On a hot day in September, 1979, Mary Vincent was looking for a lift. The young girl, just 15, was in Berkeley, California.
She’d been staying with her uncle after running away from her parents in Las Vegas.
Trying to reach her grandfather, who lived close to Los Angeles, Mary had decided to hitch-hike there.
Back then, hitch-hiking was quite common and she met two other young people also looking to thumb a lift.
Finally, a blue van pulled up beside them.
The driver was a kindly grandfather-type, in his 50s, with a beard and belly.
He was happy to help Mary, the man explained, but sadly there wasn’t space in the vehicle for the other two.
But Mary’s new friends thought this was odd.
Getting a glimpse into the back of the van, it looked big enough…
When they told Mary their fears for her safety, the exhausted teenager weighed up her options.
Desperate to get home, she decided to trust the friendly stranger.
He had a daughter her age, he’d told her.
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Climbing into the passenger’s seat, she had no idea her life was about to change forever; or that her story would become an incredible tale of survival against the odds.
Settling down in the seat, Mary got comfy and drifted off to sleep.
When she woke, though, the road signs told her they’d driven east, not south towards her home.
The area was open country, with just a few properties scattered along the way.
Mary sensed something was very wrong.
‘Look, you’re going the wrong way and you know you’re going the wrong way,’ she burst out, alarmed.
It was an honest mistake, the driver said. He told her he’d turn around, but first he needed to relieve himself.
So he pulled up and got out of the van.
Looking down at her feet, Mary saw the laces of her tennis shoe were undone.
Knowing she could outrun the unfit man, Mary climbed out too and reached down to tie it before making a move.
Then, everything suddenly went black.
Mary had been hit in the head with a sledgehammer.
And her nightmare had only just begun.
Coming to in the back of the van, she found she’d been stripped and bound.
Raped repeatedly, Mary later told TV show I Survived that it wasn’t until daylight broke that the twisted attacker left her alone.
‘Just set me free, I won’t tell,’ she begged him.
So he pulled her out of the van in the wilderness.
‘You want to be set free?’ he taunted. ‘I’ll set you free.’
Grabbing a hatchet from his toolbox, he swung at Mary.
Cold and broken she just wanted to sleep. But she didn’t
As she began to fall in shock, she instinctively clutched for the man’s arm with her left hand.
But she was still falling.
‘I looked down at my arm and there was nothing,’ she explained, recalling the horrific incident.
Her arm had been cut clean off around the elbow.
Somehow, Mary Vincent, just a teenager, found the strength to fight back
Kicking and screaming, she was soon overpowered by the callous monster, who brutally severed her other arm during the struggle.
Then, he picked her up off the ground, walked to a nearby railing and threw her over a cliff into a ravine.
Climbing down after her, he stuffed her into a concrete pipe before leaving her for dead and driving off.
But, incredibly, after being hit by a sledgehammer, having her body mutilated, and with broken ribs from the fall, Mary was alive.
Cold and broken, she just wanted to sleep.
But she didn’t.
I can’t sleep, he’s going to do this to somebody else, she told herself.
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So, Mary dug what was left of her arms into the mud to stem the blood loss, and she began to painstakingly drag herself up the ravine.
It took her all day to reach the road.
In the darkness, two men drove by her.
Seeing a naked, blood-soaked young woman alone at night they sped away.
‘I looked like something from a horror movie,’ Mary later said.
Eventually, after she’d walked 5km with her arms held up to minimise bleeding, a lost honeymooning couple came across her as they tried to find the highway.
‘We’re going to get you help,’ they told her, wrapping Mary in blankets and speeding with her to a nearby airport to find a phone to call for an ambulance.
From her bed, she was able to give a detailed description of her attacker.
When the drawing was released, a neighbour identified Lawrence Singleton, 50, as the culprit.
A merchant seaman by trade, Singleton was recently divorced from his second wife.
He did have a teenage daughter, but she didn’t want him in her life.
Known for his temper, he had a problem with women.
Singleton claimed Mary had been a sex worker and that a ‘friend’ of his had attacked her while he himself was blacked out.
Six months after the attack, Mary faced Singleton in court.
She was wearing her new prosthetic arms with hooks at the end.
She’d returned to school and was trying to adapt to her new life, giving talks to other teens about why they shouldn’t hitch-hike.
The terrible nightmares would stay with her for decades to come, though.
In the courtroom, Mary pointed her hook at Singleton and confirmed that he was the man who had cost her so much.
Singleton’s lies didn’t wash, and he was found guilty of the horrific attack.
Sentencing the fiend, the judge remarked, ‘If I had the power, I would send him to prison for the rest of his natural life.’
The maximum sentence the law allowed, however, was just 14 years.
Leaving court, Singleton had a chilling message for Mary.
‘I’ll finish the job if it takes me the rest of my life,’ he whispered to her as they passed each other.
As Mary bravely worked to rebuild her life, Singleton attempted to sue her, claiming she’d threatened to make false claims against him.
The case didn’t gain traction, but Singleton was shockingly given parole for ‘good behaviour’ after serving just over half of his sentence.
Mary became an advocate for victims’ rights
Town councils across California refused to allow him to move within their boundaries, meaning he was forced to serve his parole living in a trailer on prison grounds.
Then, after eight years and four months locked up, he was a free man.
Singleton’s daughter, Debra, spoke out, saying her father was a danger to women and should remain behind bars
But nothing could legally be done to keep him caged.
The massive public outrage over Singleton’s freedom led to a reform of the sentencing laws.
But sadly, for mum-of-three Roxanne Hayes, a sex worker Singleton lured to his home in 1997, the change in penalties had come too late.
The predator stabbed her to death.
Mary, who had been living in hiding, testified about what Singleton was capable of at his murder trial.
This time, he was given the death sentence, but before he could face it, Lawrence Singleton died from cancer behind bars in 2001, aged 74.
Mary, who now stays out of the public spotlight, became an advocate for victims’ rights, and remarkably, she became a painter, using her prosthetic hooks to create her artworks.
A mum of two sons, Mary explained how she didn’t initially feel any relief at her attacker’s death, instead wishing that she could have had more answers about why Singleton did what he did.
But then she saw the relief on her sons’ faces.
‘Okay, that’s good enough closure for me,’ she explained to I Survived. ‘I don’t have to worry about my sons’ lives anymore.’
