This man is the reason the death penalty exists (*MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY*)

today's story involves one of the most graphic and upsetting sequences i've ever covered on any story it also involves harm to minors so viewer discretion is advised but before we get into today's story if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format and you come to the right place because that's all we do and we upload two or three times every week so if that's of interest to you please sneak into the like button's house in the middle of the night and unplug their iphone in the middle of a software update also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads alright let's get into today's story [Music] in the 1960s and 1970s hitchhiking became very popular amongst young people in america hitchhiking is a form of transportation where you basically get rides from strangers and so the way it works is a hitchhiker will stand on the side of a busy road and they'll extend their arm out and they'll kind of hold their thumb up which signals to passing motorists that they want to hitchhike that's the kind of universal sign for hitchhiking and then a willing motorist when they see a hitchhiker they'll pull up alongside and offer a ride now today it seems unfathomably dangerous to just hop into a stranger's car or conversely for a motorist to pick up a random stranger on the side of the road but back then this was considered totally normal and socially acceptable and so with that in mind on september 29th 1978 a 15 year old girl named mary vincent was standing on the side of a highway just outside of modesto california which is not far from san francisco california mary was a rebellious teenager who had recently run away from her home in las vegas nevada her parents were going through a very nasty divorce and she just couldn't stand to be in the house anymore and so that's why she had run away and so she had hitchhiked all the way up to los angeles california where her grandfather lived but after only being there for a couple of days she became unbelievably homesick and wanted to go back and be around her parents and her family and so one day when her grandfather was out she slipped out of his house and she began hitchhiking back to las vegas nevada and so she had hitchhiked from los angeles to modesto california that's where the first person was willing to drive her to and so she was on that strip of highway in modesto looking for another ride that could take her farther south she was on this highway with two other young hitchhikers they all had these signs that said going south so they weren't just holding their thumbs out they were holding these signs and so the three of them are huddled in a group they're holding their signs up and at some point mid-afternoon this light blue passenger van that only had one passenger it was the driver he was a 50-something-year-old man he looked pretty harmless he pulled over when he saw their signs and he parked on the side of the road maybe 15 feet ahead of where they were and so mary's companions stayed where they were and mary ran up to this light blue van and she looked through the passenger side window which had been rolled down and she asked this guy hey can you give all three of us a ride we're going south and this man he would look at her and say i can only give you a ride i can't give the other two a ride i can only give you a ride and so mary is confused because she's looking at this guy and she's seeing all the space in his van and she's thinking to herself you know why am i only allowed to go when they're going the same place i'm going and there's plenty of room in this van but when she kind of gently prodded this man and said well you know are you sure you don't you don't mind taking them too he just said look i will take you i will not take them and so mary said okay well hold on let me go back and get my bag and so he stays parked she leaves the van and she runs back to the other two people she was with and you know she explains the situation and they tell her you know mary this is not good there's clearly something off with this guy but mary even though she too shared this kind of reservation about this guy she was so desperate to get home she was so homesick that she couldn't face the idea of having to wait around for another ride which might not come until the next day or the day after because not every motorist is willing to pick up hitchhikers and she just did not want to wait any longer and so she told her companions that guys i'm gonna take the ride and so she says goodbye to her two friends she grabs her bag and she runs back up to the van and she hops in the passenger seat as soon as she sat down and closed the door this man pulled back out onto the road and started driving and then he turned and looked at mary and introduced himself his name was lawrence singleton and he was 50 years old and then mary you know she introduced herself then they have some small talk and very quickly mary feels at ease around lawrence he kind of reminded her of her grandfather he was very nice very polite and so when she started to feel tired pretty early on in their trip she said hey lawrence do you mind if i doze off while you drive and lawrence would say no problem go ahead go to sleep and so mary turned away from lawrence and kind of curled up on the seat and pretty quickly she was asleep a little while later when she woke up she looked out the window and immediately could tell they were going the wrong way so she turns to lawrence and says you know we're going the wrong way and lawrence would say oh you know what i made a mistake i'll get us turned around you know sorry about that i i had no idea but mary's thinking to herself we're really far in the wrong direction there's no way he accidentally did this but she kind of bit her tongue because lawrence would actually turn around and start going in the right direction and so they're traveling in the proper direction for a little while and mary's totally on edge but she's careful not to give that off to lawrence because she doesn't really know this guy and even though he did make her feel comfortable she just doesn't really know what his intentions are and so she's just kind of looking around pretty apprehensively and then they pull into the stretch of highway they kind of ran through this fairly forested area where very few cars were on the stretch of road and lawrence suddenly tells mary that he wants to pull over because he has to go to the