The Mad Chopper

by Fred Rosen

  Besides the landlord difficulties, he had been the brunt of numerous wisecracks and cruel jokes. He had considered changing his name, but decided that was too drastic. He just hoped that the “bad” Singleton would stay out of the Bay Area and that eventually, the name “Singleton” would fade from the headlines as it once had.

  Since the Singleton sighting in Berkeley had been wrong, he had to be some place, but where? Radio talk-show hosts kept the topic front and center and why not? It was great for ratings.

  In late June, Singleton wrote a Southern California court that he was living in northern California, in the town of Richmond. This came as a surprise to the people of Richmond. Police officers in the town said he was nowhere about. The address he’d used in the letter turned out to be a state parole office, where his former parole supervisor worked.

  “I haven’t seen him since the day he was off parole,” said the former supervisor. He had not registered in Richmond as a sex offender either.

  While he was missing from the public eye, Mary Vincent had gone to court and gotten a 2.4 million-dollar judgment against him. “The reason he did not show up in court is he was probably afraid of being shot,” Mark Edwards, Vincent’s attorney, told reporters. “I can tell you we don’t want him shot. We want him alive, healthy, and employed, and making payments.”

  Fat chance. At the age of sixty, Singleton wasn’t about to go to sea again. And if he didn’t do that, he wasn’t trained for anything else. Mary would have to be satisfied with whatever paltry sum her lawyers could exact from Singleton’s hide.

  Lawrence Singleton was weary. There was no place to go where he wouldn’t be hounded. He felt like a child, alone and afraid. Where could he go for safety and security?

  What does a child do when he’s in trouble?

  Go home. The safety and security of home. And Singleton, who had regressed to this childlike state, decided that was exactly what he’d do. Having no place to turn, he went back to where he came from.

  In June, his former parole supervisor received a call from Singleton.

  “Hi, I’m in Florida,” Singleton said over the phone. “I’m living with my brother in the Forest Hills neighborhood of Tampa.”

  Then he gave his address, even though he wasn’t required by law to do so. The parole officer figured that Singleton had read about the Singleton sightings in California and called to set the record straight. After exchanging pleasantries, Singleton hung up.

  Now, finally, California had what it had originally wanted—Singleton was no longer its problem. He was off parole and back home where he belonged. As far as California was concerned he could live anywhere, just as long as it wasn’t in their state.

  For its part, Florida could do nothing to keep Singleton out. He had served his time. He was free to travel and live anywhere he wanted. But, according to Florida law, as well as the conditions of his parole, he did have to register as a convicted felon, which he initially failed to do when he relocated.

  This gave Florida its out if they decided to use it. They could press charges against him for failing to register, but what was really the point? Failing to register was a misdemeanor, punishable by a minimum sentence, and then he was out on the street. The courts were already overtaxed with really serious offenses.

  Singleton did eventually register as a convicted felon. As he had told his California parole officer, he was living with his brother Walter Singleton in Tampa. He had no plans to move to Oregon or anywhere else. He would stay in Florida. He had applied for his Florida driver’s license using Walter’s address.

  As far as the cops were concerned, that made the whole matter moot. Maybe Singleton would just settle down in Tampa and live out his life in anonymity. But the public had not been reckoned with.

  “We want him the hell out.”

  “We don’t want that type of individual living here.”

  “We’re concerned about the young girls living in our neighborhood.”

  These were just some of the milder comments on the call-in radio programs. The police tried to reassure the public. But the bottom line was, the police had no control over the situation.

  Lawrence Singleton was back home for good, and there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do about it.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ever since the assault on Mary Vincent eleven years before, Singleton’s family had lived under a self-imposed, media blackout. That didn’t change when he moved back to Tampa.

  Repeated attempts by reporters to contact his family for a statement about their notorious sibling failed. None of his seven brothers and sisters would talk. But amongst themselves, it was a different story.

