The Mad Chopper

by Fred Rosen

  “On the sole count, murder in the first degree, we find the defendant guilty!”

  As the verdict was read, the only emotion Lawrence Singleton showed was to rapidly blink his eyes. Then he nodded at the judge.

  “The sentencing phase of this trial will begin Monday,” said Judge Mitcham, who motioned the bailiffs to take Singleton into custody. Chains were attached to his wrists and ankles and he was led off, taking baby steps into the bowels of the building.

  Roxanne Hayes’s boyfriend, Fred Ricker, was in the courtroom with their children: Xena, the oldest at twelve, who had decided that she would become a lawyer and prosecute men like Singleton; Ricker, eight, the middle child; and the baby, four-year-old Malachi. All were dressed in black to denote their continued mourning. As the verdict was read, Ricker hugged them close and he began to cry.

  Sitting there throughout the trial, they had all heard the evidence about their mother participating in the world’s oldest profession. That hadn’t bothered them so much as the people judging them on the basis of her actions.

  Xena had saved a letter to the editor of one of the local papers critical of Roxanne, in which she and her siblings were described disparagingly as “illegitimate.”

  “I’m saving it ’til I graduate and when I make valedictorian,” said Xena.

  Outside, Ricker addressed reporters at an impromptu press conference. He said he was thankful that the jurors had rejected the defense’s efforts to characterize Hayes as something less than a human being.

  “The jury looked through the smoke and saw the facts. Roxie wasn’t a thief. She never hurt anybody. Roxanne had a name,” he told the reporters afterward. “They looked at Roxanne as being somebody. We’ve been hearing prostitute, thief. She was a human being.”

  Regardless of the way she was portrayed by Singleton, Roxanne Hayes was a good mother. She would take her kids on trips to the park, swimming at the Y, dress them up on Halloween, everything a good mother would do. She even broke her cocaine habit when she was pregnant.

  Ricker had taken to higher ground. He and the kids were now part of a regular church congregation. His goal was at some point in the future to become a preacher. God had become an important part in their lives. Still, He couldn’t take away the pain.

  “Think Singleton should go to the chair?” a reporter shouted at Ricker.

  Ricker didn’t believe anyone should die in the electric chair. Still, he made sure to add that he didn’t want Singleton “to ever harm another soul again.”

  “How’d your girlfriend’s murder affect your children?” a second reporter asked.

  “He killed a big part of them,” Ricker answered simply, nodding at his three children. “But we forgive him.”

  Monday, February 23

  Jason McCord, a gun salesman, had been convicted of sexual assault in 1990, and sentenced to life in prison. But his case was overturned on appeal, and he worked out an arrangement where he pleaded to a reduced charge, got only one more year in jail and then probation.

  He had been at the courthouse for a few days, working on a motion in his case. Representing himself, McCord planned to file another appeal. Out in the corridor between legal proceedings, McCord, like everyone else, became aware of who the Singleton jurors were while they took breaks in the trial. They stayed to themselves, a tight-knit bunch, well aware of their responsibility in a capital murder case.

  During a break before the judge’s charge, McCord had approached Tom Brewster, one of the twelve Singleton jurors. He was standing, sipping a cup of coffee when McCord sidled up to him.

  “Hey,” said McCord.

  Brewster just smiled, wishing this guy would vanish.

  “So how you going to vote? I mean after you convict him?”

  “Huh?”

  “You gonna vote for death or not?”

  Stunned that anyone would be so brazen, and so stupid, to ask him what he had sworn to keep secret, Brewster still didn’t reply; then McCord added, “Just make sure you do the right thing.”

  Since the judge wasn’t available over the weekend, Monday morning bright and early, Brewster had reported the conversation to the bailiff, who relayed it to the judge.

  Mitcham immediately called Brewster into his chambers and questioned him about the identity of the man who approached him, as well as whether or not the conversation had prejudiced Brewster’s ability to render a sentencing recommendation that was not biased by the conversation.

