Sharon Hensley was 24 when she was last known to be in Key West, Florida around early February 1973. She is described as a white woman with brown hair and brown eyes, about 5 feet 9 inches and roughly 125 pounds. Family contact stopped in February 1973, but relatives did not realize she was missing for more than a year and the case was not formally reported for decades, leaving a long gap in which leads and memories could fade.

Accounts center on Sharon’s relationship with her boyfriend, William Felix Vail Sr., who told her family she left him in Key West to join an Australian couple sailing around the world, burned her identification, and wanted to become a different person. Vail’s story reportedly shifted over time and has included inconsistent names for the couple he described. Sharon was never heard from again and there has been no verified trail showing a voluntary new life.

Later legal proceedings produced broader concern: evidence connected to Sharon’s disappearance was allowed at Vail’s 2016 murder trial for his first wife, Mary Horton Vail, though Vail has not been charged in Sharon’s case. There is no public confirmation that Sharon was found. Does anyone have information about Sharon’s movements in early 1973, or recall an Australian sailing couple in Key West at that time?