The Mad Chopper

by Fred Rosen

  Shackles hobbling him, Lawrence Singleton shuffled away, following the guards, and exiting through a side entrance to the courtroom.

  The lawyers approached the bench.

  “We’ll set sentencing for March thirtieth,” said Judge Mitcham. Neither side objected.

  After the hearing, an impromptu press conference was set up one more time outside the courtroom. While Skye and Menadier expressed disappointment with the jury’s decision, Pruner and Peden claimed victory.

  Six of the jurors agreed to meet the press.

  “We knew we were about to make a decision no one wants to make,” said juror Gertrude Klein.

  “It was so one-sided,” added juror Keith Racow.

  “He was a monster,” foreman Sal Hodges told the press. “There’s no other way to describe him. After seeing Ms. Vincent, there’s no other way to describe him.”

  “I think I’ll be having nightmares for a long time,” juror Tom Brewster added. “I was totally in shock when she walked into the courtroom and pointed one of her … uh … arms at Singleton.”

  As for that picture of Singleton standing alone, naked, wearing a condom, “shocking” was the only word to describe their joint reaction.

  “I think he has shown and has proven himself to be a very evil human being, who has, in effect, taken away two lives,” said a fifth juror, Archie Graham. “And what I want to know is how do you accidentally stab someone seven times?”

  “The preponderant evidence was the stabbing seven times,” answered the sixth juror, James Matson.

  “Those knives were placed there on purpose,” Brewster continued. “His wallet never left his pocket—so much for that crap about her trying to rob him. He knew exactly what he was doing. This man hated women.”

  “Mary Vincent’s testimony was really moving,” said Hodges.

  “He destroyed her,” Brewster concluded. “You can almost say that he killed two women.”

  “But we tried him on the Florida case, not the California case,” Hodges was quick to add.

  “I’m having flashbacks from looking at the picture of Roxanne dead,” said Brewster. “There’s no getting away from those pictures.”

  The others looked at him sympathetically.

  “Know what bothers me the most?” Graham asked quietly.

  The others looked at him.

  “That rope. It was a small detail in one of the photos, remember? She was lying on the floor dead and this small piece of rope was on the floor beside her. What was that rope for?”

  “That rope was to dispose of the body, like the prosecutor said,” Brewster answered. And that conjured up the grisly murder, with all the details, finally complete.

  There was Singleton, angry at Hayes, but really angry at all the women in his life. With each thrust of the knife, he obliterated one bad image after another. He was purifying his soul in the blood of a hapless hooker with a heart of gold. Really.

  After Hayes was dead, he had tried attaching the rope to her ankle. He’d put her in the van outside and dispose of the body. But he was too drunk and too weak to make much of a go at it.

  He gazed down at the dead woman on the carpet, and then he heard the doorbell. Not even cognizant that he was naked, with his flaccid penis still encased in a condom, and covered with the woman’s blood, he went to answer the door.

  “Yeah?”

  It was a cop. Just what he needed right now, a cop asking questions why he had a dead girl on the floor in the other room.

  He tried to send the cop away, but the officer followed him into the house and the next thing Singleton knew, he was up against the wall, and the guy was cuffing him. This time Singleton knew he wouldn’t beat the rap.

  Outside, a TV crew shined a light in his eyes!

  “They framed me the last time,” Singleton told them, referring to Mary Vincent. “This time, I did it.”

  What the hell was he talking about? thought a reporter. He looks like just a mean old drunk who killed a whore. A nobody from no place.

  There was nothing very important about him. He would just get a few seconds on the evening news. It would never be anything bigger.

  March 30, 1998

  Dressed once more in an orange prison jump suit, shackled at the hands and feet, Lawrence Singleton was taken across the street from the county jail to a holding cell inside the bowels of the Hillsborough County courthouse on Twiggs Street.

  Soon, the bailiffs escorted him into the courtroom, where his lawyers, Skye and Menadier met him. Across the defense table sat prosecutor Jay Pruner. Then Judge Mitcham came in to begin the sentencing proceeding. It was Lawrence Singleton’s last chance to escape the death chamber.