  “Your Honor, the guy who approached me is an idiot. I can certainly continue nonprejudiced.”

  Mitcham could see that Brewster was telling the truth and made the decision to continue proceedings. Otherwise, if Brewster had been thrown off the jury, it would have been a mistrial, because the alternates had been dismissed after the verdict.

  Judge Mitcham called McCord into his chambers.

  “Don’t you ever do that again,” he told McCord, obviously relieved that this trial, unlike the first, was running toward its conclusion.

  Tuesday, February 24

  There was a delay in the penalty phase of the trial. The prosecution had to fly their star witness in from Tacoma, Washington, where she lived with her boyfriend.

  Not since July 18, 1994, had there been as much anticipation in the Hillsborough County courthouse on Twiggs Street. On that date, defense attorney Arnold Levine called to the stand “Little” Grady Stiles, in the Lobster Boy murder case. Singleton’s old drinking buddy had been murdered. Little Grady’s stepmother, Mary Teresa Stiles, was on trial for ordering a hit on her husband, Lobster Boy himself, Grady Stiles, Jr.

  Little Grady and Grady, Jr., shared a birth defect that gave them what looked like lobster claws for hands and feet. The senior Stiles had made a small fortune off his birth defect as a sideshow freak. But what the public never realized was that Stiles, whose upper body was overdeveloped from having to use his hands as feet, was stronger than any two men. And he had used his cruel strength, Levine claimed, to abuse his wife to the point that she was so battered, she couldn’t stand it any more and hired a hit man to kill Stiles.

  After Little Grady took the stand by sliding from his wheelchair into the box, Levine deliberately made him get out of the box and put on a hand-walking demonstration for the jury. In this way, Levine hoped to establish Little Grady’s strength and by extension, his father’s.

  The hand-walking stunt had been the highlight of a bizarre trial that not only included testimony from the members of the Lobster family but also “Midget Man,” a dwarf who had also been married to Mary Stiles.

  Now, the courthouse braced for the testimony of another “freak,” only this time, the deformity was man made.

  The prosecution had sent Mary Vincent a ticket and provided her with a hotel room so she could come to Florida and testify against Singleton. It was an opportunity to get revenge, to see that the man who had mutilated her once and for all was taken off the planet.

  “Separated by twenty years and thousands of miles, two women unrelated except by their tragic connection to Lawrence Singleton, got into Mr. Singleton’s van,” prosecutor Jay Pruner said in his opening statement of the penalty phase of the trial.

  “Mary Vincent accepted a ride in 1978. Some twenty years later, Roxanne Hayes got into a van driven by Mr. Singleton and she, unlike Mary Vincent, did not survive her meeting.”

  Based upon Singleton’s record of barbarity, he argued that Singleton should be sentenced to death.

  When it was his turn, John Skye pointed at Singleton. The killer was wearing a rumpled jail uniform.

  “He is an old man, now in the only clothes he will ever wear again. This trial is not a matter of vengeance, or for you to clean up California’s mistakes from twenty years ago, but about whether that old man dies a natural death or we take him out and kill him. And that would not be justice. It would demean us all.”

  In effect, what Skye was saying was that Singleton was such a loser, he was just not worth executing.

  After
opening statements, Pruner called his first witness.

  “The state calls Mary Vincent.”

  In the media room, reporters adjusted their monitors, making sure their video would be pristine for the evening news. In the courtroom, the video camera whirred and still-camera shutters clicked as Vincent was ushered into the courtroom by the bailiff.

  Vincent had changed much from twenty years before. Once, she had looked like an innocent fifteen-year-old, but the thirty-five-year-old woman who came into the courtroom looked far from innocent.

  She was slightly hunched over, either from the weight of years, the weight of her prostheses, or both. She had an open, though pained, face, with lines of grief etched into her skin. With haunted brown eyes, she barely looked at Singleton.

  She had on a worn cardigan sweater over an old T-shirt, stained sweat pants, no socks, and weathered, dirty sneakers. She sat down in the witness box and Pruner began his direct examination.

