Latest / True Crime California / TCC #24 Mary Vincent

Transcript

TCC #24 Mary Vincent · True Crime California

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the Family Plot Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone,
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welcome to True Crime California. I'm your host, Cindy, and
1:31
I'm glad you're here.
1:43
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, I'm back.
1:45
Speaker 2: Sorry it's taking me so long to record again, but
1:48
welcome to True Crime California.
1:50
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Cindy, and.
1:52
Speaker 2: I'm just super busy at work. My boss went on
1:54
maternity leave and I have like eight events this weekend
1:59
or something fucking crazy, so it's just been very difficult
2:02
finding time. I'm also my ten year old's chauffeur, so
2:06
that's cool. But I'm back with an episode for December,
2:09
and I'll definitely have at least one more this month
2:12
for you guys for your listening pleasure. And I want
2:16
to say, if anybody wants to send me case suggestions,
2:18
please do so. I've had a few come through, and
2:22
unfortunately most of them there's not quite enough information for
2:26
me to do a full episode. But I'm thinking even
2:28
if I get enough, like quarter cases we'll call them
2:33
are like half cases, maybe what I'll do is just
2:35
kind of string them all together and do like a
2:38
true crime roundup episode something like that, where I cover
2:42
like two or three cases that are a little bit
2:44
shorter in format, but that are important that people want
2:47
to know about or should know about. So let me
2:50
know if you have any cases from California. One of
2:53
them that actually came up in the news. It's one
2:56
that I covered the first time. Like I don't know,
3:00
five years ago when I started the podcast with Diva
3:03
when we were doing Twisted Listers. It worked out because
3:06
we did like a shorter format podcast, like each story
3:09
was shorter. Anyway, the podcasts were long as well, but
3:11
the individual stories were a little bit shorter, and this
3:14
one fit that. And this was the case of Abdulia Sanchez. Now,
3:18
this is a woman who's from like central California, who
3:21
at the time of this initial story was I think,
3:26
like I don't know if she was like seventeen or eighteen,
3:29
but her younger sister was fourteen, and they were driving
3:32
in a car on like a country road, which is
3:34
what California is full of. And Abdulia was like wasted, drunk,
3:39
just like completely fucked up out of her mind, and
3:41
she was live streaming and during her drunken car driving
3:46
live stream, she crashed and she crashed super super gnarly,
3:50
and she was in the car with two other people,
3:52
one of them being her fourteen year old sister, and
3:54
her fourteen year old sister was thrown from the car
3:56
and her head was cracked open and you could see
4:00
like her brains and it was insane. And this was
4:04
all live streamed while Abdulia is like wasted, like not
4:08
even you know, realizing the gravity of the situation.
4:11
Speaker 1: Uh, totally fucked up story. But it's interesting.
4:14
Speaker 2: Because she was back in the news this past week
4:16
because she was actually killed in a drive by in Stockton,
4:21
which a lot of people in the comments are saying, well,
4:23
that's karma for you, and I wouldn't go as far
4:27
as saying that, but I would say that, like you
4:29
play stupid games, you win stupid prizes, or another you know,
4:32
popular saying is fuck around and find out her family
4:35
had previously come out and said that she has like
4:37
pretty severe mental issues, which is super sad if true,
4:41
and you know, either way, this is a young person
4:44
who was killed violently in California and.
4:46
Speaker 1: It's it fucking sucks.
4:48
Speaker 2: But it was just really interesting to me that that
4:51
story had this conclusion. And I have to say at
4:54
the time that when I was hearing about her, I
4:57
had a feeling that, you know, when she got out
4:59
of prison, she would s of continued this lifestyle, and
5:01
clearly she did. So that's a crazy case if you
5:04
guys want to look that one up. But I wanted
5:06
to call that out. That's one of the smaller shorter
5:10
cases that could be covered in an episode like that.
5:14
But all that being said, let's get into the case
5:17
for this week. So it's actually funny. I had said
5:20
at the last when I was doing the last case,
5:23
that I was going to cover more survivor stories, and
5:27
I had mentioned Mary Vincent, and it kind of got
5:30
her story stuck in my head. So I was like,
5:32
fuck it, let's just do back to back survivor stories.
5:35
Let's just just cover the case now. It's a really
5:37
interesting case. I'll do a holiday case this month, of course,
5:41
But I have always been really interested in Mary Vincent's case,
5:46
mostly because there is kind of a lot about her
5:49
life after this traumatic experience, and I think it's really
5:52
important to sort of focus on the victims' lives when
5:57
they do survive, because I think, again I said this
6:00
last time, a lot of people sort of romanticize like
6:03
surviving an attack like this, and they don't really think
6:05
about how insanely traumatic it is to have something like
6:10
this happen to you. So I want to cover this
6:13
story because Mary has been very vocal about the things
6:18
that have been challenging for her in her life since
6:21
being attacked, and I just think it's important to think
6:24
about that, and this is also a crazy case, so
6:27
let's get into it. Oh, one more thing, actually, So
6:31
there's not a lot known about the man who attacked her. Basically,
6:35
very little known about him before the attack. So I
6:39
didn't do like a deep dive. Again, it was really
6:40
difficult to find anything, but I definitely made a point
6:43
of finding out a little bit more about him. Very little,
6:46
but I tried to research anything about him prior to
6:50
this attack, and I got a little information. So even
6:52
if you know this story, you probably will hear a
6:55
few things that you haven't heard before. So that's interesting
6:58
and exciting, hopefully.
