A rather gruesome true crime story, but yet another reminder to women, to please be careful out there!
A pretty 15-year-old girl named Mary Vincent with a promising career in dance in her future had decided to run away from home. She was upset with her parents who were getting divorced,
The year was 1978 and her destination of choice was Los Angeles. Seeking a ride to the I-5, a blue van slowed down beside the young girl on a scorching hot Southern California day. She was standing with a group of fellow hitchhikers but the driver only had eyes for one passenger and that was Mary.
Despite protests from her friends, Mary who was feeling exhausted from the heat accepted the ride from 50 year old Lawrence Singleton.
Singleton was a sea merchant at the time, and looked like a harmless gentle old man. Mary fell asleep in his car while Singleton, a serious alcoholic started drinking liquor out of a milk carton.
Mary started to become nervous when Singleton passed the I-5 and drove her into a remote area. She grabbed a tool from the truck and demanded that Singleton turn around and return to the freeway. Singleton apologized profusely claiming it was an honest mistake.
Singleton made yet another stop. He claimed he had to urinate. Mary took the opportunity to get out of the sweltering van and stretch her legs. While bending over to tie her shoe lace she was hit on the back of the head with a hard object.
The teenager was brutally raped and sodomized at the hands of Singleton overnight. He forced the young girl to drink liquor out of his milk carton until she passed out. He promised her if she would cooperate he would let her go.
Singleton lied. He told her to lie face down on the ground and took a hatchet, chopping off both the young girl’s arms and then threw her down a bank.
Mary was completely conscious at the time of the amputations. He left her there to die assuming that she would bleed to death. Plus without fingerprints in a time before DNA, it would be hard to identify her.
Mary did survive! In an agonizing crawl, she made her way up the bank and started walking toward the distant noise of the I-5 traffic. She was a truly gruesome sight as she stumbled down the road, naked and holding up what remained of her mutilated arms.
“She was holding up her arms so that the muscles and blood would not fall out,”
Court Documents
The passengers of the first car that came along were so horrified by her appearance that they sped past her! Two women in a second vehicle stopped for her and rushed her to a hospital.
Mary was rushed to the hospital where she was able to provide a detailed description of Singleton. The composite sketch was so realistic that Singleton’s neighbor recognized him and called the police immediately.
For his horrific crime, Singleton was sentenced to just 14 years in prison. Only eight of which he served. Mary was forced to face him in court. She wore prosthetic arms. Singleton’s defense was that she was a ten dollar whore!
In 1997, Singleton murdered 31-year-old mother of three, Roxanne Hayes in Florida.
He was given the death sentence for the crime that same year but died in prison from cancer before it could be carried out.
When Mary was asked what gave her the strength to crawl up that mountain with just a shirt wrapped around her bloody stumps, she replied that she knew if she didn’t do it, there would be countless other women who would fall victim to this man.
Mary became an accomplished artist and today enjoys a happy and fulfilled life.
Lucys Rules 