Cold Case Files - ISURVIVED: I Could Just Feel My Skin Almost Blistering

Episode Date: September 26, 2026

Mary is a 15-year-old hitchhiking in Florida when the man who gives her a ride sexually assaults her, cuts her arms off and throws her off a cliff leaving her for dead. Brooke is pregnant when she, along with her daughter, goes to visit her own parents in Marysville Australia. When a massive wildfire breaks out Mary and her father are separated from her mother and daughter as all parties desperately seek shelter. Sharene’s ex-boyfriend won’t take no for an answer nor accept the end of the relationship. When Sharene finally relents and gets back with the man, a drug fueled rage leads him to stab her multiple times.Earnin - Download Earnin on the App store or Google play and type in ISurvived under Podcast when you sign up!Mint - To get the new customer offer and your new 3-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to Mintmobile.com/survivedProgressive - Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.Quo - Try Quo free, plus when you go to Quo.com/ISURVIVED you can get 20% off your first 6 months!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode contains stories involving violence against children. Listener discretion is advised. He said, you want to be set free? I'll set you free. And he pulled out a hatchet. Real people. He was going to choke me to death. He means it. He's going to kill me.

Who faced death? You could just feel your skin's blistering. Everything is red. It's just red and it's bad. burning, everything's on fire, and lived to tell how. And he started to chop. I started kicking and screaming, hoping someone would hear me. This is I survived.

September 1978, Modesto, California. 15-year-old Mary has run away from home. Hom sick, she starts to hitchhike back from California to her family in Nevada. Back then, hitchhiking was a really big thing. So there were people everywhere with signs and say, I'm going here, I'm going there. And I had a sign saying that I was going south. And a man pulled up in a blue van.

There were two other people behind me who had the same sign, going in the same general direction. And when the man pulled up, they noticed he had an empty van, and there was nothing in the back. But he said he only had room for one person. The other two people behind me said, he shouldn't go in there. If he's not willing to take other people

in just a female, that's not the safest bet. But at the time, I wasn't thinking about that. I wasn't a daredevil anything. I was just desperate to get home. I could not live another day out alone. I didn't think about what type of person he was or the situation. I was just, I was tired. And he seemed like a grandfather type figure.

I was just so exhausted. I dozed off for a little bit. And when I woke up, I noticed that the son, The signs were different, and they were heading in the opposite direction. And I picked it up and said, look, you're going the wrong way, and you know you're going the wrong way. He pulled over in the middle of a deserted road. I then thought, well, I'm in trouble.

And I looked down and noticed my tennis shoe was untied. was untied. Now, if I'm going to be able to outrun this person because I'm young, he's old, I'm healthy, he's not. I better tie my shoe. So I opened up the passenger door, got out to tie my shoe. That's when a sledgehammer hit me on the head, and I blacked out. When I came to, I was tied up in the back of his van.

He began raping me. I asked why he was doing this. There was no response. He raped me a few times, probably about six times, and he fell asleep, but I couldn't get away because I was completely tied. I wanted to die. That was the worst.

The worst feeling I've ever felt. That's all I was thinking. Please, God, kill me now. Can't handle it. The whole time I was just telling him, please, just set me free. Let me go. Set me free. I remember the words.

Just set me free. I won't tell. And he kept raping me to the next day. And I was awake the whole time. And I was awake till I saw the sun starting to rise. We're still in the middle of nowhere. And he pulls me out. And I'm completely naked and already bleeding.

And he said, you want to be set free? I'll set you free. And he pulled out. He pulled out a hatchet from his toolbox and took my left arm and took one swing. And I started to fall. And then he took another swing. And I grabbed his arm, grabbed it real tight.