  They were a good and close family, presented with a crisis that no families had ever had to tackle. One of their own had done the unthinkable: cut off a girl’s hands. They were repelled by what he had done, but united in their desire to help him. He was their brother and he needed to be taken care of now that he was home.

  For his first few years in Tampa, he alternated living in his brother’s and sister’s homes. Newspaper reports at the time show that when vigilantes discovered he was living at his sister’s, someone took some BB shots at the house. Some younger Floridians, interested in publicizing the state’s citrus crop, lobbed oranges instead.

  The Singleton family eventually reached a decision to rent him an apartment in the Tampa area. The town they chose, twenty miles outside the city limits was Gibsonton.

  As Lawrence Singleton was driven by his family to his new home, he looked out and saw a bridge rising in the distance. Soon, they were on the bridge that spanned the Alafia River just south of Tampa.

  On the other side, a sign at the bottom of the bridge said GIBSONTON. Looking around, Singleton saw marshland dotted with trailers here and there. Coming up on his immediate right was a series of low-lying buildings, what looked like a restaurant, and a trailer park. The sign at the entrance read GIANT’S CAMP. It was that, literally.

  When the world’s tallest man, eight-foot-six-inch Al Tomaini and his wife, Jeanie, “The World’s Only Living Half Girl”—Jeanie was born with the lower half of her body missing—decided to quit the carnival, they set up the combination restaurant-and-trailer park they called “Giant’s Camp” to make their living from.

  Gibsonton was the place where carnival people came to winter during the off-season, and eventually retire after their performing days were over. Many of them were sideshow attractions like Jeanie and Al. It was in Gibsonton where the world-famous “Lobster Boy,” Grady Stiles, Jr., lived and his buddy “Midget Man,” Harry Glenn Newman, Jr. The “Bearded Lady” lived here and so did “Crocodile Man.”

  In despair, the Singleton family had turned to the one place on earth where their freak of a brother could live in peace, for Gibsonton was a town of freaks. The only difference was that the other residents had genetic disabilities that made them look outwardly bizarre, but for the most part, they were good people.

  Lawrence Singleton was a freak on the inside, whose personal demons tore at him, hungering to escape. When they were unleashed by alcohol, he became bizarrely violent. In Gibsonton, though, he could live in anonymity. And because of his outward normality, he could live in a place where he’d feel superior.

  Singleton took up residence in a cottage behind the home of Fred Loerke. Loerke, in his late seventies, formed an immediate bond with the younger Singleton, then in his early sixties. In Loerke’s presence, Singleton finally found some measure of peace.

  The two older men spent hours and hours talking about life and love and their adventures as young men. They spent evenings bowling at the local bowling alley. What was good for Singleton and all those around him was that when he was with Loerke, Singleton drank very little, because Loerke was a teetotaler. Singleton didn’t give up alcohol completely, though. He couldn’t. He was an alcoholic, and since he failed to admit that and seek help from Alcoholics Anonymous or some other organization, he continued to drink. Alone.

&nb
sp; On many a night, you could probably find Singleton drinking in Showtown, USA. Showtown was the local watering hole where the carnies liked to hang out and shoot the breeze. Singleton was at the bar, drinking one night when he saw something that even to his eyes looked strange.

  A man came into the bar, walking as quickly on his hands as he might have if they had been feet. But he didn’t have feet, save for appendages that looked like an elf’s slippers, with one toe curled up at each end. He walked on his hands, but they were not hands really, more like claws. A genetic defect had left his fingers fused in the shape of lobster claws.

  “Gimme my usual,” said Lobster Boy to the bartender as he smoothly climbed on top of a stool and pulled a wad of bills out from his pocket. Still staring, Singleton could only marvel at the dexterity of those claws.

  “How ya doin? I’m Grady Stiles,” said Lobster Boy, extending a claw.

  “Pretty good,” said Singleton, extending his hand and shaking the claw, which was as rough and as hard as a piece of oak. “My name is Bill Johnson.”

