After Years of Fear, a New Life

Because Mary Vincent doesn’t have hands, she can’t wear a wedding ring. So her new husband bought a big diamond on a thick silver chain she can wear around her neck. When they go for romantic walks in the park, he holds one of the metal hooks attached to each of her 5-pound prosthetic arms.

It was 21 years ago when Vincent, then a 15-year-old hitchhiker, was picked up by the now-notorious Lawrence Singleton. He beat her in the head with a hammer, raped her and cut her forearms off with a hatchet. He left her for dead in a drainage ditch near Modesto.

She’ll never be able to put change in her jeans pocket. She’ll never hold her son’s face in her hands. She’ll never have a manicure. There are many things that she’ll never do. But she’s clung to the hope that she would get her self-esteem back, that she would fall in love and maybe help other victims of violent crime.

In the end, after years of living in fear, unable to look strangers in the face and dwindling to 98 pounds, Vincent has slowly gained back her health and confidence and is preparing to step into the public arena as a victims-rights activist.

With the help of her new husband, an investigator with the Orange County district attorney’s office, Vincent has settled in Anaheim Hills and this month formed the Mary Vincent Foundation. The couple hope the foundation eventually will help victims of traumatic crime, particularly children, with medical and other expenses.

Her campaign begins Monday with a speech in Ventura County.

“I don’t want anything this bad to happen to anyone else,” Vincent said one recent evening, stirring a pot of pasta with a spatula wedged in her right hook.

Although doctors were able to save Vincent’s life after her unspeakable trauma, it didn’t seem like much of a life for years. Listless and depressed, she moved from town to town, unskilled and unable to hold down a job.

“I couldn’t even lift my head up,” she said. “I was too afraid.”

She won a $2.5-million judgment against Singleton, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for raping and mutilating her, but never collected a cent from the former merchant seaman. She did receive $13,000 from a California victims fund but survived mostly on welfare and donations from strangers who read about her case and sent in money.

Singleton was released after eight years for good behavior. He is now on death row for stabbing a 31-year-old woman to death in 1997 in Tampa, Florida.

Meanwhile, Vincent moved to Washington state, where she married a landscaper in 1987.

Vincent was terrified that Singleton would find her and kill her, “finish the job,” as he promised he would do at his first trial. She blames the stress of learning that Singleton was set free for the divorce that ended her first marriage after three years.

She couldn’t eat and ended up a skeletal 98 pounds. She was paralyzed with fear whenever she left her house. After her divorce, she and her two boys, Alan and Luke, moved into an unheated, abandoned gas station in Gig Harbor, a small town near Tacoma.

“I didn’t have my self-esteem,” she said. “If someone came around the corner, I’d jump.”

Last year, in an effort to change her life, Vincent moved from the cloudy Northwest to sunny Orange County. She found a cheap apartment in Tustin and got her first paying job, a clerical position at the Orange County district attorney’s office.

It was then that her life began to stabilize, Vincent said. She began to think about using her experience with suffering to help other victims of crime.

And after she testified in the Tampa case against Singleton, giving her national exposure that prompted many around the nation to send her donations, Vincent had $5,000 to start a foundation to support that goal.

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It was in the district attorney’s office that she met Tom Wilson, the man who loves her despite her disabilities and who gives her shoulder rubs when the leather straps that secure her artificial arms cut into her skin.

Wilson, 52, an investigator in the prosecutor’s office, has encouraged her to speak out in public about her disfigurement and shares her passion for victims’ rights.

Once married but single for 13 years before he married Vincent, Wilson said it was her 500-watt smile--and her vulnerability--that attracted him to her.

In their airy new condo one recent evening, the two of them cuddle on the couch before she serves dinner. He helps her untie her apron and she grabs the salad and plates and carries them to the table, giving him a tender kiss on his forehead.

Vincent is relieved to have Wilson serve as her bodyguard and her manager for the public speaking she is going to undertake in the next year. She hasn’t spoken in public for more than 15 years, when a friend persuaded her to speak at a high school and she was heckled by a teenager who yelled, “You got what you deserved.”

For many years, she believed that.

Now, this 36-year-old woman who used to dress only in pullover sweats has a whole new wardrobe--Wilson helps her with the tricky buttons and zippers--and a new outlook on life.

“I needed to know that I was loved and that I’d be given a chance by another human being,” Vincent said.

She said Wilson has helped her be more playful, walk with better posture and keep her chin up in public.

The couple live on a hill in Anaheim where they have a spectacular view of the Saddleback Mountains.

She spends the day taking care of her two sons and working on charcoal sketches, something she’s done since December when Wilson bought her an easel and set up an art studio for her in their loft.

Vincent still bears the marks of her past. She is easily startled by unexpected noises, jumping when Wilson accidentally turns on a garbage disposal instead of a light in the kitchen, for example.

She stays close by Wilson’s side, dependent not only physically but emotionally. She wants him with her when she walks over to the balcony. She wants him to open all her mail, to answer all her calls.

And she fights recurring nightmares, half-remembered visions of crawling on her elbows out of the concrete culvert where Singleton left her for dead.

But the violent dreams are beginning to taper off, Vincent said. Her new focus on helping other crime victims has helped her regain perspective on a difficult life.

“Even when it wasn’t going so well, it was better than death,” she said.

Vincent’s first speech is sponsored by the Port Hueneme Police Department and will be Monday at 7 p.m. at the Community Center, 555 Park Ave., in Port Hueneme. Information: (805) 986-6543.