And I couldn't figure out I'm holding him real tight on his arm. But I'm still falling. I looked down at my arm and there was nothing just blood squirting up I felt all the pain the sharpness the burning and when my blood was leaking out of my body

I felt the hot it was just flowing out of me I felt everything I was aware of everything and the pain was so excruciating. Mary's left arm was severed below her elbow. And he then took my right arm, and I started kicking and screaming,

hoping someone would hear me, and I'm just kicking nonstop. And he started to chop my right arm off But because I'm still kicking and screaming, it took longer, so he had to keep chopping away at my arm. When he was done chopping my arm off, I lay there bleeding, but I could see him at a distant. And he was flicking his arm,

and I couldn't figure out why until I looked at the end of his arm. My hand was still clutched onto him real tight, and he was trying to flick it off. At that point, he started to drag me, and I think he thought I was dead because I just lay still and didn't move. And he threw me off a 30-foot cliff. The fall broke four of Mary's ribs.

Blood loss from her severed arms had sent her body into shock. I just didn't know he drove off. I didn't know if he was waiting or what. But I just laid there bleeding to death. And I got tired. I got really sleepy and cold. And all I wanted to do was go to sleep. But all I heard was a voice saying that,

I can't go to sleep. He's going to do this to somebody else. And I can't let that happen. That's what was going through my heart, my mind, and my soul. I couldn't have him do that to another girl. I stuck my arms in the dirt to pat my arms so that they won't bleed so much, and the dirt would act like mud, and it would stop some of the bleeding. I crawled back up the cliff without any hands.

By the time Mary reached the road, night had fallen. It was dark. It was very, very dark. and I could barely see. I mean, had it not been for the moon or the stars, I wouldn't have been able to see anything. But I could hear the faint sound of traffic somewhere over the hill. Like, there has to be a freeway somewhere.

I'll just follow that noise. I just walked until it started getting daylight. And the first car that came, it was a red car with, no top on it. It was one of those sporty type cars. And there were two guys that were driving it. Says, help me, help me. But, I mean, think about it.

I have no hands now, and I'm covered from head to toe in blood. I look like something from a Fright Night movie. And they took off. So all I could think of was, I'm going to die out here. Because everyone's too afraid to even stop. So I kept walking in the middle of the road. And that's when the second person came. And it was a honeymoon couple that had gotten lost.

They just tried to help me up into the truck and said, lay still, we'll get you there. And they raced really fast. I mean, it was an old truck, but I could hear the wheels peeling out. They were able to get to a phone to call. call the paramedics. A rescue helicopter flew Mary to the hospital. I lost over half the blood in my body,

and the rest of the blood in my body got to a toxic level, but my body took it because I was, I guess I was that desperate to live. Ten days later, police identified and charged Mary's attacker. The next time Mary saw him was in court. I was scared because he was just a few feet from me when I was in the witness stand. He was only like 10, 15 feet from me. Lawrence Singleton was convicted of rape and attempted murder.

He was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment. The sentence was the maximum term allowed under California law at the time. When he was done testifying and I was leaving the courthouse, I had to pass him just inches away. And I heard him say, if it's the last thing I do, I will finish the job, quote unquote. Mary married and had two children. After Lauren Singleton was paroled in 1987, Mary was haunted by his threat to hunt her down. I never knew that there could be people like that in the world. And I pray to God, I never know another.

In 1997, Singleton murdered a woman in Florida and was sentenced to death. He was sentenced on death row, but he wasn't executed. He died of cancer. I didn't feel relief when he had died. I needed to know what was in that dark soul of life. I felt that I was robbed of that opportunity. But because of my sons, I saw the relief on their faces that made me realize, okay, that's good enough closure for me.