7:00
Speaker 1: All right.
7:01
Speaker 2: So Mary Vincent was born in nineteen sixty three in
7:05
Nevada to a card dealer mother and a mechanic father
7:09
who met while in the military in some capacity. I
7:13
don't know if both of her parents were in the military.
7:15
I believe her father definitely was. I'm not sure about
7:18
her mother. It's very unclear, and I looked several places
7:21
to try and figure it out, but in any case,
7:23
one of them was in the military, if not both. Now,
7:26
Mary was one of seven children born to the couple
7:28
and lived in a home full of rules, but also
7:31
a bit of chaos, as any home with that many
7:34
people and it will have, you know, sort of no
7:35
matter what. Her parents were strict in order to try
7:39
to keep the household running properly. Plus you know, we
7:41
have the military influence. But they did also allow Mary
7:45
to be fairly creative, which was really important because Mary
7:49
is was and will always be an artist and a
7:53
very creative person. So, like I said, she was a
7:57
great artist, but she was also a great deal answer
8:00
by the time she was a teenager, like a trained
8:03
dancer who took it very very seriously, and who had
8:07
a teacher who really really believed in her.
8:09
Speaker 1: At that time.
8:11
Speaker 2: Little bit more about Mary. She's half Filipino. Not sure
8:14
which parent, as I couldn't find any photos of her
8:15
young life, but I think probably her mother. She also
8:18
spent some of her young life living in the Philippines,
8:20
which is pretty cool.
8:22
Speaker 1: I'm not sure she.
8:23
Speaker 2: Speaks to golg but maybe. She's very petite, coming in
8:27
around five foot two and weighing at most one hundred pounds. Mary,
8:32
like I said, she was an artist. She was also
8:34
a bit of a free spirit and often would butt
8:36
heads with her parents. As a result, now, from what
8:39
I've read, she was pretty close with her grandfather. Not
8:42
sure if it was her mother or father's parent, but
8:44
I do know that whichever grandparent he was, he and
8:48
Mary had a very good relationship. I'm sorry if you
8:50
can hear my dog scratching himself in the background. Her
8:53
grandfather lived in California, so not super far from Mary's family,
8:57
so they were able to see each other fairly often
8:59
and they have a really, really great bond. Now, when
9:02
Mary was fifteen, her parents, who hadn't had a great
9:04
relationship for quite a while, ended up in a pretty
9:07
bitter divorce. Now, on top of everything else, the rules,
9:12
the fighting with her parents, she just got really sick
9:15
of the chaos and of also like dealing with her
9:17
parents having this crazy divorce where they're probably you know,
9:20
sniping at each other and just it was not a
9:23
good situation.
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Speaker 1: So she's fifteen years old and she decides.
9:26
Speaker 2: To run away to California. At first, she spent time
9:31
on the streets, sleeping in cars and sometimes outdoors, with
9:34
no real stable living situation. This was on for a
9:38
while before she became pretty homesick and missed her family,
9:41
but not really her parents, so much. She didn't feel
9:44
super supportive there. She wanted to go be with somebody
9:47
who she felt loved her and who would take care
9:50
of her, so she decided to hitchhike to her grandfather's house.
9:54
This was in nineteen seventy eight, and as many of
9:56
you know, hitchhiking back in those days was super common.
10:00
People would meet up in groups to try to get rides,
10:02
they'd have signs. It was a totally normal way to travel.
10:06
And this is despite all the murders and rapes and
10:09
just horrible things that happened as a result of hitchhiking.
10:12
It was still considered safe and people did it constantly,
10:15
which is really weird, but I think it just took
10:17
a little time for the stories to circulate in people
10:19
to be like, holy shit, we probably shouldn't do this.
10:22
But at this time it was still something that people
10:25
did pretty regularly, and Mary was no exception. At this point,
10:28
she had found herself in the Bay area, but her
10:31
grandfather lived in the La area, so she had quite
10:34
a bit of distance to cover. The exact date was
10:37
September twenty ninth, nineteen seventy eight, so had she been home,
10:40
she would have been in high school, but instead, fifteen
10:43
year old Mary is out hitchhiking around California, surrounded by
10:47
other hitchhikers out doing the exact same thing. Like many
10:53
other days, on this day, Mary was waiting by the
10:57
freeway along with a few other groups of young She
11:01
was looking to go south, like I'd said, towards la
11:03
where her grandfather lived. After a while, a man in
11:06
a large van pulled up and offered only Mary a ride.
11:11
He looked to be in his fifties and had a
11:13
large van with no back seats, but nothing else inside
11:16
the van, which made it super weird when he said
11:19
he could only take Mary and nobody else. Mary had
11:23
been sort of hanging out with one of these other groups.
11:25
It was a couple of young guys, and when this
11:28
all went down, they told her, like I wouldn't go
11:29
with him if I were you, like, you should not
11:31
take this ride. This was, as it turned out, very
11:35
solid advice. But you know how it goes. When you're
11:37
young and invincible, nothing bad could ever happen to you.
