NATION : Rapist Singleton Freed in Fla.
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TAMPA, Fla. — A man convicted in California of raping a 15-year-old girl and hacking off her arms walked out of a county jail today after serving 48 days on a petty theft charge.
Lawrence Singleton, 62, initially pleaded innocent to the second-degree misdemeanor charge of petty theft but changed his plea July 31, citing his past record and saying he did not believe he could get a fair trial. He was released about 6 a.m. today, 12 days short of his maximum 60-day sentence.
Singleton was arrested by sheriff’s deputies April 8 at a Brandon drugstore in rural Hillsborough County after a guard spotted him taking an instant camera from a display.
In California, he served eight years and four months of a 14-year sentence for raping the teen-ager and leaving her for dead along a roadside in central California in 1978.
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