Tag: Charlotte crime

A woman charged in connection with a brutal, five-year-old Charlotte homicide can remain free despite repeated violations of her court-ordered electronic ankle monitoring, a Mecklenburg County judge ruled Friday.

America Diehl was indicted on charges of accessory after the fact of first-degree murder and concealment of a body in the 2020 killing of .Mary Collins.

Collins, a 20-year-old with a cognitive disability, died after prosecutors said she was lured to an apartment and stabbed 133 times.

Kelly Lavery, one of four defendants charged in the case, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. But more than five years after the attack, the others haven’t been tried. They include Diehl, who has been allowed to stay with her mother and grandmother in their Clover, South Carolina, home, court records show.

Although Diehl has cooperated with investigators, she should be returned to jail on a $500,000 bond for repeatedly failing to charge her electric ankle monitor over the years, including as recently as Oct. 9, prosecutor Bill Bunting told the judge Friday. She’s been free on $150,000 bond, court records show.

Diehl’s lawyer, Lambert Guinn, said Diehl has complied with other orders of her bond, including a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew. She had no previous criminal history and poses no flight risk, he said.

“She was 18 years old when this happened and was forced into a terrible situation,” Guinn said. “She goes to work. She has stayed out of trouble as much as possible. Her willingness to help, to participate (in the cases against the other defendants) has not changed.”

The judge also agreed with Guinn regarding the unreliability of electronic ankle monitoring and ruled that Diehl no longer has to wear one.

None of which excuses Diehl’s allegedly having “stuffed Mary in a mattress,” Bunting told the judge.

Diehl “could have prevented Mary’s death” by calling 911 the night of the attack, Collins’ mother, Kasei Canfora, told the judge. For days, she failed to notify police as to where Collins’ body was hidden, Canfora said.

“But I have no control over the justice (system),” Canfora told the judge.

Collins’ family members reacted with anguish in the courtoom after the ruling.

“Get ready for hell,” one said loudly to Diehl as the family exited the courtroom.

‘Justice I did not get,’ mom of homicide victim says

Collins’ grandmother, Mia Alderman, said outside the courtroom later that she was “dumbfounded” by the ruling.

“I cannot believe this,” she said. “I’m literally in shock.”

Outside the courthouse after Friday’s hearing, Canfora reiterated her disappointment in the ruling.

“The mother, the person who carried her for nine months and gave birth to her, gets no say at all, other than to express my heartfelt pain and plead with the judge to give me some kind of justice, which I did not get at all,” Canfora said.

“And it’s not just me,” she said. “It happens over and over again, and it’s unacceptable.”

This story was originally published October 10, 2025 at 7:02 PM.

Mary Collins loved art, makeup and photography, wigs, hats and shoes.

She played the guitar, sang and “loved gothic stuff,” part of her “quirky,” endearing personality, grandmother Mia Alderman recalled.

“She liked to make people laugh, and would mess with you,” Alderman told The Charlotte Observer in the split-level Charlotte home where she raised her granddaughter. “She was very kind and always wanted people to be happy.”

Collins, a 20-year-old with a cognitive disability, died in 2020 after prosecutors said she was lured to an apartment and stabbed 133 times. Two men and two women were arrested.

One of the accused, Kelly Lavery, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. But more than five years after the attack, the others haven’t been tried. They include America Diehl, who’s allowed to stay with her mother and grandmother in their Clover, South Carolina, home, court records show.

Another round of court hearings is scheduled for the end of the year: Dec. 11 and Dec. 31 for suspect James Salerno and Dec. 31 for suspect Lavi Pham, court records show.

“Do you know what a hell this is for us?” Alderman said about waiting for the suspects to be tried in Mecklenburg County Criminal Superior Court. “I want justice for Mary. She matters, and we have to wait years and years. I don’t want to sue. I want change.”

Grieving grandmother: “Charlotte’s daughters” deserve better.

The fatal stabbing of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on the city’s light rail system on Aug. 22 prompted Alderman to call attention to her granddaughter’s case, as she did when Salerno was given bond in 2023.