I don't have to worry about my son's lives anymore. It's God and my sons that keep me going. They keep me loving life more than most people. I appreciate it more, and I'm just glad that I'm given another chance at life, that I didn't die. I'm a survivor. I survived. You know that moment when you're in the middle of five things at once, your phone starts ringing, and you look at it and think, I'll call them back. Except sometimes that call is a new customer, ready to book, buy, or ask one quick question before

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Saturday afternoon and we were just having a swim and saw the column of smoke going up and I started to get a bit concerned at that time so I packed up Cassidy my daughter and we went back to my parents house. A decade of drought and scorching temperatures had put the state on extreme fire alert. Brush fires had ignited nearby but Marysville was thought to be out of the fire's path. The smoke was travelling away from the town and it was travelling very quickly across the back from our place and we couldn't see any flame. We could only see smoke. My mum was getting quite disturbed about the amount of smoke that was around so she took Cassidy and I decided

to stay with dad to defend the house. So we were just wetting down the garden and sort of keeping everything wet and damp. Brooke's mother and daughter left to drive to a park in the town known as the Oval. The park next to the dam was the nearest designated refuge area. Dad's at the back of the house still, watching the smoke go across. And then we realized that it did that, that it had, the wind had changed. That's when all of a sudden it was, it was on the town within seconds. A 90 degree wind shift drove the fire directly onto the town.

The skies just went completely black and I couldn't see, I couldn't see anything until the house next door to me just exploded in flames. I just couldn't believe what I was saying. It was there one minute, and then the next minute it was just boom, and it was gone. I was being showered by major, huge embers, and burning, burning material, burning branches were just flying across. The inferno was fanned by 55 miles per hour winds. It was just an absolute inferno. It was just deafening.

I was having to shout to speak to each other. It was unbelievable, just the wind. that was behind that fire. And I just said to Dad, we've got to go. We just can't save the house at this time. I raced down to the front of the house and got into my car. The two dogs were already in my car.

I realised then that my dad wasn't behind me and I had assumed that he would be following me to get into my car. I then realised that he would have gone back to the carport to get his work vehicle. But when he got into his car to come down the laneway beside the house, a tree branch had come down

and he had to smash his way through with his car. When we started to head down the road, that's when I really started to panic, because we started to get trees falling down. Massive trees just falling down onto the road, hitting the road and just exploding into embers and sparks. We were in the gutter and we were up on the road verge, just trying to avoid trees and branches

which were just crashing down as we were driving all around us. So we were going as fast as we could to try to avoid becoming trapped in between two trees. we couldn't get through. We've got to get to the oval, otherwise we're not going to make it. Everything is red. It's just red and it's burning. Everything's on fire.

Couldn't make anything out because everything was a blaze, but we couldn't see where we were going because the smoke was just so thick, coming over the road. The veering was very dramatic. We'd sort of come down, the next thing, we'd just have to take off over one side of the road to try and get around a big tree,

which had come down or some branches which were on the road, and just not knowing whether or not, and Cassidy had gotten through and exactly where they were was a big concern. I didn't know whether or not they'd been able to make it through or whether they'd become trapped halfway between two trees or I had no idea where they were. We went over one bridge and then a second bridge and we could see the oval from it as we started to come across that second bridge, but then a massive tree came down in front of my car. The tree was ablaze and completely blocked their path.

You've got a high bank on one side and it's a high bank on one side and it's a big dam on the other and when the tree came down it came off the high bank right down into the water and it was such a big tree that there was no way we could get around it. I started heading for the dam saying that we should just get in the dam because it was right there. So that was where I was heading and my dad said to me no no we should head back to the head back to the pipe underneath the bridge because if we had have gone with my plan and gone into the dam we would have had to be in the water with two dogs and constantly having to go underneath the water to try to to avoid the radiant heat.

We decided to just leave the cars. We got the dogs organised and we took off and we ran. We grabbed the two dogs and the mobile phone out of my car and we ran back over the first bridge to the second bridge which had a big concrete pipe underneath it and so we were able to shelter in that concrete pipe. There were buildings going off, just exploding all around us. We were only probably about 10 metres from the Marisville Pertissary

which went up and it had six gas bottles along one brick wall and that was just exploding one after another. It was unbelievably hot. You could just feel your skin almost blistering. Your lungs burnt and your throat burnt and your eyes were just stinging. Everything was just on fire. There was nothing that I could recognise.