  Singleton was using that name so no one would know who he really was. He had found through bitter experience that his notoriety followed him around. Ironically, that had been the name of the one-armed man in the TV drama, The Fugitive.

  The two men chatted for a bit. Yes, sir, this was a place where Singleton could feel right at home. He could drink here and no one would give him a second look.

  Many addicts like Singleton have other medical problems. In Singleton’s case, he would later be diagnosed as suffering from depression, paranoia, and schizophrenia that all remained untreated. That was the purpose of the alcohol—to suppress the other diseases so he could survive.

  The problem is that alcohol does not solve the underlying problems that remain to eat away at the addict’s conscience, if he has one. Singleton did. He desperately wanted help, but didn’t know how to get it. In his mind, he formed the subconscious idea that stealing might be the way to go.

  On April 8, 1990, Lawrence Singleton entered a drugstore in the town of Brandon and stole a ten-dollar disposable camera. Conveniently, he allowed himself to get caught.

  Local members of the New York vigilante group, the Guardian Angels, picketed the courthouse when he was charged. Tried and convicted, he served sixty days of a six-month sentence for the theft. Six weeks after his release, on November 23, Singleton walked into a Wal-Mart in Plant City and stole a three-dollar hat.

  “I just want to plead ‘no contest’ with an explanation,” Singleton told Hillsborough Judge James Dominguez. “I’m a confused, bungle-headed old man.” He explained to the judge that he was caring for a seventy-five-year-old man (probably Loerke), and had gone to Wal-Mart to buy adult diapers.

  “I picked up the hat to buy for my friend,” he told the judge, “paid for the diapers and just forgot to pay for the hat.”

  Security officers spotted the theft and followed him outside, where they nabbed him. He had no identification on him and gave his name as Bill Johnson.

  “Whether or not he’s crazy and has the propensity to steal, I don’t know,” said the assistant state attorney prosecuting the case. “I just think he’s stupid. He’s a thief.”

  Noting Singleton’s California record, and the conviction on the previous shoplifting charge, the prosecutor asked for the maximum sentence under law: two years for petty theft and giving a false identity.

  Singleton was soon convicted. More than fifty people packed the courtroom and applauded when he was sentenced to two years in the Hillsborough County Jail.

  A two-year stretch in a minimum security jail was nothing to a man who had done almost eight in San Quentin, nine if you counted his parole year. When he got out, he went back to live with his friend Fred Loerke. But Loerke was ill, suffering from cancer. Suddenly, Singleton had to confront the reality that his only friend might die. And he would be alone.

  1994

  Nancy Glass, the host of the popular, syndicated tabloid show American Journal, looked out from the TV screen and introduced the next segment. It was, she said, about a woman whose arms had been cut off in a savage attack in 1978. The screen suddenly lit up with the face of Mary Vincent. Then, the camera panned down to show her hooks.

  “He took away my pride, my esteem, my childhood,” said Mary.

  In the graphic, tearful interview that followed, Mary said, “I mean, this isn’t living, this is existing.” She told American Journal that she lived in hiding, in fear of her attacker, Lawrence Singleton, who remained free on parole somewhere in Florida. She would not identify the city where she lived, but she said that because of her continued upset over the attack, she had considered suicide.

  “I’m haunted when I wake up. I’m haunted when I’m sleeping,” she said in the interview. “It won’t leave, it’s always there.

  “As I get older, it’s getting harder to use my arms, and I have to keep myself in shape just to deal with the everyday chores, the everyday life.

  “I have to work ten times harder than the average person with hands to do anything, fold clothes, do dishes,” Mary continued.

  She revealed on the show that she and Mark had divorced, after they had had a son together. Clearly, her life after marriage had not turned out the way she had hoped.

  In 1996, Singleton’s best friend, Fred Loerke, died from cancer. Singleton was bereft—he had lost his one friend in all the world and didn’t know what to do. He was sixty-eight years old, and everyone was hounding him. They all wanted to frame him, to put him away. Why couldn’t they just leave him alone?

