Vail collected on wife's life insurance, didn't pay for burial
Despite collecting on his drowned wife’s life insurance policies in 1962, Mississippi native and serial killer suspect Felix Vail, who was arrested Friday in Texas on a murder charge, didn’t pay for the Louisiana woman's funeral, burial, plot or marker, according to records and interviews by The Clarion-Ledger.
Prosecutors could seek to introduce that evidence at his trial, said former federal prosecutor Don Cochran, a professor at Belmont University College of Law. “It would all be part of his scheme to make money,” he said.
Cochran — who was involved in prosecuting a cold case himself, the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four girls — said the average spouse or family member “is going to pay for funeral arrangements. A jury should at least be allowed to consider it.”
More than a half century after his wife drowned in a Louisiana lake, Mississippi native Felix Vail is now facing a murder charge in her death — making his case the oldest prosecution of a serial killer suspect in U.S. history. Authorities arrested Vail on Friday in Canyon Lake.
The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, after an investigation that began in May 2012, detailed the peculiar circumstances surrounding the drowning of Mary Horton Vail and the fate of other women who crossed Vail’s path. The Nov. 11 report prompted authorities to reopen the investigation.
Undercover Comal County, Texas, deputies waited outside Felix Vail’s home in Canyon Lake for authorities from Louisiana, where Mary Vail drowned on Oct. 28, 1962, to arrive and arrest him. However, Vail left in his truck for town and was arrested at the post office.
Robert Yates Jr. seeks federal appeal of death sentence
Condemned serial killer Robert Lee Yates Jr., awaiting execution for the murders of two women in Pierce County in the late 1990s, is seeking an appeal of his death sentence in U.S. District Court in Seattle.
Yates, 60, a father of five and former Air National Guard helicopter pilot, has already had his death sentence upheld by the Washington State Supreme Court, and the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to reconsider that decision. Yates is now attempting to enter the federal district court system by seeking a petition for habeas corpus.
Even though Yates does not currently have an execution date, U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez ordered a stay until September, pending the filing of the formal petition. Martinez said that Yates has raised at least one “nonfrivolous ground for relief.” He also appointed two attorneys to represent him on appeal.
Search for John Wayne Gacy victims solves decades-old missing person case
A DNA test used by investigators to identify victims of serial killer John Wayne Gacy has helped solve a 41-year-old New Jersey missing persons case, officials announced Tuesday.
Sixteen-year-old Steven Soden went missing on April 3, 1972, but his remains were not identified until 2012, when authorities matched them with a DNA sample from his sister.
Soden's relatives contacted the Cook County Sheriff's Office in 2011 after hearing about Sheriff Thomas Dart's efforts to identify several of Gacy's victims. They believed Soden may be one of them, officials said.
"We always had hopes that we'd somehow find him alive," Steven's brother, Ron Soden, 73, told NBC 4 New York Tuesday from his home in Tacoma, Wash. "In this day and age, it's so much easier to find someone over the Internet."
Sun on Sunday pays damages to man wrongly linked to serial killer
The Sun on Sunday ran a front page "world exclusive" last November headlined "I'm Fred West's love child".
The story, about a 33-year-old man, Dean Barry, who had discovered his father was a convicted serial killer, was true enough. The picture, however, was not of him. Inadvertently, the paper had published a picture of his half-brother, who was unrelated to West.
The wronged man, Neil Bachi, sued the paper and his lawyers issued a press release on Monday saying the publication had apologised and paid him substantial damages, thought be a five-figure sum. It also made a contribution towards his legal costs
HYDERABAD: A bakery receipt of a water bottle purchase found at a murder spot helped the Bowenpally police nab fugitive serial killer M Ramulu, who reportedly murdered 13 women in the past five years.
While investigating the murder case of an unidentified woman at recovery camp of the Military area in Bowenpally on April 18, police found the receipt of a Kinley water bottle near the body. As the slip had the name of Tirumala Bakers, Suchitra X Roads, the Bowenpally police reached the shop. Luckily, the shop had CCTV cameras installed and by verifying the footage, they identified the person, who purchased the water bottle.
Police then apprehended the private employee from Suchitra area, who purchased the water bottle. On interrogation, he told police that he had hired a prostitute from a toddy compound near Suchitra X Roads on April 18 and had sex with her at the murder spot. The private employee also told police that after him two other persons had hired the same woman, who possibly could have committed the murder
Abortion doctor found guilty of murdering 3 babies
A Philadelphia doctor accused of performing illegal late-term abortions in a filthy clinic has been found guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of three babies born alive but acquitted in the death of a fourth baby.
In a case that became a grisly flashpoint in the abortion debate in the US, Dr Kermit Gosnell, 72, was also found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the overdose death of an abortion patient. He was cleared in the death of a fourth child, who prosecutors say let out a whimper before the doctor snipped its spinal cord.
Former clinic employees testified that Gosnell routinely performed illegal abortions past Pennsylvania's 24-week limit, that he delivered babies who were still moving, whimpering or breathing, and that he and his assistants dispatched the newborns by "snipping" their spines, as he referred to it. "Are you human?" prosecutor Ed Cameron snarled during closing arguments. "To med these women up and stick knives in the backs of babies?"
A 40-year-old man who killed more than 13 persons at various places in the city and its surrounding places, is in the city police custody.
According to sources, the North Zone police in Hyderabad took the serial killer into custody and are questioning in connection with the murder of women in the city.
The accused is Maina Ramulu who had escaped from the mental hospital a few years ago. Ramulu killed many women in the city and Cyberabad police commissionerate limits and stolen gold ornaments. The motive for the murders: He hated women.
Woman charged with murder of three men found dead in ditches
Joanna Dennehy, of Peterborough, who is in her early 30s, is accused of killing Kevin Lee, Lukasz Slaboszewski and John Chapman earlier this year.
Kevin Lee, 48, was found dead in a ditch in Newborough, Cambridgeshire, on 30 March . A postmortem examination found he died from stab wounds to the chest.
Lukasz Slaboszewski, 31, and John Chapman, 56, were found at Thorney Dyke, Cambridgeshire, on 3 April. They had both been stabbed.
Link to 2011 Murders Tsarnaevs Being Investigated for 3 Murders
Bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev is being investigated in a possible link to triple murders back in 2011.
Tamerlan and his brother Dzhokhar are already suspected of bombing innocent civilians at the Boston Marathon, but Tamerlan, who has since died in a police shootout during the manhunt for the suspects, is being investigated for the gruesome murders that took place in suburban Boston.
Tamerlan, 26, was a close friend of one of three that were stabbed to death in an apartment in Waltham, Mass., back in September 2011.
'Wanabe Dexter' has unlimited access to his hero on in-cell TV
A wannabe serial killer whose crimes were influenced by the series Dexter has been given unlimited access to the show from his cell in a maximum-security prison, it was revealed today.
Mark Twitchell, from Edmonton, Canada, was jailed in 2011 for the murder of Johnny Altinger - who he met after posing as a woman on dating website Plenty of Fish. He then lured him to a 'kill room' where he murdered and dismembered him, just like on the TV show which he later said inspired him.
But the former filmmaker - who was dubbed the 'Dexter Killer' - is allowed to watch the violent program from inside the maximum security wing of Saskatchewan Penitentiary.
No. But I don't think that thread exists anymore. It should be under "crime in the news". It was a thread naggy originally started I think, or at least contributed to a lot.
ah yes, so we do, and just in case you're referring to my post, sorry, i forgot about it. would move it but can't move comments so unless you wanna do that it'll just have to stay put
