[Johnny Wadd]

Lawrence Bernard "Larry" Singleton (July 28, 1927 – December 28, 2001) was an American criminal known for perpetrating an infamous rape and mutilation of adolescent hitchhiker Mary Vincent in California in 1978. He raped Vincent and cut off her arms, then left her to die in a culvert off the Interstate 5 in Del Puerto Canyon, California. Vincent managed to crawl up to safety and later acted as a key witness against the rapist. Released from prison on good behavior after serving 8 years of his 14-year sentence, he went on to murder Roxanne Hayes, a mother of three. On February 19, 1997, police found Singleton covered in blood after stabbing her in his new home.







On September 29, 1978, Singleton picked up 15-year-old Mary Vincent of Las Vegas while she was hitchhiking in Berkeley, California, raped her, and then severed both her forearms with a hatchet and threw her off of Interstate 5 near Del Puerto Canyon, California, leaving her naked and near death. She managed to pull herself back up the cliff and alert a passing couple, who took her to a hospital. By the time of Singleton's arrest, Vincent wore prosthetic arms.

Six months after the assault, Vincent faced Singleton at his trial, where her testimony helped to convict him. Singleton was sentenced to 14 years in prison, the maximum allowed by law in California at that time. The presiding judge remarked: "If I had the power, I would send him to prison for the rest of his natural life."

While Vincent won a $2.56 million civil judgment against Singleton, she was unable to collect it when Singleton revealed that he was unemployed, in poor health, and had only $200 in savings.

Along with the particularly gruesome and callous aspects of the crime, the case became even more notorious after Singleton was paroled after serving only eight years in prison. He was able to reduce his time through good behavior and working as a teaching assistant in a prison classroom.Singleton was paroled to Contra Costa County, California, but no town would accept his presence, so he had to live in a trailer on the grounds of San Quentin until his parole ended a year later.

According to Time, "as authorities attempted to settle him in one Bay Area town after another, angry crowds and Tampa's chapter of Guardian Angels led protests, screamed, picketed and eventually prevailed." In Rodeo, about 25 miles northeast of San Francisco, a crowd of approximately 500 local protestors were up in arms and forced officers to move him under armed guard from a hotel room. Authorities tried housing him across the street from Concord's City Hall, but that was met with protests and failed too. He was removed from one apartment in Contra Costa County in a bullet-proof vest after 400 residents surrounded the building to protest a decision to place him there permanently. Governor George Deukmejian ordered that Singleton be placed in a trailer on the grounds of San Quentin for the duration of his one-year parole.

The outrage at this sentence resulted in legislation, supported by Mary Vincent, which prevents the early release of offenders who have committed a crime in which torture is used: in 1987 Singleton's parole led to passage of California's "Singleton bill", which carries a 25-years-to-life sentence. (Harrower, 1998). The leniency of the legal system shocked and outraged many. One journalist who interviewed him remarked, "What was most surprising to me, however, was not his sentence. It was that Larry Singleton had worked his crimes around in his mind so completely that they did not warrant punishment at all." Right before Singleton's parole ended, Donald Stahl, the Stanislaus County prosecutor at Singleton's trial, said, "I think, if anything, he's worse now. He has not taken responsibility. He lives in a bizarre fantasy land and acquits himself each day. He doesn't accept his guilt and won't resolve never to do it again."



Singleton returned to his native Florida after his release. In 1990, he was twice convicted of theft. He served a 60-day sentence for stealing a $10 disposable camera in spring 1990 and in the winter received a two-year prison term for stealing a $3 hat. Before his sentencing for the latter crime, he described himself to the judge as "a confused, muddleheaded old man".

In the spring of 1997, a neighbor called police to report Singleton assaulting a woman in his home. When police responded, they found the body of Roxanne Hayes; she had been stabbed multiple times in the upper body. Hayes was a sex worker and a mother of three.

Mary Vincent traveled from California to Tampa to appear at Singleton's sentencing. During her testimony, she described Singleton's attack and the toll the ordeal had taken on her. The judge sentenced Singleton to death. Singleton died in 2001 of cancer in a prison hospital at the North Florida Reception Center in Starke, Florida.



That person was Lawrence "Larry" Singleton, a then 51-year-old merchant mariner, with blue overalls, a bulging stomach and a flat, bulbous nose.

One who later hit Mary Vincent twice with a sledgehammer, tied her hands and raped her in the back of his van. Who then climbed, naked, back into the driver's seat and drove farther down the road toward the canyon where he raped her repeatedly throughout the night and forced her to swallow liquor.

The hours passed slowly. Terrified, exhausted, in searing pain, she pleaded with Singleton over and over throughout the ordeal. "Just set me free," she begged. "Please, just set me free. I won't tell."

As the darkness began to shrink across the sky, he walked to the rear of the van, and returned with a tool box. As he loomed over her, he pulled out a hatchet. "You want to be free?" he yelled. "I'll set you free."

Then he swung.

He struck her left arm first, severing it just below the elbow. As he hacked at her right, she kicked him, furiously, desperately, screaming both for help and in agony.

"I felt all the pain; the sharpness, the burning. And as the blood was leaking out of my body I felt the hot ooze just flowing out of me," she told I Survived. "I felt everything. I was aware of everything."

By the time he finished his attack, Mary was limp but conscious. But Lawrence Singleton didn't know that. Presuming she was dead, he dragged her body across the dirt then threw her off a 9-metre cliff into a concrete culvert.

She should have died there. Half of her blood had leeched from her body and the rest was fast becoming toxic.

But Mary heard a voice - a voice, she says, that was in her mind, her heart and her soul. "I can't go to sleep," it said. "He's going to do this to somebody else. I can't let that happen."

She summoned energy and rolled her elbows in the dirt to coat the wounds and stem the bleeding, and scrambled back up the cliff. The sound of traffic guided her through the darkness toward the freeway, where she walked, naked, with her arms raised - a court report said - "so that the muscles and blood would not fall out."

A red convertible with two men inside slowed, then sped off again when she called for help. Then came her saviours. Two holidaymakers who had gotten lost. They helped her into their truck and raced to a phone to call paramedics.

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

His teenage victim, now fitted with prosthetic arms, was there.

“When he was done testifying and I was leaving the courthouse I had to pass him, just inches away, and I hear him say, ‘If it’s the last thing I do, I will finish the job.’”

Singleton was slapped with a 14-year jail term - the maximum available in California at the time. And yet he served just eight, paroled for "good behaviour".

[kellyhound]

what a remarkable and strong woman mary is. she married twice and became an artist.

[mcpronoun]

Glad he died of cancer instead of a nice relaxing painless sleep.

[murofhsirgo]

How the fuck did that piece of shit die old?

[DiamondSmiles]

I might have gone with some BIG dogs!

Thanks, Johnny! I never heard of this piece of shit!

[DiamondSmiles]

I was looking up the case. Hughes´ bf or husband were in court with their children. Mary testified for them. Florida wanted to give him Old Sparky, which I think was more than fair.

[DiamondSmiles]

Originally Posted by murofhsirgo ↗

How the fuck did that piece of shit die old?

Probably his good lucks and charm. Or not!

Some people who are religious say, ¨God doesn´t like ugly...¨

[TheIckyMan]

Cancer was too good for him.

[Rottweiler]

I remember when this happened. Couldn't believe that he was released after only 8 years.

[Daveroo]

i remember this well myself,i was living not far away and while still in high school,we were traing for the fire department and we studied this case with the local pd.