11:41
It could happen to somebody else, but not you. And
11:44
Mary was tired and just so ready to be with
11:46
her grandfather and have this whole ordeal be over with
11:50
being on the streets is hard.
11:51
Speaker 1: Mary was just done with it.
11:53
Speaker 2: All she cared about was getting to her family, getting
11:56
to a place to sleep and live and be taken
11:58
care of. So she got into the van of the
12:00
man she described as quote looking like a grandpa. This man,
12:05
fifty one year old Lawrence Larry Singleton, was in fact
12:09
not a grandpa, but was either a still married or
12:12
very recently divorced merchant seaman. Now, a merchant seaman works
12:17
on boats, usually delivering goods to and from some place,
12:20
So Larry was away quite a bit for work, but
12:24
still managed to have a marriage happen and also fall
12:26
apart just before this incident. Now, as I mentioned, I
12:32
did some research on Lawrence Singleton, and I'm going to
12:35
talk to speak to that. So again there's not a
12:39
ton out there about him, but I can, you know,
12:44
kind of talk about what I did find. His life
12:46
before this attack is not very well documented, but I
12:48
did use ancestry dot com and I found through there
12:52
that he was one of nine children born to a
12:55
mother who was nineteen years younger than her husband his father.
12:59
He was born and raised most in Florida before moving
13:01
to California, probably for work. His siblings, from what I
13:04
can tell, mostly married and mostly stayed in Florida, with
13:08
only his eldest sister ever having any children, which I
13:11
find interesting. Now maybe ancestry just doesn't have that information.
13:15
But I did some other digging kind of finding, you know,
13:17
I found the names of his family on ancestry, and
13:20
then I used Google and I use like a family
13:22
tree now app and I just really couldn't find any
13:25
other children for any of his siblings. Also just wanted
13:29
to note he's like a middle child, which I don't
13:31
know what that means, but just something to note.
13:35
Speaker 1: Anyway.
13:35
Speaker 2: I can only imagine what his childhood was like, having
13:37
a father who was, you know, nearly twenty years older
13:39
than his mother, having that many kids. I mean, we
13:42
have no proof that it was terrible, but if I
13:44
had to guess, that's what I would probably say. So anyway,
13:48
at some point, like I said, he moved to California,
13:51
married briefly for only about a year, and that gets us,
13:54
unfortunately up to speed into nineteen seventy eight.
13:58
Speaker 1: I don't know that he had any.
13:59
Speaker 2: Sort of criminal record from before this attack, you know,
14:04
probably little things petty thefts, things of that nature, but
14:09
nothing that really came up anywhere. So now it's nineteen
14:12
seventy eight and he's picking up Mary Vincent on the
14:15
freeway and promising to take her to the LA Area.
14:19
As I had mentioned, Mary was very tired and just
14:22
wanted to get where she was going, so pretty much
14:24
as soon as she got into the van, she fell asleep,
14:27
which sounds super crazy to me, Like to be with
14:31
this random dude and you're a young teenager and you
14:35
just fall asleep.
14:36
Speaker 1: But again, hitchhiking was very common back then. Again, at fifteen,
14:41
you think you're invincible.
14:42
Speaker 2: We all thought that, So I'm not judging her. It
14:46
is just something I did want. You can't just say
14:48
that and not talk about it.
14:49
Speaker 1: You know.
14:50
Speaker 2: It's an interesting choice. But again, she's a kid, you know.
14:56
Now It's unclear how long she was asleep, but when
14:59
she did wake up, she I realized they were driving
15:01
in the wrong direction. They were driving back towards the
15:07
Bay Area instead of towards LA. When Mary realized this,
15:11
she was bold enough to call it out to Larry,
15:13
who surprisingly agreed to turn around and drive in the
15:15
proper direction. He told Mary it was a simple mistake.
15:19
He wasn't familiar with the area. It was like getting dark,
15:22
and she believed him. You know, he was super quick
15:24
to correct his mistake, so she didn't really worry about
15:29
it too much. After a short while, he told Mary
15:32
he had to get out to go pee and pulled
15:34
over near Del Puerto Canyon, which is outside of Modesto,
15:38
so very much in central California, only about an hour
15:41
or so south of where they started, So again, who
15:44
knows where he drove while she was asleep. Now from here,
15:47
I've read differing accounts of what happened next, not so
15:50
much the specifics of the attack as much as the
15:53
reasoning on Mary's end for what she was doing. Apparently,
15:57
when Mary fell asleep, she took off her shoes, so
16:00
when they pulled off the road, she was barefoot, or
16:02
maybe only in socks. I don't really know for sure.
16:05
Now to clarify what I'm talking about is I've read
16:07
and heard that Mary was relaxed after Larry turned the
16:09
van around. But Mary actually did an episode of I Survived,
16:13
and in that episode she said that she was planning
16:15
to run away from him when he pulled over because
16:18
she was scared that he might hurt her. So maybe
16:20
in her mind she was like wanting to believe everything
16:23
was going to be okay, and the fact that he
16:25
turned the van around when she called it out could
16:28
be a good sign, like an honest mistake. But she
16:30
said in the back of her mind like she was scared.
