09/18/2026
Mary Vincent was only 15 years old when she accepted a ride that would change her life forever.
On September 29, 1978, Mary was hitchhiking through California on her way to visit her grandfather in Los Angeles. Later that afternoon, a 50-year-old man named Lawrence Singleton stopped in a blue utility van and offered her a ride.
At first, there was nothing that seemed unusual.
But hours later, Singleton left the highway and drove into a remote area. When Mary questioned where they were going, he stopped the van. She got out, hoping she could escape.
Instead, she was attacked.
Singleton severely assaulted Mary and left her with life-threatening injuries. Before leaving, he cut off both of her forearms and abandoned her in a drainage culvert at the bottom of a ravine.
But Mary survived.
Alone, badly injured, and losing blood, she remembered something she had learned years earlier while living in the Philippines—that soil could help slow severe bleeding when there was nothing else available. She used what she remembered to try to keep herself alive.
Then she began climbing.
Without her arms, Mary somehow made her way out of the ravine and reached the road. She walked for nearly four miles along Interstate 5 before a passing couple found her and rushed her to a hospital.
Her survival was only the beginning.
From her hospital bed, Mary gave investigators a detailed description of her attacker. Six months later, wearing prosthetic arms, she walked into court and faced him. She refused to say his name, referring to him only as “my attacker.”
Singleton was convicted and sentenced to 14 years, the maximum allowed under California law at the time.
He served only eight years.
The case sparked widespread outrage, and many people feared that he could hurt someone else after his release.
Sadly, those fears would become part of the story too.
Mary Vincent’s story remains one of survival, determination, and the will to keep going when almost everything seems lost.
What do you think gave Mary the strength to keep moving when she had every reason to give up?
