A New Life for Mary : A Decade After She Was Maimed, Mary Vincent Weds the Man She Loves

In one moment, by vows exchanged, with tears staining her bridal satin, the marriage of Mary Vincent moved her public life closer to a private peace.

“It (life) just began all over again,” she said. In fact, “everything that has been happening lately seems like the beginning of another life, a better life.”

Anything would be better. Ten years ago, Vincent was raped by Lawrence Singleton, who hacked her forearms off with five swings of a hatchet and dumped her to die in Del Puerto Canyon near Sacramento. Singleton, 60, was released from San Quentin in April after serving eight years and four months of a 14-year sentence. Vincent, now 25, has spent a decade picking up the pieces of her life with hooks for hands.

But, on Saturday, on a lawn overlooking a village in the Pacific Northwest, Mary Vincent found one more fragment of a future when she married a man she says can always make her laugh, a red-haired, 23-year-old straw boss of a landscaping crew, and became Mrs. Matthew--well, the first duty of her new husband was to ask that their surname remain undisclosed to further protect their start together.

Deep secrecy surrounded the short, simple, 65-guest garden ceremony at the home of a close, caring family where Vincent rooms in the sub-basement. Only three reporters were invited to attend. Each signed an agreement not to reveal the city nor even the state where Vincent has lived for almost three years.

A check of the area’s Department of Motor Vehicles will reveal no drivers license in the name of Mary Vincent. Her certificate of marriage will not be part of the state record. Both public documents have been sealed at the request of Vincent’s attorney because either could be a trail to the town that has accepted and secluded his client.

“Everyone (in the town) kind of looks out for me, to make sure I’m OK,” Vincent said in a quiet, reflective sit-down with two writers after the wedding ceremony. She says she finally feels safe there. Many residents know who she is but they won’t talk to outsiders. They say they have adopted her. “It’s like I was a gem that walked in here and everyone said, like, this girl’s special, she cares a lot. So we’d better look out for her.

“I’ve never had that feeling in a long time.”

What Mary Vincent has had, by her own description, is a decade of despair that even when condensed and capsulized remains an inconceivable trauma.

There was Singleton’s attack, after which he stuffed her, unconscious, into a concrete pipe. One court document describes the indescribable: “The next morning, two individuals found Mary Vincent wandering nude . . . she was holding up her arms so that the muscles and blood would not fall out.”

While only 16, she re-created every awful second of her assault at Singleton’s trial and again for the inevitable magazine interviewers and researchers for books and television movies that were never written nor produced.

Psychotherapy was for years. Her mother and father separated, he to work in Alaska and join that state’s air national guard, she to Las Vegas as a blackjack dealer. Although fitted and trained for prostheses, Vincent is unskilled, only basically educated, and her employment opportunities negligible. Her total income for 10 years has been $13,000 from California’s Victim of Crimes Act, $6,000 from small donations to a public fund in her name and welfare.

Anger and fear of Singleton was exhumed with his prison release in April and exacerbated by his subsequent written claim of innocence that forms an incredible psychological denial: that he was the victim, that he was kidnaped and held by threats, that Mary Vincent actually had been maimed by two others, not by him.

There was, in 1985, a romance for Mary Vincent. A boy, Luke Matthew Vincent, was born. But there was no marriage to the father. “Luke’s father, he understood me, and I basically understood him,” is Vincent’s view. “But he is like people who want to care about somebody who went through a bad trauma: They can’t cope with the hurt that goes on inside me or any other victim.”

Singleton’s fallout from the 1978 assault was a shortened sentence, rejection by communities wherever he sought to live, isolated death threats, an offer of a one-way ticket out of Florida and, now, almost ironically, a full media pursuit that has forced him into hiding as deeply as his victim.

Yet none of this had any part of Mary Vincent’s weekend wedding.

It was, in fact, an afternoon more normal than she could ever have hoped.

