I was raped & left for dead by sick lorry driver who cut my arms off, I dipped the stumps in mud to stop bleeding
Mary Vincent was relieved when a van stopped to offer her a lift after she had walked miles to return home to her family.
Following her parents’ divorce, 15-year-old Mary fled her Las Vegas home and fled to California.
When Mary was picked up by Merchant Seaman Lawrence Singleton in California on September 29, 1978, she felt homesick and made the decision to return to her parents, even though she had friends and family nearby.
According to Mary, 62, who spoke on I Survived, Lawrence had stated that there was only space for Mary, but she remembers two other hitchhikers following her.
The hitchhikers warned her against it because they could see there was space for them all, but she ignored it because she was a naive teenager and wanted to return to her home in Las Vegas.
“I just wanted to get home because I was so exhausted,” she said.
The horrors of what 50-year-old Lawrence Singleton had in store for Mary started when she woke up from her sleep in the truck.
He had taken a different route, leading her to no man’s land, rather than heading for Las Vegas.
He swore he made an honest mistake, but Mary freaked out and confronted him.
Then, as he turns the truck around and stops the van to relieve himself, Mary finally realizes how serious the situation is.
Mary discovers her shoelace is loose while he is out of the van and chooses to get out and tie it up in case she wants to flee.
However, as she crouched down, she was smacked across the head with a sledgehammer and lost consciousness.
Mary woke up to see herself naked and bound in the back of the truck, where she had been horribly assaulted all night and into the morning.
She remembers pleading with Singleton to release her on the condition that she keep the incident a secret.
After completing his cruel deed, Singleton drags her from the van, unties her, and then chillingly asks Do you wish to be released? I’ll release you.
Then, with a hatchet, he severed Mary’s left arm just below the elbow.
Sexual abuse in numbers
In England and Wales, 669,000 adults are sexually assaulted annually.
- 1 in 5 women (8m) in the UK have been sexually abused
- 1 in 6 men (5m) in the UK have been sexually abused
- 1 in 20 children in the UK have been sexually abused
The following have been blamed for sexual abuse:
- 15% of all suicides in the UK
- 11% of all common mental health disorders in the UK
- 7% of alcohol dependence disorders
- 10% of drug dependence disorders
- 15% of eating disorders
- 17% of post-traumatic stress disorders
(Source: Safeline)
Mary screams and sobs, grabbing him with her right arm in shock, but Singleton continued to assault him.
Taking the hatchet once more, he starts to cut off her right arm as well.
When Mary realizes her right arm is no longer attached to her, she collapses backwards while clinging to him.
He grabbed my left arm and swung it once. I started to fall, but he took another swing, so I grabbed his arm and held on hard, but I couldn’t figure out why I was still falling, she recounted.
She notices Singleton flicking his arm in an attempt to remove her disengaged arm from him.
Mary became limp and was still aware, but she was losing a lot of blood.
Singleton decided to take her body and toss it off the road railings into a 30-foot precipice since he thought she was already dead.
As he drives off, she breaks four ribs on the way down. When the police catch him, they discover that he severed her arms to prevent her identity.
Mary was not prepared to give up, even though she had suffered terrible and life-altering injuries.
She remembers losing blood and wanting to sleep when she woke up at the base of the cliff, but a voice in her head ordered her not to.
She recalls the voice telling her, “You can’t sleep, you have to wake up so they can catch this guy.”
Mary coated what was left of her arms with mud to stop the bleeding and created a mudpack to prevent blood loss.
After spending the entire day crawling up the 30-foot cliff, she finally reached the road.
I resembled a character from a horror film.
Mary started to walk three kilometers down the road, naked, covered in blood, and holding two stump arms.
She determined that flagging down a car was her greatest chance of surviving, but the first vehicle—a convertible carrying two men—choosed to continue driving.
Mary subsequently remarked, “I looked like something out of a horror movie,” but she didn’t place any responsibility on the males.
She keeps walking when she comes across the car of a honeymooning couple. They promptly pull over and let her in so she can locate the closest hospital.
Mary had lost half of her blood before she was seen by doctors, so it was just in time.
She underwent life-saving surgery and was given prosthetic arms, a transition she would need to get used to over the course of years of physical therapy. To assist her deal with the trauma she had endured, she also received rigorous psychotherapy.
She told the authorities all she could recall about her assailant, including the smallest details, while she was in the hospital.
In 2023, Vincent stated, “I wanted to make damn sure they knew who he was when they saw his face.” I explained him in the same way that you would explain someone to a blind person.
A week or so later, one of Singleton’s neighbors recognized his police sketch and promptly called the police.
Singleton was taken into custody nine days later and accused of rape, attempted murder, and numerous other sexual offenses against Mary.
Mary described the terrifying night when she faced Singleton six months later while wearing her new prosthetic arms.
He was convicted guilty but was given a 14-year sentence. Before leaving the courthouse, he said a few last words to Mary.
He whispered in her ear, “I’ll finish the job if it’s the last thing I do.”
On good behavior, he was freed from prison after only eight years.
His light sentence had a direct impact on the 1987 passage of the California Singleton bill. Supported by Vincent and other well-known survivors, it imposes a minimum penalty of 25 years for anyone who commit torture-related crimes.
Many wished the penalty had been imposed to Singleton, but it was not possible because he had already been released.
In 1997, nine years after being imprisoned, Singleton killed Roxanne Hayes, a mother of three.
He was found drenched in blood at the spot after a neighbor alerted the police.
Mary returned to court to testify against the monster and permanently imprison him, despite his threat to complete the job.
Despite being sentenced to death, he passed away from cancer in 2001.
Mary, 62, is now an artist and survivor advocate after getting married and becoming Mary McGriff.
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She told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 2003, “My nightmares have caused me to break bones.” In an attempt to get out of bed, I jumped up and dislocated my shoulder. I’ve busted my nose and cracked my ribs.
She has made the decision to live a private life, and the Mary Vincent Foundation helps thousands of trauma survivors and victims of abuse cope with their daily struggles.