The Third Woman: The Disappearance of Annette Michelle Craver Vail

Author

Benjamin Hayes

Publication Date

July 27, 2026

Annette Michelle Craver Vail was 18 years old when she disappeared in October 1984, and for years her case sat in police files as an ordinary, if troubling, missing persons report: a young woman with documented mental health struggles who had, according to her husband, simply left the country to start over somewhere new. It took a newspaper reporter, decades of patience, and the eventual unraveling of two other women's fates connected to the same man before anyone understood that Annette was very likely the third victim of a serial killer who had been operating, undetected, since 1962. Her husband, William Felix Vail, was finally convicted of murder in 2016, more than fifty years after his first wife drowned. He was never charged in Annette's disappearance. She has never been found.

A New Inheritance and an Old Pattern

Annette was born December 7, 1965, and by the time she met and married Felix Vail, known to those around him as Felix, she was a young woman described in records as having emotional problems, the kind of vulnerability that would turn out to be a common thread among the women in Felix's life. Not long before she disappeared, Annette inherited approximately $98,000 from her father's estate, a substantial sum that she and Felix used together to pay off his debts and acquire various assets. At one point the couple had briefly separated, but after reconciling, Annette transferred the deed to her own house over to Felix, effectively removing herself from ownership of the one significant asset still clearly in her name. Weeks later, she was gone.

A Story That Fell Apart Immediately

Annette's family last saw her on October 5, 1984, in Sulphur, Louisiana. By October 22, she had vanished entirely, and Felix's account of what happened to her shifted depending on who was asking. To neighbors, he initially said Annette had gone to visit friends in Denver, Colorado. When Annette's mother grew concerned enough to report her missing, Felix changed his story, saying that Annette, citing her mental illness and a desire to leave, had boarded a bus to Mexico. He told investigators he had personally dropped her off at a Trailways bus station in St. Louis on September 16, 1984, a date that did not even align with the October timeline her family had established for her disappearance. Investigators looking into the claim discovered a more basic problem with it entirely: there has never been a Trailways bus station in St. Louis, only a Greyhound station. The single, specific, checkable detail in Felix's account turned out not to exist.

The First Wife, Twenty-Two Years Earlier

What made Annette's case so significant was not simply the holes in her husband's story, but the fact that this was not the first time a woman connected to Felix Vail had vanished or died under circumstances he alone could explain. In October 1962, Felix's first wife, Mary Elizabeth Horton Vail, drowned in the Calcasieu River in southwest Louisiana. Felix's account at the time was that the two of them had been trotline fishing when Mary fell into the water, and despite his own account of the incident's setup, investigators later noted that Mary had a known fear of water and that the location itself was poorly suited to trotline fishing in the first place.

The original coroner's report ruled the death an accidental drowning, and the case was closed for decades. It was not until a pathologist reviewed the original autopsy records in 2012 that a very different picture emerged: large bruises on Mary's neck and legs, and a scarf found lodged in her mouth, findings far more consistent with forcible asphyxiation than with an accidental fall from a boat. In his own later account, given decades afterward from prison, Felix would claim the scarf ended up in Mary's mouth simply because her body rolled along the river bottom for two days before being recovered, an explanation forensic experts did not find persuasive.

Perhaps the most damning piece of evidence connected to Mary's death came from Felix's own young son, Bill, who told police in 1970, when he was still a child, that his father had confessed to killing Mary. According to Bill's account, he overheard Felix tell a girlfriend, "you don't understand, I really did kill her," a statement made carelessly in front of an eight year old who would go on to carry that memory for decades before it became relevant testimony in a courtroom. That same year, Felix was arrested on drug possession and child abuse charges tied to his treatment of Bill, including allegations that he kept drugs in the house and forced his own son to use them, but he served only six months.

A Second Disappearance in Between

Eleven years after Mary's death, and eleven years before Annette vanished, a woman named Sharon Hensley disappeared in 1973 after being involved with Felix. Her family last heard from her that year, and Felix's explanation for her absence would become a template he reused, almost word for word, when Annette disappeared over a decade later. He claimed Hensley had burned all of her identification documents and left the country with an Australian couple to sail around the world, starting an entirely new life free of her past. When he was interviewed decades later in prison, Felix described Hensley as having wanted to escape her mother and her troubled history, framing her disappearance as something to be celebrated rather than investigated, saying he applauded the fact that she and Annette, as he saw it, were both still sticking to whatever plan had taken them away.

A Case the FBI Could Not Close and Would Not Open

By 1993, the pattern connecting Mary's death, Sharon Hensley's disappearance, and Annette's disappearance had become impossible to ignore entirely, and the FBI opened an investigation into Felix Vail as a potential serial killer, weighing the sheer statistical improbability of three women connected romantically to the same man all meeting sudden, unexplained fates. That investigation ultimately closed without any charges being filed, and Felix continued living his life for nearly two more decades without facing any legal consequence for any of the three cases.

A Reporter Reopens Everything

The turning point came in 2012, when investigative journalist Jerry Mitchell, writing for Mississippi's Clarion-Ledger, began publishing articles revisiting the cases of all three women. When Mitchell attempted to interview Felix directly about Mary, Sharon, and Annette, Felix abruptly fled Mississippi, leaving some of his own belongings behind in his haste, a reaction that drew fresh law enforcement attention to a story that had gone cold for decades. He was eventually located and arrested in Texas in May 2013, charged specifically with the 1962 murder of Mary Horton Vail, the one case among the three where a body had actually been recovered and where forensic evidence could still be meaningfully reexamined.

A Trial More Than Fifty Years in the Making

Felix Vail went to trial in Louisiana in 2016, nearly fifty-four years after Mary Horton Vail's death. His defense argued her drowning had been a tragic accident. The prosecution countered with testimony from three of Felix's former friends, each of whom testified that he had confessed to murdering Mary at various points over the years, along with the conclusions of two forensic pathologists who reviewed the original autopsy findings and determined her death was a homicide rather than an accidental drowning. The jury did not take long to decide. Felix Vail was convicted of murder, and he received a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. His conviction was upheld on appeal in 2018.

What Felix Said From Prison

In interviews conducted after his conviction, Felix Vail maintained his innocence in all three cases, describing his trial as the product of what he called coached and paid witnesses and insisting on his own moral character, saying he had one conscience and had never had any other kind. Regarding Annette specifically, he claimed she had left voluntarily to escape her own mother, describing unnamed Canadian companions who supposedly possessed the skills to create false identification for her, and stating that he would not, to save himself, ever put either Annette or Sharon Hensley back in contact with the mothers he claimed they had been trying to escape. At another point, discussing both missing women, he made the bizarre claim that they were both alive and effectively protected under what he termed the Felix Vail witness protection program, an assertion offered with no evidence and accepted by no one investigating either case.

Still Missing

Annette Michelle Craver Vail remains classified as a missing person, presumed dead, with foul play suspected given her connection to a man now serving a life sentence for killing one woman under nearly identical circumstances of denial and misdirection. Her mother held a memorial service for her in 1997, a formal acknowledgment of loss made without a body to bury or a confirmed account of what actually happened to her daughter. Sharon Hensley likewise has never been found. Only Mary Horton Vail's case ever reached a courtroom, and only because her body had been recovered back in 1962, giving investigators something physical to reexamine once suspicion finally caught up with the man who had been present at the end of three women's lives and had an explanation, however implausible, ready every single time.

The Tulsa Police Department's Cold Case Unit continues to list Annette's case as open. Anyone with information is asked to contact investigators at TPDColdCaseHomicide@cityoftulsa.org.

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