  The prosecution argued for death one final time. As for Skye, he tried to pull a rabbit out of his legal bag.

  “What everybody wants to happen here,” said Skye in a ringing voice, “is to kill Mr. Singleton for what he did twenty years ago. That’s not right. That’s not fair. That’s not the law. That’s revenge.”

  After Skye had finished, the judge asked Fred Ricker if he had anything to say. Ricker said that he had forgiven Singleton and did not want to see him executed.

  “When he killed Roxanne, he killed a part of me and my kids. He killed a great part of us. But we forgive him.”

  Later he would tell the press, “Any time a person is killed, or dies, it’s not a happy thing. There’s nothing for me to be happy about. There’s nothing for anyone to be happy about.”

  That left only one person to be heard from. All along Singleton had said he had killed Hayes in self-defense. When given the opportunity, would he recant and throw himself on the mercy of the court to save his life?

  “Mr. Singleton,” Judge Mitcham urged, “do you have anything to say?”

  Singleton stood up.

  “Yes, Your Honor, I do.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’m sorry about the death in this case,” he said in a halting voice. “I’ll have to carry it on my conscience the rest of my life.”

  Not exactly a ringing confession rife with contrition. But at least it was something. Mitcham decided to delay sentencing until April 14. Singleton was taken back across the street to Hillsborough County Jail to await his judgment day.

  For Mary Vincent, Singleton’s conviction and sentencing was the end of a long van ride into hell. For twenty years, she could not look at her new “hands” without feeling fear that Singleton would be coming back. But now, she could wake up in the morning, look at her arms, and know that Lawrence Singleton was getting what he deserved.

  After Singleton’s arrest in 1997 for killing Hayes, the Today show had flown her to New York to appear live on national TV and to describe the attack and her continuing ordeal. Today did not pay her for her appearance, as was the custom with any journalistic endeavor. After that, Mary clammed up for the media. She made it known through her bodyguard and confidante, that her story was available, but only for the right price. She wouldn’t give it away for free anymore. But 1978 was a long time ago; there were no takers. Ironically, the Mad Chopper was more famous than his victim, whose name was known by few. Fate then conspired to deal her a better break.

  The publicity surrounding Singleton’s arrest and conviction had been enormous. Reporters asked Lawrence Preston, an attorney who had worked with Mary during her civil suit against Singleton, where contributions could be sent. He gave them an address, and suddenly, by the hundreds, people, who felt Mary Vincent’s pain, began sending her money. Typical was the contribution of John Russell.

  Russell had read about Vincent in an edition of his local paper in Provo, Utah. Though he was an eighty-eight-year-old retiree on a fixed income, Russell was moved by Vincent’s plight. He sent her a note on a piece of lined, loose-leaf paper, saying he and his ninety-three-year-old wife, Martha, wanted to help. They enclosed four twenty-dollar bills, indicating it was part of their Social Security benefits.

  “I immediately went to the Pacific Northwest and offer
ed to help set up a trust fund, free of charge,” Preston told the Associated Press. “I could see that she was visibly moved by the amount of correspondence and the very personal tone of it.”

  Preston gave Mary some of the money from the fund for basic expenses, including rent and utilities. Preston had also managed to contact companies that specialized in making prosthetic limbs, and one of them, NovaCare of Oklahoma City, offered help. They sent a team to Seattle to talk with Mary about the new technology available in artificial limbs that they could provide on a less-than-cost basis. And while they were at it, they repaired her old arms.

  “Obviously, we’ll have to pay them something, but they’re willing to work with her because of her plight,” Preston continued.

  There was the possibility the money could be used to provide a better life for her children. That’s all Mary really wanted, to take care of her two kids. Maybe now, without having to worry about Singleton, she could spend more of her time with them. With a little money left over, maybe she could buy those new hands.

  Regardless of what the future held in store for her, one thing Mary Vincent now knew for certain: Lawrence Singleton would never hurt another woman, ever. She could finally sleep well again at night.

