’s grasp and return to Mary Rose.
– But she was not herself. She was so confused. When we were painting the downstairs and she looked into the camera with this intense look on her face like, “What do you want from me?” I think she was just overwhelmed with the way he had tried to control her and mess with her mind. – Even if she wasn’t the same anymore, Mary was happy to finally be reunited with her daughter, but their respite was short-lived.
Felix started calling the house over and over, demanding to talk to Annette. Mary didn’t flinch and tried her best to protect her, but one day, mere weeks after their reunion, Felix came to their home, walked in without asking, and directly went to see Annette. – He spent some time with her alone, and then they approached me and said, “We want you out of the house.
” – Mary tried as best she could to resolve this with Annette, but Felix’s grasp on her was overwhelming. Forced to leave her daughter behind a second time, Mary Rose renounced her half of the house, packed her bags, and moved to California. Soon after, Annette turned 18 and cashed in the inheritance left by her late father.
She then allegedly proceeded to move all of her money into Felix’s accounts and deeded her house to his name. Upon learning of this, Mary immediately called Felix. – And what he told me was that he put her on a bus, and that she was going to Mexico. I hung up and called the police and filed a missing person’s report.
– Without any evidence or anything to look into, the police went to Felix, but unfortunately for Mary, he put them under the same kind of spell that charmed her daughter three years prior. – They believed Felix. He convinced them that she had left on her own. Then I got to the DA, they didn’t respond, so…
– Since the authorities refused to look into her disappearance, Mary hung on to the only thing she had left – hope. – Yes, I wanted to believe she was alive. I waited and waited. I sat by the phone and I kept waiting for a call. Christmas, her birthday, my birthday, Mother’s Day. I would stay close to a phone on those days in those early years, thinking this is it.
This is the day she’s gonna say, “Hi, mom.” – But doubt sowed into her mind as the years went by. – I said, “All right, if she’s trying to get away from her mother, why isn’t anybody else hearing from her?” She had family. – After seven years and hundreds of unanswered letters to the police, the FBI, and even to Felix himself, Mary had enough.
She accumulated small pieces of information on Felix’s family over the years, but this was the early days of the Internet, and the data was scarce, to say the least. However, there was no way she would be waiting for the police to take action any longer. So she decided to start her own investigation. She began with the only strong lead she had found, Sue Jordan, Felix’s sister, and drove halfway around the country to meet with her.
– She told me that Felix had a wife who had drowned. – Shocked by this revelation, Mary tracked the family of Felix’s first wife, Mary Horton Vail. She quickly located Will Horton, Mary’s little brother, who was only 15 when she drowned in the Calcasieu River. – A lady calls me and says, “You don’t know me, but Felix Vail married my daughter and she’s missing.
” And I said, “Oh, my God!” My sister was so very special, so thoughtful, kind. – Mary Rose couldn’t help but feel for Will Horton, who only had good things to say about his sister, but he couldn’t say the same for his brother in-law. On the contrary, his entire family resented him. – What was it like when you met with Will Horton? Did he think that his brother-in-law had killed his sister? – Oh yes, oh yes, and so did his parents.
And they felt helpless. – Will didn’t spare any details regarding what he knew of the case. His sister met Felix while studying at McNeese State College in 1960. Six months later, they married. And the following year, the couple had a son, Bill Vail. – My sister radiated over that baby. This was part of the dream.
You go to school, you go to college, and you have a family. – But after the birth of Bill, things changed in the Vail household. In a similar manner to Felix’s treatment of Annette after their wedding, he began to exert more and more control over Mary’s life. He even went as far as to tell her that he resented having a child, and that there would be consequences if she ever became pregnant again.
When she did the following year, Felix exploded in a fit of rage. Before he could hurt her, Mary ran back to her parents with her son. – She had thoughts of leaving Felix, and that’s why she was there, talking to my mom. My mom suggested that she go back and try to work things out, and then they would have another conversation, but she died before there was another conversation.
– According to the authorities at the time, Felix and Mary left their son in the care of Mary’s mother before heading out to fish on a friend’s boat. There, Felix saw tree stump emerging from the water and quickly maneuvered around it. After the sudden turn, Mary allegedly fell overboard. Felix then stated that he jumped in the water to look for his wife before coming back to the shore to alert the police.
From the get-go, they were suspicious of him because to get back to the shore, he had to pass by multiple other boats, a few docks, and even a fully staffed ice house. So they arrested Felix on the spot. Two days later, Mary’s body was recovered from the river. To everyone present, the evidence clearly pointed to murder.