16:35
So sometimes what you'll read is that Mary was tying
16:37
her shoes so that she could stretch her legs while
16:40
Larry went out and did like a nature pee. But
16:43
really she was planning to run away, figuring she could
16:46
outrun an older, out of shape man like Larry. Sometimes
16:49
you'll read she felt fine, everything was great, She just
16:52
wanted to stretch her legs. That is not true out
16:54
of Mary's mouth.
16:55
Speaker 1: She was scared.
16:56
Speaker 2: She wanted to escape. Unfortunately, while she was bent down
17:00
inside the van tying her shoes, Larry either opened her
17:04
passenger door or came in through the driver's side and
17:07
hit Mary in the head with the sledgehammer. As you
17:10
can imagine, this knocked her sideways, and by the time
17:13
she sort of came to Larry was on her. He
17:17
tied her up and threw her in the back of
17:19
the van, where he raped and sodomized her. For over
17:22
six hours into the early hours of the morning. This
17:26
was obviously extremely horrific for Mary, scary and painful and
17:31
just fucking awful. And the whole time she kept asking
17:35
him to set her free, Set me free, set me free. Please,
17:39
I won't tell anyone. She just kept saying this over
17:42
and over. Now, for a while, Larry fell asleep and
17:45
she was tied up and unable to move. And finally
17:48
the next morning, Larry takes her out of the van,
17:50
completely naked and bloody from the attack.
17:53
Speaker 1: Because it was not it was violent.
17:57
Speaker 2: It was very, very violent. Again, you know, she is scared,
18:01
she's tired, but she hasn't given up, and she asks
18:05
him to please set her free, and he says, you
18:08
want to be set free, I'll set you free. As
18:13
he is saying this, I'll set you free, he begins
18:19
to sort of push Mary and they're sort of like fighting,
18:23
and I'm not really sure that she knew why at
18:25
that point, but she grabs a hold of him and
18:27
starts to struggle against him. Now, one thing is they
18:30
were standing on the side of the road above like
18:31
a thirty foot hill that rolled down into a colvert,
18:35
and she didn't want to be thrown down their naked
18:38
so she grabbed onto his shirt as hard as she could,
18:40
but it didn't do much, as Larry had a hatchet
18:43
in his hand and began hacking at Mary as they struggled.
18:47
Now what happened next is just beyond comprehension.
18:49
Speaker 1: It is so horrible.
18:52
Speaker 2: Mary said that she remembered having a hold of Larry
18:54
and was holding him tight, but somehow, despite her grip,
18:57
she began to fall backwards, and as she well, she
19:00
grabbed Larry with her other hand, but again despite her grip,
19:05
she began falling backwards. Then she felt pain in her arms,
19:11
and as she fell, she saw both of her hands
19:14
and parts of her arms still attached to Larry Singleton.
19:19
They had been cut from her body just above her elbows.
19:23
After she rolled down this thirty foot dirt hill into
19:26
the colvert, she looked up and saw Larry shaking his
19:29
arms as if there was a fly bothering him. She
19:32
pretty quickly realized what he was actually doing was trying
19:35
to shake off her severed arms from his, which he
19:38
did successfully while Mary watched in horror from below. He
19:42
then disappeared, presumably into his van, leaving Mary to die
19:46
in the colvert, but Mary did not die. Instead, Mary
19:55
laid there for a moment, completely in shock, before nearly
19:58
giving in to the overwhelming desig to just fall asleep.
20:02
She said, she felt so incredibly tired, and she almost
20:08
gave in, but then a voice in her head told
20:10
her to get up and climb up that hill, and
20:12
that she had to survive to keep this man from
20:15
ever doing this to anybody else. Mary was losing blood quickly,
20:19
of course, but she remembered something she learned while living
20:22
in the Philippines. If you ever have a wound that
20:25
won't stop bleeding and you're not somewhere where you can
20:27
get help, you can pack it with dirt or mud
20:30
until you can get somewhere for somebody to help you.
20:33
So Mary, thinking quickly despite her insane injuries and crazy
20:37
blood loss, stuck both of her arms into the mud
20:41
and packed the wounds to stop the bleeding, and it
20:44
sort of worked. What's crazy is that she thought to
20:47
do this at this age, in this moment. I mean,
20:49
this is so much for anybody to handle, so this
20:52
is amazing.
20:53
Speaker 1: She then crawled her way up the thirty foot.
20:55
Speaker 2: Bank without hands and part of her arms and dragged
21:00
her nude body up to the road to try to
21:02
find some help. Now, the whole time she was walking nude, bloody,
21:08
covered in dirt and mud, she was holding her arms
21:11
above her head to keep the muscles and blood from
21:13
falling out, and the entire time she sorry, that was
21:18
my dog. And the entire time she was also terrified
21:21
that Larry would.
21:22
Speaker 1: Come back and finish her off.
21:25
Speaker 2: Now, despite these insane injuries, and despite her terror, she
21:28
stood on the road and yelled for help. The first
21:32
car to pass slowed down, got a good look at
21:35
Mary and sped away, which is such a shitty fucking
21:39
thing to do. But like to be fair, that would
21:41
be beyond traumatic to see, let alone to get involved.
