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44 - Mary Vincent and Aimo Koivunen
44 Plays21 days ago
This week, Jeff and Sam bring you two incredible survival stories.
Jeff shares the story of Mary Vincent, who miraculously survived a violent attack while hitchhiking in 1978 and went on to become a powerful advocate and artist.
Sam tells the unbelievable tale of Aimo Koivunen, a Finnish soldier in WWII who survived extreme conditions after accidentally overdosing on meth.
Enjoy!
📢 Visit us on Linktree for the collection of links, Instagram, or email us at downtherabbitholepod@gmail.com.
Jeff's sources:
- The Untold Story of Roxanne Hayes: A Life Cut Short by the "Mad Chopper" Killer
- Mary Vincent (artist) - Wikipedia
- Lawrence Singleton - Wikipedia
- Mary Vincent: A Life of Survival
Sam's sources:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Info
00:00:00
Jeff Rogers
Hello, Sam. Hi, Jeff.
00:00:25
Jeff Rogers
Do you have anything else, Sam? Is there anything else? No, I'm good. I'm settled. Okay, good. Welcome to Down the Rabbit Hole. This is Jeff and Sam. I'm Jeff. And I'm Sam. And just right when we went to hit record, the moment I hit record, there's a whole 10 steps that happened before you record.
00:00:42
Jeff Rogers
The moment that I hit record, Sam was like, Wait. So then I stopped. Now we're here. It was such a moment panic. It was a moment. It was a moment.
00:00:54
Jeff Rogers
ah Thank you for listening, people. you can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, and
The Vortex of Fuckery: Show Theme Discussion
00:01:00
Jeff Rogers
Amazon. Wherever you get your podcast, we are there. Share us with the world.
00:01:05
Jeff Rogers
You can reach out to us and find us on Instagram at downtherabbitholdepod, you can send us a message on Gmail down the rabbi pod at at gmail.com.
Leisure, Guilt, and Daily Life
00:01:14
Jeff Rogers
and um welcome to the vortex of fuckery this is sam's vortex of fuckery um you're absolutely a part of that i am i guess it's jeff and sam's vortex should that be the name of the show vortex of fuckery two um two competing airstreams there but what's new um i didn't see you yesterday
00:01:38
Jeff Rogers
and we didn't even I didn't do anything yesterday. Not even a little bit. In fact, I took the longest nap in the afternoon. oh was it lovely? Yeah, I was exhausted. I don't even know why I was so tired.
00:01:51
Jeff Rogers
I've been i've been yeah too. Like Tuesday and Wednesday, i was beat. But yesterday, i mean it was beautiful outside, so...
00:02:03
Jeff Rogers
I know. Did it work out and then went outside late in the sun. That's a little guilt for being like taking a nap while it was so pretty
Movie Review: Anora
00:02:11
Jeff Rogers
outside, you know? She's got learn how to sleep in the sun. Yep.
00:02:14
Jeff Rogers
That's what do. um Just like this. Exactly. That's the way to do it. They call it lizard naps. But I was okay. I took a big nap. I watched some TV last night. i Honestly, okay, wait.
00:02:27
Jeff Rogers
Stop. Rewind. Flip it. Reverse it. Reverse it. A good one. What did you think of the movie Anora? Because I think on the last show we were leaving to go see
Crimes of Lawrence Singleton
00:02:37
Jeff Rogers
Anora that night.
00:02:39
Jeff Rogers
Give me your thoughts. I mean, I know your thoughts, but give these lovely people that are listening your thoughts on the movie Anora.
00:02:49
Jeff Rogers
ah there's no gentle way to say it it was fucking amazing it was so well done and i know that we've talked about this we talked to kim about it afterwards but you know it's it's described as this cinderella story right um but there's something that happens in the movie where It's just, there's a twist that happens and you kind of want things to to go a certain way and then something else happens and ah you're going, oh, wait a second. I kind of like that idea.
00:03:25
Jeff Rogers
And she such a fucking badass. Oh my God, she was a badass. like And the ah the whole reason why I wanted to see this movie was because that man, i don't know his name, the producer, the one that edited the movie, sea Sean Baker, I think that's his name, Sean got up and he won three Oscars that night.
00:03:45
Jeff Rogers
I don't even really care for the Oscars. I just watched it. And he ah won three Oscars. And in one of his speeches, he thanked the sex workers whom he had interviewed for because they told them they told his their stories to him. They shared their stories with him.
00:04:04
Jeff Rogers
And he thanked them for it. And I was like, wow, that's fucking awesome that he thanked the sex workers. And that helped make this movie, which I found to be so refreshing.
00:04:17
Jeff Rogers
Honestly, we laughed for the first hour. It was like a little bit of... It was hilarious for the first hour. and then at the second hour, you're like, what?
00:04:28
Jeff Rogers
It was so good. It was so, so good. Yeah. Definitely not a family movie. um If you're dating somebody new, maybe don't take them to it. Awkward. Yeah. um But, you know, if you're and a platonic half-marriage like Jeff and I are, it was perfect.
00:04:46
Jeff Rogers
It was... Yeah. And you could tell, you could tell that he did such a good job. Amen. And the actors, i don't even know the Russian people that were in the movie.
00:04:58
Jeff Rogers
They were great. I'm obsessed with that. They were great. And the woman that played in Nora, ah feel bad because i don't even know her name right now, but she was fantastic in the movie. What a good experience. And I can tell you it was a good experience because there were five of us that went that night.
00:05:13
Jeff Rogers
And we all walked out of the theater smiling because that just made us feel so good. It was something. It was a positive experience. It was great. Yeah. it was ah It was. We went to dinner beforehand as well at night.