Her mouth was gagged with a scarf. The back of her head showed a large open wound, as if she had been hit with a bludgeoning weapon, and the sleeves of her college sweater were covered in blood. But to the surprise of everybody present and the detectives involved, the Coroner had a different opinion, one that completely cleared Felix’s name and immediately ended the investigation.
– He was absolutely a suspect in her death. – But he was released three days later, why? – The Coroner at the time ruled that the death was an accidental drowning. As a prosecutor, how do I prosecute a murder case when the Coroner says it’s not a murder? So they really had to let him go. – It destroyed my mother.
It left a hole in me I have still today. – The revelation that, just like herself, Mary’s mother had been left hanging by the authorities, enraged Mary Rose. Now, not only was she seeking justice for Annette, but also for Mary Horton. – I never let go of hope that maybe, maybe, maybe, people- somebody would believe what I knew to be true.
– But there was no way around it. She needed concrete evidence if she ever wished to be heard by the authorities. When she shared these concerns with Mary’s brother, he confided something in her. Since 1975, he has received many calls from people looking for a young woman named Sharon Hensley, Felix’s next girlfriend, who also disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
– Her mother called for years wondering if anyone had seen Sharon. When she told me that, my ears perked up. I thought, “Oh my gosh, now I’ve got something to work with.” – Once again, Mary Rose needed to hit the road to continue her investigation. This time, she headed to Bismarck, North Dakota to meet with Brian Hensley, Sharon’s brother.
– My fondest memories of my sister, Sharon, are just the sunshine and beads, and a lot of people described her as a free spirit. – That was the kind of personality that permeated the late ’60s in America. And since the death of his wife, Felix too adopted the Hippie lifestyle. He became a wandering preacher, the head of his own personal cult.
It was around this time that he met 21-year-old Sharon Hensley out on her first trip to California. – He had a way with women and just a silver tongue. I think he said exactly what she wanted to hear. – They were living from vineyard to vineyard, living on grapes and kind of freewheeling around. – After joining the cult of the Holy Order of MANS for a short period of time, the couple’s journey took a sour turn.
Felix’s drug use was becoming more frequent, along with his violent and controlling behavior towards Sharon. – At that point, I believe she was with him out of fear. She didn’t know how to get out of the situation. – After visiting her family one last time before heading out to South America with Felix, Sharon called her mother to say goodbye.
Felix was probably right next to her, listening to every word she said, but her mother knew, from her voice only, that her daughter was in danger. – When my mom got off the phone, she told my dad, “Sharon’s in deep trouble. She’s crying out for help.” – But nothing came out of it. The next communication they received was a letter from Felix, claiming Sharon left him to travel to Australia on a boat with some strangers they met in Florida.
Obviously, the Hensleys weren’t duped, but with zero evidence to go forth, they filled a missing person report, and the police didn’t look into it for over a year. – The letter that we received from Felix was just bizarre. I remember plainly, clearly, just like, “Oh, my God, this is such BS.” – This wasn’t until an old arrest report concerning Felix and Sharon resurfaced.
Unbeknownst to the family of Mary Horton, Felix took their son Bill with him when he first left for California. From then on, Bill was forced to follow his strung out father everywhere he went. For years, his son endured his daily abuse and mistreatment until the age of eight, when he ran away to seek any help he could find.
– So Bill went, no shoes, no socks to the police station and said, “My daddy’s making me smoke marijuana, and take LSD, and I wanna go home.” – This led to the arrest of both Felix and Sharon for child endangerment. Mary Rose thought that paying a visit to the now adult Bill could provide her with more clues regarding his father’s whereabouts.
So she packed her things once again and left for Kansas to meet with Bill and his family. – Bill Vail was very open. He was very kind to me, compassionate. He was a good man, and I realized he was petrified of his dad. – Bill was initially reluctant to share too much information regarding his father. He wanted to help Mary Rose, but needed Felix to stay away from his wife and children.
But Bill was ready to take that risk if it meant he could finally get justice for his mother. What he ended up revealing to Mary on that day confirmed all of her fears. When he was eight, just before he went to the police for help, he overheard a conversation between Sharon and Felix. – Following Felix and Sharon’s arrest, Bill had to testify against his own father.
Three months later, the pair was released and continued to travel together. His son was then adopted by his grandparents, but the fear he had toward his father lingered. He couldn’t help but think that Felix would eventually come back. When he did, five years later, he claimed it was only to see his son. But one detail bothered Bill.
