S4|E30: Catching Felix Vail | Part 3

Summary

Gone South: S4|E30 - Catching Felix Vail | Part 3

Released on May 14, 2025 by Audacy Podcasts

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Introduction

In the gripping finale of the "Catching Felix Vail" trilogy, Season 4 of Gone South delves deep into the unraveling of one of the South's most perplexing cold cases. Host Jed Lipinski masterfully guides listeners through the intricate web of investigation, unveiling the relentless pursuit of justice for the victims of Felix Vail.

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Reviving the Cold Case

[01:17] Jake Brennan:
In the last episode, investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell launched his own investigation into Felix Vail.

Building upon previous episodes, this installment recounts how Jerry Mitchell's unwavering determination reignited the decades-old case of Felix Vail. Initially met with a lack of official interest, Jerry's investigative prowess becomes the catalyst for renewed attention.

[01:24] Jerry Mitchell:
"There was nothing. There was no paper trail. Nothing." ([01:24])

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Uncovering Hidden Truths

Jerry's investigation takes him to Louisiana, where he uncovers unsettling connections between Felix Vail and the mysterious deaths of those closest to him.

[01:35] Jerry Mitchell:
"Felix didn't act like it was anything like. He didn't act upset, he didn't cry." ([01:35])

Simultaneously, Felix's son, Bill, releases a podcast episode revealing his father's dark confessions:

[01:42] Jake Brennan:
...Bill claimed his father killed not only his first wife, but also his girlfriend, Sharon Hensley.

This revelation suggests a disturbing pattern of violence, positioning Felix as a potential serial killer.

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Enter the Private Investigator: Gina Frenzel

Determined to bring Felix to justice, Jerry teams up with private investigator Gina Frenzel. Gina's first encounter with Felix sets the stage for a deeper infiltration.

[02:41] Gina Frenzel:
"I'm kind of tenacious that way. I like the hard to get..." ([02:41])

Posing as an insurance adjuster, Gina gains Felix's trust, leading to several intense interactions that slowly peel back his facade.

[03:26] Gina Frenzel:
"I park, get my camera out...I go to the fence, and there's no door to knock on...he just said, okay, great." ([03:26])

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Gathering Evidence: The Shed and the Journals

During her undercover operations, Gina discovers crucial evidence hidden within Felix's shed, including a toolbox suspiciously containing a hacksaw and a hammer.

[04:01] Gina Frenzel:
"Which kind of freaked me out..." ([04:01])

Further probing reveals a box full of journals, hinting at Felix's meticulous record-keeping and possibly his attempts to conceal his crimes.

[04:39] Gina Frenzel:
"I wasn't very successful. One time, he had to go out and go to the bathroom..." ([04:39])

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Breakthroughs and the Path to Arrest

Gina's persistent efforts lead to startling confessions and the retrieval of long-lost evidence:

[05:24] Jake Brennan:
...73-year-old Felix Vail was arrested and charged with the 1962 drowning.

With the discovery of Felix's journals and corroborative testimonies from old acquaintances, the case against Felix strengthens significantly.

[15:04] Chuck GPT:
"He wheels himself into his back bedroom and... handed the elected DA an envelope..." ([15:04])

This envelope contained authentic sheriff's reports and damning photographs that contradicted the initial accidental drowning narrative.

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The Trial: Building the Case

Prosecutor Hugo Holland takes the reins, presenting a compelling case that goes beyond the sole accusation of Felix murdering Mary Horton Vale. He introduces the disappearances of Sharon Hensley and Annette Craver Vail to illustrate a pattern of behavior.

[30:08] Jerry Mitchell:
"So literally every single family, these three families all got to testify...all that went into evidence." ([30:08])

By employing the doctrine of chances, Hugo effectively argues the improbability of Felix's innocence given the circumstances surrounding the three women.

[30:43] Chuck GPT:
"What are the chances that Felix Vail's first wife dies accidentally and then two significant others disappear... Zero." ([30:43])

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Verdict and Aftermath

After intense deliberations, the jury finds Felix Vail guilty of second-degree murder, marking a historic resolution to the oldest solved cold case in U.S. history where the perpetrator was still alive.

[31:52] Jake Brennan:
The jury found Felix Vail guilty of second-degree murder.