  Be it life in prison, or death, either way Lawrence Singleton would not be sailing the high seas again. Not in this life anyway.

  Chapter Seventeen

  After the rape and assault on Mary Vincent, the California courts had given Lawrence Singleton a second chance. He was only sixty years old when he was released from prison, and he had a chance to live out his remaining years in relative harmony when he returned to Florida. And he did, for almost ten years.

  Singleton had spent a lot of his time at the local bowling alley, tending his garden, and doing general improvements on his property. But those old sexual urges just wouldn’t leave him alone.

  Lawrence Singleton clearly, felt most comfortable with prostitutes, whom he didn’t have to relate to on an emotional level. He had viewed Roxanne Hayes that way, and then that day in February, 1997, she became a human being to him, a human being on whom he could take out all his past anger toward women. When that paroxysm of rage was over, she lay dead on his living room floor.

  Now, Singleton found himself back once more in the courtroom, where he had been convicted of the prostitute/mother’s death. Had Roxanne been just any prostitute, the case wouldn’t warrant the national attention it was receiving. But because she was the victim of Lawrence Singleton, the pervert who had chopped off the hands of that nice little girl in California almost twenty years ago, all along the newswire, Associated Press editors were waiting for word on what would happen in that Florida courtroom.

  Would the court spare Singleton again, or would this time be Singleton’s last?

  April 14, 1998

  “All rise,” the court clerk ordered.

  As one, the people in the courtroom rose as Judge Mitcham took his seat high up on the bench then sat back down. All the players were assembled one last time. In addition to the prosecution and defense lawyers and the defendant, the courtroom was packed with reporters, and what few seats that were left went to lucky rubberneckers, the same type of people who slow down to watch at accident scenes.

  “Mr. Singleton, would you stand please?” Judge Mitcham ordered.

  In his bright orange jump suit, Singleton rose at the defense table and stared up at the judge.

  “This was an unprovoked, senseless killing of a human being, the mother of lovely children, without cause, provocation, or justification,” Mitcham began. Then he added a Biblical reference. “This killing further exemplifies that we are living in times worse than Sodom and Gomorrah.”

  Mitcham had referred to the Biblical cities that were so sinful, they were destroyed by God in a great conflagration, even as the just man Lot fled with his wife, who was turned to salt when she turned to watch the destruction. But unlike Lot, Mitcham was empowered. He was not about to turn into a bag of salt any time soon.

  “Roxanne Hayes fought for her life. She literally clawed for her life. She was acutely aware of her impending death. The fact that the victim was a prostitute in no way diminished her right to life or justifies the taking of her life.

  “Mr. Singleton”—and now Mitcham looked down from the bench like an avenging God from heaven— “you deserve no more chances. I sentence you to death for the murder of Roxanne Hayes. And may God have mercy on your soul.” Or at least more than you had on Mary Vincent, he might have added.

  Singleton took a sharp breath, but showed no other reaction to the death warrant. He just stared out into space. Perhaps he was contemplating his own mortality. And just like that, without fanfare, the sentencing was over. Once again, a shackled, defeated ex-merchant marine, murderer/mutilator/rapist was hustled out into the bowels of the building, and now, the Florida State prison system.

  As he left court, Fred Ricker reiterated, “I’m against the death penalty. It’s sad that Mr. Singleton has to face the death penalty. We forgive him,” His children stood beside him on the courthouse steps. “He has a greater punishment beyond the grave. But as long as he was in prison for life, that would have been enough for me.”

  Musing further, Ricker felt that the judge’s sentence signified that “It is a recognition that her life was important. She was a human being. Roxanne has been recognized as a person.”

  Vincent was immediately contacted after the sentencing. A press conference was organized.

  “I didn’t want to play God and don’t want anyone’s death on my hands,” she told reporters nervously. But she had no need for nerves; they were taking down and recording her every word. Even if she recited “Mother Goose,” it would make the evening news.

