Sheriff: Rush hour, shift change behind delay in Singleton case

Saturday, Feb. 22, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

Sheriff Cal Henderson offered them all as reasons why it took 34 minutes for a deputy to show up after a frantic 911 caller said "the same guy that cut that girl's arms off" was beating a woman in his house.

By the time the deputy arrived Wednesday night, Lawrence Singleton's face and chest were covered with blood and the lifeless body of 31-year-old Roxanne Hayes lay on his living room floor.

"We were slow to get there," Henderson said Friday. "It wasn't anybody's fault. The response time was as quick as we could get there under the circumstances."

Singleton, convicted in California of raping a teen-age hitchhiker and chopping off her forearms in 1978, appeared in court Friday charged with first-degree murder. No bail was set.

The slaying - which came nine days after Singleton was released from a psychiatric hospital after attempting suicide - has raised questions about police response time, why Singleton was not under police watch in Florida and why neighbors weren't notified of his violent past.

"Do I wish we could have gotten there in nine minutes? Yes. Do I think it would have changed anything? No," Henderson said.

The department's average response time to emergency calls is 9.1 minutes.

"Listen, we just went up to a house," the caller said. "And we went up to the house and there was this guy inside this house and he was beating this woman inside the house."

Later, he said: "The person that lives in that house is the same guy that cut that girl's arms off, that 15-year-old in California."

Ms. Hayes died from six stab wounds to the chest, including one directly to her heart and another that severed her liver, the sheriff said. Authorities believe the murder weapon was a 6-inch boning knife.

Residents of Singleton's blue-collar neighborhood weren't notified of his past convictions because the state's sexual predator law applies only to crimes committed after 1995.

Singleton, 69, registered in Florida as a felon when he moved back to his home state in 1988. Residents in several California towns drove him out of their communities.

Monitoring him closely would have been difficult, authorities said.

"He has a lot of notoriety because of his crimes," said sheriff's Lt. David Gee. "But in a community this size, there are a lot of criminals. It would be difficult to monitor someone, long-term, 24 hours a day."

Singleton was jailed twice for shoplifting in 1990, and this month he was charged with stealing an $87 electric drill.

Henderson said investigators are examining if Singleton is connected to any other slayings in which prostitutes' bodies were dumped.

"There's a number of them," he said.