00:05:30
Jeff Rogers
Some Italian food. So good. Your favorite. we We gave the the poor waiter such a hard time because we're sarcastic and flat and
Mary Vincent: Survival and Testimony
00:05:42
Jeff Rogers
deadpan ah sometimes. But also he was sarcastic and he gave it back, which I love that. Yeah, he did. And by hard time, I mean we were just st joking with him. He was lovely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We weren't actually assholes. Can you imagine being one of those assholes that are mean to – Take this back.
00:05:58
Jeff Rogers
Please. yeah. Yeah. To all you that are that way. I get that that's you. But just don't come into my vortex of fuckery. Have some self-awareness.
00:06:10
Jeff Rogers
You're an asshole to people that serve you food. I don't know. Have a little self-awareness, right? How's that spit taste? Exactly.
00:06:20
Jeff Rogers
Goodbye, Earl. Goodbye, Earl. Okay. um are Are we there? Are we done talking? Oh, no, I did. So i kind of started a show last night.
00:06:31
Jeff Rogers
How do you have so much room for all these shows? I literally didn't do anything yesterday and I was bored last night. And I was somebody at Orange Theory yesterday, the coach, Allie, she recommended a show on Hulu.
00:06:45
Jeff Rogers
I'm putting it on my list. Called Paradise. I've seen that advertised. Yes, it's it's a little bit great music. Interesting storyline.
00:06:56
Jeff Rogers
A little bit dystopian. um yeah you don't really understand what's happening like you finished the first episode and but at least me maybe i'm not that smart i finished the first episode and i was like what okay what just happened you know okay and then you go a little bit further on into the second show and you kind of understand what you're it's really interesting i like it i'm gonna watch the third one tonight maybe the fourth one Okay, well, it's on my list.
00:07:25
Jeff Rogers
That is a long list, but you keep reading Harry Potter, so I don't think you're going to get there. I have nothing to say to that. There's nothing wrong with me rereading Harry Potter for the 900th time. lot of people agree with you on that.
00:07:38
Jeff Rogers
Yeah. I don't think there's anything wrong with it either. My sister goes, because I've been reading all of her romanticcy, epic romanticcy, whatever, like dragon smut books, right? um Love them.
00:07:49
Jeff Rogers
Very, very pleased with what she's introduced me to. Okay, I love the word dragon smut. The description dragon smut. mean, there's no other way to describe it. I probably did that wrong. So for all of those romanticcy people in the world, I'm sorry if I offended you.
00:08:04
Jeff Rogers
But um so i just kind of needed a ah ah break from that. so ah to So I was like, oh, like what better palate cleanser than Harry Potter?
00:08:16
Jeff Rogers
My sister goes, what? That is a seven book palate cleanser. That's not what a palate cleanser is, Sam. Like you need a book that's just going to reset you. And I said, yeah, but... Harry Potter, so of course I'm gonna do it.
00:08:30
Jeff Rogers
The Covenant of Water. That's 900 pages. It's so not gonna be your type of book. Also not a palate cleanser. You need something that's just gonna like wash your brain out and just like make you not think. And Harry Potter, i know it so well at this point that there are times where I'm like, don't even know if I actually read that page. I think I just read the top and the bottom and like filled in the so rest of my memory.
00:08:54
Jeff Rogers
I've read those. Long time ago, i read those. Ashley bought me the set. Yes, that comes in the little more trunk. Yeah, i have that. Okay, are you ready do this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so, first and foremost, what are you drinking? I'm drinking a bubbly.
00:09:11
Jeff Rogers
ah Blue pomegranate. Blueberry pomegranate. Ooh, I am drinking a bubbly Bellini Bliss. I thought you would like that. I think I will, too. All right.
00:09:25
Jeff Rogers
Here we go. um And who we're there. Listen to the fizz. I like the fizz.
00:09:37
Jeff Rogers
Should we cheers, Quiz? We should always cheers, Quiz. Cheers, Quiz. How does it taste?
00:09:47
Jeff Rogers
That is delightful. Great. That is delightful. Way to go, Bubbly. Yeah, that's good. They've they've impressed us the past couple times. but We're also drinking a tropical smoothie.
Mary's Life Post-Attack
00:10:00
Jeff Rogers
Detox Island Goddess or whatever. that what you got to? you got the same thing? Because any of the other ones has like 400 carbs in it and God bless. Not Chris approved. Not Chris approved. and Not Chris approved. No, not nearly enough protein for the amount of carbs. I love the text he sent us today. Oh, that made me so happy.
00:10:21
Jeff Rogers
Okay, and now we flip a coin. oh it's April. um my God, this show comes out in April. Oh, I'm so happy. You just looked at your watch like, is it?
00:10:33
Jeff Rogers
Is it April? It's not yet. Not In case anyone was wondering. This is April 3rd. That's when the show comes out. You will have already gone on your little trip to an island in the middle of nowhere.
00:10:46
Jeff Rogers
going to come back just so relaxed and working my way every step closer to being one of those old wrinkly little leather handbags. I can't wait. Perfect.
00:10:58
Jeff Rogers
Life goals. Uh-huh. There you go. Okay. Coin time. And stop. Oh, the good old school one from the Switzerland festival.
00:11:10
Jeff Rogers
So it's like the cork board or cardboard or whatever it is. So you are going to be the Deport Jetton Buffon.
00:11:21
Jeff Rogers
Oh, I think I've been that one before. have. I'm just the blank one. I'm just
00:11:28
Jeff Rogers
And she dropped it. It went so much farther than was thinking. And now she's looking for the coin. that is so far away.
