Florida Balks at Singleton’s Parole in State

While authorities searched for a California home for paroled rapist Lawrence Singleton, a parole official said Monday that Florida backed out of an agreement at the last minute to accept him for parole there.

Irv Marks, the official in charge of placing Singleton in his home state of Florida, said Singleton has five family members willing to care for him in the Tampa Bay area, plus a job offer and promises of a car and furnished housing.

“This case . . . belonged there. Everything that was needed for him to make it was back there,” Marks said.

Marks blamed media attention to Singleton’s parole for the rejection.

Close Supervision

Public outcry against Singleton in Contra Costa County in the Bay Area, where parole officials also hoped to place him, coupled with Florida’s refusal to accept him, has left authorities without a place to release the 59-year-old parolee.

He remains in temporary quarters at an undisclosed Northern California locale under close supervision by two parole officers.

On Monday, meanwhile, the state appealed Superior Court Judge E. Patricia Herron’s order of Friday that bars the state from paroling Singleton to Contra Costa County, his last California address before he was imprisoned in 1979.

In the appeal filed in the Court of Appeal in San Francisco, Deputy Atty. Gen. Morris Lenk said that the public interest--and Singleton’s--would be served if he were placed in familiar surroundings and that public outcry should not play a role in the decision.

“We believe that his notoriety is such that it will occur no matter where he may be placed and that it must simply be endured by him and the state,” Corrections Department Deputy Director Edward Veit said in a declaration accompanying the appeal.

Worked in Prison

Singleton spent less than eight years in prison for raping and axing off the arms of Mary Vincent, a teen-age hitchhiker, in 1978. His sentence of 14 years was cut because he worked while in prison. State law gives prisoners one day off their sentence for each day they work or attend school in prison.

Marks said Robert Porter, his Florida counterpart, initially told him that Florida would take Singleton but that Porter was overruled by Richard Duggar, who is in charge of the Florida Department of Corrections, when California reporters began calling about the prospective parole.

Porter contradicted Marks, saying by phone that he and Duggar made the decision jointly. Porter added that the publicity attached to Singleton’s crime and his early parole convinced Florida officials that “a satisfactory parole situation (would be) almost impossible.”

Parolees commonly are placed in other states if they have family ties or job offers, elements considered important for parolees to avoid a return to crime. California has roughly 900 parolees in other states and 1,600 parolees here from other states.