Sharon wasn’t with him. – Bill, from this day onward, lived with a constant fear that if he ever revealed Felix’s secret, he or his family could be his next victim. But Mary Rose’s quest for justice echoed his own. He too wanted closure, not just for his mother, but also for Sharon and Annette. While most of Mary Rose’s investigation took place in the ’90s and early 2000s, Bill Vail eventually died from cancer in 2009, but made sure to get his local preacher to record his retelling of Felix’s confession.
The audio clips you’ve heard were actually from that interview, mere months before Bill’s passing. – He wanted the truth to come out here for the victims. He knew what he had heard, and he never wavered on that, never. – He called me, and it was very close to the end. And he said, “At least now, I’ll get to see mom.
” – After decades of investigating, Mary Rose finally felt like she had an actual case against Felix Vail. She still had no physical evidence, but she believed that the testimonies of the Hortons, the Hensleys, her own, and Felix’s son Bill, could sufficiently prove to the FBI that the cases needed to be reopened.
– They had a Special Agent there that was working on serial killers and cold cases. He told me, “I believe you’re absolutely right. We are dealing with a serial killer.” – But when the time came to meet them, they were coldly informed that the agent in question had been let go following budget cuts imposed by the government.
Their entire Cold Case Department was affected. And following this event, nobody ever followed up on Mary Rose. She was back at square one with nobody willing to listen to her. – I felt shame that I had gotten all the families excited about this, so it was a big letdown for me. – Even though things fizzled out, she continued to search for someone to take a look at our situation.
She just had that burning desire to want to get this guy so bad. She was consumed with it. – After almost three decades without Annette, I continued just doing my life, and I realized then I need help. I need some healing here. – In June 2011, almost 30 years after the disappearance of her daughter, Mary Rose was in her home listening to the radio when she heard about an investigative reporter who solved the notorious “Mississippi Burning” murders.
These eight murder cases, all perpetrated by members of the Ku Klux Klan, remained cold for almost 50 years before he cracked them. – I was just sitting in my living room, listening, and I realized, “Oh, my gosh, this man is not afraid of cold cases. I need to contact him.” – Without a minute to spare, Mary jumped on the phone and started making calls.
Quickly enough, she managed to get in touch with the reporter in question, a Mississippi resident named Jerry Mitchell. – I said, “Jerry, if you knew there was a serial killer living in Mississippi as a free man, would you be interested in the case?” – “Well, yeah!” And so she proceeds to tell me about Felix Vail.
– She tried to explain the complex case to him as best she could, but one clue overlapped all the others. She recently learned that Felix moved back to Mississippi. When she expressed her intention to the reporter, his reaction took her by surprise. – She said, “I’m coming down to confront Felix.” I said, “Well, I want to go with you.
” – The pair drove up to the place in question, a remote and isolated trailer park beside the blackened remains of an old burned down house. – By now, I’m starting to get kinda suspicious about where is he, is he watching? I’m thinking along those lines. – But Mary didn’t care. She was ready for anything. At 64 years old, she had enough of Felix Vail.
She would get to the truth, whatever it took. – She gets over there and the back window was missing. So she crawled inside. – You don’t worry about the risks? – I don’t worry about the risk. I just wanted to know the truth. – Inside the house, camera in hand, Mary Rose stumbled upon a collection of religious texts and a large haul of weapons.
– And she threw out a machete, and then she threw out another machete, then another machete, then another machete. And I’m like, “What in the world have I gotten myself into?” – After Mary Rose crawled back out of the house, the pair noticed someone running in their direction. It wasn’t Felix, but one of his sisters, Kaye Faulkner, who also lived on the property in an adjacent house.
She was initially annoyed by their intrusion, but when they started to explain the reason behind their visit, the look on her face changed. – When I spoke to Kaye Faulkner, Felix Vail’s sister, she’s like, “Oh, yeah, I think he killed these women.” – Surprised that his first day of investigating the case was so fruitful, Jerry Mitchell didn’t waste any more time.
He listened to Bill Vail’s tape, interviewed the Hortons, the Hensleys, and Mary Rose. Then directly started to write. Four years later, <i>Gone</i>, a book retelling his and Mary Rose’s investigation came out to great acclaim, collecting multiple awards. Following the buzz surrounding the book, the FBI contacted all the parties involved and reopened the cases.