“Our family sees heartbreaking parallels between Mary’s case and Iryna Zarutska’s,” Alderman said, including their closeness in age and that both were brutally stabbed.

“We believe now is the moment to bring overdue attention to Mary’s case, as the city reckons with systemic justice issues that continue to cost young women their lives,” Alderman said in a recent media statement.

Collins and Zarutska “were both Charlotte’s daughters,” she told the Observer on Sept. 24. “And Charlotte’s daughters should be safe in their community, our community.”

About her granddaughter’s killing, she said: “What they did to her was so heinous, they should have faced the harshest penalties” and never been given bonds.

“Bled her out in a bathtub”

Collins was found dead, hidden in a mattress in a NoDa apartment on April 4, 2020, according to previous reporting by The Charlotte Observer.

She was lured to the apartment by Lavery and Pham, who planned in text messages to kill her for refusing a threesome with them, prosecutors said in court in June 2022. Lavery was 24 and Pham 23.

Salerno, then 22, is accused of helping conceal her death.

Collins had 22q deletion syndrome, also known as DiGeorge Syndrome — the second-most common genetic disorder behind Down syndrome, according to the International 22q11.3 Foundation. Collins had the cognitive abilities of a 15-year-old, her family said.

Collins believed the suspects were her friends, Alderman said.

“They tricked her under the guise of friendship,” she said. “She was barely 100, 110 pounds. They killed her for entertainment because they are depraved, and they tortured her.”

Collins was last seen in south Charlotte on March 28, 2020, when she got into an Uber paid for by Lavery and went to the apartment with Lavery and Pham, prosecutors said in court.

Alderman became concerned when Collins stopped answering texts, the Observer reported. Two days later, she went to the Yards apartment complex in NoDa to pick her granddaughter up.

After hours of searching the complex and the apartment, she called 911.

Collins was endangered because of her disability, Alderman said she told police. Police told her to fill out a missing persons report, she said.

Five days later, police found her granddaughter’s body wrapped in plastic and stuffed in a mattress, Alderman said. The next day, police charged Lavery, Pham and Salerno with murder and kidnapping, public records show. Pham and Salerno also were charged with concealing a death.

“They bled her out in a bathtub, into Charlotte’s water system,” Alderman said Wednesday.

Diehl, 18 at the time, was later charged with accessory after the fact and concealing a death, according to court documents.

Pham has been in the Mecklenburg County jail since his arrest, jail records show.

Pham and Salerno refused the same plea deal as Lavery’s, Alderman said. She has attended the nine or 10 bond and other court hearings involving the suspects over the years, she said, always urging judges to keep the suspects behind bars.

Diehl was released on bond in 2021, according to the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office website. She was given a curfew and ordered to wear an electronic ankle monitor.

The company monitoring the device filed two violation notices in court in February after Diehl kept her ankle monitor off,, according to an Observer review of the notices.

An assistant district attorney newly assigned to her granddaughter’s case is considering asking a judge to return Diehl to jail because of the violations, Alderman said.

Alderman said she’ll raise the issue of Diehl’s bond when she testifies Monday at the Victims of Violent Crime hearing, scheduled by the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight at the federal courthouse in Charlotte. The hearing was scheduled because of the light rail stabbing.

She’ll tell the committee how Salerno was out on bond, about Lavery’s plea deal and how police treated her 911 call.

“I’ll never stop advocating for Mary,” she said.

Keeping “Mary’s Voice” alive

Alderman staked two “Mary’s Voice” signs in her front yard.

Reminders of her granddaughter are everywhere in the home: her guitar; photos of Mary; her bedroom left untouched since she went missing, her clothes laid out on the bed and black, gothic artwork across a wall.

A six-foot-by-six foot mural of Mary stands on wheels in the great room. Alderman has wheeled the mural to the courthouse to raise awareness about her granddaughter and the justice Alderman seeks.

Sun shines through a window of the great room onto a cross depicted in a tiny corner of the mural, as if transforming the cross into a piece of stained glass.

“The first time I saw it, I was stunned,” Alderman said. “Light always found Mary. There were so many photographs taken by or of Mary where light found her. It gives me some semblance of peace where there is no peace.”