Singleton testifies: multiple stabbing was accidental, ‘I panicked’

Friday, Feb. 20, 1998 | 8:57 a.m.

His defense lawyers closed their case after Singleton - convicted in California of raping a teen-age hitchhiker and chopping off her forearms - testified Thursday he and Roxanne Hayes each had one hand wrapped around the knife and were fighting for control when the knife plunged seven times into her face, chest and stomach.

"I intended to take the knife away from her as fast as I could," said Singleton, 70, who is charged with first-degree murder and could face the death penalty if convicted. "Probably each time I pulled her, the knife was going in."

Closing arguments were scheduled to begin Friday morning.

Singleton, a retired merchant seaman, first grabbed headlines 20 years in the case of the hitchhiker. When he was released on parole, several towns refused to take him in.

He now stands accused of stabbing Hayes, a 31-year-old mother of three, to death in his Tampa living room last Feb. 19.

Singleton told jurors he was depressed, drunk and over-medicated when he decided to pick up Hayes, a prostitute whom he had met several months earlier. He brought her home and paid her $20 for oral sex.

Both were nude and he was handing her $10 for a cab ride home when she grabbed for his wallet, he said. When he fought to get it back, she picked up a knife he kept on the living room table to chop vegetables while watching TV.

"She let me know she was going to cut my head off. She was calling me every name in the book," he testified. "I was scared for my life."

The struggle lasted about 30 seconds, and each time he pulled Hayes' arm downward to pry the knife from her hand, she apparently stabbed herself, Singleton testified.

But she never cried out and he didn't realize she was injured until she lay dying on his sofa and asked him to hold her in his arms, he said.

"She put both her arms around me and asked me to hold her. So I held her tight. We were embracing."

At that point, he said, he realized Hayes was injured and bleeding heavily. He meant to call 911, but picked up the remote control instead and threw it down.

"I told her, 'We've got to get to the hospital,"' Singleton said. He then tried to help her walk to the door, but his knee went out and they both collapsed on the dining room floor.

"I sat there and cried and rubbed her face and tried to talk to her," he told jurors.

Asked by his attorney if Hayes responded, Singleton replied:

"Not at all. She was dead."

Singleton told a deputy who knocked after receiving an emergency call from a painter who walked in on the struggle that nothing was wrong and he was bleeding because he cut himself cutting turnips, according to earlier testimony.

On Thursday, he testified he never saw the painter in his home and couldn't remember what he told the deputy because he was "torn to pieces," by the stabbing.

"I was very frightened. I panicked," Singleton said. "That was the last thing I wanted to do was explain to the policeman having a dead woman on my floor."

In 1978, Singleton was convicted of raping 15-year-old hitchhiker Mary Vincent, chopping off her arms with an ax and leaving her for dead on the side of a road. She survived to testify against him.

He was paroled in 1987, amid predictions he would try to kill again. Singleton served his parole on prison grounds after several California communities refused to let him live there, and he later returned to his home state of Florida.