  “Could you tell us how you came to make the defendant’s acquaintance?” Pruner began.

  All eyes in the courtroom were transfixed by her metal claws. Actually, they were much more than that.

  The arm itself was made of Fiberglas, like the kind used to make boats. Two curves of metal made up her aluminum hook. One part moved, while the other remained immobile. The movable part was attached to a wire cable that ran up her arm, connected to a fabric harness that was worn over the opposite shoulder. When the shoulder was flexed, the cable was pulled, and the hook could open or close.

  They were the same type of arms that Harold Russell had worn as a handicapped serviceman in the classic film The Best Years of Our Lives. It wasn’t so much that prosthetic developments had stagnated since then; there were artificial limbs available that used electronic impulses to make the arms work, prostheses reminiscent of the ones worn by Lindsay Wagner as The Bionic Woman. But the cost had made such devices out of Mary’s reach. Plus there was an even more important factor.

  Mary had always been afraid Singleton might get out and attack her again. If that ever happened, her claws could be a deadly defensive weapon.

  Vincent proceeded to offer a terse, though detailed, account of how she had met Singleton, but was interrupted when Judge Mitcham realized she had not taken the oath. He stopped her from speaking.

  “Please raise your right arm and swear to tell the truth,” Mitcham requested.

  Mary was so broke, having been forced to declare bankruptcy in 1995, that when her right arm needed servicing, she couldn’t afford the repairs and had to use a piece of yarn to fix the prothesis. That just made the arm weaker. She had use her lift hook to lift her arm. Only then could she swear the oath. The jury, of course, was watching all of this happening.

  “Now, as you were saying,” Pruner continued, “after you met Lawrence Singleton.”

  She described the trip they took in his van, and the drinking that took place on the way to Modesto. After that, “I was raped and I had my hands cut off,” Vincent said in a quiet, deliberate voice. “He used a hatchet and left me to die.”

  But she had refused to die and, instead, had crawled almost two miles before she found help.

  “Do you see the man who raped and cut off your forearms in this court today?” Pruner asked dramatically.

  “I do,” Vincent answered, and quickly, she raised her shiny metal claw and pointed it at Singleton, who sat emotionlessly at the defense table.

  “That’s the man who hurt me. Lawrence Singleton.”

  “No further questions.”

  John Skye was on his feet quickly. He couldn’t allow the jury to think about what they had just heard. He needed to get away from the emotional effect she was obviously having on the jury.

  “Was Mr. Singleton drinking before the attack?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was he drinking?”

  “Vodka from a plastic gallon jug during the attack.”

  “Did he continue drinking” throughout his attack on her? Skye wanted to know.

  “It’s hard to recall,” she answered.

  After all, not only was she in tremendous shock from loss of blood and the savagery of the assault, it had taken place twenty years before.

  Skye’s goal was to establish Singleton’s lifelong pattern of drinking and then violence, cause and effect. Other than doing that, there really wasn’t much else he could get out of the witness. Besides, if he was seen by the jury to be pressing her, it would only work against Singleton. Regardless of what they thought of Singleton and his actions, how could they not have sympathy for the poor woman?

  After her testimony, the judge took a break, and the media followed Mary into the corridor outside Judge Mitcham’s courtroom.

  “How did you feel identifying the man who cut your arms off?” one reporter asked, rather crassly.

  Vincent didn’t blink. “I had to. I had to identify him,” she responded. “I think I felt I had to testify.”

  “How are you today?” a second reporter asked politely, scratching out his notes.

  “I’m still trying to stay alive,” Vincent answered. “For the most part, I’m just trying to be a normal person.”

  Which certainly was a laudatory goal, but considering her mutilation, difficult to accomplish.

  “How are you affected emotionally by this whole proceeding?” a third reporter asked.

  “I blocked it out,” she answered honestly. “I can’t handle stress right now.”

  “What about the sentencing? You think he should get the chair?” the first reporter asked.

