Las Vegas teen-ager one of Singleton's victims

Lawrence Singleton began his notorious journey on Sept. 30, 1978.

That was when 15-year-old Mary Vincent was picked up by a then 51-year-old Singleton while hitchhiking to see her grandfather in Corona, Calif.

It was the second time she had run away from her Las Vegas home. She was found in a daze and with her forearms chopped off as she wandered along a highway near Modesto, Calif.

Singleton, who was living in Sparks at the time, used five swings of a hatchet to do the damage before leaving her for dead.

A couple of weeks after the rape and mutilation, her older sister, Lucy, shared her rage in an October 1978 interview.

"I wanted to kill the man who did that to my sister," said Lucy, then 18. "I thought he was the lowest, craziest person. I don't know how he could have done that to her and sleep easy."

Lucy shared a room and her secrets with her sister before Mary ran away. After finding out about the crime, Lucy said, "My brother and I wanted to take off and find the guy and kill him. After the guy was caught I felt some peace, but I still cry a lot."

Three months after Mary Vincent was left for dead in the California farm field, families and businesses in Modesto raised $20,000 for medical expenses, an amount that was doubled by Las Vegans. Both parents worked in casinos.

"Without all of this we would have gone under," said Mary's father, Herbert, during a interview in December 1978. "There is no way we could have made it."

Lindsay Wagner, star of the television show "The Bionic Woman," befriended Mary Vincent and helped her family deal with the grief by referring them to a trauma seminar in Portland, Ore., a month after the rape and mutilation.

"It was real tough for me," Mary's mother said at the time. "When Mary came home from the hospital I was the person who had to unwrap her arms, and change her dressing. I was the one who had to look at her. I had nothing but hatred in my heart for that man."

Mary was reluctant in those days to talk about the horror she suffered, saying only she hated to see anyone hitchhiking.

A year later, she said she was haunted by nightmares of the crime and the trial.

But fear didn't rule the teen-ager's life.

"I'm just a normal person now learning about things I didn't know before," she said in that interview. "I've survived the worst. Now I can survive the rest."


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