Lawrence Singleton, despised rapist, dies / He chopped off teenager's arms in 1978

FILE--Lawrence Singleton is seen in in court in Tampa, Fla. in a Monday, March 30, 1998 file photo. Singleton, who chopped off a teen-age hitchhiker's forearms in California and was later sent to death row in Florida for killing a prostitute, died of cancer Friday, Dec. 28, 2001 behind bars at the North Florida Reception Center in Starke.. He was 74. He had been on death row since 1997, but no execution date had been set. (AP Photo/Tampa Tribune, David Kadlubowski) less FILE--Lawrence Singleton is seen in in court in Tampa, Fla. in a Monday, March 30, 1998 file photo. Singleton, who chopped off a teen-age hitchhiker's forearms in California and was later sent to death row in ... more Photo: DAVID KADLUBOWSKI Photo: DAVID KADLUBOWSKI Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Lawrence Singleton, despised rapist, dies / He chopped off teenager's arms in 1978 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Lawrence Singleton, who wrote his own unique chapter in the annals of depravity when he chopped off the forearms of California teenager Mary Vincent after raping her, has died of cancer in a Florida prison hospital.

Singleton, who was 74, had been transferred to the hospital from Florida's death row at the North Florida Reception Center, where he was awaiting execution for the 1997 murder of a 31-year-old prostitute in his Tampa home. He died on Friday.

'He had a deeply ingrained hatred and dislike of women,' said Assistant Attorney General Scott Browne, who represented Florida in Singleton's appeal of his death sentence. The Florida Supreme upheld the sentence last year, rejecting the claim that he didn't get a fair trial because of notoriety from the California crime.

Notorious was something of an understatement -- Singleton was reviled in California. And his victim, Mary Vincent, has spent the past 23 years in a series of nightmares, worried that some day Singleton would find her and the whole thing would start over.

'She had a constant fear of her life from Lawrence Singleton,' said Mark E. Edwards, the California attorney who once represented Vincent.

As well she should have. After testifying against Singleton, Vincent, still a teenager, had to walk past him in the courtroom as he sat with his lawyer. He whispered something to her. She suddenly turned pale and fled the courtroom.

Later, she told a prosecutor Singleton had said, 'I'll finish this job if it takes me the rest of my life.'

Nonetheless, 20 years later, Vincent volunteered to come out of her sporadic hiding to testify in the death penalty phase of Singleton's Florida trial.

Asked what happened to her on Del Puerto Canyon Road in California, she said, 'I was attacked, I was raped, and my hands were cut off. He left me to die.' Then she lifted one of her prosthetic arms, pointed it at Singleton and identified him to the jury.

The murder of Roxanne Hayes was covered by the national press largely because of Singleton's near-homicidal mayhem that took place after a car ride between Berkeley and rural Stanislaus County on Sept. 29, 1978.

VINCENT'S HORRIFYING ORDEAL

Singleton, at the time a merchant seaman, picked up 15-year-old Vincent in Berkeley and drove her to an isolated area a few miles west of Patterson and not far from Interstate 5.

There he bludgeoned her, then raped her and then used a hatchet to chop off her arms just below the elbows. Then he dragged her down into a culvert, where he left her, apparently thinking she would die from the trauma he had just inflicted on her body. And, besides, as investigators later deduced from Singleton's crude modus operandi, if she had no hands, it would be difficult to identify her from fingerprints.

But she didn't die. She managed to get out of the culvert and started walking toward the distant noise of I-5 traffic, her bloody stumps hanging down from her shoulders. People in the first car that saw her were so horrified they turned around and fled. People in the second car stopped and got her to a hospital.

CONVICTED IN 1979

In March 1979, a San Diego jury convicted Singleton of kidnaping, mayhem, attempted murder, forcible rape, sodomy and forced oral copulation.

Singleton was so notorious in California for his singular act that when he was paroled to Contra Costa County in 1987, after serving a bit more than half of his 14-year prison sentence, town after town refused to allow him to settle there and he finally served out his parole in a trailer on the grounds of San Quentin prison. Singleton moved to Florida shortly after that.

For Mary Vincent, it didn't matter that he was 3,000 miles away. As long as he was somewhere, she was terrified.

She moved to Washington state and married a landscape designer in 1987, but that marriage did not last more than three years. She was so paralyzed with fear that she had difficulty leaving her home for routine errands. Eventually, she moved into an derelict gas station near Tacoma. Then she became anorexic, her weight plunging to below 100 pounds.

VICTIM'S LIFE CHANGED

In the late 1990s, she moved to Orange County and got a job clerking in the local district attorney's office, where she eventually met investigator Tom Wilson, whom she later married. Stable in her new job and marriage, she became more outgoing and formed the Mary Vincent Foundation to help victims of traumatic crime.

'When (Singleton) was incarcerated,' said Richard Breshears, assistant sheriff of Stanislaus County and the lead investigator into the case in 1978, 'she changed dramatically, from someone who looked like she was at death's door to someone who began experiencing life and looking robust.'

'This,' he said of Singleton's death, 'kind of seals the deal for her.'

Recently, according to friends, she got divorced and moved back up to Washington, settling in the Seattle area. Attempts to reach her yesterday were unavailing.

Singleton's sordid trail

-- Sept. 29, 1978 -- Lawrence Singleton kidnaps hitchhiker Mary Vincent, 15,

from Berkeley, drives her to rural Stanislaus County, then rapes her and chops off her forearms with a hatchet.

-- Oct. 9, 1978 -- Singleton is arrested in Sparks, Nev.

-- March 29, 1979 -- Singleton is convicted by a San Diego jury of multiple counts and is sentenced to more than 14 years in prison.

-- April 25, 1987 -- Singleton is paroled from California state prison in San Luis Obispo after serving just over half of his sentence. A furor erupts in Contra Costa County after many towns refuse to allow Singleton to settle there. State officials eventually settle him in a trailer on the grounds of San Quentin State Prison.

-- April 1988 -- Singleton, released from parole, leaves San Quentin, and begins to roam around the East Bay, living part of the time in Richmond.

-- Sept. 14, 1990 -- Singleton, now living in Tampa, Fla., is released from jail after serving 48 days for petty theft.

-- Feb. 19, 1997 -- Roxanne Hayes, a 31-year-old prostitute and mother of three, is stabbed to death in Singleton's Tampa, Fla., home, nine days after Singleton is released from a psychiatric hospital after attempting suicide. A sheriff's deputy, knocking on Singleton's door, finds him in blood-spattered shirt, Hayes' bloody corpse lying on the floor nearby.

-- April 14, 1998 -- Singleton is sentenced to die after a Tampa jury convicts him of first-degree murder in Hayes' death.

-- Dec. 28, 2001 -- Singleton, 74, dies of cancer in a Florida prison hospital.