21:44
It's very Texas chainsaw like the murderer might be right
21:47
behind her. But honestly, I still think that that's fucked. Like,
21:50
fuck those people seriously. Now, the second car to see her,
21:53
which contained a young couple, stopped, got her into the
21:57
car and drove her to the hospital. And man, is
22:00
a good thing they did, because by the time she arrived,
22:04
she had lost over half of the blood in her body,
22:07
which is not really something you're supposed to be able
22:09
to survive, and on top of that, she had an
22:12
infection in the remaining blood, which made survival even less
22:17
likely for Mary. Doctors immediately began working on her, but
22:21
I will tell you before she even got in the
22:24
operating room, she was trying to talk to the cops,
22:26
because that's why she survived. She wanted to let them
22:29
know who did this to her. She wanted to stop
22:31
him from.
22:31
Speaker 1: Doing it again.
22:33
Speaker 2: And as we know, she did in fact survive and
22:36
recovered amazingly well considering what happened to her, at least physically.
22:41
I've read a few places that while she was being
22:43
wheeled in for surgery, she found an officer and tried
22:46
to tell him about her attacker, which.
22:48
Speaker 1: Is what I'm saying.
22:49
Speaker 2: You know, she did so even before you know, she's
22:53
barely alive, barely awake, and she's trying to give her
22:57
account like this is what he looked like absolutely insane
23:00
and like amazing And as a note, I'm talking about
23:03
him using his name, but she didn't know who he
23:05
was obviously. And then once she came out of surgery,
23:08
but while still healing, she worked with a police sketch
23:11
artist to create a picture of Larry, which was then
23:14
put out everywhere. Now it wasn't immediate that he was caught,
23:18
but everyone, uh, you know, all over the countryside. This
23:22
is a huge, huge, fucking story. And eventually one of
23:26
his neighbors saw the sketch on the news and called police,
23:30
saying they thought it might be their neighbor Larry who
23:32
attacked the young Mary. They were right, and within about
23:36
three weeks of the attack, Lawrence Singleton was arrested and
23:39
charged for rape, kidnapping, mayhem, and attempted murder. At this point,
23:46
Mary Vincent was already wearing prosthetic arms because she was
23:50
not one to let things slow her down, and she
23:52
was like, suit me up, I need my hands, let's
23:55
get this going. And when his trial came around about
23:59
six months later, she testified against him, which she later
24:03
said was terrifying, but she had to do it so
24:06
he wouldn't be able to do what he did to
24:08
her to anyone else ever again. Now, her testimony was
24:12
a large part of why he was convicted on all counts,
24:15
so it was very important that she did this, even
24:18
though it was terrifying. When asked to identify Lawrence Singleton
24:22
in court, she pointed at him with her silver prosthetic
24:26
hook hand and said, that's the man who attacked me.
24:31
I was attacked, she said, I was raped and my
24:34
hands were cut off.
24:35
Speaker 1: He used a hatchet. He left me to die.
24:40
Speaker 2: She said that after the trial she had to walk
24:42
by him, like right by him, which to me seems crazy,
24:45
like get it together, courts, why are you making victims
24:48
walk by their attackers? But anyway, she did walk by him,
24:52
and as she did, he said to her, if it's
24:54
the last thing I do, I will finish the job,
24:58
which is fucking terrifying like this poor girl did nothing wrong,
25:04
is attacked, raped, brutalized, has her arms removed, and then
25:09
the man vows to finish the job if he ever
25:11
gets out of prison. So from here, I do want
25:15
to talk a little bit about Mary's life, like I said,
25:17
because there's more to this story, and I think it's
25:20
again it's important how we see how this type of
25:22
life altering attack is more than just a happy ending
25:25
survivor story. But before I do that, going back real quick,
25:29
Lauren Singleton was sentenced. He was found guilty on all charges,
25:32
like I said, but he was sentenced to me easily
25:34
fourteen years in prison, which is the maximum for all
25:38
of the above above charges allowed at the time in California,
25:41
which honestly confuses the hell out of me, considering that
25:44
the child Chili kidnappers got life for kidnapping. I mean,
25:49
it's not fair to say it was like less of
25:51
a crime, but like they didn't cut anybody's arms off
25:53
or rape anybody, you know. So for those three men
25:56
to get life and for this motherfucker to get fourteen years,
25:59
I would really like to further understand how the law
26:03
works in that way, that that's how that worked. And
26:06
I'll tell you right now, he only served just over
26:09
eight of those years, which is absolutely fucking criminal. And
26:14
this information really plays in to Mary's life and the
26:17
way things go for her after this attack. So obviously
26:21
we want to know what happens to him, but in
26:24
the in the greater picture, in the broader picture, it's
26:27
important to know because his freedom directly affects Mary's life. Okay,
26:32
so now let's just talk about Mary. So after the attack,
26:37
Mary's dancing career, obviously, you know, was over before it
26:40
even started, and not because she didn't have hands.
26:43
Speaker 1: That wasn't the problem so much as.
26:46
Speaker 2: She had had to have a muscle or yeah, I
26:50
think muscle taken out of her leg to be put
26:53
into her arms so that they could still kind of function,
26:57
Which was really unfortunate because her dance instructor had set
27:00
up a ton of like meetings and things for Mary's future.