Felix's sentencing sees him receive life without parole, bringing a semblance of closure to the families affected by his actions.

[33:14] Jerry Mitchell:
"He talked about me..." ([33:14])
Felix deflects blame and draws bizarre parallels to literary works, showcasing his manipulative nature until the end.

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Reflections on Justice and Truth

Jerry Mitchell shares his personal reflections on the case, emphasizing the role of faith and the pursuit of truth in his investigative work.

[34:48] Jerry Mitchell:
"My faith has a lot to do with my reporting because God loves justice and so I know if I'm writing about truth, that's what he wants me to do." ([34:48])

This conviction underscores the moral imperative driving journalists to seek out and expose hidden truths, no matter how deeply buried.

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Conclusion

In Catching Felix Vail | Part 3, Gone South delivers a powerful narrative of tenacity, uncovering hidden evidence, and the relentless pursuit of justice. Through meticulous investigation and unwavering dedication, Jerry Mitchell and Gina Frenzel bring closure to a case that had lingered for over half a century, exemplifying the profound impact of investigative journalism in solving cold cases.

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Notable Quotes

• Jerry Mitchell:
  "What are the odds that you have one guy who's 90 something that has saved these records for 50 years...I had to find anything that I had around that was 50 years old." ([16:16])

• Gina Frenzel:
  "He didn't act like it was anything like. He didn't act upset, he didn't cry." ([01:35])

• Chuck GPT (Prosecutor Hugo Holland):
  "You got Mary Rose not letting it go. God bless Mary Rose for what she did...This is just how many different stars had to align for this to occur." ([32:21])

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Further Engagement

For listeners eager to explore more about the Gone South investigations, consider subscribing to Audacy Podcasts and following Gone South on social media platforms. Engage with the community by sharing thoughts, tips, or feedback at gonesouthpodcastmail.com.

Transcript

[Jake Brennan]

Do you know what went down at the Viper Room the night River Phoenix died? Or how about the mysterious death of Brittany Murphy? Are you aware of how Steve McQueen escaped murder at the hands of the Manson family? The obsessive killing of Dorothy Stratton? The real life murder that inspired David Lynch's Twin Peaks. The three conspiracies surrounding Marilyn Monroe's death. These stories and more are told in the Hollywoodland podcast, where true crime and Tinseltown collide. Hollywoodland is hosted by me, Jake Brennan, creator of the award winning true crime podcast Disgraceland. Follow and listen to Hollywoodland wherever you get your podcasts.

[Chuck GPT]

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[Jake Brennan]

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[Jake Brennan]

In the last episode, investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell launched his own investigation into Felix Vale.

[Jerry Mitchell]

There was nothing. There was no paper trail. Nothing.

[Jake Brennan]

When I began, he traveled to Louisiana and spoke to people who believed Felix had murdered his first wife, Mary Horton Vale.

[Jerry Mitchell]

Felix didn't act like it was anything like. He didn't act upset, he didn't cry.

[Jake Brennan]

He also discovered that Felix's son Bill had recorded a podcast episode about Felix before he died. In it, Bill claimed his father killed not only his first wife, but also his girlfriend, Sharon Hensley. My father thought I was outside playing and he confessed to her that he had actually murdered her. Based on his reporting, Jerry Mitchell published a story that exposed a disturbing pattern. The women closest to Felix Vale kept winding up dead or missing. By then, Felix himself had disappeared. But sources told Jerry he was living in Texas, a fact that caught the eye of an intrepid private investigator who offered to knock on his door. It's fair to say that most people, upon learning that a potential serial killer lives nearby, do not immediately think to go pay him a visit. But for private investigator Gina Franzel, that was her first instinct.

[Gina Frenzel]

I'm kind of tenacious that way. I like the hard to get, but yeah, I mean, if he's not talking to anybody, let's see if he'll Talk to me. Why not? It's just a knock on the door, you know, might scratch a knuckle, but who cares?

[Jake Brennan]

Still, Gina was a professional P.I. she knew she couldn't just barge in and start asking about Felix's dead wives and girlfriend. She needed a cover. And Jerry had the perfect one. As it happened, there had recently been a fire on the property Felix was living on. And Jerry had discovered Felix had filed an insurance claim for it. They decided Gina would pose as an insurance adjuster conducting an inspection. An hour later, Gina pulled up to his house, which was more like a converted storage shed.

