A young, intellectually disabled woman in North Carolina spoke the words, “I just need friends,” before her ex-boyfriend and his associate “bled her out in a bathtub like an animal in a slaughterhouse,” according to a local prosecutor.
“Mary’s words exposed her vulnerability, and these defendants used that vulnerability to take her life,” Mecklenburg County Prosecutor Jane Collins stated during opening statements this week at the murder trial of Lavi Pham and James Salerno, according to local ABC affiliate WSOC. The two men stand accused of killing 20-year-old Mary Collins in Pham’s Charlotte apartment in 2020 after luring her there. Prosecutors allege they stabbed Collins more than 130 times following a sexual assault, wrapped her body in plastic, and “stuffed” her into a mattress.
“I honestly don’t remember what I said six years ago when my daughter was missing for eight days, and I didn’t know where she was or what was happening to her,” Collins’ mother, Kasei Canfora, testified. “The only people who did were not making sense.”
Four people faced charges in connection with Collins’ death. Salerno confronted charges of murder, kidnapping, and failure to report or conceal a death. Lavi Pham, Mary Collins’ ex-boyfriend, and his girlfriend at the time of the killing, Kelly Lavery, faced the same three charges. Lavery pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, while Pham and Salerno have pleaded not guilty.
Collins’ family reports she had the mental capacity of a 15-year-old due to her diagnosis of 22q deletion syndrome, also known as DiGeorge syndrome. This condition is identified as the second-most common genetic disorder behind Down syndrome. “They bled her out in a bathtub like an animal in a slaughter house,” Mary Collins’ grandmother, Mia Alderman, told the court during a bond hearing in January 2023 for Salerno, according to the Charlotte Observer.
“They said Mary had a leash around her neck in the bathtub, bloodied, stabbed, dog leash around her neck,” Alderman recounted to local NBC affiliate WCNC after Lavery’s plea hearing in 2022. “I remember putting my hands over my ears, trying not to hear.”
Collins’ family has said they believe Lavery and Pham obtained sushi for Collins hours before killing her and posted a video with her to create the appearance that she faced no danger. Prosecutors allege that Pham and Lavery, whom the woman considered her friends, lured her to their apartment and orchestrated her killing in retribution for her refusal to have sex with them both simultaneously.
“‘I just need friends.’ Those are Mary Collins’ last words,” the prosecutor told the court.
Collins’ grandmother, Mia Alderman, took the stand this week and described arriving at the apartment where her granddaughter was killed while searching for her.
“I was yelling Mary’s name,” Alderman said, according to WSOC.
“I was like, ‘Let me in there,’ and she said, ‘No, you’re embarrassing me, my friends are in there,'” Alderman said.
Lavery is serving a minimum 25- to 32-year sentence in state prison.
Prosecutors say Salerno and an 18-year-old woman he met on Tinder, America Diehl, used Cascade dish detergent and pumpkin spice shower gel to mask the smell of Collins’ body. Diehl is scheduled to go on trial in December.
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