How Mary Vincent Survived Lawrence Singleton’s Attack

Updated November 3, 2024

February 4, 2021 ~ By Shari Rose

Mary Vincent’s survival after losing both her arms in a violent attack 45 years ago is a story of strength and hope in the face of unimaginable cruelty

After surviving a terrifying night of violent assaults and unconscionable degradation by a man 35 years older than her, 15-year-old Mary Vincent knew she had to stay alive no matter what. That resolve remained even when Lawrence Singleton cut off her arms and threw the teenager off a cliff. But through faith and sheer force of will, Vincent survived her injuries and learned how to navigate the world as she once had, now with prosthetic arms. And more than 45 years since that violent night, Mary McGriff continues moving forward today.

• Mary Vincent Accepts a Ride from Lawrence Singleton
• Singleton Cuts Vincent’s Arms Off in Vicious Attack
• Vincent Testifies Against Her Attacker in Court
• Outrage at Singleton’s Short Prison Sentence
• Lawrence Singleton Murders Roxanne Hayes After Release
• Mary Vincent’s Advocacy Work for Victims’ Rights
• Mary McGriff Now

Mary Vincent Accepts a Ride from Lawrence Singleton

Artistic and expressive, Mary Vincent was just like any other 15-year-old living in Southern California in the 1970s. She dreamed of traveling the world as a competitive dancer – and had a real gift for the performing arts. At age 13, Vincent performed a solo dance routine at the Miss Universe pageant.

But when her parents got divorced, Vincent wanted to get away from the emotional fallout. She began hitching rides to the Bay Area to be among like-minded artists and performers. Peculiar as it may seem today, hitchhiking was a common method of transportation for young people in the 1970s, particularly for teenagers without a car of their own.

On September 28, 1978, Mary Vincent decided to head back south to visit her grandfather in Los Angeles. Standing alongside two other hitchhikers on the road, Vincent looked for a friendly driver to give her a ride. That’s when Lawrence Singleton pulled up in a blue van.

The 50-year-old driver acted strangely from the start. When the group of hitchhikers asked for a ride, Singleton told them he only had room in his van for one passenger. This was odd because it was clear the back of the van was totally empty – it didn’t even have seats.

But Singleton was adamant that only Mary, the one teenage girl in the group, could get in his vehicle. Vincent said in a 2023 interview that her hitchhiking companions told her not to go.

“The guys I was with kind of pulled me aside and said, ‘I wouldn’t get in there if I were you,’” she recalled.

Exhausted and acting against her better judgment, Mary Vincent climbed into Singleton’s van.

Singleton Cuts Vincent’s Arms Off in Vicious Attack

At first, the ride seemed normal as Singleton took the well-traveled routes down to Southern California. But then he headed for the desert.

With this navigational change, Vincent recognized that something was wrong. She told Singleton to turn around, and he pulled over. The 15-year-old decided to make a run for it while he relieved himself. She got out of the vehicle and bent over to tie her shoe. But Lawrence Singleton came around the van and hit her in the head with a sledgehammer.

He violently raped Vincent throughout the night while she fell in and out of consciousness. And the true extent of his horrific cruelty showed itself the following morning.

With a hatchet in his hand, Singleton dragged Vincent out of his van. He cut off her arms at the elbow to prevent her body from being identified. Still conscious but losing massive amounts of blood, the 5-foot-2 girl went limp.

In an interview with “I Survived…”, Vincent explained what went through her mind at the moment of Singleton’s hatchet attack that took both her arms.

“He took my left arm and took one swing. And I started to fall, and then he took another swing, and I grabbed his arm, grabbed it real tight, and I couldn’t figure out, holding him real tight on his arm, but I’m still falling,” she recalled.

Believing Vincent was dead, Singleton threw her body off a cliff. She landed 30 feet below in a concrete culvert off Interstate 5.

However, Mary Vincent was not dead. In searing pain and naked, the 15-year-old fought the urge to fall asleep and give in to death.

Instead, she covered what was left of her arms in mud, packing it down to effectively stop the bleeding. Then, Vincent climbed back up the 30-foot cliff and began walking down a rural road, holding her arms upright so she would not bleed out.

The first car that drove past her carried two men who quickly sped off once her bloody condition came into view. However, a subsequent couple driving their vehicle pulled over and drove her to a hospital.