[Gina Frenzel]

I park, get my camera out, my big camera, because I thought, I have to make this look legit. So I go to the fence, and there's no door to knock on because the shed is behind the fence, bolted, all the things locked. So I just start hollering, hello, Mr. Vail. I mean, he comes to the fence. I told him why I was there, you know, the story. And he just said, okay, great. And he opened the fence. And we walked around for probably 30 minutes, talking.

[Jake Brennan]

As they talked, Gina took photos of the area where the fire had taken place. Then Felix invited her into his shed.

[Gina Frenzel]

I asked where he slept. He said, right here. There's an air mattress. No bathroom. The running water was a hose. You know, he just kind of roughened it. There wasn't anything significant in the beginning. Except I did see. I looked down, and he has this toolbox. He's fixing the place up. He tells me. So he has a toolbox, but he has this hacksaw and this hammer sitting on top of it. Which kind of freaked me out, because this is very new territory for me. I'm sitting there, and I'm just kind of side eyeing the whole time like, there's a hacksaw, there's a hammer, there's a hacksaw, there's a. And my brain was just like, why can't you get.

[Jake Brennan]

Gina also noticed a box full of journals on the floor.

[Gina Frenzel]

Of course, I would go and peek over and try to read. I wasn't very successful. One time, he had to go out and go to the bathroom. And so I run over there real quick, and then I come back in, you know?

[Jake Brennan]

Gina spent an hour talking with Felix, indulging his diatribes about spirituality. But she was careful not to overstay her welcome and politely excused herself.

[Gina Frenzel]

And so he was just, okay, thank you. Here's my card. And I left. And I pulled over a little store and shaking like a leaf. And I called Jerry and I said, the SOB Talked to me. And he goes, what? So I talked to Jerry, told him the deal, and he was like, that's amazing. He goes, do you think you could go back? I said, hell, yeah, I can go back. I'm going back. Let me figure it out.

[Jake Brennan]

Jerry's stories about Felix Vale had gotten a lot of attention, but months had passed since his first article appeared, and he had yet to hear from anyone in law enforcement. Normally, Jerry let his reporting speak for itself, but in this case, he decided to go further. Along with Gina, he would set another investigation in motion, one that would captivate the country and make history in the world of American cold cases. I'm Jed Lipinski. This is gone south. A week after her impromptu visit to Felix Vale's shed in Canyon Lake, Texas, Gina Frenzel returned. But this time, she tucked a recording device in her bra, and she had backup.

[Gina Frenzel]

And I had my husband and my colleague down the street for security. The cell service is not great there. And I told him, my phone will be with me, but my focus is 100% on him. And they were within earshot, so they could hear if there was something wrong. But I went in and I just said, hey, I was just in the neighborhood. I'm done with the fire investigation. I just thought I'd stop by and say hey. And he was thrilled. He was thrilled.

[Jake Brennan]

Inside the shed, Felix seated himself between Gina and the door. They proceeded to talk for the next six hours, with Regina recording the entire time.

[Gina Frenzel]

So I let him lead the conversation. That's what you have to do when you're undercover. You cannot control the conversation. And especially with someone like Felix, if you open the dictionary and see narcissist, Felix's picture has got to be there because it's all about him. But I used that, and I thought, okay, I'm going to pretend like he is the greatest man on the earth, and I'm just. Oh. And bat my eyes. And smitten by him.

[Jake Brennan]

In the recording of their conversation, Felix drones on for hours about books, God, and the importance of eating what he calls live food or vegetables straight out of the ground. Gina pretended to be interested.

[Gina Frenzel]

But can you go to the grocery store and buy fresh things like that? Because really, what options do we have around here?

[Chuck GPT]

You'd have to do some nutritional research to be able to get the right minerals and nutrients.

[Gina Frenzel]

What do you do? Like, a garden? I have.

[Chuck GPT]

But if you know what you're doing.

[Jerry Mitchell]

You can get live stuff out of the grocery store.

[Gina Frenzel]

Like what?

[Jake Brennan]

Vegetables, fruits. Any fruit and vegetable at one point, Felix asked if she was aware of the nosy reporter in Mississippi who'd been writing stories about him.

[Chuck GPT]

Do you know about this guy in Jackson who's been stalking me?

