Singleton Plans to Sue Victim of His ’78 Rape, Maiming

SAN QUENTIN, Calif. —  Lawrence Singleton, the convicted rapist whose parole last year sparked statewide protests, said Monday that he plans to leave the state when his parole ends in two weeks.

Singleton also said he is pursuing legal action against the woman he was convicted of raping and maiming in 1978.

Singleton made his comments in a telephone interview reported in a copyrighted story in the Daily Ledger of Antioch.

He said he will move to Oregon to spend the “first few days” with a church group after he becomes a free man on April 25 but would not disclose the exact location. He did not rule out an eventual return to California.

Singleton, 60, was convicted in 1979 of raping Mary Vincent, then 15, and hacking off her forearms with an ax on Sept. 29, 1978. He has spent the last 10 months finishing out his 1-year parole in a trailer on the grounds of San Quentin Prison.

Singleton was paroled to the prison grounds after local government officials throughout California mounted protests aimed at preventing the state from placing him in their county.

With last year’s protests in mind, authorities may take Singleton to an undisclosed site in the state before April 25 and release him on the proper date, said Ron Chun, regional director of the state Corrections Department.

If he lives anywhere in California, Chun said, Singleton will have to register as a sex offender within 10 days.

After serving seven years and nine months in prison and a year on parole, Singleton continues to insist that he did not attack Vincent and is now portraying himself as a victim.

In a request to the Superior courts in Placer and Marin counties, Singleton is pursuing his claim that he was kidnaped by Vincent just hours before she was attacked.

A copy of a civil complaint form provided to the Ledger contains many comments Singleton has made since his 1978 arrest. It says that Singleton, who was heading to Sparks, Nev., picked up Vincent while she was hitchhiking in Berkeley and agreed to take her to Reno.

On the way, his complaint says, Vincent began smoking PCP. When they stopped for gas in Auburn, she wanted to go to Los Angeles, became abusive and poked him with a 3-foot surveyor’s stick, Singleton claims.

Singleton claims that he drove Vincent to the town of Galt, where he picked up two male hitchhikers. They and Vincent then extorted money from Singleton to buy drugs, the complaint alleges.

Singleton wrote that he drove north and left Vincent in a “low-rent district” in Sacramento and never saw her again.

Although not in the complaint, Singleton has repeatedly claimed that he allowed one of the hitchhikers to drive while he was drinking. He has said that he passed out from the booze and when he awoke, Vincent was gone but that her clothes were still in the van.

The hitchhikers, he contends, committed the crimes. Authorities, however, maintain that the two hitchhikers never existed.

Singleton said his action is not intended to be a form of revenge. He said he mailed the complaint Saturday to authorities in the two counties, but court clerks in both counties said Monday morning that they had not received the complaints.