  “I am relieved that there has been justice served. I think I can start all over and put everything behind me and hopefully be safe and happy. I think there’s a little bit of relief,” Vincent continued. “I think we can all put this behind us now. I feel peace.”

  Vincent reminded reporters that people said she was paranoid when she told them that Singleton had told her that he was “‘… going to finish the job.’ I don’t think I was paranoid enough.”

  She spoke of getting on with her life, of getting a job where she could “help people … so they don’t have to go through what I went through.”

  Someone asked her how she had gotten through the dark years of learning to live with her disability.

  “My children,” she answered quickly. “Life. I love life, I really love life.”

  She could even joke about her condition. It seemed that on the way back home from Florida, the airline had lost some of her bags—the ones containing her second set of artificial arms.

  “Half of me,” she said, “is somewhere else.”

  After the death sentence, Singleton was taken outside, and placed in a van. He was driven upstate to Florida State Prison, where he took up residence on death row.

  Of the thirty-eight states that have capital punishment, only five, besides Florida, require the electric chair—Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Nebraska, and Tennessee. Of the rest, most use the more humane method of lethal injection.

  Singleton’s sentencing coincided with the one-year anniversary of Florida’s electric chair setting a convicted killer’s death mask on fire. Eventually, an investigation placed the blame for the malfunction on the executioner’s failure to properly apply electricity-conducting sponges in the chair’s headpiece.

  With blame adequately fixed, the state didn’t have to go to the expense of buying a new three-legged, oak death contraption. Even a law suit challenging the use of the electric chair on constitutional grounds fell short of changing things, when the state supreme court upheld the use of the electric chair by a four-to-three vote in the fall of 1997. Still, the national attention was unwelcome in a state that preferred to be known for the round-trip rides through Disney-world rather than the one-way trip to the executioner. The state legislature decided to
consider the matter of switching execution methods to lethal injection.

  Not surprisingly, considering its conservative nature, the legislature on March 18, 1998, voted unanimously to keep electrocution as the state’s method of execution.

  Appeal in a capital case is mandatory in Florida, as it is in every state where capital punishment exists. Assuming there were no procedural irregularities, chances were Singleton’s case would not be overturned on appeal. Few cases in Florida are. He also could not count on the governor granting clemency. What politician of either party, in his right mind, would grant clemency to “the Mad Chopper,” regardless of Singleton’s age?

  Various state and federal laws over the past couple of years had been passed to decrease the time it took for the appeals process. Still, the average amount of time an inmate spent on Florida’s death row was ten and a half years before he was executed. The oldest inmates at the time of Singleton’s sentencing were Raymond Thomason, sixty-eight, and William Cruse, Jr., seventy.

  Even if his appeal took only a few years, that was time enough for Singleton to continue drinking himself into liver failure on the homemade, two-hundred-proof alcoholic brews popular in prisons.

  Maybe his abused liver would save the state the cost of an execution. Or maybe he’d play the string out with last-minute appeals until finally, with all of them exhausted, Lawrence Singleton would be marched into the death chamber. The electricity-conducting sponges would be applied to his ankles and resembling an ancient football helmet, the headpiece would then be strapped tightly over his head and secured beneath his chin with a worn leather strap. His hands and arms would be strapped down by the same, tough straps, and a black mask placed over his face. A heart monitor lead would be attached to his chest, and the lead stretched through the wall to a physician, who would monitor his heart action until the state was certain it had stopped.

  The warden would read Singleton the death warrant, ask for any last words, and then, all would leave the old man alone. After a fleeting moment, the executioner would throw the switch and 10,000 volts of electricity would course through Singleton’s body for approximately sixty seconds. Then the switch would be thrown “off,” only to be flicked again into the “on” position, to make sure the job was done. After 10,000 volts lit him up, the machine would be turned off. The doctor would check his heart and if it was stopped, the body would be removed to a local mortuary where the family could claim it. If on the happenstance that Singleton was alive—and he is a tough old bird—they’d give him as many doses of “juice” as needed until he was dead.