[Gina Frenzel]

Who's stalking you?

[Chuck GPT]

You don't know about him?

[Gina Frenzel]

No.

[Jake Brennan]

Jackson.

[Gina Frenzel]

What Jackson, Texas, in East Texas? I don't know.

[Jerry Mitchell]

Well, okay, I won't go into it then.

[Chuck GPT]

If you don't know about him, there's.

[Jerry Mitchell]

No point in knowing that.

[Jake Brennan]

No, I don't. Throughout their conversation, Gina was desperate to ask him about Sharon and Annette, the two women who were with Felix when they disappeared decades earlier. But in her role as insurance adjuster, she couldn't just bring them up. Finally, as the sun began to go down, Felix mentioned a woman that Gina believed to be Annette.

[Gina Frenzel]

And I'd done all the studying. At this point, I think I knew Annette just as well as anybody else out there. And so I knew he was talking about her. And he said something, and it prompted me to say, well, where is she now? I guess maybe y' all can reconnect in the future. And you know how people say, oh, their eyes turn black? And I. You hear that, and I don't believe it. I'm like, your eyes don't turn black. His eyes turn black. And I'm not even kidding you. And he stepped towards me and he said, no, no, she's not coming back. She's on her own. You know, it scared the bejesus out of me.

[Jake Brennan]

And yet this wasn't the last visit Gina made to Felix Vale. Over the next few weeks, she went back and recorded him several more times, hoping he might slip up and say something incriminating. Jerry was amazed.

[Jerry Mitchell]

And she wound up talking to him for, like, 12 hours. He basically told her his entire life story, which proved incredibly valuable in terms of trying to piece everything together, in terms of what happened and where he went and things like that.

[Jake Brennan]

Jerry, meanwhile, was making progress of his own. He'd visited the district attorney's office in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and he'd gotten his Felix Vale stories into the hands of a tenacious special prosecutor. First of all, just tell me your name and what you were doing back then before this case came across your desk.

[Chuck GPT]

My name's Hugo Holland. I'm an assistant district attorney in the state of Louisiana. At the time this case arose, I was prosecuting for 18 different district attorneys around the state.

[Jake Brennan]

Could you explain why you were doing that?

[Chuck GPT]

The 18 DAs that I worked for called me into work on special cases. Sometimes they were particularly difficult. Sometimes they were old. Sometimes they were complicated. But the bottom line was I wasn't handling the day to day robberies, burglaries, thefts, that kind of thing.

[Jake Brennan]

Before inheriting the Felix Vale case, Hugo Holland had worked some of the state's most high profile cases. In 1999, he was called in after six inmates tried to escape from Angola penitentiary, taking prison guards hostage and killing one of them in the process. A few years later, he'd helped locate the body of a missing Louisiana Tech professor, then prosecuted her killer. After reading Jerry's story about Felix in the Clarion Ledger, Hugo met with Jerry and Mary Rose in his office. They briefed Hugo on the scope of their investigation. The suspicious death of Mary Horton Vail and the disappearances of Sharon Hensley and Annette Craver Vail. Hugo was impressed. But in order to prosecute Felix for any of those crimes, they were going to need a lot more evidence.

[Chuck GPT]

What Jerry and Mary provided was a whole lot of smoke. But for a criminal prosecution, I've got to be able to show a jury the flames.

[Jake Brennan]

Just days after Jerry and Mary Rose's visit, the first flames flickered to life.

[Chuck GPT]

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[Emma Greed]

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[Courtney Harrell]

Imagine if you could ask someone anything you wanted about their finances. How much do you make? Who paid for that fancy dinner? What did your house actually cost? On every episode of what We Spend, a different guest opens up their wallets, opens up their lives really, and tells us all about their finances. For one week they tell us everything they spend their money on.

[Jake Brennan]

My son slammed like $6 with the blueberries in five minutes.

[Courtney Harrell]

This is a podcast about all the ways money comes into our lives and then leaves again. Which of course we all have a lot of feelings about.

[Jake Brennan]

I really want these things.

[Emma Greed]

I want to own a house, I.

[Gina Frenzel]

Want to have a child. But this morning I really wanted a coffee.