  He continued to try to drink away his troubles, to no avail, and he went on drunken binges. Singleton regularly patronized whores, sometimes two at a time. Once, he had a mother and her daughter, the latter following in the family tradition.

  His continued aberrant behavior finally caused some family members to throw up their hands in disgust and frustration. They just didn’t know what to do with him. Herb, the brother who was in business in Atlanta, took charge and decided it was time for Lawrence to move and to settle down in his own home. The hope was that this would give him the grounding he had lacked since his conviction in California.

  In July 1996, a man calling himself “Bill Singleton” put a $10,000 down payment on a converted ex-Army barrack in the Orient Park neighborhood of Tampa. He agreed to pay the owner another $15,000 over the next few months to make the full purchase price. It was money that his brother Herb had given him. And that was how Lawrence Singleton, using another alias, became a property owner again. The house needed work and Singleton had all the manpower he needed in his family.

  “His brothers Herb, Walter, and Jimmy would come over and josh each other while they redid the front of the house. He put in irrigation pipes so big [that] his brothers laughed at the size of them. Bill just wanted to make sure they did the job. It was a real tight family,” recalls one neighbor.

  Singleton became friendly with his neighbor and revealed a telling detail about his life. “The only thing he said about his mother was she drank a lot,” the same neighbor recalled.

  Whether it is a genetic defect, something learned in the home or a combination of both, alcoholism is looked on as a disease. It frequently runs in families. In Singleton’s case, the apple had apparently not fallen far from the tree.

  Despite this problem, by all accounts, he was a good neighbor.

  “He was a great neighbor. He would come over with steaks for the barbecue. I had a rottweiler and he begged me to sell it to him,” the neighbor said.

  Singleton, always a dog fancier, finally convinced his neighbor to sell him the dog, which he named Kayla. But the demons were working their destruction on his insides. “He was always talking about whores. He said he had been married twice and that one of his ex’s was an attorney. He had had a girlfriend who was married and taking him for all he was worth. They broke it off at Christmas. He had a real intimacy problem.”

  Singleton knew no matter how many women he h
ad at a time, no matter how much he drank, he would always be left with himself. He was a man who had cut off a girl’s arms, a lonely, old man whom he hated more than anything in the world. Maybe it was time to check out.

  February 1, 1997

  It was a bright, sunny day, the temperature hovering around eighty, without a cloud in the sky. The air was dry with not a trace of humidity.

  Lawrence Singleton went down to his local Sears, where he “boosted” an eighty-seven-dollar power drill. After he was charged with shoplifting, he was released and sent home. When he got there, he sat down at his dining room table and wrote out a note that said simply:

  I would like to thank everyone who helped me, especially Herb. I hope I can find peace.

  He left the note on the dining room table and went outside. His van was already in the driveway, where he’d parked it earlier in the day.

  Across the street, his neighbor Stu Simon watched as he took a length of hose from his garage, and attached it to the tail pipe. Then he pulled the hose around and stuck it through the top of the driver’s side window, which was open just a crack. Singleton opened the door, got in, and started the car up.

  My God, he’s trying to kill himself, Simon thought. Simon ran across the street, threw the car door open, and pulled Singleton out.

  “What are you crazy, Mr. Bill?” asked Simon.

  Simon thought that Singleton should go to the hospital to get some help. He knew the man had psychiatric problems. It was no secret. Everyone in the neighborhood knew. But trying to kill himself in broad daylight, that was just plain nuts.

  Singleton declined help and went inside his house. An hour later, Stu saw him come out and try the same thing again. As before, Stu pulled him out. Once again, Singleton went back into his house.

  Stu was inside his own house the next time it happened, but when he came out, he saw Singleton slumped unconscious behind the wheel of his van. He pulled him out and this time, Singleton couldn’t refuse help when the police came.