00:11:38
Jeff Rogers
I think your hip's going to pop out. Honestly, it almost What side did it land on? It landed on you. How does it always land on me? It's just, it's your cosmic fabulosity. Speaking of cosmic fabulosity, you set me right up for that one. Did you see that those two astronauts are back on Earth? They went there for 10 days. They got stuck there for nine months.
00:11:58
Jeff Rogers
Yo, that would be us. Never go. I'm not going to say never. Planning a trip to space after the trip to London and our detour along the way. It was all fun, but jokingly.
00:12:12
Jeff Rogers
I'm hard pressed to go to space with you. some like Some shit like that would happen us. Listen, we'll make up for it in Alabama, okay? Okay. Perfect. um Okay. Are you ready?
00:12:23
Jeff Rogers
Indeed. Are you ready? No. Yeah, I am. Jesus, he's so dramatic. Please go, sir. Okay. Thank you for your permission.
00:12:36
Jeff Rogers
Sometimes court documents are kind of boring. In the experience of witnesses, law officers, victims, and defendants, it's their experience presented at the trial, right?
00:12:48
Jeff Rogers
Feelings and sensations are irrelevant, so they're left out. Emotions and guesses, left out. Moments inherently complicated where boundaries of the law are tested, they have to be stripped bare.
00:13:02
Jeff Rogers
You have to be objective and impartial. That's how the law should work, right? Take one but particular document randomly archived that details a trial, one that surrounded an incident on February afternoon in 1997.
00:13:17
Jeff Rogers
Listed under the state's case, an eyewitness account given by a house painter working in Florida in a suburb detailed what he saw through the window of a home that he was hired to work on. A man, the homeowner, strangling a naked woman.
00:13:32
Jeff Rogers
The account recalls the bone-crushing sounds that came each time that the man struck her, but it didn't articulate just how it felt for the painter to kick at the front door as he heard the woman crying for help.
00:13:46
Jeff Rogers
In the same section, the notes of the officer called to the home marked his arrival time at 6.23, but the notes didn't say what the officer felt when his knock at the door was answered by and elderly man in boxers and an unbuttoned shirt with blood smeared across his chest.
00:14:04
Jeff Rogers
It documents the jittered excuses the old man gave, ah disagreement with his girlfriend, an accident chopping those vegetables, before the officer forced his way through the door, through the home, to find the body of a woman lying face down.
00:14:18
Jeff Rogers
It doesn't say whether the sight of her closed eyes gave him any hope that she may be conscious, or whether her skin was still warm or had gone cold by the time he tried and failed to respond.
00:14:31
Jeff Rogers
The victim was Roxanne Hayes, and she had been stabbed seven times. But the journalists who discovered the story weren't reporting on it. They weren't really interested in Roxanne.
00:14:43
Jeff Rogers
Roxanne was a mother of three kids, and she was also a sex worker. And unfortunately, sex workers are often overlooked. They were more interested in the man who had committed the violent crime, and his name was Lawrence Singleton.
00:14:58
Jeff Rogers
Because 20 years earlier, Singleton had committed another violent crime, and the victim, Mary, she wasn't surprised at all. There was a little bit of pain in Mary's voice when she heard, and she responded by saying, he destroyed everything about me.
00:15:16
Jeff Rogers
So this is the survival story of Mary Vincent. You do love your yourself a survival story. I do, I do. It's a good setup, I like this. So nearly 20 years earlier, in September of 1978, Mary was standing on the side of the road. She was somewhere in Berkeley, California.
00:15:34
Jeff Rogers
She had a sign in her hand saying that she was headed south. She faced the direction of oncoming traffic, determined to hitch a ride. Mary was from Las Vegas. She was a middle child in a military family of seven children.
00:15:47
Jeff Rogers
She was the lead dancer in a show called Lido de Paz. Perry, a prestigious cabaret who frequently skipped school and liked breaking her parents' rules. She was also a scared child who ran away at 15 to save her own life when her sister said, Dad's coming home with a migraine and he's in a rage and he's going to direct it all toward you, Mary.
00:16:08
Jeff Rogers
From there, she traveled to California. In the summer of that year, Mary, who was 15 or 16 at the time, went from place to place place, from person to person, as if constantly searching for a place to claim her own.
00:16:21
Jeff Rogers
She spent some hot nights in the car of her short-lived boyfriend near San Francisco until he was arrested for rape of another teenage girl. Mind you, that boyfriend was 26 and marries 15 or 16, so we know what he is.
00:16:37
Jeff Rogers
She lived with an uncle just outside of Santa Cruz, and on that fateful September evening, there she was, ready to hitchhike to Los Angeles. Do you know this story? Okay. Okay.
00:16:51
Jeff Rogers
After a while, a man driving a blue van pulled over next to Mary, who stood beside two other hitchhikers. All three of them were hoping to go in the same direction and hoping to get a ride together.
00:17:02
Jeff Rogers
The driver was older, he had a big belly, and to Mary he looked like a grandpa type of figure. He didn't tell her his name, so she only knew him as the man offering her a ride that would take her south on I-5 freeway.
00:17:16
Jeff Rogers
This was Larry Singleton. the man was noticeable The van that he was in was noticeably empty with space for all three travelers. Yet he insisted on only taking Mary, saying had just enough room for her and her alone.
00:17:30
Jeff Rogers
While the two weren't offered a ride, the other two weren't offered a ride, they told Mary not to go with him. Mary ignored their are concerns. She got into the passenger seat. She ignored the two-gallon milk jugs that he had filled with alcohol before hitting the road.