[Courtney Harrell]

Because whatever you are buying or not buying or saving or spending, at the end of the day, money is always about more than your balance. I'm Courtney Harrell and this is what We Spend. Listen to and follow what We Spend and Odyssey original podcast available now. Wherever you get your podcast.

[Jake Brennan]

The Mary Horton Vale case had been stalled for over half a century. But once Hugo Holland sat down with Jerry Mitchell and Mary Rose, it was as if someone hit fast forward. The first development happened days later after a local news station aired a segment about the revival of the Mary Horton Vale Cold Case. Felix's former landlord, a 90 something year old man named Ike Abshire, contacted Hugo.

[Chuck GPT]

So when my investigator finds Ike Abshire and we go knock on the door of his house, when we identified ourselves and told Ike what we were there about, he said, I've got something for you. And he was in a wheelchair at the time. He wheels himself into his back bedroom and I hear things moving around and he wheels back into the living room and he hands the elected DA an envelope, a large manila envelope that has in red written on it, keep K E E P. And in that envelope was a copy of the long lost sheriff's investigators reports, a copy of the autopsy report. But more startling was there were two photographs, black and white, of Maryvale's body being pulled out of the water. Now, I'm not a forensic pathologist, but I've been to thousands of death scenes and it didn't look to me like she had drowned.

[Jake Brennan]

As we said in previous episodes, the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff's Office had nothing related to the Mary Horton Vale case except for a set of Felix's fingerprints. When Jerry heard about the Crime scene photos. He was in disbelief.

[Jerry Mitchell]

What are the odds that you have one guy who's 90 something that has saved these records for 50 years, that photographs for 50 years in a folder? I mean, I'd be hard pressed to find anything that I had around that was 50 years old, you know?

[Jake Brennan]

At the start of his investigation, Mary Rose had given Jerry a copy of Mary Horton Vale's autopsy report. The coroner had ruled her death an accidental drowning, but judging from the details in the report, Jerry thought it sounded more like a homicide. When he looked at the crime scene photos with Gina Frenzel, they confirm Jerry's suspicions.

[Jerry Mitchell]

Basically, if you look at the photo of her when she's been recovered, you can tell that her sweatshirt has been kind of pushed up and there's kind of like oil or something on the sweatshirt. Gina's theory on it was that Mary may have been hit over the head and knocked out, and that Felix then dragged her body and put her in the back of the boat. And then when he got where he wanted to go, then he just simply put her body into the river.

[Jake Brennan]

The sheriff's report was valuable, too. It indicated that all the detectives on the case thought Felix was guilty. They listed 15 points for why they thought so. For example, Felix had refused to take a polygraph exam. He was having affairs with multiple other women. And most of the witnesses interviewed felt Felix was capable of killing his wife. After leaving Ike Abshire's home, Hugo took the photographs to the Calcasieu Parish Coroner's office.

[Chuck GPT]

I'm sitting in the conference room trying to explain to the investigator what I'm doing, why I'm there. And I've got the two photographs spread out on the conference room table. And the forensic pathologist just happens to walked by the conference room door and he looked at the photos. He said, who murdered her? And I said, Terry, 50 years ago, somebody said that she drowned. What are you telling me? He said, no, she was dead before she went in the water. Somebody murdered her, and, boy, it was owned like a chicken bone. Once he told me that not long.

[Jake Brennan]

After the photo surfaced, another local man showed up at the DA's office. His name was Wesley Turnage. And he also wanted to get something off his chest. He explained that years ago, he and Felix Vail had worked in the same factory.

[Chuck GPT]

And the story he told us was, I remember asking him one time what exactly happened to his wife. And he said, well, our marriage wasn't working and that bitch wanted another baby. I didn't want the one I had, and I fixed her where she'd never have another one. So 17 year old Wesley Turnage, who's listening to Felix Vale tell him that in the car on the way to work in 1963, goes home and tells his parents what he heard. His mother made him promise not ever to tell anybody because she was scared of what would happen to him. Wesley came to talk to us because he said, my mama's been dead for a while. And I figure I can tell you now. So from my perspective, I am just, you know, sitting here doing like this, clapping my hands because not only do I now have a forensic pathologist that says this is a murder, I've got an adult human being that's going to get on the stand and say, he told me he killed his wife.

[Jake Brennan]

Hugo started drafting an indictment of Felix Vale. In the meantime, private eye Gina Friendzel was continuing to record her conversations with Felix. At one point, he told Gina he planned to leave the country.