– I celebrated. I danced. I remember calling one of my brothers. I said, “Fred, I’ve got some good news.” They said, “Mary, that’s not good news. That’s fabulous news!” – They determined that Mary Horton Vail’s case was the only one they could prosecute, since it was the only one with a confirmed death. But since her drowning was ruled accidental, the police never got their hands on any evidence related to the case.
Almost 50 years after the event, all the evidence and involved staff were lost to time. With nothing else to latch onto, the FBI started looking for a DA eager enough to pick up the hopeless case. – I was minding my own business, walking down the hall to get some coffee, and the DA grabbed me and said, “Hey, how would you like to work on a 50-year-old murder case?” And foolishly, I told him I would do it.
– The first thing Holland did was send a squad to bust down Felix’s door and search his property more thoroughly. Amongst the mess of swords in Holy Order of MANS’ literature, they got their hands on a series of personal journals, stretching from the ’80s to 2010. – We found Felix Vail’s journals. Almost 2,500 pages worth.
And so in reading through the journals, Felix clearly tried to control every woman in his life, and a lot of times, through physical violence. – Felix even had a whole section describing how he liked to drink raw blood, but nothing concerning the murders. With nothing conclusive at hand, Holland started to look for someone, who was involved in the rescue effort at Calcasieu.
Against all odds, one man survived the test of time, 90-year-old Ike Abshire. – Ike Abshire was a roommate with Felix Vail when Felix Vail lived in Lake Charles. Ike’s father, ironically enough, owned a large boat. The Sheriff’s Office hired Ike’s father as part of the search party to look for Mary’s body.
Ike happened to be on his father’s boat when Mary’s body was recovered. – Holland and his DA then headed off to Lake Charles to meet with Ike at his home. They’re greeted by a geriatric man in a wheelchair. Inside the home are piles upon piles of cardboard boxes with dates on them. – He says, “I got something for you.
” He gives us an envelope, and written on the envelope is a single word, “KEEP,” K-E-E-P. I open up the envelope and then I pull these two photographs out. – It was the lost pictures of the discovery of Mary Horton’s body. Back in his office, Holland and his team were examining the pictures when fate struck down.
– The forensic pathologist just happens to be walking past the table, he looks down at the pictures, he said, “Who murdered her?” And I said, “Okay, well, we got us a murder case now.” – Now armed with not only a confirmed piece of evidence, but also a direct witness, Holland charged Felix Vail with the murder of his first wife, Mary Horton Vail.
His arrest quickly followed, and he was sent to Louisiana for trial. – Felix, what happened to Mary? What about Sharon? Annette? Felix, did you murder those women? – The trial opened on the testimony of Jerry Mitchell and Mary Rose, followed by Will Horton and Brian Hensley, and closed with Ike Abshire, his retelling of the night he helped recover Mary Horton’s body, finally put an end to any form of doubt still lingering in the mind of the jurors.
and it looked like a big old knot, but it wasn’t a woman’s knot. – So without him, without his testimony introducing the photos, I can’t prove it’s a murder. Ike Abshire was the key to the entire case. – Three months after his testimony, Ike Abshire died of old age, but the truth he was bearing shined through the procedures.
In 2016, after only 10 minutes of deliberation, Felix Vail was finally convicted of Mary Horton’s murder and sentenced to life. – Mary was sitting next to me, and Brian was sitting next to Mary, and we were holding hands. – We’d become a family. The best part of this whole ordeal was getting to meet Mary Rose and getting to meet Will.
– And when they said “guilty,” really, no words to describe it. It just felt so good. Finally, mission accomplished. – Sadly, the disappearance of Annette was left unaccounted for, but more verdicts wouldn’t have added much to Vail’s sentence. In the eyes of Mary Rose, truth prevailed nonetheless. – The most important thing for me was that he would be convicted of murder, whether it was just for Mary Horton or all three women, and that he would serve the rest of his life in prison.
This was it, he was never gonna get out of jail. – And for Sharon, her brother Brian finally got some form of closure. – As far as for Sharon, I was able to have a memorial service for my sister, and it felt so good. I felt like I fulfilled a promise to my mom. – But the same cannot be necessarily said for Mary Rose, even four decades after the fact.
– I don’t really know exactly what “closure” means. I haven’t found Annette’s body. There’s always gonna be a piece of me that my heart is always gonna be broken. – As a way to cope with her loss, Mary Rose started to write letters to her daughter after the trial. In them, she talks to Annette almost as if she was still there to help her forgive herself for the decisions she made all those years ago, and hopefully, one day, overcome her grief.