27:03
Speaker 1: You know, she's getting to the age.
27:04
Speaker 2: Where it's like, if you're going to become like a
27:06
professional dancer, it's gonna happen kind of now, you know,
27:10
at fifteen is sort of when that gets set in motion.
27:15
So it was really unfortunate because it really did sound
27:17
like she had a future there, and this attack completely
27:21
destroyed that. Beyond that blow, Mary was terrified all the time,
27:25
scared to be alone, scared to trust to anyone. She had
27:28
nightmares for years. In an interview nearly twenty years after
27:32
the attack, Mary said that Larry effectively ended her life
27:36
that day, even though she was still alive. And I
27:38
don't think she meant like he killed her. He just
27:41
ended her life as she knew it, Like her life
27:44
was never the same after that, which I think, you know,
27:48
that's fair, that feels very very fair.
27:51
Speaker 1: And you know, it.
27:52
Speaker 2: Wasn't just physically that he changed her life, It was
27:54
mentally and emotionally as well. Despite this, you know, Mary's
27:58
a fighter. She's a tough person, obviously, and she did
28:02
the best that she could, and she actually became an artist.
28:06
Her work is mainly in pastels and depicts powerfully upbeat women,
28:10
which I think.
28:11
Speaker 1: Makes a lot of sense.
28:12
Speaker 2: She also did portraits on commission for a while. I
28:15
don't know if she still does, but you know, she
28:19
despite what was going on inside of her, she did
28:22
everything she could to maintain as much of a normal
28:25
life as possible, at least, you know, outwardly. To this end,
28:31
she got married in her early twenties and had two
28:33
sons with her husband Tom. Unfortunately, by her mid thirties,
28:37
Mary had divorced, and while there isn't a lot of
28:39
information about her divorce, it sounds like her husband her
28:41
husband wasn't happy like with all the publicity that her
28:44
story brought to their home, and they just weren't super compatible.
28:48
So by the time she was thirty four, she had
28:50
two sons aged ten and eight, no steady job, and
28:54
for a while the three of them ended up living
28:56
in an abandoned gas station with no electricity. During this time,
29:01
Mary so Mary had disability payments obviously that makes sense.
29:06
And at this point they had been stopped because the
29:10
government realized that she'd received a settlement for her injuries,
29:14
and they counted it as income because if you're poor,
29:18
they want you to stay that way. So if you
29:19
get a thirteen thousand dollars settlement, which is what she had,
29:22
you're not gonna be able to get ahead with that money.
29:24
You're just gonna lose out on your disability payments to
29:27
that amount, because fuck you, you know that's how our
29:30
world works. Don't get me started. You know, Mary tried
29:34
other things. She tried to write a book, she tried
29:36
to sell the story for a movie, kind of anything
29:40
to help with the bills and raising her kids, but
29:42
unfortunately everything fell through and she was left with very
29:46
very little. She had actually successfully sued Larry Singleton, but
29:50
you can't believe a turn up, so she never saw
29:53
a dime of the two point five million dollar settlement
29:56
she won against him, which honestly, it's there's no way
30:00
she's ever gonna she would have ever seen that money.
30:04
I think it was sort of just you know, I
30:07
don't know, they just gave it to her as like
30:10
a token of yeah, we know your.
30:12
Speaker 1: Life sucks, I guess, you know.
30:14
Speaker 2: And to be fair, at this time, Mary's life was very,
30:18
very hard. She was definitely you know, selling her art, hustling,
30:22
but things were very bleak, which is just another layer
30:25
of sadness to this story. She was able to get
30:28
back on her feet eventually, but it took a lot
30:30
of fighting on her end, which just does not seem fair.
30:33
And I mean, it's just it just seems like one
30:35
thing after another. You know, she did get back on
30:38
her feet eventually, and here and there, you know, things
30:41
would be good for Mary, but the fear was always nearby,
30:46
and it came flooding back in nineteen eighty seven when
30:49
Larry Singleton was paroled despite huge public outcry. At first,
30:55
law enforcement had a hell of a time placing him anywhere,
30:57
as no city would take him, and when they tried
30:59
to send him to Florida to be near his family,
31:02
they were rejected by the state. Weirdly, his ex wife
31:06
offered for him to live with her in Nevada, but
31:08
that fell through as well. I find it really interesting,
31:10
and she was basically like, he's a you know, he
31:14
might have made a mistake, but he's not a bad person.
31:17
And he deserves a chance, and it's like, dude, what
31:19
the fuck, Like, I don't know, I wouldn't let him
31:22
live with me, I'll tell you that. So he finally
31:25
ended up in a halfway house somewhere for a while,
31:27
and then eventually he did move back to his home
31:29
state of Florida.
31:30
Speaker 1: Now I don't know exactly.