Balloons of lavender and white and writing on paper plates tacked to street posts told friends the directions to “Mary & Matt.” Vincent’s mother and family--except for a brother in Army boot camp and her father who telephoned his love and best wishes from Alaska--were in full attendance. There were sprays and bouquets of silk flowers, attendants in rented frock coats, punch and domestic champagne, two dogs, everybody crying in all the right places, the standard bride-and-groom jokes, metal chairs beneath a hot sun and a baby to shriek in mid-service.

And, on the arm of brother John who would give her away, there came the bride. She wore a picture hat and an empire-line wedding dress in eggshell satin. Leg of mutton sleeves. Veil. Train. Said the neighbor who made the dress: “Mary’s only instructions were that it (the dress) have a train and long sleeves--so they would cover her (artificial) arms.”

A Lutheran minister read of faith, hope and love from the 13th chapter of Corinthians. Two candles were burned and used to light a third and that, he said, symbolized two lives forming a single love of light and warmth.

A Beginning

If there were any specific references to the bride’s past and present, it was coincidental. Of a genesis. Of a new family. Of new beginnings.

Matthew spoke to Mary the words he had prepared: “Mary, I pledge to you from this day forward to always love you, to be understanding and honest with you. You are the light of my life and we will grow old together. . . .”

Mary whispered to Matthew the pledge she had written: “I loved you before I ever met you because when I was a little girl I dreamed there would be a certain man to comfort me, to love me no matter what, the man who would be my best friend. I know I have found that man. . . .”

They stood together. They traded rings. She took her band in her left hook, the one clamping a Kleenex tissue. She held it until the ceremony was through. Then it joined the diamond solitaire engagement ring that she wears on a gold chain around her neck.

What Mary and Matthew have together is the stuff of a thousand young marriages each week in America. He sees in her, he says, a woman of enormous strength, personality and friendship. She sees in him, she says, a stable, uncomplicated influence from a man who has “always tried to put a smile on my face.

“There was an emptiness (in life) and in trying to fill that emptiness I went through a lot of heartbreak, a lot of struggles and everything. But he patched up my wounded heart. He made it all better.”

He wants to go to school--to study aviation electronics. She ‘I’ve always wanted

to express what I’m doing now, what my plans are for the future.’ wants to go to school--to study psychology. They want a home, they want to honeymoon in Hawaii one of these days and they want to forget.

Then why invite even a few members of the press to the wedding?

“Well, whenever I’ve gone into an interview or something, I’ve always been wanting to express what I’m doing now, what my plans are for the future,” she explained. “But everyone is dwelling on what happened, they’re dwelling on the past. Forget the past. And look at what I’ve done with my life.

“Most people, if they ever put their mind in the position where something like this had happened to them, they would probably still be in the hospital now, being a big vegetable.

“But I’ve accomplished so much in my life. I need to share that, letting them (the public) know that this isn’t going to get me down and that nothing will.”

Then this wedding may well be a final public appearance?

“Probably. I want to just be myself and start all these goals of mine and accomplish them.”

Yet as the public presence of Mary Vincent fades, the images of her past will continue to rise as legal hearings and decisions press her attacker.

Civil Debt

For although Singleton may have paid the traditional debt to society, insists attorney Mark Edwards, “he has yet to begin to pay his civil debt to Mary Vincent.”

Edwards, 38, of Edwards, Chambers & Hoffman of Tustin, was an appreciated guest at Saturday’s ceremony--he first represented Vincent in her 1982 court challenge against the California Board of Control.

Earlier, the Board had ruled that Vincent--as a minor, as a victim whose medical costs had been paid in part by her parent’s group insurance policy, as a Nevada resident at the time of the assault--was ineligible for benefits under the California Victims of Crime Act.

Edwards won a new ruling. His client received $13,000.

And last year, in answer to a civil damages suit filed by Vincent, a Nevada court ordered Singleton to pay his victim $2.5 million.

To date, Singleton has paid nothing.

So Edwards is chasing him. Hard.

“What we’re interested in doing with Mr. Singleton is asking him under oath, what his ability to respond (pay) is,” explained Edwards. “Obviously, as an inmate in a state prison system he was given a per diem allowance for whatever work he had done. He was former Merchant Marine and may very well have a pension or pension benefits.”