00:17:45
Jeff Rogers
and the way he drank them as he drove toward I-5. She ignored the passes he made at her as he tried to pull close to her before she moved out of his reach. Exhausted, she ignored the warning signs.
00:17:59
Jeff Rogers
You know, and not that is not to at all victim blame, but sometimes in like Mary, you gotta to do what you gotta to do to get to where you need to go, and that's all she was doing. Instead, she settled in and she fell asleep.
00:18:12
Jeff Rogers
When she woke up, it was dark outside. She looked up through the windshield and she started to panic. You're going the wrong way and you know you're going the wrong way. Above them, the road signs told her that they were headed toward Nevada, the opposite direction that he promised.
00:18:29
Jeff Rogers
Angry and afraid, Mary felt like she was feeling around under her seat and she felt a stick, so she held it in front of him. She said, turn around right now. He did as she asked. He turned around, only soon to pull over and stop, telling her he needed to pee before he got out of the car, like he was going to get out of the car to relieve himself.
00:18:51
Jeff Rogers
As he walked away, she looked down and realized that one of her shoes was untied. She was sure if she could outrun him, She could outrun the old man if she had to, but her show her shoes would need need to be tied.
00:19:04
Jeff Rogers
Stepping out of the car, she bent over and began to loop the laces together. She stooped down, her gaze lowered, and she did not see him coming up behind her. Singleton struck Mary in the head with a sledgehammer.
00:19:18
Jeff Rogers
Mary woke up in the back of the van, having been knocked out. Now she's tied up, completely naked, with the driver hovering over her. He began sexually assaulting her, over and over, ignoring her cries, her pleas to be set free, her promises not to tell any anyone if he did.
00:19:35
Jeff Rogers
Stopping to sleep for a short period of time, or maybe to drive to the nearby canyon, each time returning to assault her once again. Mary was awake for it all, unable to escape her constraints, even...
00:19:48
Jeff Rogers
as he slept she watched the sun begin to rise the light of it inevitably seeping through the windows of the div van as morning came the man pulled mary out from the back seat and removed the rope from around her he looked at her and said you want to be free i'll set you free and then he pulled out a hatchet pulling pulling back the hatchet striking below her elbow in just three swings he cut off her left arm Mary felt the shock of the pain, hot, slick blood run down her body as she fell to the ground.
00:20:22
Jeff Rogers
He started to cut into her right arm, but it took a lot longer. As she began to kick and scream and grab him, she hoped desperately that someone might hear her screams. but when she was finished But when he was finished, she grew still.
00:20:37
Jeff Rogers
Her blood spilled across the pavement. From where she was lying on the ground, she could see him flicking his arm back and forth the width of his body. She's laying on the ground.
00:20:47
Jeff Rogers
She didn't understand what he was doing until she saw his right ah her right arm attached to his forearm. So now he severed both of her arms.
00:20:59
Jeff Rogers
And her right arm still had a grip on his forearm. But she's laying on the ground. she didn't This was hard for her brain to process. Understandably. Right? So now both arms are gone.
00:21:12
Jeff Rogers
Maybe she looked dead. Perhaps that's why he picked her up and tossed her off of the edge of the road over a 30-foot canyon cliff. She went all the way down to the bottom of the 30-foot canyon.
00:21:24
Jeff Rogers
Then he climbed down after her and he stuffed her into a nearby drainage culvert before climbing back up.
00:21:33
Jeff Rogers
Against the cool concrete that encased her body, Mary was barely alive. Four ribs broke in her 30-foot fall, but she continued and she continued to bleed at bleed out from her arms, not knowing if the man had left her to die or if she was if he was still waiting for her.
00:21:50
Jeff Rogers
She was tired and she was cold. She wanted to close her eyes, and she wanted to go to sleep, to let go. but she heard a voice in her head. I can't go to sleep.
00:22:00
Jeff Rogers
He's going to do this to somebody else, and I can't let that happen. Moving her way out of the culvert, she stuck up what remained of her arms into the earth of the canyon.
00:22:12
Jeff Rogers
The mixture of blood and dirt created a mud bandage that she somehow knew would slow the bleeding. Then she began to climb. By the end, she reached the cliff's edge,
00:22:24
Jeff Rogers
It was night. By the time that she reached the top of the cliff, it was night. Her attacker was gone and the road was empty. A memory came to her of cutting her finger as a child and her mother said, hold it above your heart to slow the bleeding.
00:22:37
Jeff Rogers
Standing alongside of the road, she lifted what was left of her arms over her head. She walked for nearly three miles. She followed the sound of the nearby highway. The only light was the night sky.
00:22:50
Jeff Rogers
In the distance, she saw headlights, a convertible with two young men. She could see and she could hear them getting closer. She knew that they saw they saw her too.
00:23:02
Jeff Rogers
As she stood in the road waiting, instead of slowing down, they sped up. so They intentionally passed her. Naked, caked in dirt and blood, with her severed arms held high, she was afraid that she was going to die.
00:23:17
Jeff Rogers
Not from her injuries alone, but because she was too horrifying to approach. Then again, she saw headlights. This time, an old truck. It came.
00:23:29
Jeff Rogers
It slowed down. It stopped. The front doors opened. It was a couple on their honeymoon who had gotten lost, stepped out, and led her back to their car. Across the back seat, Mary could hear the tires of the truck's pill as they sped off down the road.
00:23:45
Jeff Rogers
a phone call later, Mary was airlifted to the hospital. She was told that she had lost over half of the blood in her body. While the blood that remained became toxic or septic,
00:23:57
Jeff Rogers
In her attack, the body her body and her mind had been torn, drained, and poisoned. Yet somehow she held on to both of them. 10 days later, with the description Mary had given as she recovered in the hospital, police identified and arrested her attacker where he lived.