bathroom he wants to relieve himself and so mary kind of apprehensively says yeah okay that's fine and so as lawrence is beginning to pull off of the highway mary happens to look down at her feet and she notices one of her shoes is untied and instinctually mary just thought to herself i better make sure that shoe gets tied because i might need to run away from this guy but she didn't want to reach down and start tying her shoe it was kind of awkward because the space was small and she was worried it would be kind of suspicious if she did it and so she thought okay as soon as we pull off i'll get out of the car and i'll tie my shoe and so lawrence he pulls over but he doesn't just pull over onto the shoulder of this road instead he pulls into this access road that kind of trails into the forest and so as soon as he turned onto this road the alarm bells are going off in mary's head she knows something is wrong but she doesn't really know what to say to lawrence because he's not talking to her and she doesn't really want to look at him and so she's just kind of going over in her head what she's going to do is she going to run is she going to confront him she doesn't know and then eventually after about a minute or so when they are far enough away from the main road that no one on that road could see them they're pretty far into this forest lawrence stops the car and he hops out to go relieve himself and immediately mary she hops out of the car too and she bends down to tie her shoe before she could finish tying her shoe suddenly something smacked her hard in the back of the head and it knocked her unconscious it was lawrence he had hid a hammer next to his seat and when he had gotten out he did not go relieve himself instead he walked around the vehicle and smashed her in the head when mary came too she realized she was laying down in the back of the van and as she was looking out the windows she could see that they were still parked out in the middle of the forest and then when she tried to move she realized her hands her feet everything had been tied down to the van she couldn't move and so as she's wondering what's going on lawrence comes around he opens the back doors to this van he hops inside and he begins assaulting her mary has no idea what to do she's a 15 year old kid and this guy is on top of her he's not stopping and so she just began quietly begging him to please stop set me free i won't tell anyone she just kept repeating that over and over and over again and lawrence never spoke back he just continued the assault for hours and hours finally when lawrence got tired he got off of mary and he climbed out of the back of the truck and he went around and he climbed into one of the front seats and he fell asleep and so mary probably tried to free herself from her restraints but there was nothing she could do the restraints were tied too tightly and so for hours she must have just laid there wondering what was going to happen to her and then at some point in the middle of the night lawrence wakes up again and without saying a word to mary he just climbs out of the van and gets into the driver's seat and then drives the van out of the forest he drives on the main road for a little while until he turns down another access road that takes them away from the main road so away from any prying eyes and he comes to a stop somewhere out in this forest in the middle of this big canyon lawrence parks the van he climbs out and walks around to the back he opens up the back doors where mary is laying there whimpering and crying and begging to be set free he climbs inside and her torture continues for hours and hours until the sun finally came up at which point lawrence stopped he climbed out of the back of the van and he's standing out there and he turns around so he's facing mary and he reaches in and he undoes her restraints so he frees her he pulls her out of the van and stands her up on the ground and so she's crying she's beaten she's bloodied she doesn't know what's going on and she just gently says to him please set me free and he says oh you want to be set free i'll set you free and so he walks around this totally destroyed 15 year old girl and he reaches into the back of his van where there's this toolbox and he pulls out a hatchet and so he walks back and he's standing in front of mary and mary would have had a fraction of a second to see what was in his hand before in one fluid motion he reaches and grabs her left arm with his left hand he grabs her on the wrist then he raises his hatchet up and he brings it down on her left forearm severing her arm off right below the elbow and so mary falls backwards to the ground and she looks down at where her left arm just was she's in shock and before she can do anything lawrence just walks over and with his left hand again he reaches over and grabs her right wrist and now mary knows what he's about to do he's still holding this hatchet and so she's screaming and she's kicking him as hard as she can to try to get him off of her but his grip is too strong and then he begins to chop at her right forearm over and over again it would take four hard blows to finally sever her right arm off of her body and so mary falls to the ground in a heap she's bleeding profusely she's screaming in agonizing pain and all lawrence can focus on is that one of mary's amputated hands was clutched on to his left arm when he cut off her left hand it had gripped on onto his arm and now it was stuck to him and so very nonchalantly he began trying to flick this hand off of his arm and then finally when it did come off he turned and looked at mary and realized she had gone silent and she was limp and she was laying in a huge pool of blood and so lawrence put the bloody hatchet back inside of his van and then he just walked over to mary and grabbed her and began dragging her about a hundred feet down the road from the van was a culvert a culvert is a big tunnel that goes underneath roads it allows water and runoff to pass by the road without damaging it and so this particular culvert underneath this access road was built about 30 feet below the surface of the road and so if you were standing on the road over the area where this culvert was if you walked to the edge of the road on either side there would be a 30-foot drop-off down to the opening of this culvert on either side and so lawrence dragged mary all the way over to this section of the road over the culvert and then chucked her lifeless body off the sides smashing it down onto the rocks below