FLORIDA - Death row inmate dies on death row

California rapist Singleton dies of natural causes on death row

Lawrence Singleton, who chopped off a teen-age hitchhiker's forearms in California and was on death row in Florida for killing a prostitute, has died of cancer, state prison officials said Monday.

 Singleton, 74, died Friday at the North Florida Reception Center in Starke. He had been on death row since 1997, but no execution date had been set.

 Jurors in Tampa convicted Singleton of 1st-degree murder for the February 1997 stabbing of Roxanne Hayes, 31, a prostitute and mother of three. She was stabbed 7 times, her nude body found on Singleton's living room floor at his Tampa home.

 Singleton won parole in 1987 in California after serving only 8 years for raping a 15-year-old hitchhiker in 1978, severing her arms and leaving her to die.

 Mary Vincent testified during Singleton's penalty hearing in Tampa, pointing him out with an artificial limb.

 Singleton had moved back to Tampa, where he had spent his childhood and still had family, after outraged California communities refused to accept him.

 The retired merchant marine denied raping and mutilating Vincent, but admitted stabbing Ms. Hayes.

 "I'm sorry about the death in this case," he said. "I'll have to carry it on my conscience the rest of my life," he told the judge as he was sentenced to death.