00:24:15
Jeff Rogers
she they did They came up to her, the police sketch artist, and they said, can you tell me what he looks like? Based on the description she gave to that man and the thing that he drew,
00:24:27
Jeff Rogers
they immediately identified him. His neighbor saw this on the news and called and was like, that is my neighbor, Lawrence Singleton.
00:24:38
Jeff Rogers
um Lawrence Singleton and the atrocities he committed toward Mary Vincent quickly became the worst kind of infamous. single Singleton described Mary as a drugged out call girl who threatened to hurt him and say that he he raped her.
00:24:54
Jeff Rogers
If he didn't do as she asked, he would insist that in reality, two other hitchhikers he picked up were Mary's true attackers. And he was entirely framed for the crimes that he was charged with.
00:25:06
Jeff Rogers
That was he was the real victim.
Legacy of Trauma and Empowerment
00:25:08
Jeff Rogers
This insufferable defense, along with the inarguably shocking and gruesome nature of the attack, left him depicted and dismissed as a one dimensional monster.
00:25:18
Jeff Rogers
Once more, scattered hints and implications only form a splintered image. His alcohol problem began when he was stationed in Korea and would follow him throughout his life, ending his first marriage in 1971, continuing on to his second in 1976.
00:25:34
Jeff Rogers
He was an angry drunk, and that would be aimed at the women around him, ultimately ending his relationship with his daughter. He would then divorce from his second wife, a year later, meaning that this attack would have occurred the same year that his wife left him.
00:25:52
Jeff Rogers
Years later, psychologists, ah psychological evaluations conducted on Singleton would find evidence of atypical psychosis, traits of a personality disorder, and damage in all measurable regions of the brain.
00:26:05
Jeff Rogers
Six months after her attack her attacker's arrest, wearing a prosthetic, two prosrate prosthetics that she had been fitted for, Mary stepped into a San Diego courthouse and faced Singleton for the first time since he tried to kill her.
00:26:19
Jeff Rogers
On the witness stand, she was terrified. Her attacker sat only a few feet away as she reopened all of her wounds. When she was finished testifying, her only exit forced her to move directly past Singleton.
00:26:34
Jeff Rogers
Now he was just inches away, and as she walked past, he whispered to her, if it's the last thing I do, i will finish the job. Oof.
00:26:45
Jeff Rogers
yeah Fucked up, right? The hushed, deadly threat had Mary turning pale and running out of the courtroom. And her fears only increased when she heard the sentence. Despite being convicted of attempted murder, kidnapping, rape, sodomy, forced oral copulation, and aggravated mayhem, he was sentenced to only 14 years in prison.
00:27:06
Jeff Rogers
The maximum sentence in California at the time. Now, people in California were pissed off. Outrage surrounding his sentence his sentencing would rise again when Singleton was paroled after serving merely eight years and three months due to good behavior and a prison program that allowed inmates to work their time off their sentence.
00:27:27
Jeff Rogers
According to the state's parole board and its laws, Singleton was ready and safe to reenter society. Now think about that. He was ready and safe to enter society. He's no longer a threat.
00:27:38
Jeff Rogers
Yeah, right. The entirety of California objected to the idea of Singleton living in their state. In what might be described as a strange game of parole-y hot potato, each city where Singleton was placed rejected him.
00:27:51
Jeff Rogers
Entire counties placed temporary restraining orders on him. One city's ah petition to have him banned received over 10,000 signatures. On several occasions, Sigleton had to be escorted by the police out of what was to be his quiet permanent residence, pushing past hundreds of protesters, screaming and waving signs denouncing his presence.
00:28:12
Jeff Rogers
Police even had to put him in bulletproof vests. to get him out of these situations. after months on the parole After months of the parole being, like where he was lived, being constantly moved and removed across city lines, a trailer was placed on the grounds of San Quentin, where he had been imprisoned, where he lived until his parole expired in 1988, less than 10 years from the day he saw a young girl on the side of the road and decided to offer her a ride.
00:28:42
Jeff Rogers
Lawrence Singleton left the grounds of San Quentin. While many wanted him to go to Florida, where he was known to have family, his destination was entirely in his control. He was now a free man.
00:28:53
Jeff Rogers
The same couldn't be said about Mary Vincent. While she survived, the trauma left... behind cascaded early on beyond ah the constant reminders that hung at her side surgeons had to take part of her leg in order to save her right arm ending her career as a dancer in her return to las vegas she began to understand her new reality as a public spectacle She enrolled in school and a school for the handicapped.
00:29:19
Jeff Rogers
Her old friends drew away from her. And even after the trial, media outlets bombarded her. Her already strained relationship with her parents worsened. ah she'd say later in her life, they were more interested and what they felt about what happened to me rather than what I felt about what happened to me.
00:29:41
Jeff Rogers
um Her father started collecting guns and plotting ways to kill Singleton, and loud fights became a regular facet of the home and mary was ah that she was so desperate to go back to She left again, traveling until she found a small town in Washington state to settle down in.
00:29:59
Jeff Rogers
There she got married, became a mother, something that she had dreamed of doing since she was four years old. For a moment, she was allowed to have the home that she had been trying to reach.
00:30:11
Jeff Rogers
Then Singleton was released from prison, then from parole. Mary hadn't forgotten the promise that he made to her in court that day. To finish, what he said started the day he decided to end her life.
00:30:24
Jeff Rogers
Her fear was only made more tangible when Singleton said he planned to spend his first few days of freedom visiting Washington State, where Mary was known to be living. She began to move frequently, too afraid of staying in one place for a long time.