[Jerry Mitchell]

So Gina told me that I actually passed that on to the district attorney to let him know about that. And as a result of that, they wind up making probably a quicker arrest than they would have normally made. A suspected serial killer wanted for half a century is found living near Canyon Lake. 73 year old Felix Vail was arrested and tonight he's charged with the 1962 drowning.

[Jake Brennan]

Felix Vale was arrested on the morning of May 20, 2013. Deputies from Calcasieu Parish approached him as he walked into the post office in Canyon Lake, Texas. They charged him with the murder of his first wife. Just shy of 51 years after her death, Felix's arrest was a major achievement. Jerry and Mary Rose, who'd set the entire case in motion, were ecstatic.

[Jerry Mitchell]

And boy, I really celebrated that day when somebody sent me pictures of him being handcuffed and, oh, gosh, walking to the cop car and.

[Gina Frenzel]

And, you know, thank goodness for Gina.

[Jerry Mitchell]

That she knew he was planning to leave the country.

[Jake Brennan]

And yet the prosecution still faced an uphill battle. Yes, they had crime scene photos and a forensic pathologist's belief that Mary Horton Vale was murdered and a man who said Felix admitted to killing her. But they had no physical evidence, there were no eyewitnesses. All the original detectives were dead. To get a conviction, they were going to need more. Fortunately, Gina Frenzel maintained her friendship with Felix behind bars. Shortly after his arrest, she sent him a letter in jail.

[Gina Frenzel]

And I said, I came back, you weren't there. I saw something. What happened? What's going on? Call me. And he wrote back and he rattled off all, you know, Everything's a conspiracy. Nothing says fault the whole time. So he told me, he said, hey, I've got a few things I need done at the house. First of all, come get my truck and bring it back to the house. Because he was arrested at the post office, so they impounded his truck. So I said, okay, I will do anything. I'll pay your water bill, I'll pay the electric bill, keep the utilities on, whatever it is, okay?

[Jake Brennan]

On a Friday afternoon, on Felix's instruction, Gina picked up his truck from the Comal County Sheriff's department and drove it to his place. She'd been itching to get inside alone for months, and now here she was. She immediately began searching for Felix's journals.

[Gina Frenzel]

It's hot and, you know, it's Texas, it's May, it's just miserable. And they were pushed back into court under a whole bunch of junk. I open this, you know, storage tote, and it's just full. Like it's a big storage tote and it's full of journals. And I just started crying. I was like, there they are, there they are.

[Jake Brennan]

The storage bin in Felix's shed contained dozens of his journals. Gina knew she couldn't take them off the property. So she ran out and bought $500 worth of SD cards and snapped a photo of every page. All 2600 of them. She then drove back to her house, uploaded them onto her computer, and started reading.

[Gina Frenzel]

He journaled a lot, trying to read them all. It was exhausting and kind of useless. He talks about just so many things that who cares? And just the monotony of it all.

[Jake Brennan]

Gina was searching for anything related to the death of Mary Horton Vale and the disappearances of Sharon and Annette. But as she read, she discovered the journals started in 1985, the year after Annette disappeared. What happened to the journals from before 1985? As it turned out, Felix answered that question in a journal entry.

[Gina Frenzel]

He kept all of the old journals in the attic at his parents old house. So when they sold the house to move it, he wrote about taking them all down and burning them. My heart sunk when I read that, you know, because I thought, well, now we know where they are. I mean, they literally do not exist anymore.

[Jake Brennan]

Still, the journals Gina had contained at least one critical piece of information. After hours of reading, Gina came across a passage describing an argument Felix had had with his sister and her husband. It was over the sale of their mother's estate after she died.

[Gina Frenzel]

What he said was that after rereading his journals, before burning them, and then realizing the conflict he has with his sister over this, he has come to the realization that he can resolve his conflict without resorting to murder. And when I read that, I think my jaw's still on the ground from that so many years later. And I immediately called Jerry, and I said, jerry, guess what? He goes, oh, my goodness.

[Jerry Mitchell]

He had ruled out murdering his sister and her husband. It's like, that's a consideration. You know what I mean?

[Jake Brennan]

That's one of the options that he's ruled out.

