by Fred Rosen
Singleton didn’t hear anything else. By that time, his two guards had heard the commotion and came running in. They briskly packed up his things and theirs, quickly loaded them into their car, and drove off. Once more, Singleton was on the run.
They just won’t leave me alone, Singleton thought. But barely had he formed that thought, when he realized that it was particularly true this time.
The Times Tribune staffers chased Singleton through the streets of Redwood City and into Atherton, a chase that only ended when a second Department of Corrections car blocked the street. Saul Beltran was forced to brake, and as he gazed though his windshield, he saw Singleton’s car speeding into the distance.
That night, Singleton’s “safe” motel was in Napa, a place that was only disclosed on a need-to-know basis. “We don’t have sleazy hotels in Napa, and we want to keep it that way,” said one local official who’d been asked to comment.
The new, super-secret plan now was to put Singleton in Richmond township, but once again leaks proved to be the bane of the Department of Corrections. When Bert Bevins found out that Lawrence Singleton was in town, he was furious.
Bert was a prominent Richmond businessman. The last thing he wanted was for Singleton to be around mucking up business. Who’d want to shop in a town that condoned settling the state’s most famous mutilator in its midst?
After being tipped to Singleton’s presence, Bevins called a news conference to focus attention on the paroled rapist, correctly anticipating Singleton’s reaction. Singleton was mortified when he came home from lunch to discover camera crews camped on his doorstep. He quickly packed. The parole board needed to relocate him again. It would have been funny, had it not been so sad.
Singleton was quickly moved to the small town of Rodeo in the San Francisco Bay Area. He had now changed his name to Frank Farmer. Shortly thereafter, Minnie and Will Simpson showed up at the apartment building owned by Sybil Dahl.
“We’re looking for an apartment,” said Minnie.
“What did you have in mind?” Sybil asked.
“Well, it’s my father—” began Will.
“He’s kind of cantankerous,” Minnie cut in.
“Yes, well, he doesn’t have many needs. We thought a small place. He’s just coming home from the hospital after a long illness,” Will continued.
Sybil looked through her files. “Well, I have one studio available for $345 a month.”
“We’ll take it,” Minnie said, sounding relieved that they had found a place for her cantankerous father-in-law.
Sybil watched as the old man was moved in by Minnie and Will. He did seem rather cantankerous, complaining at every step of the way. Sybil noticed he had a bulbous, veined nose.
Later in the day, she stopped by to formally greet him, but found two beefy guys in uniform outside his door. They seemed to be his bodyguards and they barred her from going in.
“He’ll pay his rent on time, don’t you worry,” one of the beefy guys told her.
“But why are you here?” she asked.
He gave her some double-talk and then turned his back. That was the worst thing the guard could have done. It just made Sybil mad.
Her new resident with the large nose looked familiar. He made her feel uneasy. That brought up old feelings about her daughter Susie, who was raped and murdered in 1976.
That evening, Sybil called a friend of hers, Jerry White. Sybil and Jerry were real tight, and Jerry was one of the managers of the local TV station. She told Jerry about her new resident, and the guards outside his door. After she described the man who had moved in and under what circumstances, it was clear to Jerry who it really was.
Jerry now had a scoop. He was the only one in the state who knew where Lawrence Singleton was living. The only question that remained was how to release the news to maximum effect.
Lawrence Singleton had finally found some measure of peace. The state had rented him a furnished studio apartment. It was here, he thought, that he could finally rest.
The day after he settled in, he showed up quietly and by himself at the local sheriff’s substation to fulfill the part of his parole that required him to register as a sex offender. The cop who took his report said very little, but noted his name. It was hard to miss it, since Singleton had signed it in big letters. And the cop was no dummy; he’d been watching the news for the past few weeks and knew who he was. But he was a professional. He knew of the problems Singleton had been having, and he wasn’t about to add to them by disclosing his location, and getting his superiors angry at him in the bargain.
The next morning, Singleton got up, breakfasted on eggs, ham, toast, and coffee, took a long walk, and finally began to enjoy his newfound freedom. He did things that afternoon he hadn’t done in years, like going to the movies, going shopping, eating at McDonald’s, all the things free men and women take for granted.
He was fifty-nine years’ old, with a record, but if he kept his nose clean, he might be able to live out his life in freedom. The conditions of his parole made it difficult for him to pick up women so, for a while anyway, he didn’t have to worry about anyone accusing him of rape, abuse, or anything else for that matter. All in all, things were going all right.
Singleton returned home and, by midafternoon, had settled down in bed to take a nap. Soon, he was asleep.
“We interrupt your regular programming for this special bulletin.”
The blond-haired reporter looked up from her notes with a gleam in her eye. Jerry had just handed her the bulletin.
“We have just received word that notorious rapist/mutilator Lawrence Singleton has taken up residence in Rodeo township. According to someone who lives in the same building as him, he has taken up residence at 1001 Elm Street, a multistory apartment house.
“Apparently,” continued the reporter, “our sources tell us that Singleton was placed there by representatives of the state Department of Corrections masquerading as husband and wife. The department has refused comment. Stay tuned for further developments. We now return you to your regular programming.”