00:30:39
Jeff Rogers
um She took her two sons with her. They would move with her. With the looming threat of another attack and the imposing hounding force of the media, her marriage fell apart. Her income became limited to disability checks, insufficient
WWII Survival Story: Finnish Soldier
00:30:52
Jeff Rogers
or never paid court settlements because she won $2 million dollars in court, but he's a piece of shit, so she never got that.
00:31:00
Jeff Rogers
When one home was repossessed within months of her overborrowing on a down payment, she and the boys she referred to as her little men lived in an unheated, abandoned Arco station in the icy winter months.
00:31:12
Jeff Rogers
With her children, Mary felt the push to keep fighting and keep going, even in moments she didn't really want to. in the fear and anticipation of her attacker's return, with the knowledge of what he was capable of, Mary couldn't be free.
00:31:26
Jeff Rogers
And so, in the early months of 1997, when she learned of Singleton's arrest for the murder of Roxanne Hayes, she couldn't help but feel relieved.
00:31:36
Jeff Rogers
I mean, the man had spent so much time, she had spent so much time fearing he would come after her, but now he was locked up again. But to say that this was all that she felt was not right, because, um...
00:31:52
Jeff Rogers
Then multiple news outlets came crashing into her life again, pushing her to rehash her trauma. She mourned all the while she was mourning for the life of Roxanne. She couldn't stop thinking about Roxanne or reliving her own encounter with Roxanne's murderer, Singleton.
00:32:06
Jeff Rogers
In those thoughts and recollections, she did recall the voice that had told her to stay awake all those years ago, that told her she couldn't let him hurt any anyone else. Could she not help but imagine herself in the last moments of Roxanne's life?
00:32:20
Jeff Rogers
At night, in the trailer park that was her home, the nightmares she had recently gotten over, that often made her scream and dislocate her joints when she fell from the bed returned in the wake of the murder.
00:32:32
Jeff Rogers
A year after Roxanne's death, her children sat quietly in the second row of a Florida courtroom, all dressed in black. Akeena, 11 years old, who was the one who had to identify her mom, Clifton, who was eight, and the youngest was Malachi, he was four,
00:32:50
Jeff Rogers
In his testimony, Singleton told another tale of victimhood and misunderstanding, of a sad old man who asked Roxanne to come over more for company than for sex, that she was the one who tried to stab him, and in his struggle for the knife, she had somehow stabbed herself seven times in the face, in the body, and the stomach, that she had asked him to hold her in his arms as she died.
00:33:18
Jeff Rogers
The following week, somebody else would testify and a Florida courtroom. Mary. Honey, Mary made that journey from Washington State to Florida. she was She was done with him.
00:33:30
Jeff Rogers
So the following week, Mary raised her right prosthetic hand before the courtroom in Florida and gave her testimony at his sentencing. Right there in front of Lawrence Singleton, for ten minutes while Singleton sat emotionless, she retold her story, looking at him in the eye, physically pointing to him and identifying him as the man who had attacked her.
00:33:53
Jeff Rogers
This time, when she walked out of the courtroom, he said nothing. Again, people saw through his story, and he was found guilty after less than four hours of deliberation. Singleton received the death sentence, but he died of cancer three years after receiving this sentence. Bastard.
00:34:09
Jeff Rogers
Mary Vincent became an aspiring artist who works with chalk pastels to create powerfully upbeat women like female action figures. She draws family and individual portraits on commission.
00:34:22
Jeff Rogers
Her customized prosthetics are also self creations, including a custom prosthetic for bowling because she likes to bowl. She still has nightmares that will likely never go away.
00:34:33
Jeff Rogers
Her shoulders ache every single day as she held up her prosthetics to walk, her dogs play pool, or embrace her sons. And this is ah quote from the article that I read. It's going to be in the show notes.
00:34:48
Jeff Rogers
It says, a pattern is etched in the narratives that fell to adequately portray the truth a paradigm that maybe exemplifies an inherent human instinct to pick and choose elements of fact or a particular life, as a story is woven around a desired tone, effect, or moral.
00:35:07
Jeff Rogers
to be a victor or a victim, to be tragic or happy ending. There's a comfort in simplistic, the essential, the linear. But if any conclusion can be drawn from Mary's story, it isn't that life is comfortable or clear or chosen.
00:35:22
Jeff Rogers
It's complicated. It's felt. And before anything else, it's lived. And that is the survivor story of Mary Vincent. Damn. Did you like that? i mean, the story was horrible, but you did a very good job.
00:35:37
Jeff Rogers
Thank you. But, you know, I think about after I tell these stories of these survivors, ah I think there's so much trauma that they have to deal with. And losing your arms, that just – the whole body is connected from head to toe. This is what we used to say with mom after she went through what she went through.
00:35:56
Jeff Rogers
The whole body – is connected from head to toe. So when one, if your knees hurt, then your hips hurt. If your hips hurt, then your back hurt. And not to even mention the emotional trauma, you know, it's probably still a nightmare for her every day.
00:36:14
Jeff Rogers
i mean, good for her for going to testify against him. Like it's a shame that he died before he can get executed, that fucking always happens. Yep.
00:36:26
Jeff Rogers
Oh, Glad he got what he deserved. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. a degree. Mm-hmm. That was good. Thank you. Way to go, Mary. Mary. Kick ass.
00:36:39
Jeff Rogers
Damn. Kick ass and paint a picture. There you go. Mm-hmm. Okay. um Mine's on a very different level. Good. Cheer us up. Um...
