Man who mutilated LV girl dies

Monday, Dec. 31, 2001 | 10:58 a.m.

Lawrence Singleton cheated a Las Vegas teenager out of her innocence in 1978 by kidnapping, raping her and cutting off her arms in one of the most high-profile crimes at the time.

He served eight years for that crime, and in 1994 killed a Florida prostitute in his home, for which he was sentenced to death in 1998.

The former merchant seaman cheated the executioner by dying Friday of cancer on death row. He was 74.

Singleton died at the North Florida Reception Center in Starke. He had been on death row since 1998, but no execution date had been set.

On Sept. 29, 1978, Singleton raped 15-year-old Mary Vincent, a Las Vegas runaway, cut off her forearms and left her to die, wandering armless and naked on a road in California. Ironically, the blows from Singleton's hatchet sealed her wounds and kept her from bleeding to death.

In a decision that caused a furor in California and Nevada, he won parole in October 1986, after serving eight years. He had been sentenced to 14 years, four months -- the most that could be given at the time for mayhem. He was released from the California Men's Colony at San Luis Obispo in April 1987.

The early release, prison officials said, was because of good behavior.

Outraged California communities refused to accept him, and Singleton ultimately moved back to Tampa, where he had spent his childhood and still had family.

In February 1998 a jury in Florida convicted him of murder for stabbing to death 31-year-old Roxanne Hayes, a prostitute and mother of three, at his Tampa home in 1997.

In one of the most poignant and dramatic moments of the trial -- during the penalty phase -- Vincent took the stand and pointed her shiny prosthetic arm across the courtroom, identifying Singleton as her attacker 20 years earlier.

"I was raped and I had my hands cut off," Vincent testified. Jurors, who days earlier had convicted Singleton of Hayes' murder, were visibly moved.

Vincent, 35 at the time, delivered her testimony in a soft, deliberate tone: "He used a hatchet. He left me to die."

Singleton, then 70, showed no reaction during Vincent's 10 minutes on the witness stand.

Twenty years earlier, in a San Diego courtroom, Vincent had pointed out Singleton as her attacker. He had been captured at his Sparks home without incident. The capture followed a manhunt that began when Vincent, who was found after stumbling onto a country road, said her attacker was a fat, balding man who had picked her up hitchhiking.

Singleton long denied raping and mutilating Vincent, saying he drank heavily and passed out. He admitted, however, to stabbing Hayes.

"I'm sorry about the death in this case," he told the judge as he was sentenced to death. "I'll have to carry it on my conscience the rest of my life."

In May 1987 Clark County District Judge Tom Foley awarded Vincent $2.4 million from Singleton. It is not known whether Vincent ever collected a dime.

Vincent who for a while attended UNLV, in 1983 was awarded $13,000 by the state of California under the Victims of Violent Crimes Act.

Singleton had long talked about writing a book of the Vincent incident to give his side of the story, but never did. Vincent's attorneys had said they would have used the civil court judgment to go after any advance he would have received.

Vincent later moved to an undisclosed location in the Pacific Northwest, went to college and married. She has two sons, ages 12 and 14.

A list of Singleton's survivors was not immediately available.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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