[Jerry Mitchell]

Yeah, it's one of the options he's ruled out is murdering them.

[Jake Brennan]

So Jerry and Gina sent the passage to Hugo Holland.

[Chuck GPT]

To me, that's a semi confession to the fact that he has committed murder in the past to take care of personal interactions.

[Jake Brennan]

While Gina was busy analyzing Felix's journal entries, Jerry had continued reporting, Talking to anyone he could find about felix. One source told him that Felix used to be friends with two twins in San Diego named Bruce and Brian. Jerry learned that Brian was dead, but Bruce was still alive. So Jerry called him.

[Jerry Mitchell]

He wished his brother was still alive. And so we talked for a while, but he just indicated he didn't have any information.

[Jake Brennan]

Jerry called back the next day, but this time, the man's wife answered, and.

[Jerry Mitchell]

She says, there's something he didn't tell you. I'm like, oh. And so he gets on the phone. He says, yeah, we were having this party, and we were all trying to brag about what we had done that nobody else had done. And Felix said, oh, yeah, I killed my wife.

[Jake Brennan]

Brian put Jerry in touch with another old pal of Felix's, A guy who'd ridden across California with him on a bicycle sometime in the 80s. Felix had mentioned this person in one of his interminable conversations with Gina, but he'd never mentioned his name.

[Jerry Mitchell]

I get this phone call from this guy, and he says, I rode across California on my bicycle with this guy, Felix vale. I'm like, oh, it's bicycle boy. You know, that was our nickname for him because we didn't know anything else to call him. And so he said, you know, in these travels with Felix Vail, My bicycle across California. And then they later went to Mexico. At some point, Felix vail told him he killed his wife.

[Jake Brennan]

These men marked the second and third witnesses to claim that Felix had admitted to killing his first wife. When Jerry asked why they hadn't come forward until now, Bicycle boy said he was a teenager at the time and too scared to turn Felix in. The twin thought Felix had just made it up. Regardless, all three of the witnesses were willing to testify in court. No one had called to say Felix admitted to killing his girlfriend Sharon or his wife Annette, both of whom vanished 11 years apart. Their bodies never found. Prosecutor Hugo Holland could have decided to simply leave them out, focusing solely on the murder of Mary Horton Vale. But as the trial approached, he decided to make Sharon and Annette a cornerstone of his case.

[Chuck GPT]

Why do you suppose I'm interested in Sharon and Annette? I'm interested in them because Louisiana and the law of every other state by the way, provides that certain other crimes evidence is admissible. My theory was the reason that we will never find Sharon's body and the reason we will never find Annette's body is because Felix is not stupid. And he learned from his first mistake. First mistake to him was not killing his wife. The mistake was allowing the body to be found. And so with Sharon and Annette, he made sure that we never found the bodies.

[Jake Brennan]

The trial of Felix Vale took place in August 2016 in Lake Charles, Louisiana. The families of the victims filled the back rows of the courtroom. Mary Horton Vale's sorority sisters, now in their 70s, wore buttons reading justice for Mary. When Jerry Mitchell took his seat in the press gallery, he looked up to see Felix staring at him.

[Jerry Mitchell]

The very first time I saw Felix was in the courtroom, just saw him across the courtroom and just like death glare he just daggers from his eyes at me. Didn't bother me. I'm just. It just kind of cracked me up.

[Jake Brennan]

The defense's argument rested on two assumptions. One, the pathologist's original ruling that Mary Horton Vale's death was an accidental drowning was correct. And two, that without a dead body or a crime scene, Sharon and Annette could still be alive and well. The prosecution meanwhile had no shortage of witnesses. The three friends to whom Felix admitted killing his wife all took the stand. So did Gina Frenzel, Mary Rose and more than a dozen other members of the victims families.

[Jerry Mitchell]

So literally every single family, these three families all got to testify, which is highly unusual. I've covered a lot of trials. I've never seen anything like that before. Yes, my sister disappeared. Yes, my daughter disappeared. You know, all that went into evidence.

[Jake Brennan]

There was no concrete evidence that Sharon and Annette were dead and no strong theories about where their bodies might be. But their families were still able to testify. That's because Hugo had introduced something called the doctrine of chances.

