Singleton Is Moved to Avoid ‘Circus’ as End of Parole Nears

State parole authorities said Tuesday that they have slipped rapist Lawrence Singleton out of the safe haven of his trailer on the prison grounds in anticipation of freeing him of all restrictions when his parole expires at midnight Sunday.

Department of Corrections spokesman Robert Gore said parole officials, who hope to successfully conclude the most intensive surveillance ever conducted of a California parolee, moved Singleton late Monday evening “to avoid the media circus” that likely would have befallen him if the state had waited until Sunday.

“It is our legal duty to supervise a successful parole period, and a successful parole period precludes massive publicity,” Gore said.

As they did for five weeks upon his parole from prison last year, teams of parole agents will chauffeur Singleton, 60, one of the most reviled criminals in the state’s history, through Northern California until his parole ends.

Singleton, who lived in Contra Costa County before his imprisonment, has not said where he will live once his parole ends, although a religious commune in southern Oregon has offered him shelter--to the dismay of local residents. If he remains in California, he must register with local police.

Singleton served less than eight years in prison for raping a 15-year-old girl in 1978, hacking off her forearms with an ax and leaving her to die near Modesto in rural Stanislaus County. Law enforcement officials say the law has been toughened so that such a crime now would result in more lengthy imprisonment.

Still, in part because he served such a short sentence, the nightmarish case stirred vocal protests. A near-riot broke out in the small Contra Costa County town of Rodeo when he was discovered living there after his parole last May. Singleton fueled it all by defiantly proclaiming himself innocent and deriding his victim, Mary Beth Vincent, who survived to testify against him.

Last June, Gov. George Deukmejian, confronted with continued protests over Singleton’s release and convinced that no town would accept him, ordered that he be placed on the grounds at San Quentin prison. He was housed in a cramped, 24-foot trailer in a lot just inside the west gate of the prison. He was not, however, considered an inmate.

The move quelled the reaction. Teams of parole agents kept him incognito. When they took him to buy groceries, for example, they would drive him out of the area and never returned to the same place twice.

Singleton passed his time by telling parole agents of his life at sea or reading newspapers. From his trailer inside the prison, he had a million-dollar view of the Marin County town of Tiburon and the ferries and pleasure boats that sailed into the San Francisco Bay inlet of Larkspur Landing. He cared for, and named, wild birds that he attracted with a feeder and a homemade birdbath, said agents who were a part of the Singleton watch.

Counseling Sessions

He received a few visitors: an ex-wife, and members of a local group “interested in befriending him in an act of Christian forgiveness,” Gore said. He was required by conditions of his parole to attend psychological counseling sessions and occasionally visited people he had met through those sessions.

His unprecedented supervision by parole authorities was as much for his protection as for the protection of others. Agents volunteered for the watch, often putting in unpaid overtime while balancing caseloads of as many as 80 parolees.

“We know that after handling this case, we can handle any case,” said Ed George, one of the parole agents who volunteered for the Singleton watch. “We now have a procedure. We know what it’s going to take.”

For agents who maintained the Singleton watch, Singleton was sociable, even pleasant. When George was on Singleton duty, he would spend two to three hours “just talking to him . . . keeping him stable,” listening to his stories about life as a merchant marine.

“When you first meet him, you don’t know what to think. But he has got a very good mind. He sometimes gets a little bawdy in his story-telling. He talks about politics, the Middle East, places he has been,” George said.

“He discusses his case a lot,” George added. “You have to divert him.”

Ingest Drug

While he was on parole, Singleton apparently was alcohol-free. Authorities required that he ingest a drug that would have made him violently ill if he had had a drink. Singleton was drinking heavily on Sept. 29, 1978, when he picked up Vincent, who was hitchhiking from Berkeley to Southern California.

“I’ll say this, my estimation is that if Mr. Singleton totally abstains from alcoholic beverages, he should be a law-abiding citizen,” said Ronald Chun, regional administrator of the San Francisco-area parole division of the Department of Corrections.

In an interview to be broadcast tonight on San Francisco public television station KQED, Singleton says that while he will stay off hard liquor, “I’m not going to say I’m not going to have a glass of wine with dinner.”

Singleton continues again to claim innocence, and in the TV interview he blames Vincent for the attack, and insists that two hitchhikers--who he could not identify and who have never been found--committed the crime. The station plans to disclose a polygraph exam Singleton reportedly took and passed.

Claim of Innocence

Stanislaus County Dist. Atty. Donald N. Stahl, who prosecuted Singleton, scoffed at his claim of innocence, saying that he has managed to convince himself that he did not commit the crime.

“Everything points to his guilt. The compass still points to the north,” Stahl said, calling Singleton “beyond the fringe” and “dangerous.”

Stahl is convinced that the bizarre case “will never die.”

“Until he goes under, people will try to figure out what makes him tick, and he will continually try to vindicate himself,” he said.

Vincent, in a People magazine interview, said she still has nightmares about Singleton. She has a young child, wears artificial arms, and lives in the Pacific Northwest, apparently not far from a religious commune in the southern Oregon town of Azalea that has offered Singleton refuge. Someone fired four shotgun blasts into the commune last week.