Everything was just a blaze. Not knowing where my daughter was was the hardest part for me. I was frantic trying to call everybody that I could think of. of that may have had contact with my mum. Brooke and her father have been trapped under the bridge for two hours. We were sort of starting to think that maybe it was getting to the end and maybe we could start to think about moving out of the culvert

and heading to the over where we would be safe. Then the service station across the road went up. When the petrol tanks underneath the ground went up, they were just exploding and it sounded like bombs going off and the whole sky was just lit with this brilliant orange light and the whole earth just shook. It was just unbelievable, these massive fireballs and the noise was just deafening when that went up.

So we were just basically moving from one side of the culvert to the other, just trying to avoid the radiant heat while we were in the culvert. And we had my mobile phone as well, so we were trying to locate my mum and Cassidy at that time. Not knowing where my daughter was for those three hours really took its toll on me. I was frantic trying to call everybody that I could think of. He was spending a lot of time reassuring me because I was starting to really panic,

not knowing where they were. And he was offering suggestions as to other people that we could call. Finally, one of the firefighters was able to get my number and give me a call, and he put me onto my mum, and then we realised that they were only a matter of less than half a mile from us on the Oval. the oval.

The park was one of the town's safe refuge zones. It was about that time that the fire, that the intensity had started to decrease and were able to run around the back of the dam and get to the oval. So that's how close we were. Trees were still burning. There were still buildings up on the hill that we could see that were still burning. We were just constantly being bombarded by this incredible heat. When we arrived, my mum was overwhelmed.

She was just so thankful that we were OK. And I was just so thankful to find that my daughter was there and that she was safe. It was probably around maybe 100 people on the Oval all together. People just in absolute shock about what had happened. When the news of the death of the wife and oldest son of the fire captain came through, That was a very devastating time for so many people because they were well known in the town. And that was sort of the first news of people

where there wasn't an answer, and then all of a sudden there was an answer, and the answer was just, it was really just too horrific to be able to contemplate. Just also knowing that this is just a start. We're getting this news now, but how many other people will get the same news? There's a lot of people asking, with the brigades to go and search for people,

but we were all just stuck on the Oval. No one, there was no going anywhere. We were all just stuck there. The fire was just still too intense, trees down all over the road. We just had to wait it out until the morning. I won't ever forget that night that we had there. The whole forest was just a blaze.

There's also houses higher up on the hill around the Oval as well, and they were exploding as the night was going on. We slept on the ground with the other people. We spent the night with a man who had, he owned a bed and breakfast in town and he had taken his guests to safety and they had been able to be evacuated from the town.

But by the time he got back to his, to save his wife and two small kids, they had, he found them dead on the property. People were breaking down, lots and lots of tears, lots of people hanging on to each other just trying to make sense of what was going on. Miraculously, Brooke and her family had escaped with no physical injuries. By morning, the fire was out

and the survivors were able to leave the park. When we woke up, my family walked around the back of the oval. One of the first things that we saw was an eight-month pregnant woman who I knew and she was dead underneath the tree. And she'd walked probably maybe a mile to get to where she was. So she had to walk down a really steep hill from her house to get down to the oval. And she just, she was so close, but she didn't make it. I was four months pregnant at that time.

So I certainly had an affinity with her and because I knew her as well. And she was, you know, not only was one person lost with when she died but two, so it was very, very sad to see her there. her there like that. Everything was gone. Houses, the trees, it was like a bomb had gone off. Everything was just covered in ash and the smoke was still really thick in the air.

It was just surreal. Walking up the road towards the house, just nothing, there was nothing left of houses, just a bit of twisted metal and the rest was just ash. It was the intensity of the fire was just so great that really there was really nothing left, nothing left at all. There are a lot of very, very sad stories to come out of the Marysville fires.

