Woman charged in brutal Charlotte homicide can remain free, judge rules
A woman charged in a brutal, five-year-old Charlotte homicide can remain free despite repeated violations of her court-ordered bond conditions, 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.
Judge David Strickland said ’s order prompted shouts of anguish in the courtroom from the family of the 20-year-old victim, Mary Collins.
Later, outside the courthouse, the victim’s mother criticized the criminal justice system.
“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,” Kasei Canfora said.
“And it’s not just me,” she said. “It happens over and over again, and it’s unacceptable.”
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.
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, whom judges have allowed to stay with her mother and grandmother in their Clover, South Carolina, home, court records show.
Diehl should be given a $500,000 bond should be revoked because she repeatedlviolated her curfew and failed to charge her monitor multiple times beginning Dec. 31, 2023, until as recently as Sept. 10, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Mills said in Tuesday’s court filing.
“The defendant has been made aware of the conditions of her release on multiple occasions and continues to violate them,” Mills wrote.
It was not immediately known Wednesday when a judge will consider the request.
The prosecutor’s filing came a day after Mia Alderman testified at a congressional hearing in Charlotte about waiting so long for Diehl and suspects James Salerno and Lavi Pham to face trial in her granddaughter’s killing.
“Five years is not justice,” Alderman told the subcommittee. “Five years is torment.”
The Victims of Violent Crime hearing was held by the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight at the federal courthouse in Charlotte. The hearing was scheduled because of the fatal stabbing of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on the city’s light rail system on Aug. 22.
This story was originally published October 1, 2025 at 9:46 AM.