31:31
Speaker 2: When, but it was probably at some point, like when
31:33
his parole was over, because I don't think he would
31:35
have been allowed to before then. But after some time
31:38
he did move back to Florida. At the time, Mary
31:41
was living up in Washington State with her sons, but
31:44
she still lived in like complete terror that he would
31:47
live up to his promise and finish the job, which
31:50
totally fair. This man said, if it's the last thing
31:53
I do, I'm going to finish the job. And then
31:55
he gets paroled. It's like, I mean, I can't imagine
31:58
what she was going through. This so fucked Now. Meanwhile,
32:02
while Mary's living in terror up in Washington State, Larry
32:06
was in and out of trouble down in Florida, mostly
32:08
for petty crimes like theft. He had a troubled life
32:11
in general, obviously, and in nineteen ninety seven, he ended
32:15
up in a mental hospital after trying to end his
32:17
own life. He had again been arrested for theft and
32:20
decided he didn't want to live any longer. There was
32:23
no reason for him to exist bah bah bah. He
32:25
left a suicide note for his family and attempted to
32:27
kill himself by inhaling car exhaust by putting a tube
32:31
from the exhaust pipe of his car of his van
32:33
into the window. His neighbor actually found him passed out
32:37
inside the van and called nine to one one, So
32:40
he would have probably fucking died if his neighbor hadn't
32:43
seen him, which is crazy. Larry was then taken to
32:47
the hospital, and once he was treated and you know,
32:50
feeling better, he was taken to a mental hospital for evaluation.
32:54
Now he was released February tenth, nineteen ninety seven, despite
32:58
pleas from his family to keep him in the hospital
33:01
as they believed that he was a danger to himself
33:04
and others, which I would say, no, fucking duh, Like
33:08
I'm not even his family member, and I could have
33:10
told you that, And as if to prove just how
33:13
right his family was. Nine days after being released from
33:17
the hospital, Larry Singleton murdered another woman, or not another
33:21
I guess he didn't murder Mary, but he murdered a woman,
33:25
thirty one year old Roxanne Hayes. Roxanne Hayes was a
33:31
sex worker at the time, and Singleton picked her up
33:34
and brought her back to his home in Tampa, Florida,
33:37
beyond her job, which back then was reported in a
33:40
much less kind way. Roxanne was the mother of two
33:44
small children and had a steady, long term boyfriend. I
33:47
actually think she had three kids, three fucking young kids,
33:50
and a long term, steady boyfriend, but nobody ever talked
33:54
about that. I had to dig deep for that information.
33:57
So Larry and Roxanne get to his house around three
34:00
thirty pm, per his neighbor, on February nineteenth. At the time,
34:05
according to the neighbor, Larry seemed sober, as did rock Sand.
34:10
Later that afternoons or an hour or two later, around
34:12
like you know, five point thirty six thirty something like that,
34:15
a man who was painting Larry's house for him came
34:18
by to do some touch up painting. He saw Larry's
34:21
van parked around back and his back door open, so
34:25
he went inside calling out for Larry. He said he
34:29
heard moaning and thought that Larry was maybe having sex,
34:32
which is kind of weird, and also saw at least
34:34
five pill bottles on the table in the kitchen.
34:37
Speaker 1: This is just like what he remembers.
34:39
Speaker 2: He then walked further into the house towards the living room,
34:42
but stopped in the doorway when he saw Larry naked,
34:46
bending over a woman who was sitting on his couch,
34:48
also naked and with blood on her thigh. The man
34:52
said that Mary that Larry looked up towards him when
34:56
he heard him come in, but that his stare was
34:58
more like staring through him him, as if he was
35:01
like in some sort of state, or maybe so drunk
35:04
that he was blacked out, which is terrifying. If you've
35:07
ever seen that stare, it can be quite scary. This
35:11
man ran outside to his uncle, who had come with
35:13
to help paint the house, and told him what he
35:16
had seen. This man then tried to go back inside
35:18
the house with a shovel because he was gonna fuck
35:21
Larry up because he realized the woman was being attacked,
35:24
but his uncle stopped him, which I want to say
35:26
I understand, but that also fucking sucks, considering what happens next.
35:31
Instead of going back inside, the two men went to
35:33
the front of the house and looked in through the
35:35
living room window, where they saw the woman on the
35:37
couch with Larry standing over her with his hand around
35:41
her neck. They heard the woman say help in a
35:44
muffled voice. Then they heard Larry say shut up, bitch,
35:48
before repeatedly hitting her in the face with his other fist.
35:53
The men said, each time he hit her they heard
35:55
bone crushing sounds, which is fucking horrifying. The two men
36:01
watched in horror as the attack went on for a
36:03
few minutes before they finally left to go to a
36:06
gas station to call for help. Because remember there weren't
36:10
really cell phones at this time, so if you want
36:12
to call somebody you knew in it from a landline. Now,
36:15
when an officer arrived around six point thirty, so I
36:17
guess this was like five thirty or so that this started.
36:21
So at six point thirty when the officer arrived, he
36:23
found Larry in an open shirt and shorts with a
36:26
bloody cut.
36:27
Speaker 1: On his chest.
36:28
Speaker 2: Larry was in his kitchen and so the cop comes
36:31
up and he asks him what happened, and Larry said
36:33
he and his girlfriend got into a fight, but that
36:35
everything was fine and the officer could leave. Instead, the
36:40
cop followed him farther into his house. In the living room,
36:44
he found Roxanne's body on the ground, not moving or breathing.
