Mary Vincent: The Teenager Who Survived Lawrence Singleton and Faced Him Twice in Court
Updated: Oct 6
On the morning of 30 September 1978, two holidaymakers driving near Del Puerto Canyon in central California saw a teenage girl walking along the road. She was naked, and she was holding what was left of her arms up in the air to slow the bleeding. Her name was Mary Vincent. She was 15.
The man who’d done it was caught within about a fortnight, served a little over eight years and then killed someone else. Vincent stood up in court against him both times.
Quick Answers
Who is Mary Vincent? A survivor of one of California’s most notorious crimes of the 1970s, and now an artist living in Washington State.
What did Lawrence Singleton do to her? In September 1978 he raped her, cut off both her forearms and left her for dead near Modesto.
How did she survive? She packed her wounds with dirt, climbed a 30-foot embankment and walked about three miles until she found help.
How long did Singleton serve? A little over eight years of a sentence of 14 years and four months, which was the legal maximum at the time.
What happened to him? He murdered Roxanne Hayes in Tampa in 1997, was sentenced to death in 1998 and died of cancer in prison in December 2001.
A Lift Out of Berkeley
Vincent was a runaway from Las Vegas. On 29 September 1978 she was hitchhiking south from Berkeley towards Los Angeles when a blue van pulled over. The driver was Lawrence Singleton, a 51-year-old merchant seaman. He told her he had a daughter her age and offered to take her as far as Interstate 5.
Instead he headed east towards Modesto. When Vincent realised, she got hold of a pointed surveyor’s stick and told him to go back to the freeway. He turned round. Then he stopped at a desolate spot in Del Puerto Canyon.
It was the same roadside gamble that had ended with Colleen Stan locked in a box a year earlier, also in northern California.
What Happened in Del Puerto Canyon
Singleton raped her repeatedly through the night. The next morning he took a hatchet, which some reports describe as an axe, and cut off both her arms below the elbow. Then he threw her down a 30-foot embankment and drove away.
Vincent packed the ends of her arms with dirt to slow the bleeding and climbed back up to the road. She walked roughly three miles before the two holidaymakers saw her. They wrapped her in towels and drove her to a nearby airport to call an ambulance.
The Sketch and the Trial
From hospital, Vincent gave police a description good enough for an artist’s sketch. JoAnne Eversole, a housewife in San Pablo, recognised the face as her longtime neighbour. Singleton was arrested about two weeks after the attack.
He never admitted it. He called Vincent a prostitute, said he’d been drunk and blamed another hitchhiker. The jury at his 1979 trial convicted him of rape, kidnapping, mayhem and attempted murder.
Vincent gave evidence in person. As she left the witness stand, Singleton swore that one day he’d “finish the job”.
Fourteen Years, Eight Served
The sentence was 14 years and four months. It was the most that California law allowed at the time. With credit for good behaviour, Singleton won parole in October 1986 and walked out in April 1987, having served a little over eight years.
Nobody wanted him. The state tried to settle him in Antioch and then elsewhere in Contra Costa County, and each time word got out, protests forced him to move on. In June 1987 Governor George Deukmejian announced that Singleton would spend the rest of his parole in quarters at San Quentin prison. He lived in a mobile home in the grounds until 1988, then went back to Tampa, where he’d grown up.
The uproar changed things. California brought in longer sentences for violent offenders. A bill that would make parole officials give local police 30 days’ notice before releasing a convict into their area, which had been going nowhere in the legislature, suddenly started moving.
In May 1987 a Nevada judge awarded Vincent damages against Singleton. Reports put the figure at either $2.4 million or $2.56 million. It hardly matters which, because he was destitute and she never expected to see any of it. For years she lived on and off welfare.
Tampa, 19 February 1997
Singleton spent almost a decade in Tampa without drawing much attention. On 1 February 1997 he tried to kill himself in his van and neighbours pulled him out. He was taken to a psychiatric unit, where doctors supported having him committed, but he signed himself out on 10 February before a hearing could take place.
Nine days later a house painter arrived at Singleton’s home, saw him standing over a naked woman in the living room and ran next door to call for help. She was Roxanne Hayes, a 31-year-old mother of three who worked as a prostitute. She’d been stabbed seven times. When a deputy reached the house, Singleton came to the door and said he’d cut himself chopping vegetables.
Facing Him Again
Singleton’s lawyers didn’t deny the killing. They argued it had happened in a struggle. A Florida jury convicted him of murder in February 1998.
Vincent was 35 by then and living in Tacoma. She came out of hiding and flew to Florida for the penalty phase of the trial. She was on the stand for about ten minutes and identified Singleton by pointing at him with her prosthetic arm.
It wasn’t an easy decision. She’s morally opposed to the death penalty and believed his life should be spared. On 14 April 1998 Judge Bob Mitcham sentenced him to death anyway. Vincent told reporters: “I didn’t want to play God and don’t want anyone’s death on my hands.”
Nobody had to carry it out. Singleton died of cancer in a Florida prison at the end of December 2001. He was 74.
Mary Vincent’s Life Since
Vincent was fitted with prosthetic arms within a month of the attack and has spent the decades since rebuilding them to suit herself. The mechanism from an old slot machine gives them their up-and-down movement, and other parts have come from a dishwasher, a bicycle and a stereo.
She went to college, settled in the Pacific Northwest and had two sons. In 1999 the Tampa Bay Times reported that her new husband, knowing she couldn’t wear a ring, had bought her a diamond on a silver chain to wear instead. That same year she threw out the first pitch at a San Francisco Giants game.
She’s also an artist. Working in pastels with her prosthetic arms, she’s made and sold thousands of drawings, many of them of strong female figures. Now known as Mary McGriff, she lives in Washington State. She has told her story to other survivors and given evidence to legislators arguing for tougher sentencing.
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Further Reading
Want the full story? The Mad Chopper by Fred Rosen is a book-length account of Singleton’s crimes and how he came to be released.
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