and then lawrence walked around very carefully all the way down to her body and stuffed her inside of the actual culvert and then as he was walking away he said to her now you're free after lawrence left mary should have been dead really she should have died at several points along this attack but miraculously mary did not die and in fact she would later say she vividly remembered the entire attack she was fully lucid fully conscious fully aware for the entire thing saved for the moment when she was knocked unconscious by the hammer and so she vividly remembered having her arms amputated and she specifically remembered one particular point in the beginning before her left arm the first arm had been amputated he grabbed her left wrist and she in turn instinctively grabbed with her left hand onto his left arm so she's clutching onto him and so when he came down and cut her arm off she began falling backwards but she remembered thinking to herself why am i falling backwards i just grabbed onto his arm i had a firm grip and then as she's falling it's like time is standing still she literally saw her hand still clutching his arm and saw it had been cut off of her body and then when lawrence cut off her right arm despite being in agonizing pain it's like she instinctively understood that she has to pretend to be dead otherwise she will die and so she went totally limp her eyes were half open and she watched as lawrence is flicking her left hand the one that she thought she had gripped onto when she was falling back she watched as he shook that hand off of his arm and then she was limp as he grabbed her and dragged her the 100 feet to the culvert and she was limp and still and didn't make a sound when he threw her 30 feet down onto jagged rocks and she broke four of her ribs she was in excruciating pain but her will to survive was telling her make no sound take this punishment and you will survive and then after he left she remembers thinking you know i don't know where he is he could be waiting up on the road for me i can't just crawl out and try to save myself because then he might actually finish me off and so she laid in this culvert in this horrible position totally contorted with her arms gone and broken ribs and then finally after a while she started to feel exceptionally tired and that was from blood loss and she said there was a voice in her head telling her you can't go to sleep if you go to sleep you're going to die and if you die we can't catch this monster and he's going to do this to someone else and so she had the surge of adrenaline where she decided i'm going to live i'm going to get out of here i don't know if he's still up there but i have to get out and i have to try to save myself and so somehow she got out of the culvert and then once she was on the ground she dug the nubs of her arms into the dirt and attempted to pack the wound with dirt and mud and then afterwards she raised her arms up over her head because she didn't want the blood and muscles to fall out and so with her mutilated arms up over her head she managed to crawl up this embankment up onto the road she's got no clothes on she's covered head to toe in blood she's in shock and she starts running down the highway and a car would actually come by fairly quickly but they were so startled at what they were seeing they didn't stop and they drove on and so mary would ultimately run three miles on this highway before finally flagging down a passing motorist that happened to be a young couple and after they got over the initial shock of what mary actually looked like they put her inside of their car and they sped to the hospital mary would stay in the hospital for a month and during that time she would give police all this information about her attacker about lawrence singleton and using her very detailed description of him the police were able to come up with a very good composite sketch and lawrence singleton's neighbor happened to see that sketch and they turned him in lawrence was ultimately sentenced to 14 years in prison for what he did to mary it was the maximum sentence that the judge could give the judge wanted to do more but legally they couldn't and so mary she testified at court and so after it all ended and he was sentenced mary was leaving the courthouse and as she passed by lawrence it was the one time she had to be physically close to him he turned and kind of leaned into her and said i will finish the job if it takes me the rest of my life eight years later lawrence was paroled for good behavior and so of course this terrified mary who by now had become a wife and she had two sons and so she's worried that now that this guy is free he's gonna come and finish the job but lawrence would not go after mary instead 10 years after he got out on parole he would attack another woman a 31 year old mother of three named roxanne hayes and unfortunately he would kill her at roxanne's murder trial mary would actually testify against lawrence and her testimony is what they used to secure a death sentence for lawrence but before he could be executed lawrence died of cancer in jail in 2001 when mary heard that lawrence had died she felt very cheated however her sons were very relieved to find out that her attacker had died and so she took some solace in that outrage over lawrence's early release considering what he did to mary and the fact that that early release led to another person being killed led to the creation of the lawrence singleton bill which gives judges the ability to give 25-year to life sentences in cases that involve torture meaning under this bill lawrence would never have gotten out of prison after what he did to mary so that's going to do it guys if you got something out of today's episode and you have not done this already please sneak into the 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Channel: MrBallen

Views: 4,823,081

Keywords: strange, dark, mysterious, true, story, scary, scary story, horror story, disturbing, narration, narrator, storyteller, storytime, storytelling, solved mystery, true crime, Lawrence singelton, Mary Vincent, trauma, traumatic, hatchet, chop, killer, crime, notorious, infamous, california, Los Angeles, hitchhiking, hitchhiker, halloween, spooky, horror, van, teen, teenager, monster, criminal, murderer, murder, mystery, terrible, graphic, graphic content, mature audiences, terrifying, depraved, sociopath, sociopathic, death, die

Id: PiUo8biy0Ok

Length: 18min 55sec (1135 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 07 2021