Law&Crime Sidebar - 'She's Not Disposable': Family of Woman Stabbed 133 Times Outraged at Accused Killer’s Release

Episode Date: June 11, 2023

North Carolina woman Mary Collins was brutally stabbed 133 times and stuffed inside a mattress in April 2020. Now, one of the four men accused of killing the 21-year-old is walking the streets after being released on bond. Collins’ grandmother, Mia Alderman, tells the Law&Crime Network’s Angenette Levy gruesome details of the case and why their family is irate that one of the alleged killers is out of jail.LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergWriting & Video Editing - Michael DeiningerGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa Bein & Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaDevil In The DormThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. An accused murderer back on the streets after he posts bail. The grandmother of the teenage girl he's accused of murdering is outraged. She's here with Mary Collins' story and what she wants to happen next. Thanks for joining us here on Law and Crime for our Sidebar podcast. I'm Ann Janette Levy. There are really some stories that rock you to the core and the details are unimaginable. The murder of Mary Collins is one of those. Mary was developmentally disabled. She was born with 22-Q deletion syndrome, which is also known as DeGeorge Syndrome. It's the second most common genetic disorder behind Down syndrome. Her family said she had the mental capacity of a 15-year-old. In 2020, Mary was stabbed 133 times. Her body stuffed in a mattress. Police have said in the past she was killed because she wouldn't have group sex with a couple, Kelly Lavery and LaVie Fam.

Lavery pleaded guilty and is serving a prison sentence at this time. A woman named America Deal is charged with being an accessory after the fact. Last weekend, one of the men charged James Salerno posted bail. He's now free and awaiting trial. And that is not sitting well. with Mary's family. Joining me to discuss this case and Mary Collins is her grandmother, Mia Alderman. Mia, thank you so much

for coming on sidebar. We appreciate it. We know this is really difficult. We thank you for caring about Mary. I want you to start by telling me a little bit about Mary. Trying to describe Mary as like trying to describe art or music.

She just, there's just, there's just, not enough adjectives really to describe mary kind loving forgiving um typical young girl she loved music very very much all types of genres of music she had a great musical ear she loved the things that most girls love makeup she loved doing photos shoots with family and friends she loved fashion hair color. She loved hair color. She, one of her friends, described her as being whimsical like a fairy. And that's, that's true too. It's my understanding, Mia, that Mary was developmentally disabled. So she was somebody who thought at a younger age than she was or reasoned at a younger

age than she was. Is that right? That's the easiest way to describe it. Yes. There were certainly aspects of Mary where she was far beyond any of us. She had a genetic disorder called 22Q. That's a deletion on the 22nd chromosome. It's very, very, very tiny deletion, but it can cause an array, a spectrum of different things. There's over 180 different conditions. And of course, Mary can't have all of those. The 22Q is kind of a form of, let me see, it's, I was reading this last night in writing it, DeGeorge syndrome. Is that right? It's not a form of DeGeorge. It has multiple different names because doctors, when doctors gave it different names and now the community of people, this wasn't the case when Mary was born, but these 20-some years later, the community

is calling 22-Q across the board because it's Velocardiofacial syndrome, which in VLO is pallet, cardio is heart and facial is your face. It's also DeGeorge syndrome. It has a couple of other different names. So 22-Q deletion is what it is. They're all the same. Mia, let's go back to April of 2020. Mary was thought these people were her friends. She leaves the house and she never comes home. She's missing. So tell me a little bit about when you realized that Mary was not coming home and something was wrong. Well, we knew where Mary was. So she wasn't missing. She was in the apartment with these people. We had the tracker on her phone. I was aware of where she was. It's hard. You have to sort of understand to frame it. It was right at the beginning of COVID. March 28, 2020,

the governor of North Carolina decided to shut down the state. I believe it was the same day, or it would have been the next day. I'm not sure. But shut down the state, like where everybody was supposed to stay in their house and not go out. So there was a lot of chaos. And I was busy trying to get, you know, they were saying get enough food for two weeks. And you can, you remember, you know, the everything, you know, they, they didn't know what kind of medication you would need, what you could and could not do if you got COVID. So it was chaos. And Kelly Lavery sent the Uber and picked Mary up and she left. So when I didn't hear from her, her. That was unusual because usually I text her and she would answer me or, you know, I was planning on her coming back because she would usually leave with a friend that if she had, you know, she had a few, you know, very good friends. And she would either come back with them or come back and she would just start the Uber thing to and from with the friends. She could not get home on her own and she was dependent, you know, on people that she was with. So I was waiting for her to.

