Jerry Mitchell

The Clarion-Ledger

Most serial killers are a far cry from Hollywood's brilliant Hannibal Lecter.

They work in blue-collar jobs and have average IQs, said Enzo Yaksic, founder of the Serial Homicide Expertise and Information Sharing Collaborative.

Unlike those who may impulsively commit crimes, they show patience and planning, he said. "Most serial killers enjoy the ritual of stalking and victim selection, acts known as trolling. To some, the 'process of killing' is more gratifying than the act of murder itself."

In the end, they do make mistakes that help lead to their arrests within a few years of their killing sprees, he said.

But there is a rare category that more often gets away with their crimes. They are the ones that dismember their victims' bodies, Yaksic said.

In the 2,600 serial killers he has studied since 2001, only 5 percent fall into the category of dismembering bodies, including such famous serial killers as Ed Gein, whose crimes helped inspire Thomas Harris' book and subsequent film, "The Silence of the Lambs."

The former wife of serial killer suspect Felix Vail recently told authorities that he kept surgical saws in a secret compartment in his car -- a detail that has caused authorities to wonder if other women could be victims.

Vail, 74, a native of Montpelier in Clay County, has been charged with murder in the death of his first wife and remains a suspect in the presumed deaths of two other women in what experts say is the oldest serial killer suspect case in U.S. history. He is the last known person with three women before they died or disappeared -- his first wife, Mary, whose body was recovered in 1962 from a river in Lake Charles; his common law wife, Sharon Hensley, who disappeared in 1973; and his wife, Annette, who disappeared in 1984.

On April 5, Vail's former wife spoke with authorities at the Tupelo Police Department. She was 17 when she and Vail married for a few months in 1975.

While visiting Vail's parents in Montpelier, he was doing something with the trunk of his yellow Volkswagen, she said in a statement obtained by The Clarion-Ledger. "I walked out there. I don't think he knew I was coming out there. And he had a compartment pulled up …

"I can see it just like it was yesterday," she said. "In that vehicle, there were sinister, surgical looking saws of all shapes and sizes in a neat, neat formation."

The saws looked like they belonged in a surgery clinic, she said. "They were that sterile."

To her, "that looked evil," she said. "I said … 'I'm not going anywhere with you in that car.' It scared me."

That, she said, was the end of their marriage.

Vail reportedly told his son, Bill, that Mexican men had attacked him in Baja, Mexico, and that he had killed one of them, cut up the body and buried the pieces.

"Bill said Felix told him about it and showed him the knife he used," said Bill's widow, Janet. "Bill referred to it as a fillet knife."

She also recalled her husband saying Vail worked with a surgeon at a hospital, handling instruments.

Vail is expected to go on trial in November. He has maintained his innocence, blaming The Clarion-Ledger, prosecutors and others.

Annette's mother, Mary Rose, called the revelation of the surgical saws "very, very eerie. It's creepy and shocking, but not surprising given who I know he is."

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