[Chuck GPT]

In other words, what are the chances that Felix Vales first wife dies accidentally and then two significant others disappear off the face of the planet where he's the last one to ever see him alive. What are the chances there's an innocent explanation for that? Zero. Right? So if I can show a jury that Sharon disappeared under suspicious circumstances and that Annette disappeared under suspicious circumstances, that's good evidence that Felix's claim, which is that Mary died accidentally, is crap.

[Jake Brennan]

After Hugo delivered his closing statement, the jury left to deliberate.

[Jerry Mitchell]

So the jury goes out and I'm talking to Mary Rose, and she's asking me, how long do these things usually take? Because I've covered a number of cold cases gone to trial. I said, well, you don't anticipate, you know, anytime soon. And literally, while we are talking, we get word that they have a verdict.

[Jake Brennan]

The jury found Felix Vail guilty of second degree murder. Mary Rose remembers the moment.

[Jerry Mitchell]

My friend who went with me, we.

[Gina Frenzel]

Just held hands and squeezed our hands and, you know, just looked at each other and smiled and said, wow, yeah, this is really happening. It was a moment to cherish.

[Jake Brennan]

Hugo had been confident the jury would see things his way. But getting the case this far hadn't been easy or even likely.

[Chuck GPT]

You got Mary Rose not letting it go. God bless Mary Rose for what she did. God bless Jerry Mitchell for listening to Mary Rose and knowing enough to agitate to come see the elected district attorney in Calcasieu Parish. God bless Ike Abshire for being willing to cooperate with us and giving us the photographs. God bless those several people that I talked to that when I caught them 40 years later, they said, yeah, he told me he murdered his wife. I mean, this is just. I'm trying to describe how many different stars had to align for this to occur.

[Jake Brennan]

Felix's sentencing happened a few months later. Jerry Mitchell was in the courtroom. He expected Felix to insist he was innocent or beg the judge for mercy. To Jerry's surprise, Felix talked mostly about him.

[Jerry Mitchell]

He talked about me. He talked about that original piece that I wrote, gone. And he said that I had gotten the idea for that piece from James Patterson novels. So after the hearing, I turned to Will Horton, brother of Mary Horton Vale. I said, well, I guess I'm going to have to start reading those novels.

[Jake Brennan]

Felix was sentenced to life without parole at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. As Jerry left the courtroom, he ran.

[Jerry Mitchell]

Into the DA and he says to me, jerry, you find any other guilty sons of bitches, you just let me know. I'm like, okay, I will.

[Jake Brennan]

As we said in the first episode, Jerry had helped solve a number of civil rights era cold cases decades after the crimes occurred. By the time Felix was convicted, 54 years had passed since the death of his first wife. According to Jerry, that makes it the oldest solved cold case in US History in which the perpetrator was still alive. In my last interview with Jerry, he was wearing a T shirt with the phrase though he slay me, I will trust in him. He said. It's one of his favorite verses in the Bible from the Book of Job. A few times in our conversations, Jerry had told me that his job is simply to expose the truth. I asked him if his faith in God plays a role in his work as a journalist.

[Jerry Mitchell]

My faith has a lot to do with my reporting because God loves justice and so I know if I'm writing about truth, that's what he wants me to do. I almost feel like my job as a reporter is really just a ministry of sorts because that's what I think we're about in this role as journalists as best we can, try to tell the truth, to expose it. And my prayer is always to God to let the truth be exposed and let justice be done.

[Jake Brennan]

If you have information, story tips or feedback you'd like to share with the Gone south team, please email [e-mail] that's gonesouthpodcastmail.com and for bonus content you can follow us on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram @ Gone South Podcast. You can also sign up for our newsletter on substack. Gone south with Jed Lipinski Gone south is an Odyssey original podcast. It's created, written and narrated by me, Jed Lipinski. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss Berman, Maddy Sprung Kaiser, Tom Lipinski, Lloyd Lockridge, and me. Our story editors are Tom Lipinski, Maddy Sprunkheiser and Joel Lovell. Gone south is edited by Chris Basil and Perry Crowell. It's mixed and mastered by Chris Basel. Production support from Ian Mont and Sean Cherry. Special thanks to J.D. crowley, Leah Rees, Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, and Hilary Shof. Sometimes historic events suck, but what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History that Doesn't Suck is a chart topping history telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America in a decade by decade. Right now I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History that Doesn't Suck. Available on the Free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.