Survival of Mary Vincent
This episode is the extraordinary survival story of Mary Vincent. Picture a two-lane highway outside of Modesto, California. It's late September, 1978, and a girl is walking down the center of that highway. Mary is only 15-years-old. She’s naked, and she’s covered in blood with her arms pointed straight up to the sky.
She might only be a teenager, but she instinctively knows that if she doesn't keep her arms elevated, she is going to bleed to death on this road. A few hours earlier, a man used a hatchet to cut off both of her forearms and then threw her into a ravine to die.
Her attacker, Lawrence Singleton, hoped Mary would die in the canyon he threw her down. Her story is about resilience as much as survival.
Photo Credits: Tony Lopez/St. Petersburg Times, Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office, Melina Mara/AP, Peter Cosgrove/AP, Ron Wurzer/ Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Florida Department of Corrections
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