My family has lost everything. We've lost a lot of friends. My daughter suffered extreme nightmares for about a month after the fires and she had, she, I've taken her into therapy to try to resolve some of the issues. As we came up back onto the road, the girl, the pregnant girl was right there and she She had a lot of questions about, you know, when people burn what happens, what happens to them, how much does it hurt? She had a lot of questions about death and dying, about pain, about why it had happened.

She was with my mum for the whole three hours that her grandfather and me were missing and so her primary carer was of course hysterical and not coping, so she has major separation, anxiety. If I had to leave her at any point, she would just scream hysterically and cling to me and just wouldn't let me go. If going to work was a nightmare, I had to drop her at childcare and she would just, they would just have to pull her off me and it would take hours for them to console her. I tried to be as gentle as I could and let her know that things happened very, very quickly and that there was not a lot of suffering had by anyone who had died just because of her, I could

because things did happen, happened so fast. The fire that destroyed Marysville was won of 400 in the Australian state of Victoria that day. The fire released the equivalent energy of 1,500 Hiroshima atomic bombs. The Black Saturday fires killed 173 people. 34 of the victims were from Marysville. We were lucky. That's all it is. We stayed way too late.

We should have left when my mum left, even probably before, but we thought that we could save the house, and that's why we stayed. If the pipe underneath the bridge hadn't been there, we wouldn't have made it. I don't have any doubt about that. It's funny how much of life is instant now. You can send a message across the world in a second. Get a ride with a few taps, order dinner from your couch. But when it comes to money you've already earned,

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Taxes and fees extra, initial planterm only, greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy, includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot. Capable device required, availability, speed, and coverage varies. Seamintmobile.com. July 1992 in Fallbrook, California. Shireen has left her boyfriend and moved back to her parents' house. I was living with my parents and my younger sister and her two young girls. And her husband had recently passed away. And at that time, my younger sister was battling brain cancer. And we were going through a very, very hard time, really hard time.

Shireen's ex-boyfriend kept harassing her to move back in with him. He kept coming over to my parents' house. And upsetting my parents. and my sister was on chemo and was sick. And I just, I didn't want him upsetting my family anymore. I didn't, I just wanted it to stop. The only way that I could stop him from bothering my family was to go back with him, even though I didn't want to.

Shereen moved back in with her boyfriend. One evening, he drove her to an unfamiliar apartment. He said he was going to. He was going to borrow some money from a friend of his so we could go out and have some dinner. I waited in the car, and when he got back and was walking back towards me, I could tell that he was high on cocaine.

So when he got in the car, I was upset about it. I pleaded with him and asked him, please don't do this. And he just told me, you know, just shut up. He just started the car, and we started going, And he would occasionally stop, get out, and go to the back of the car, open the trunk, and get some cocaine and snort some cocaine. And one of the times I got out, and I walked to the back,

and I went and, like, popped it out of his hand, which really infuriated him. So we got back in the car, and I knew that this is really going to be a bad situation. I just felt it in my heart. He threatened me and said, you know, you're going to pay for that, for what you've done. He drove to a wooded area on the edge of town.

It was pitch dark, not a soul in sight, just me and him in the car. He took the right and the fork of the road, just went down a little bit and pulled over. And I asked him, I says, what are you doing? And he didn't say anything. Before I knew it, he got something out of the glove box, which ended up being about two and a half inch razor blade.

And when he said, I'm going to effing kill you, he grabbed my hair, grabbed me by the back of the hair, pulled my head back and slit my throat. And that's when I went like this, and it cut this finger. And that's what basically saved my life at that point. that point. After stabbing my throat, then he started cutting up my body and I caught eyes with him for just a second and they looked like the devil. Like they were like a like a fiery-looking reddish orange, real evil look. The deep slash to Shereen's throat just missed her jugular

artery. She is bleeding heavily from multiple wounds. He got out and went to the back to do some more cocaine. When he got out, I took my white t-shirt and I put up to my throat here, because I could just fill the warm blood just bumping out. And I just figured, well, I'm going to bleed to death, and I'm going to die. I started saying my goodbyes to my dad and my mom

and all my loved ones. And I said, God, I'm really. I'm ready to go. I'm tired. I can't take this anymore. I'm ready to go. I can't do this anymore. And all of a sudden, he got in the car.