The TV station was playing with fire. Given the level of public resentment against Singleton, they had just declared open season on the man. In his apartment, Singleton snoozed away, blissfully unaware of what was happening outside. His guards, playing cards, knew nothing of the broadcast, while word spread quickly of the Mad Chopper’s presence within the friendly confines of Rodeo township. Reaction was swift.
The notorious rapist and mutilator had settled in among them as though he was some normal person. Townspeople wanted him out. Some of them immediately gathered in front of his apartment house to protest.
The guards, looking down at them as they were easily dispersed by sheriff’s deputies, were worried. One uttered the universal expression of concern: “Uh-oh.”
That afternoon, Singleton was the topic of discussion at local bars and taverns. Rodeo was a largely blue-collar town of 7,000. Normally placid men who did their nine-to-five without complaint reacted violently.
“What the hell is he doing around here?” said one.
“Let’s get rid of the son of a bitch,” another offered.
Like most mobs, it started out with just a few malcontents, but pretty soon the bad vibes spread throughout the town. Women joined the ranks of the outraged. Why should they be denied the right to be part of an angry mob just because of their sex? They had as much right as anyone else to be vigilantes.
By the time Singleton awoke in the evening, his guards were on the alert for more trouble. They told him what was going on, but Singleton treated the news with little reaction. Instead, he was hungry.
Singleton pulled a TV dinner out of the freezer and warmed it up in a new gadget he had never seen before—a microwave oven. All you had to do was pop the food in, press a few buttons, and bam—invisible rays heated the slop up faster than anything he’d ever seen. It was amazing!
Outside, the modern-day lynch mob was gathering. Fueled by hate, they stal
ked down the street in search of their quarry. As they rounded the corner, they saw Singleton’s apartment building.
Inside the apartment, Singleton was just finishing his meal when he heard the sounds. They were not much at first, just a few voices, but as the people got closer, he could hear that it was not just a few, but hundreds.
“Singleton out, Singleton out,” they chanted.
“Kick him out, kick him out.”
The guards looked down on the street to as frightening a scene as any lawman could ever hope to see. It was a mob all right, and it was clear that they were coming not to chat with Singleton, but to get him.
It was a scene lifted whole out of the late nineteenth century, when the county sheriff stood his ground as the lynch mob advanced to take away his prisoner for hanging. The difference was that Singleton had already served his time in jail and these people, unlike the law, were not satisfied with the sentence. They wanted him behind bars for life, and short of that, they wanted him out of town. If he got hurt in the process, or if manhandling him brought the man pain and suffering, who was going to complain?
Quickly, the parole agents acted, calling directly to the county sheriff’s office and telling them of their plight. While they waited for help, they put Singleton in the living room, away from the window. Then they checked the ammunition clips in their automatic weapons, brought the slides back to load cartridges into the chambers, and flipped off the safeties. They made sure the door was locked, barred it, and then they waited.
Singleton was sitting in the living room, watching TV when he heard glass break in his bedroom. Someone had thrown something. While the parole agents contemplated their options, one county official, Sarah Fisher, actually showed up to see how Singleton was doing.
“It was strange,” Fisher recalled later. “He seemed not to be too concerned. I think that may have been because he’s been through this so many times now. The man has become a pariah. No one wants him.”
“Why don’t you consider serving the remaining eleven months on your parole at a minimum-security prison?” she suggested to Singleton, who turned angrily from the TV set he’d been watching, even as the mob continued to throw rocks at the windows of his apartment.
“I served my time. I’m an innocent man,” Singleton reacted angrily. “Why would I go back there?”
Sirens approached from the distance. The crowd heard them and stopped as the sirens got louder and louder, and finally deafening as a phalanx of sheriff’s black-and-whites pulled to the curb outside Singleton’s apartment house. A group of officers went inside, while the rest stayed on the street, where they set up a police perimeter.
“Step back, please, step back,” a metallic voice intoned through a police loudspeaker.
Inside there was an anxious knock at the apartment door, and when the deputies ascertained who it was, the door was swung wide open.
“Let’s go,” said one of the cops who’d run up the stairs.
Quickly, Singleton packed what few belongings he had managed to amass in the last month, and followed the cops out.
“Here, put this on,” said one of the parole agents, who shoved a bulletproof vest into Singleton’s gnarled hands.
“Stay close to us,” his two parole agents advised.
When they hit the street, the crowd was contained behind the police barricades, but upon sighting Singleton, a roar went up.
“There’s the son of a bitch!”
“Let’s get him the hell out of here!”
“Let’s have a lynching party for him.”
“Hey, I’ve got some rope!”
“My kid plays in front of his building!”
“We want him out of here!”
Someone in the crowd was carrying a doll with its arms cut off and a sign that said THINK ABOUT IT. Someone else carried a sign that said GET OUT OF TOWN, BUD!