36:48
She had a blood clot in her nose and cuts
36:51
all over her body. Larry Singleton was arrested and sadly,
36:55
Roxanne was pronounced dead.
36:57
Speaker 1: At the scene.
36:58
Speaker 2: Now her cause of death was actually stabbing, believe it
37:01
or not, which I don't even know when it happened,
37:03
potentially after the two men left, because they didn't see
37:06
it happening. They only saw the beating. But all of
37:10
this is to say this was an extremely, extremely violent
37:14
and prolonged attack and something that nobody deserves and just
37:18
fuck this fucking monster. So once again, here Lawrence Singleton
37:24
is arrested and finds himself on trial for a violent crime,
37:28
and once again Mary Vincent found herself on the stand
37:32
reliving her attack for a jury in the hopes of
37:34
finally putting this motherfucker away forever. And it worked. In
37:41
April nineteen ninety eight, Lawrence Singleton was found guilty of
37:44
murder and was sentenced to death. With Mary's story playing
37:48
a large part in the sentence he was given. His
37:51
past history of super violent crime drove home the fact
37:54
that this man had no intention of ever changing and
37:57
was a menace to women everywhere. Larry appealed this sentencing
38:03
multiple times. He was rejected every time, but in the
38:08
end it didn't matter as not very long after three years.
38:12
In fact, Larry Singleton died in prison from cancer at
38:16
the age of seventy four, which means that when he
38:19
murdered Roxanne Hayes, he was in his late sixties or
38:23
maybe even seventy years old, which is super crazy to
38:27
me because it means he I mean, you never really
38:31
think of like the elderly as being killers, but they're
38:34
out there and he was one of them. As for Mary,
38:38
going back to Mary, because fuck this guy, I'm glad
38:39
word I'm talking about him. Mary remarried a man who
38:43
worked for the District Attorney down in Orange County, which
38:46
makes sense as it's probably the safest she ever felt,
38:50
you know, married to a man who works with law
38:51
enforcement after her attacker was put away for life. Now
38:54
she lived with this man in southern California for a while,
38:56
but sadly this marriage also ended by the time her
39:00
boys were grown, so she moved back up to the
39:02
Pacific Northwest, where she married for a third and seemingly
39:06
final time with A cute story that I heard was
39:10
when she met her future third husband, she told him,
39:14
you look like my third husband. When he then asked
39:16
her how many times she'd been married, she said twice.
39:20
So despite everything, she's still very clever and has a
39:23
great sense of humor, and apparently, as of like right
39:27
now in twenty twenty five, Mary lives a very quiet
39:30
life with her husband, mostly out of the spotlight. And
39:34
I'm so happy to say that she finally found the
39:36
peace and stability that she deserves, because it's about damn time.
39:39
Speaker 1: And I just want to say.
39:42
Speaker 2: How disappointing it is that people who have these horrific
39:46
things happen to them are basically just left on their
39:49
own by society, by our government. It's like, it's just
39:55
it's almost like it's the things are, you know, everything
39:58
stacked against them. Can't win for losing when you're in
40:01
a situation like this, And I just want to drive
40:04
home how absolutely unfair that is and how amazing it
40:09
is that somebody like Mary was able to keep going
40:13
and you know, end up with sort of a happy ending,
40:16
which she absolutely deserves, you know, I mean, one because
40:20
she's a human being, and two because she fucking went
40:23
through it. Man, Like that's rough as hell. So that's
40:27
the end of the story. I hope everybody enjoyed. I know,
40:31
I said I was gonna do a Christmas.
40:33
Speaker 1: Story, and maybe I will. I don't know.
40:36
Speaker 2: There's like the covena massacre. That one's horrible and like,
40:40
I don't know, there's not that much to it. It's
40:42
just like kind of bleak. But I was actually talking
40:46
to somebody today about skateboarding and like skateboarding in the past,
40:53
and they brought up well, they didn't bring up they
40:55
just like brought up skaters from like the eighties and nineties,
40:57
and it got me to thinking about Mark orgali Ski.
41:01
He went by Gator and he is a murderer and
41:04
his story is crazy. The actual murder itself is not
41:08
a huge story, but sort of the rise and fall
41:13
of Gator, the you know, skateboarder is really really interesting.
41:17
So I was thinking about covering that. I might leave
41:19
that for January because I might want to do like
41:21
a deeper dive. There's some really good like documentaries out there.
41:26
But if I leave it to January, then I'll do
41:28
a Christmas Eve story. I'll see what I can find.
41:32
And if I don't and I just do Gaytor next,
41:35
then you know, we'll just do the holidays next year.
41:37
So anyway, thanks everybody for listening.
41:40
Speaker 1: Please like rate review.
41:41
Speaker 2: Sorry it's taking me so long to get these out.
41:44
My boss went on maternity leave, so I am now
41:48
taking on extra work and doing extra things and also
41:51
just been busy. So that's life. I do this when
41:55
I can. I hope you all enjoy it. Thank you
41:57
so much for listening. I will have at least one
42:00
more episode out this month. Uh and tell everybody you
42:03
know you know, get more, help me, help me spread
42:07
the word about true Crime California. Thanks again everybody, and
42:11
until next time, stay safe. M HM