And he started the car up and started driving further into the woods. And without even think about it, I didn't even think about it. I just did it. I jumped out of the car going about 35 miles an hour. I skidded on my hands. my hands and my legs on the gravel along the side of the road. And I got up and I ran into the woods until I couldn't run anymore because the woods were so thick.

I've got a lot of stab wounds in my hands and in my arms. And my legs were just like hamburger meat from jumping out of the car. I then got down in a fetal position and And that's when I heard the car door open. I heard his footsteps coming closer and closer to me. I tried to stay as quiet as I could, so he wouldn't hear me. I was terrified. And it's like, I'm going to die.

You know, he means it. He's going to kill me. That's when he found me. And he just, you just... He had a big pair of scissors, and he started stabbing me. He stabbed me in my head. He stabbed me in my neck, in my arms, in my back. I was screaming for him to stop.

But he was just calling me every filthy name in the book. You're a whore, you're a slut, you're a bitch. You're the reason for all my problems I've ever had all my life. I knew that the only way that, I could maybe possibly survive would be to play dead. So I played dead. He drug me back to the car by my clothes and threw me in. He got in the car and he saw that I was still alive.

And that's when he went and started choking me. He was going to choke me to death. All of a sudden, I saw some car headlights come around the corner, the corner and it startled him. And they drove by really slow and looked over, and I guess it just kind of like freaked him out or something, you know, because he started the car up and turned around and started going back into town.

I begged and I pleaded with him to please take me to the hospital. I says, I won't say anything. just drop me off by the hospital. And he goes, OK, he goes, I'll take you to the hospital. We start getting closer to the hospital. And he drives right by the hospital and says, yeah, I'll take you to the hospital. Yeah, right.

And it's like my heart sank. He's like a cat with a mouse. They like to torture them and play with them before they kill them. We ended up back at the same apartment complex that he had went to earlier to get some cocaine. And he says, if you leave out of this car, he goes, I'll find you and I'll kill you.

He got out, and I heard his footsteps going up to the second floor. So I went and opened the car door as quietly as I could and got out. I just started running like crazy. I mean, I felt like I was flying. And I went in the opposite direction of where he went. And I was going up to doors and knocking and begging and

begging and pleading for help. And nobody would answer their door. So I was desperate. I can hear people talking. And I found this window that was open. And I jumped in. The apartment's two male occupants were watching television. They were horrified by what they saw

because I was just bloody from head to toe. And I scared them. And they didn't speak any English. So the guys got on each side of me and they escorted me outside their sliding glass doors. That's when I'm like, oh my God, I'm back outside and vulnerable, and he's going to find me. I went and hid underneath a stairwell

and all of a sudden that's when I saw a police car. And I went and I ran up to him. And I said, please don't let me die. Shereen didn't realize that the occupants of the apartment had called 911. The ambulance arrived. And that's when they took me to the trauma center. The doctor lost count after counting 50 stab wounds

to my head and my face and my neck and my arms. He had never seen anyone. so cut up, like just looked like a cut-up rag doll that was just bloody from head to toe that was still alive. Another 20, 25 minutes, I would have blood to death. Shereen's boyfriend was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and false imprisonment. He was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison. A jury acquitted him of attempted murder. They said it because of his size and his weight and everything that he could. could have killed me very easily.

I guess they didn't hear me when I told them I got away. Had I not gotten away, it would have been a murder trial. God wasn't ready to take me yet. One of my purposes at the time was to be able to be there to spend time with my sister, Carlin, before she passed away, and also, to help raise her two young girls. I survived because God still had a purpose for me here on this earth.

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