A mob is only as brave as its bravest man or woman. Since most mobs are composed of cowards who find strength in numbers, no one was willing to take the first step forward to go after the old man. But there was no guarantee that their nerve would continue to be low. Maybe someone would get it in his head to make a reputation by taking out Singleton.
The cops wouldn’t give them the opportunity.
As sheriff’s deputies moved in to disperse the crowd, the now bulletproof merchant seaman was hustled down the stairs and into a waiting squad car, which drove off, siren wailing, through the screaming throng. Before any of them realized what had happened, Singleton was gone.
There was no point in hanging around. They’d gotten what they wanted. The crowd dispersed quickly and oozed down side streets. The only things left on the sidewalk in front of Singleton’s former haven were a bunch of cigarette butts and empty coffee cups that drifted down the street in the wind.
“We had a mob reaction, a mob mentality. Where does it stop?” said County Undersheriff Ward Welker.
“Let someone show me how you can legally justify mob reaction,” Welker continued. “I have seen people go absolutely off the board in what they are doing and saying. This is not what our community is all about. There is a proper forum [for protest] and it is in the courts and legislative bodies.”
Welker was a welcome voice of sanity in an insane situation, and the state apparently heard him. In Sacramento, the state capital, the Assembly Public Safety Committee met to consider the case of Lawrence Singleton. Was the state parole system set up to handle it? And what steps could be taken in the future to prevent the release of criminals who, like Singleton, were suspected of having mental disorders.
A 1985 law allowed authorities to commit criminals to mental institutions after their scheduled release date. According to a spokesman for the Department of Mental Health, Singleton was not kept in jail because he had not been diagnosed as having a severe enough “character disorder” to be committed.
“What I don’t understand is why a man who hacks off the arms of a fifteen-year-old girl is not crazy?” questioned Assemblyman Larry Stirling (a Republican from San Diego), chairman of the Public Safety Committee.
Stirling’s committee also had access to the shocking amounts of money that were being spent ferrying Singleton around Northern California. The cost alone for the Department of Corrections parole officers who had been guarding him ran to almost $4,000 a day, or nearly $30,000 a week. Of course, those figures did not include the costs for the attorneys from the state attorney general’s office who were shuttling in and out of courts, four so far, to try and convince judges that Singleton had the right to be paroled—somewhere, anywhere.
“We’re spending a lot of money just to carry out the law,” said one high-ranking assistant attorney general. “This has all the dimensions of a circus. If all the counties in the state followed the pattern that some counties are setting, you would end up with Singleton being discharged without being on parole. Obviously, that is not going to work.”
As for the Department of Corrections, they had decided that it was no longer productive to discuss the case publicly. They continued, however, to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Singleton should be settled in Contra Costa County, familiar grounds to him, where he had lived before the rape and mutilation of Mary Vincent. The thought was he would be more comfortable, and less likely to violate parole, if he settled on familiar ground.
“This matter needs to be resolved so we don’t go through this agony again,” said Attorney General John Van de Kamp. “I have sympathy for county officials who want to keep Singleton out. It’s become kind of a spectacle,” he continued.
The public, though, was getting tired of the spectacle and a backlash had begun against the politicians who were fanning the fires of hate.
“Local politicians were posturing because they couldn’t possibly win,” said law professor John Wyant of the University of Southern California. “But what are these politicians going to say to their constituents?”
They had to show they were doing something to keep the me
nace out of their communities.
“Once this starts, it just tends to feed on itself,” said another academic. “Politicians will do what newspapers will report. It’s safe. You don’t lose votes by denouncing Singleton.”
In the wake of Singleton’s hasty, and dangerous, withdrawal from Rodeo, Contra Costa County officials began to soften their rhetoric. While having Singleton among them would be bad for business, it would be worse if someone in the county killed him because they didn’t want him there. What kind of message would that send?
“The snowball is so big that nobody can handle it,” said county official Sarah Fisher.
She requested that the state parole authority meet with local officials to see if they could find a mutually satisfactory home for Singleton. Fisher and the rest of the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors also met in a special closed session in an effort to resolve what had become, in the words of the media, “the Singleton problem.” But two hours were apparently not enough: at the end of the meeting, no conclusion was reached.
“We are, however, prepared to work with the state to resolve the issue,” Fisher said.
Meanwhile, Singleton had been placed under the jurisdiction of the neighboring community of Concord, still within Contra Costa County. Police confirmed for reporters that Singleton was at another undisclosed location, under heavy guard by four parole officers. However, he had no other police protection.
“They are telling us that Singleton will be here in Concord from two to three days,” said a town official.
That night, hundreds of people gathered outside the motel where Singleton was rumored to be staying. It looked as though it might be a repeat of the scene in Rodeo. But then, an enterprising reporter found out that the whole thing was a lie.
Singleton wasn’t anywhere near Concord. The parole board had spread that piece of disinformation in an effort to get everyone off Singleton’s tail. Apparently, it had worked.
Singleton was somewhere, but only a few knew where that somewhere was, and for a change, no one was talking. It had become a game now, a game of hide-and-seek. Only, grownups were playing it. Where is Lawrence Singleton today?