00:36:52
Jeff Rogers
So this is one of the stories that was sent as a recommendation. So now that we know that recommendations are coming. And I do apologize because I gathered all the recommendations up and I just passed them on. And I cannot remember who it's from. Maybe when you're telling me, cause I don't know what it is.
00:37:07
Jeff Rogers
Maybe I'll remember okay who sent it to us. Well, whoever did send it, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Oh, good. So you thought you had a bad trip, huh?
00:37:20
Jeff Rogers
We have a lot of experience with people high on a multitude of different substances. I'm sure we all have the fun, and I'm not really sure that's the correct word to use here, but, you know, maybe that's just the dark ER humor.
00:37:33
Jeff Rogers
ah stories about interactions with patients who have taken or ingested plenty of different things. So we've got the marijuana stories from just a few years ago when all of the Woodstock babies who used to smoke weed all the time started using what they thought was weed or weed products. And it's, they realized that it was a totally different strain and it was a totally different monster.
00:37:54
Jeff Rogers
um and We've got our,
00:37:59
Jeff Rogers
tale as old as time, PCP and cocaine and meth stories. PCP is the worst. Being an ER nurse. I've never seen anything like that.
00:38:10
Jeff Rogers
But you know what? and this is Maybe this just makes me so fucked up, but I love it. It's like... it it it is It creates monsters. Literally very strong monsters. Absurd. yeah Like, flip the stretcher with one hand, kind of. And we've seen that. you know We've lived We've been on the receiving end of, whoop, don't get too close.
00:38:31
Jeff Rogers
who So... um In the ER, we get to hear and experience all sorts of exciting and absolutely bonkers stories. This is one of those stories, and i would have loved to have been ah nurse taking care of this guy.
00:38:49
Jeff Rogers
In 1938, Temler Pharmaceuticals developed a little pick-me-up capsule that seemed to cure depression, provide a boost of energy, while decreasing fear and hesitation. This medication was called Pervitin, and it could be...
00:39:04
Jeff Rogers
It could be obtained over the counter. In the what decade? It was 1938. Oh, 1930s. It was essentially quick-acting, swallowable form of pure crystal meth.
00:39:20
Jeff Rogers
Oh, shit. With war so close on the horizon, German doctor Otto Rönke began testing Pervitin on college students. The effects were such that he suggested providing soldiers with it.
00:39:33
Jeff Rogers
Oh, scheisse. This little gem gave the Nazis an edge. The soldiers didn't need to sleep, and they could march through many nights with ease. Thus, in the spring of 1940, they issued the Stimulant Decree and sent 35 million doses of meth to the front lines.
00:39:53
Jeff Rogers
But they called it a pretty name. Pervitin. This is your daily dose of Pervitin. Drink with the orange juice. The Allied forces took a page from the Nazi book and began providing their soldiers with small doses as well.
00:40:07
Jeff Rogers
Because if they're doing it, we might as well be on the same level. Everybody should do it. This allowed them to fight off the fatigue associated with constant combat. Over the next four years, obviously there was a lot going on, but we're going to focus on Finland.
00:40:23
Jeff Rogers
Throughout the war, is a great story, Finland played many roles. They allied with Germany to fight off so Soviet invasion and then invade the the Soviet Union, and then they fought with the Allies against Germany.
00:40:35
Jeff Rogers
Aimo Koivinen was born October 17, 1917. Not much is known about his early life, except that he was the eldest of six children.
00:40:46
Jeff Rogers
He grew up to become a soldier, and by World War II, he was a corporal. While the Soviet Union thought they could just roll through Finland, take it quickly and quietly, and then move on, he was part of the forces that resisted.
00:40:58
Jeff Rogers
It cost them too much and much more than they were expecting, and thus eventually gave up. Imo was an upstanding soldier and did not like the idea of taking pills, so he didn't take any, and he was in control and in possession of the Pervitin for his entire unit.
00:41:16
Jeff Rogers
On March 18, 1944, his unit woke up on the third day of a patrol with temperatures hovering around negative 15 degrees Celsius. Yeah, I would die. Right? By 10 a.m., m they were stopped to make a small fire for warmth and to make some tea, because, you know, everyone likes tea, when gunfire broke out nearby.
00:41:37
Jeff Rogers
As the unit fled to avoid being surrounded, Imo was in the lead. So, he was responsible for cutting a path through the multiple-feet-deep snow.
00:41:48
Jeff Rogers
He couldn't let his men down. Their lives depended on him to keep pushing. He could hear some of them calling out to him not to stop. But Imo was exhausted from plowing a path through the snow.
00:41:59
Jeff Rogers
His only option was to keep going. In order to push through the exhaustion that was rapidly overtaking him, he realized that he would have to take his purvitin. He took out the bag of his unit's meds.
00:42:13
Jeff Rogers
Unfortunately, his gloves were so thick that he couldn't grab a single pill. He didn't have time to stop and remove the gloves or to hesitate. He poured the contents of the bag out into his hand. am putting my hand over my mouth because I know what he's going to He took 30 doses of pure crystal meth in one swallow.
00:42:36
Jeff Rogers
For a few moments, he felt amazing. In his supercharged state, he was able to push through the snow so rapidly and continue going without stopping. As he got farther away from the encroaching troops, his vision began to blur.
00:42:53
Jeff Rogers
and so good so bad so good as he got farther away from the encroaching troops his vision began to blur He recalls that his last thought before blacking out was, that perhaps was a mistake.
00:43:09
Jeff Rogers
He regained awareness the next day. Oh my god. He had continued moving and crossed approximately 100 kilometers through the untouched snow, and he was completely alone now.
