Felix Vail said he killed wife, ex-travel buddy says

Rob Fremont said he was riding bicycles with Felix Vail across California when Vail told him he had killed his wife.

"He said something to the effect that he knocked off his wife and drowned her," recalled Fremont, now 57.

In the late 1960s, Vail became friends with his family, Fremont said. "He was a ladies' man. I liked him. He was a fun, happening guy, and we became friends."

The then young teen viewed Vail as a mentor, riding bicycles halfway across California and back a couple of times in 1969 or 1970, he recalled.

In a recorded conversation with private investigator Gina Frenzel, Vail discussed those trips.

"There was a real smart teenage boy who was biking with me," Vail said. "He had long hair."

At night, they slept under pup tents, he said.

It was 110 degrees in the desert when police pulled them over, Vail recalled.

Fremont recalled being nervous because Vail had stuffed a half-ounce of marijuana into one of the bicycle frames. "We came real close to getting into trouble."

Vail said police became suspicious because he didn't look like his driver's license picture. "Instead of looking older, I looked 10 years younger," he said.

Police held Vail in the back of the squad car for more than an hour. When his story checked out, "they opened the door and apologized," Vail said. "Then they wanted to know how I did it."

He explained that he ate a diet of "live" food, such as grapes pulled straight from the vine.

Fremont said Vail believed in "The Grape Cure," a debunked 1928 book that claims a combination of fasting and eating grapes could cure cancer and other diseases.

In their travels, the two ate from vineyards and watermelon patches.

Fremont realizes in retrospect what they did was wrong. "We were basically stealing from farmers," he said. "We could have gotten shot."

He said he and Vail "were good buddies. He never threatened me. He never came onto me." But some of Vail's beliefs did rise to the level of fantasy, he said. "He thought because we were exercising and on this great diet, we could go to the Olympics and win."

Even at age 13, he doubted such dreams, he said.

During one of their trips across California, Vail mentioned having killed his wife, Fremont said. "I believed him, but I didn't want to believe him. I was in denial."

Later, he recalled Vail's teenage girlfriend, Hensley, sunbathing nude.

"We ended up having an affair. I thought Felix knew and didn't care."

The whole time he spent time with Vail, "I never remembered him working or even talking about a job, which was a little troubling," he said.

One day, Vail invited him on a trip to Mexico, where they hopped trains, he said. "He liked to travel, and so did I."

During the trip, he said Vail once again said that he had killed his wife. This time, Vail began to share more details, he said.

" 'I hit her over the head and drowned her in the lake' is what he told me," Fremont recalled. "It popped up out of nowhere. I'm thinking, 'What the hell? Why would anyone do such a thing?' "

When Vail said those words, "there was such emotion, like he was still pissed off about it," he said. "I'll never forget it as long as I live."

He said he thought to himself, "He's really serious. I've got to get away from this guy. This is getting too creepy."

He never traveled with him again.

Mary Vail's body had been found on Oct. 30, 1962, after two days of dragging the Calcasieu River. Her body bobbed back to the surface. There was a scarf 4 inches into her mouth, and the autopsy report showed what appeared to be a bruise behind her left ear "extending down on the neck and up into the hair" on the back of her head.

Vail told authorities she had accidentally fallen out of the boat while they were trotline fishing and that he dove into the water but was unable to save her.

Mary's brother, Will Horton, said Vail kept the boat docked at Shell Beach on Lake Charles, which the river flows into. He regularly waterskied with Vail on Lake Charles, he said. "It was a ski boat, not a fishing boat."

In fact, "I never saw a tackle box, a fishing rod or lures. He didn't have a trolling motor," he said. "He never once mentioned going fishing."

Fremont's statement makes Horton believe Vail killed his sister in the lake before dumping her body upstream in the river. "It makes me angry, thinking of somebody hurting my sister," he said.

Nearly eight years after Mary's death, California authorities arrested Vail and Hensley in 1970 after his 8-year-old son, Bill, told police that his father gave him drugs.

Bill also told police he overheard his father admit to killing his mother, Mary.

"He told her (his girlfriend) that he had murdered my mother," Bill said in a taped interview months before his 2009 death. "I heard the girlfriend saying, 'Oh, I know you just must feel responsible for it.' … He said, 'No, you don't understand. I really did kill her.' "

Vail received a six-month jail sentence in California after pleading guilty to LSD possession. Louisiana authorities, however, never prosecuted Vail.

Fremont read about the arrest at the time and recalled feeling sorry for Bill, whom he had also met.

Two and a half years later, Vail was supposedly married to Hensley when he wrote his mother on March 20, 1973, telling her, "I'm not married anymore."

He wrote that he was south of Florida and when he last saw Hensley, he sent her and an unnamed man "off to the ocean and each other with my good wishes and blessings."

A year later, Vail wrote her family, saying the last he saw her she was in Key West, Florida, where she was leaving to travel the world with an Australian couple named "John and Venessa."

A year later, Vail told his mother that Hensley had left with "Frank and Sally."

Authorities never questioned Vail about Hensley's disappearance.

"She wouldn't have just disappeared," Fremont said. "She would have kept in contact with her family."

He wasn't the only one that Vail talked to about killing his wife, he said. "He confessed to a lot of people. They didn't believe him — I did."

Contact Jerry Mitchell at jmitchell@jackson.gannett. com or (601) 961-7064. Follow @jmitchellnews on Twitter.