Word: singleton
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Further enraging Californians were Singleton's claims to innocence and his absurd threat of a forcible-kidnap complaint against Vincent. (She won $2.56 million from him in a civil suit, but he had no funds.) When Singleton moved in 1988 to his native Florida, the reception was equally hostile. A Tampa car dealer offered him $5,000 to get out of the state, and a firebomb exploded on his lawn. He had more luck later in Orient Park, where he moved into a house owned by his family. Some neighbors were ignorant of his past. Others felt sure Singleton...
Some did much more. Three weeks ago, David Sales, who didn't know of Singleton's history, found him slumped over the wheel of his van, a hose running from the tailpipe. "He was foaming at the mouth, and his breathing was really shallow," Sales recalls. He and his son Danny foiled the suicide attempt. In light of last week's event, Sales says, "The first thing I thought was, 'Should I have left that man in there...
Sales wasn't the only one second-guessing. If Singleton had committed any serious crimes in Florida before last week, he wasn't caught. Police records indicate shoplifting charges. But the absence of intervening atrocities between bookend acts of horror does not lessen the impression that the California picketers were justified and the tolerant Orient Parkers tragically naive. In 1987 Singleton's parole led to passage of California's "Singleton bill," which carries a 25-years-to-life sentence with possible parole for aggravated mayhem. In fact, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office estimates that subsequent toughening...
...Lawrence Singleton's victims, such speculation is moot. Mary Vincent, now 34, told the San Jose Mercury News that she was "appalled and horrified. I want to feel safe again. I don't know what the feeling is like anymore." Divorced and financially strapped, she is raising one of her two children on her own. The prosthetic hooks she wears have worn...
Roxanne Hayes, last week's victim, leaves three children ages 3 to 11. Over the past 11 years she had accrued 99 arrests, mostly on prostitution and drug charges. But she probably had no idea what sort of man she was visiting; Singleton's first crime predated Florida's public-notice statute on sex offenders. Said her grieving boyfriend: "Roxanne did nothing to deserve what she got from...