On death row for the murder of a Tampa prostitute, Lawrence Singleton dies of cancer at age 74.
By BILL VARIAN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published
January 1, 2002
The attorney for convicted rapist and killer Lawrence Singleton had a simple plea for the jurors.
They already had convicted Singleton of killing a Tampa prostitute. They also knew that 20 years earlier he had committed one of the most notorious crimes in America. The victim herself told them how Singleton had raped her as a teenager in California, hacked off her arms and left her to die. As she sat in the witness chair, she raised her prosthetic forearm and pointed to her attacker.
But on that day in early 1998, attorney John Skye urged the jury to let Singleton live.
Wouldn't it be better, he said, if they read in a newspaper one day: "Lawrence Singleton died in his jail cell today, lonely and alone and despised?" Skye's plea found no sympathy from jurors, who recommended death.
But when Singleton died late Friday, it was not from the executioner's hand. He died of cancer in a prison hospital after nearly four years on death row.
"I don't take satisfaction in any human loss of life," said Assistant State Attorney Jay Pruner, who prosecuted the Tampa case. "This man was a heinous criminal that the public deserved to be protected from."
Singleton, 74, a former merchant seaman, had been housed at the Union Correctional Institution in Raiford. He died at 10:30 p.m. Friday at the North Florida Reception Center hospital in nearby Lake Butler, where he was undergoing treatment for his illness. The Department of Corrections did not disclose his death until Monday, or offer details about his illness.
Singleton was one of the most infamous criminals to call Tampa his home. His story became a symbol for groups nationally that oppose the early release of violent criminals.
In the fall of 1978, he stopped his blue van at an intersection in Berkley, Calif., next to a 15-year-old hitchhiker named Mary Vincent. The child of a Las Vegas blackjack dealer and slot-machine repairman, Vincent had run away. The van door opened and she climbed inside.
The driver called himself Larry and he drank liquor from a milk jug. Later, he pulled over and they both got out of the car. As she bent over to tie her shoe, Singleton slammed his fist on her head.
Singleton raped her repeatedly, she later told investigators. Then he chopped off her forearms with a hatchet as she tried to fend off the attack. He left her to die.
A couple found her the next day naked, holding her arms up to slow the bleeding.
The case drew outbursts of public outrage.
Singleton was convicted of attempted murder, and mayhem -- depriving a person of a body part. He got only 14 years, the maximum allowed under California law at the time.
Eight years later, Singleton, a model prisoner, was paroled. He tried to settle into several California communities, but each time he was forced to move after residents protested vehemently. Authorities there ultimately were forced to house him in a mobile home at San Quentin prison until his parole ended in 1988.
Vincent has said that Singleton threatened to finish the job after she testified against him in the California case.
"I knew that she had a great fear of Lawrence Singleton," said Mark Edwards, Vincent's former California civil attorney, who helped her shield her location upon his release. "That fear was that he would try to do her harm again."
Attempts to locate Vincent for this story were unsuccessful.
Singleton resurfaced in Tampa, where his family lived, but quickly drew attention. Not long after he arrived, someone threw a firebomb in the front yard of his brother's home. Protesters picketed court hearings after he was arrested on shoplifting charges.
Early in 1997, he entered a psychiatric center after his family declared him a menace and neighbors said he attempted to take his life.
Nine days after his release, police say, he stabbed to death 31-year-old Roxanne Hayes, the mother of two boys and one girl, who had a lengthy arrest record on drug and prostitution charges.
Hayes was found in Singleton's Orient Park home by a painter who had arrived to do some work. The painter said he found Singleton standing over her bloodied body, making swinging motions. Hayes suffered seven stab wounds from a boning knife.
Singleton testified that Hayes was stabbed by accident as he tried to ward off her assaults during an argument over what she wanted to charge for a sex act.
But the most compelling witness was Vincent, who flew to Tampa to recount her story before the jury decided Singleton's fate. Her sentences were short. Her testimony was brief.
"He used a hatchet," Vincent told the jury. "He left me to die."
It was her words, and perhaps her appearance as she pointed to Singleton with a clawlike prosthesis, that prompted one juror to describe her attacker as a monster.
Circuit Judge Bob Anderson Mitcham seemed equally transfixed, initially forgetting to swear Vincent in.
The testimony in part fueled an unsuccessful appeal by Singleton on the grounds that his notoriety in California tainted his Florida trial.
"He had a deeply ingrained hatred and dislike of women," said Assistant Attorney General Scott Browne, who represented the state in Singleton's appeal of his death sentence.
No execution date had been set for Singleton. The average stay on death row is 11.3 years, when lengthy appeals are factored, according to DOC records.
Singleton was the second-oldest inmate on Florida's death row. DOC spokesman Sterling Ivey said it is not common for death row inmates to die of natural causes.
There are currently 373 inmates on death row in Florida. The last natural death of one of them was in 1999, Ivey said.
Ivey said he was not aware of any statements made by Singleton before he died.
Before his sentencing, he said this: "I'm sorry about the death in this case. I'll have to carry it on my conscience for the rest of my life."
-- Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.