to come home and at the same time there was all this chaos about COVID. I didn't hear from her and I was trying to reach her and I thought you know and I saw that her phone was dead pretty much immediately or the calls weren't going through again because I had a method of looking at the phones and I just thought she forgot her charger you know she didn't chart and the phone died and then I saw Lavi fam posting on online. We got sushi holding up a bag of sushi, which is Mary's favorite food, which he was well aware of. And he made this video where they were smiling and getting the sushi.

And I was like, okay, they're being nice to her. They're having sushi. I can see that. You know, I didn't want to be too overbearing. But at the same time, I wanted her to come home. We had already been quarantining. So I waited. And then finally, you know, when I didn't hear and she didn't come, I just decided to go get her.

You know, that was enough. I didn't think that she should be anywhere around these people in the first place. I never thought in a million years what could happen to her. It's just you, your mind just I never thought anything like that. So I went to go get her. And yeah, I got into the. the apartment, which was all gated and closed off and difficult to get into. I had to wait for people to open the doors, all the different doors. And I went in. I went up to the apartment, knocked on the

door, and I could hear somebody behind the door. And they didn't open the door. So I got on the phone and started saying very loudly, I guess I'll have to call 911, and then Kelly Lavery opened the door. She did tell me that Mary was not there, that she had left, and I knew immediately that she was lying. I can't really go into the other specifics because of the, well, I almost said because of the case, but then they gave her that deal, didn't they? Yeah, but there's still a case against the other three. And Kelly Lavery has pleaded guilty to some charges in his serving time. So when did you deal to a lesser charge? She was charged with first degree murder. And she would have gone to prison for the rest of her life, and that's where she should be until she takes her

last breath. But she, they let her plead down. Mia, when did you find out what had happened to Mary? Seven or eight days after she left. We were, I was constantly trying to get into the apartment. We had the whole, we had people from the community coming out, looking for Mary, looking in the woods, looking down the railway, conducting searches, organizing search. parties, printing flyers. I had hired a woman to bring bloodhounds. I was not allowed to bring the bloodhounds. There's an entire, there's a lot that happened that week. And it was not the police and not detective Joshua Gaskin, who is the missing person's detective who did any of it

and would not help and did not understand the gravity of the situation. in the danger that Mary was in. The minute she said to me that she laughed and she said a few other things to me that I knew could not be true, I knew she was lying and I knew something was really, really wrong. Mia, the details about what happened to Mary, I've said, are unthinkable and unspeakable. She was stabbed more than 133 times. I know that you want justice. I know that you want answers.

And recently, we know that James Salerno, one of the people charged, was released on bail. He posted his bail and was released as is his right. But this is something that has really upset you. And I want you to tell me about that. It's only his right because the court system gave him bond. They're not required to give someone with a first degree murder charged bond, but they did. Here in Charlotte, North Carolina, the police, the former chief of police, who was the chief of police when Mary was murdered and then retired, and then there's another one now, like pretty much the same month or within months. I can't remember when that happened, but they decided that they weren't going to put ankle monitors or murderers anymore, the police department, because they didn't feel that their officers should be having to.

to deal with that and monitor people with murder charges. And they wanted the judges to keep them in jail. It hasn't worked out that way. So you can get, if somebody gets a bond and they're able to make the bond, they get out on a murder charge, which includes accessory and aiding and abetting, any murder charge, no ankle monitor from the police department.

They get out of jail and they are not monitored, But you have people who break into cars or whatever do something else. They do have ankle monitors on them. It enrages me that James Salerno can do what he did to marry and be out on bond for an extended amount of time. Who knows when? Because who knows when there'll be a trial, the courts are backed up for years and years. His parents apparently posted $33,000 over $33,000 in cash, because that would be 10% of what his bonds were. His girlfriend that he had at the time, she was ordered to stay in Mecklenburg County to be on an ankle monitor through CMPD, the police department.

