Prosecutors and defense attorneys offered an appeals court their arguments Wednesday for why evidence of other crimes should or should not be allowed in a 50-year-old murder case.

Felix Vail, 75, has been indicted on a charge of second-degree murder in the Oct. 28, 1962, death of his wife, Mary Horton Vail, whose body was found in the Calcasieu River. Vail is also the last known person to have seen another wife, Annette Craver Vail, and a girlfriend, Sharon Hensley.

Prosecutors want to use the disappearances of the two women to refute Felix Vail’s claim that Mary Vail’s death was an accident (a drowning), prosecutor Carla Sigler said.

District court Judge Robert Wyatt ruled in May that the state could use the other women’s disappearances during the trial.

Judges John Saunders, Billy Ezell and Phyllis Keaty heard the appeal arguments.

Defense attorney Ben Cormier said Wyatt’s ruling used a Civil Code article that considers a person dead when he or she disappears under circumstances that “death seems certain.”

“The judge presumed they were dead then presumed they were murdered,” Cormier said. Wyatt put the burden on the defense to prove the women are alive, he said.

“The passage of time has greatly diminished my ability to rebut that presumption,” Cormier said.

Sigler said Vail’s account of and reason for the disappearance of the two women — Annette Vail on a bus in St. Louis and Hensley on a sailboat in Florida — “are remarkably similar.”

“That they went to find themselves and go sleep with a bunch of men is essentially what it boils down to,” she said. “Even if that were true, what are the odds that they would drop off the face of the earth as if they never existed?”

She said Felix Vail’s stories have been inconsistent.

Cormier went through each woman’s circumstances, arguing they didn’t point to a crime being committed.

Mary Vail’s death was a “tragic accident,” but a grand jury in the 1950s decided not to make a decision when the “evidence was fresh,” Cormier said.

The grand jury didn’t indict Vail in the 1950s, but it also didn’t decline to indict him, either, Sigler said. The case was reopened in the 1970s and was a cold case until an arrest was made, she said.

Hensley, who has not been seen since 1973, was reported missing in 2013, Cormier said. Cormier said that when her brother reported her missing, he said she had gone sailing to South America.

“I think her family believed her because they didn’t report her missing until 2013,” Cormier said.

Sigler said that was not an accurate representation of Hensley’s brother’s statement. Although Hensley wasn’t reported for 40 years, her disappearance had been investigated, Sigler said.

Felix Vail first said that Hensley sailed away with a couple named John and Vanessa and later said she left with a couple named Frank and Sally, Sigler said.

Annette Vail disappeared in 1984. When her mother reported her missing, she did not want to give her daughter’s Social Security number for fear it would be used for tax purposes, Cormier said.

She also said Annette Vail may have gone to Mexicali, Mexico, to be with a boyfriend named Adolfo, Cormier said. Authorities had Adolfo’s full name in 1985, he said.

“The path to finding Annette was right there, but nobody followed up on that.”

Annette Vail and her mother had fought over a house that was eventually deeded to Felix Vail, he said.

Annette Vail and her mother had mended their relationship, Sigler said.

Cormier also said neighbors said it was Annette who was abusive in the relationship.

Felix Vail began sleeping with Annette Vail when she was 14 and he was 40, Sigler said. Her birth certificate, passport, clothes and birth control were found in a house that was owned by Felix Vail, she said.

Sigler said Felix Vail also gave differing stories about money the couple had, at times saying it was in cash, then saying it was in travelers’ checks, then saying it was in a Louisiana bank.

Court records show Annette Vail pleaded guilty to grand larceny in Rogers, Ark., in March 1985, Cormier said.

Prosecutors have argued that a lawyer may have entered the plea on her behalf.(Rick Hickman/American Press)

Rick Hickman