The legal position, he said, is simple.

Mary Vincent, unemployed, barely employable, unskilled and disabled “is living off Social Security and the charity of others.”

Lawrence Singleton, by his conviction, has a civil obligation to her, and “if he can pay so much as $50 a month toward her maintenance . . . that is $50 more than she has today and that is significant.”

At Edward’s initiation, Singleton was ordered to appear in June at an Orange County hearing that would examine his ability to pay any portion of the judgment.

Singleton’s Fears

Said Edwards: “Lawrence Singleton called me on the telephone and he said . . . he would appear at the judgment debtor’s exam provided that I would notify the governor’s office or the local authorities to, in his words, ‘call out the militia,’ because he was afraid that he would be shot.”

Edwards says he certainly didn’t want that.

“There are some allegedly well-meaning citizens out there who feel that they would be doing society a favor by putting a bullet in Lawrence Singleton,” continued the attorney. “But we don’t want him shot. We want him alive, healthy, employed and making payments.”

Singleton, however, did not show for the hearing. Instead, Edwards said, Singleton wrote a letter quoting a section of the California Code that, in his cell-block lawyer legalese, “appears to state that this type of action should be brought against Debtor in the County that the debtor resides in.”

Superior Court Commissioner Ronald Bauer agreed.

The examination was pulled.

And Singleton--whose letter had listed his Northern California probation office as a return address--immediately went underground.

But Edwards’ private investigator recently found Singleton living near Tampa, Fla. Fresh contact has been made.

“We’re negotiating with an intermediary for an alternative to chasing this fellow (Singleton) around all over the country,” said Edwards. “These negotiations are currently in the middle of discussion, and, if they work, great, if they don’t, then we will refer the matter to attorneys in Florida.”

Contingency Fee

Edwards is handling Vincent’s case on a contingency basis of “between 25% and 30%” of her $2.5-million judgment. Yet even if he realizes a fee, he said, money is far from being his only motive.

“I like Mary Vincent and I like her a lot,” he said. “When I got to know her in 1980, I found that her personality and her ability to deal with her disability were so positive, it was almost infectious.”

She would make a point of offering to carry his briefcase with her hooks. At an airport terminal, she would fetch and carry his coffee “to show that maybe it’s a disability that affects other people . . . but that she is doing her best to live a normal active life.”

Then, he says, there is the professional challenge of the case.

He knows that few California attorneys are willing to file claims under the Victim of Crimes Act when $500 is the maximum attorney’s fee allowed by law.

Similarly, attorneys are reluctant to pursue civil judgments against criminals when “the obvious becomes that nine out of ten (criminals), if not more, would not have the financial lability to respond (pay).”

So a hurt population continues to grow, a community of crime victims in a society where “families can’t help them, insurance companies won’t and governments shouldn’t.

“It’s too bad that . . . there aren’t enough lawyers to represent them all,” he said. “But, honestly, the financial practicality of being able to do that just isn’t in the cards.”

Selective Coverage

By selective media coverage (he has turned down requests to interview Vincent from the “Donahue” show, “Geraldo,” “60 Minutes,” “AM America” and “Oprah!”), by suggesting an editorial emphasis on the future of Mary Vincent, not her past, Edwards hopes to build a public focus on “the legal issue at stake that may establish a precedent for other victims.”

He also wants to add new donations to the Mary Vincent Fund, c/o Edwards, Chambers & Hoffman, 17541 17th St., Tustin, CA 92680.

For he is not optimistic about positive resolution of the legal issue.

“I’m afraid that if and when Mr. Singleton shows up in a court of law, we are going to find that he has very little by way of assets,” surmised Edwards. “He is going to profess his ‘love’ for Mary Vincent and he will make promises to make it up to her.

“And be unable to deliver.”

But, he says, win, lose or nolo contendere, there will be an ascending level of normalcy for Mary Vincent.

“Particularly knowing that, but for the grace of God, she could be dead 10 years now.”