And she was ordered to be under house arrest by a judge. And she was on $100,000 bond, I believe it was. She was her lawyer was able to just skirt around all of that because CMPD does not do the ankle monitor. She got out on bond first. So she was released on bond without any conditions whatsoever. No ankle monitor, no house arrest, and she left not only the county but the state and went to South Carolina. So we complained about that vehemently. We got very upset and were by some.

just a fluke really, able to get it back before a judge. So she went before a judge, I think, I don't know, five or six times maybe different judges, and they don't really, it's not the same judge the last, the last time, the last few times it was. So then she was allowed to stay in South Carolina, not have to stay in McLeonbury County. She was not taken back to jail because she paid $10,000 bond. And my point was, so what? She paid money. What about the conditions? She did not stay in the county. She was not on house arrest. And to me, that's significant. So the judge ordered a curfew. She's to be inside from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. So she can be out from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. just doing whatever. And she was allowed to hire her own ankle monitor company. So she's monitoring her self. It's just, like, to me, it feels like Mary just is so insignificant that nobody is holding anyone's feet to the fire over what these people did. It's just not all right.

Mia, what would you like to see happen? Obviously, you want a trial date. You want accountability. What do you want to happen next? I want the remaining three to go to prison for life. I would like Kelly Lavery to be in prison for life. Take her last breath there. What I want is irrelevant.

What the community wants is a relative. What you want, the word want is irrelevant to the judicial system. And that's understandable enough. But I think we are owed diligence. We have a right to expect that marriage, Mary's life is significant and that people are held accountable to the highest, I forget the term, but to the highest degree, the highest degree of the law. And they're not. They're given these, they're giving plea deals.

The justice system is basically made up a plea deals. It doesn't matter what the, what the charge is. It's all, it's all plea deals. And some things rise above the level of just let's make a deal. And when you have four people who can lure someone like Mary, who is just the most innocent, she's an innocent, and do that to her, like animals, I mean, they bashed her head in, they forced drugs on her. They did other unspeakable things. They stabbed her over 133 times and put her in a bathtub and let her back. bleed until there was no blood left in her body.

And then they wrapped her in plastic, and they wrapped her in trash bags, and they had put her in a mattress concealed so well that the police didn't, couldn't find her the second time they finally went in and finally brought her out. So clearly they must have prepared that beforehand. They didn't just all of a sudden, you know, figure out how to hide her in that, mattress, just, you know, on the fly, these people are depraved. They are depraved in evil. And the society, our society has the right to be protected from that type of depravity. And we have the right to expect accountability. This is horrific, horrendous what they did.

And the disability community has a right to stand up and say, we matter. Mary matters. We matter and we matter and have just as much significance as anybody else. She's not disposable. Certainly nobody, Mia, is disposable and Mary should not have been viewed as being disposable. We are so sorry for everything that you and your family have been through and for the loss of Mary. And we will keep an eye on this case, I promise you, and we will watch it as it moves forward and keep our audience up to date on it. We really appreciate you joining us today and our thoughts

and prayers are with you. I'd like to just add if it's all right that we do have a grassroots movement or I don't know, really know what to call it. It's just, it's for Mary and it's for the people who are disabled, especially the 22Q community called Mary's Voice. You can go to Mary's Voice.com. We already have a bill that has passed the Senate portion of the North Carolina Stateouts of representatives. And that bill is to try and get a new alert system for people who have disabilities so that they're not just lumped in with the silver alert because that's much, much needed. There was no alert put out for Mary, but had this existed, maybe it would have helped.

Who knows if it could have saved her, if the police officer had been required, maybe, to do this alert. We also would like to explain what's happening to us and what the justice system is like and the things that that we and other people just assumed, because we didn't know. You don't know until these horrible things happen to, you really don't understand how this works. And so those are a few of the things that we're trying to do. Of course, Justice for Mary is our primary goal.

And I appreciate anybody who's willing to do. to be Mary's voice because as I said she had a severe internal clefts she had a severe speech impediment and she had worked and worked and worked just to speak in the first place she could speak she did speak and she was getting her voice and they took her voice from her they murdered her and they took her voice and so now we I ask just you know for people to care about Mary and be her voice and I appreciate you doing this. Mia, thank you so much. And again, we are going to follow the story and we appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much. And that's it for this edition of Law and Crimes Sidebar podcast. You can listen to and download Sidebar on Apple, Spotify,

Google, and wherever else you get your podcast. And of course, you can always watch it on Law and Crimes YouTube channel. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy and we will see you next time. You can binge all episodes of this long crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.