00:43:22
Jeff Rogers
He had nothing. no He had no food or ammunition. He was in possession of the skis on his feet and an empty gun on his back. After a bit of confusion, he saw his comrades up in the distance, or so he thought.
00:43:37
Jeff Rogers
He had a heated argument with them, but rather himself, about his whereabouts and which way they should go. He won the imaginary argument with his hallucination and skied down a hill. I love that for him.
00:43:51
Jeff Rogers
Maybe the next evening, because time didn't really move correctly for him, ah he thought he saw another Finnish camp. He did, in fact, see campfires in the distance.
00:44:02
Jeff Rogers
He picked up his pace and was going so fast that he couldn't stop, and he skied right into and then right through ah Soviet camp. Oh, my God.
00:44:14
Jeff Rogers
But the way they describe it... was like He was a bullet shot from a gun He was moving so fast that he just didn't didn't stop. And he they said that even like some of the soldiers Soviet soldiers were so confused they like picked up their feet and like jumped out of the way because they were what's happening?
00:44:33
Jeff Rogers
The Soviets were so confused and startled by his sudden appearance and then very rapid disappearance that they scrambled to get a group to follow him. But they were way too slow to keep up with him. So Imo kept skiing.
00:44:44
Jeff Rogers
For 24 hours, he kept moving. His hunger finally began to become a apparent, but he had no food. So he ate some pine cones to keep the hunger at bay. Oh, my God.
00:44:56
Jeff Rogers
At one point, he removed his skis to walk. um He's going to shit out a pine tree.
00:45:04
Jeff Rogers
So he takes his skis off to walk. But then at that moment, he steps on a German landmine. Oh, my God. According to his memoirs, when he landed, he looked down at his leg to see bones sticking out in different directions, and the muscles looked like they had been graded.
00:45:21
Jeff Rogers
About 300 feet away, he saw what appeared to be an abandoned shack, so he crawled to it, dragging his disfigured left leg. When the door opened, the shack exploded. The Germans had rigged it to explode.
00:45:34
Jeff Rogers
He was thrown 100 feet away, and when he landed, he still had his hand clutched around the doorknob. Just as he began losing hope, a Siberian Jay landed next to him in the snow.
00:45:46
Jeff Rogers
He beat it to death with one of his ski poles and ate it raw. He was somehow miraculously found by a Finnish patrol on March 31st.
00:45:57
Jeff Rogers
Okay. He told them that he had been there for, I don't know, maybe a week or so. The soldiers thought he was out of his mind, and they weren't entirely wrong. It had been 14 days alone, missing, without any food, in sub-zero Arctic temperatures, high on crystal meth. Oh my god.
00:46:18
Jeff Rogers
When he arrived at the hospital on April 1st at 2 a.m., 15 days after taking a handful of meth pills, his heart rate was still consistently over 200 beats per minute, and he weighed 94 pounds.
00:46:32
Jeff Rogers
After such an impossible and miraculous adventure, he recovered from his little overdose and lived to be 71 years old. Fun fact, when you graduate with a PhD in Finland, you get a sword and a top hat.
00:46:49
Jeff Rogers
I just thought you should know that because it's just so badass. A sword and a top hat? as as an As an aside, I highly suggest people look up pictures of this guy.
00:47:02
Jeff Rogers
Because I'm not sure if it's what he looked like at baseline or if he was – they took all the pictures when he was still just cracked out of his mind. But just look at his eyes in all of the pictures because he's like – It was cracked out.
00:47:16
Jeff Rogers
it's It's so bad. But what a crazy story. But that helped – you know, you just gave me a survival story. Oh, I did. Oh, I did. You gave me. as there I was loving that story. Every bit of it.
00:47:30
Jeff Rogers
And then I was like, wait, is he going to survive? This is a survival story. he fucking Rock on. That was awesome. So, you know, don't take drugs, kids, because you might end up missing a couple of limbs. And skiing 250 miles.
00:47:51
Jeff Rogers
um Getting blown up. Getting blown up twice. Pervitin. for For a little boost. For a little boost. Don't drink with caffeine. May cause an upset stomach.
00:48:04
Jeff Rogers
You might experience palpitations. Absolutely. Sweats. Lack of hunger. Hallucinations. Skiing for miles upon miles. Not even knowing that you're skiing. In arctic temperatures. Amen. That was a good story. i like that.
00:48:19
Jeff Rogers
Good job. That was really good. That was fun. Okay, if you just listened to this and you sent that story in to us, can you tell us who recommended that story? You need credit for that because that was amazing. It was amazing and it was so very, very, very fun to do.
00:48:32
Jeff Rogers
That was a good one. oh And he lived to be 71. Like, what a life. Did he have any limbs missing? His lower left leg was blown off by the grenade.
00:48:45
Jeff Rogers
That's amazing. Sorry, the landmine. Yeah, the landline. Wow. Okay, folks, that is all for today. hot mess of a show.
00:48:56
Jeff Rogers
um Thank you again for listening. guys are the best. You guys are just so awesome. We appreciate you listening. We appreciate your feedback, um your support.
00:49:08
Jeff Rogers
And we're here for you every Thursday.
Closing and Gratitude
00:49:10
Jeff Rogers
That's our promise to you. This cosmic fabulosity that is us and you. vortex of fuckery. And vortex of fuckery. Alan, our overqualified, underpaid, master publisher, content creator extraordinaire.
00:49:22
Jeff Rogers
Ashley, our ultimate and epically unmatched hype queen editor. Together. Oh, and Kelsey, our incomparable swag and merch creator.
00:49:33
Jeff Rogers
Together, our first... and forever fans. Bye everybody.