  “Well, I’d rather not comment right now. I wouldn’t want to say or do anything that might hurt the state’s case.”

  Left unsaid was her fervent hope that this would be the end of Larry Singleton, the man who had ruined her life. She had still been trying to reap some benefit from that ruin, by selling her life story to a New York publisher. Despite the efforts of her and her boyfriend, no one was buying.

  Like many who are the victim, Vincent believed that people all over the country would be interested in buying her story. She forgot to realize that she was competing with people like Monica Lewinsky and O. J. Simpson, who really commanded the national stage. While her case had been big in California, and she was trotted out every few years by overly aggressive politicians who wanted mandatory sentencing laws tightened, Mary Vincent was old news. Maybe with Singleton’s sentence, she could finally find peace and put her past behind her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Defense testimony was rather brief. Two of Singleton’s neighbors testified that they liked him, even after discovering his awful past. A psychologist testified that Singleton suffered from dementia, that he was a lifelong alcohol abuser, and that he had an extreme anger toward women.

  That was it. There really wasn’t much in the way of extenuating circumstances. Skye had to count on the jury’s mercy, that they would not want to put an old man into the death chamber. Jay Pruner, though, in his closing argument, saw things in a much more practical way. He asked the jurors to forget about Singleton’s age and recommend a sentence of death.

  “Lawrence Singleton is an old, mean-spirited drunk, who hates women, and has pickled his brain through alcoholism,” Pruner concluded. “Common sense would tell you that.”

  Pruner said that he brought Vincent in from across space and time, dragged her out of the past, because he wanted them to see that Singleton had mutilated and raped a real human being two decades before.

  “The fact of the matter is that twenty years ago, Lawrence Singleton did not dismember a document and leave a document for dead along a California roadside. He did not do that to a document, but to a human being.”

  Pruner pointed to pictures of Vincent’s missing limbs and the deep defensive wounds on Roxanne Hayes’s hands.

  “You need look no further than the hands of those two women upon which Mr. Singleton wreaked havoc,” to reach the verdict, he finished eloquently.

  When it became the defen
se’s turn to plead for Singleton’s life, John Skye did the best he could in trying to sway the jury’s mindset.

  Skye described his client as a “ruined old man. He will be held responsible when he’s put in a cage for the rest of his life.” Better for him to die lonely in prison, he argued, than in the death chamber.

  At the defense table, Singleton wiped tears from his eyes.

  “Rather than hearing a news story about how the state of Florida fried Lawrence Singleton, we can hear a story like this: Lawrence Singleton died in his jail cell today, lonely and alone and despised,” Skye concluded.

  Once again, the judge charged the jury and made it clear that this sentencing hearing was different from the trial that had preceded it. All that was necessary to condemn Singleton to the electric chair was a majority vote. But if they so chose, they could also recommend a sentence of life in prison.

  As the jury retired to consider their life-or-death decision, the courtroom buzzed with anticipation. Would the jury come back as quickly as before, despite the even more serious nature of their present deliberations? Or, would they take their time as they weighed Singleton’s fate?

  The time was five o’clock. There wasn’t even time to run out and get a hamburger. Or a Coke. Maybe a cigarette, but that was about it.

  One hour later, at six o’clock, the jury came back in. Lawyers, reporters, bailiffs, the court clerk, the judge, court watchers, all ran to take their places. Singleton, in shackles, sat down at the defense table. He licked his lips in anticipation.

  “Ladies and gentleman, I understand you have concluded your deliberations?”

  “Yes we have, Your Honor,” said the foreman, handing the sentencing recommendation to the court clerk, who then handed it to the judge. He glanced at it, then asked Singleton to stand.

  “Mr. Singleton,” the judge began, “by a vote of ten to two, the jury recommends death.”

  Singleton didn’t show any emotion. He was probably expecting the decision, perhaps even welcoming the executioner’s jolt. He’d finally be free of the demons that had been dogging him all his life.