Mary Vincent had survived, and she was finally safe from the monster who tried to destroy her. But the nightmare of what happened to her endured through the legal process.

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Vincent Testifies Against Her Attacker in Court

At the hospital, she told the police everything she could remember about her attacker, down to the last tiny details.

“I wanted to make damn certain they knew who he was when they saw his face,” Vincent said in 2023. “I described him like you would describe someone to a blind person.”

About a week later, one of Singleton’s neighbors recognized the police sketch of him and alerted authorities.

Sitting in a courtroom while wearing two prosthetic arms, Mary Vincent looked at the face of the man who tried to kill her, just six months after surviving Singleton’s brutality. She took the stand and told the jury everything he did to her during those violent hours she was held captive in his van.

Lawrence Singleton was found guilty of attempted murder, rape, and a litany of other sexual crimes he committed against Vincent. However, sexual crimes had shockingly lenient sentences in the 1970s. As a result, Singleton was sentenced to just 14 years in prison. This was the maximum sentence allowed at the time.

As he walked out of the courtroom, Vincent says Singleton whispered something to her when he passed:

“If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll finish the job.”

Outrage at Singleton’s Short Prison Sentence

Just 8 years into his prison sentence, Singleton was released for “good behavior.”

National outrage at the short sentencing for such violent and depraved crimes was unleashed across the country, particularly because they were committed against a minor. As a direct result of his lenient sentencing, California’s “Singleton bill” was passed in 1987. Supported by Vincent and other well-known survivors, it carries a 25 year-minimum for perpetrators who commit a crime involving torture.

But that bill became law after Singleton’s sentence ended and could not be applied to him retroactively. Back on the streets, he murdered a woman 9 years after being released.

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Lawrence Singleton Murders Roxanne Hayes After Release

While living in Sulphur Springs, FL, Lawrence Singleton murdered a 31-year-old woman and mother of 3 named Roxanne Hayes in 1997. After a neighbor called 911, police found Singleton covered in blood and arrested him at the scene.

During that murder trial, Mary Vincent chose to testify against him in an effort to finally lock him away for good. Facing her attacker again, now 20 years on, she shared the details of what Singleton did to her on that September night in 1978.

Lawrence Singleton was convicted and sentenced to death in the first-degree murder of Roxanne Hayes. In 2001, he died of cancer while incarcerated.

Mary Vincent’s Advocacy Work for Victims’ Rights

As one of the most publicized survivors of violent crime in the U.S. at the time, Mary Vincent used her platform to draw attention to specific laws and legal loopholes that allow perpetrators escape real justice.

In 1998, Vincent went to Washington, D.C. to testify in favor of a congressional bill called the No Second Chances for Murderers, Rapists, or Child Molesters Act. While appearing in front of members of Congress, Vincent spoke about the attack she survived and how Singleton’s lenient sentence allowed him to kill another woman nearly 20 years after he attempted to murder her. She concluded by saying:

“I have now obtained the long overdue psychological counseling to help me get over my nightmares and fear. Yet, sometimes I still feel like that confused 15-year-old runaway trapped in the body of a 35-year-old mother of two. No one should ever have to go through what I went through or what the children of Roxanne Hayes will go through without their mother.”

Unfortunately (and perhaps unsurprisingly for Congress), this bill died in committee.

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Mary McGriff Now

Today, Mary McGriff is married to her husband, Tony McGriff, and has two adult sons. The 61-year-old lives in a small Washington town, and has never let her status as a double amputee stop her from doing what she wants to do in this life.

As an expert tinkerer, McGriff has crafted her prosthetic arms into technological works of art that can do just about everything her hands could. In fact, her personal additions and changes are so useful to daily living that prosthetics makers want to replicate her work.

In the years after surviving the attack, she faced severe depression, insomnia, and other conditions commonly associated with PTSD. But drawing helped pull her out of depression. Art became her lifeline. McGriff estimates that she has produced 4,000 pieces of art since losing her arms, and has since sold or donated nearly all of them.

And though she no longer pursues the craft today, Mary McGriff says she doesn’t need it anymore to be happy.

“I’m just happy with life,” she said in 2023. “There’s so much out there. It’s beautiful. It’s not a matter of looking for it or making it happen – you just should accept happiness when it does come to you.”

 

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