RAPIST WHO CUT OFF GIRL'S ARMS ARRESTED IN SLAYING.

Byline: Associated Press 

A man who served eight years in a California prison for raping a teen-age hitchhiker and chopping off her forearms was arrested Wednesday night in the slaying of a woman in his home.

Lawrence Singleton, 69, was arrested after police responding to a call about a domestic dispute spotted the bloody body of a naked woman.

Danny Sales, a neighbor, said he accompanied a deputy to Singleton's door in the Orient Park area of eastern Hillsborough County.

``He came out, and he had blood all over himself and on the side of his face,'' Sales told television station WTTV.

Singleton said he had been chopping vegetables and cut himself, Sales said. But when the phone rang and Singleton went back inside, a woman's body could be seen on the floor from the door, Sales said.

No cause of death was immediately released, and authorities were seeking a search warrant. It was not clear how the woman was connected to Singleton.

Hillsborough sheriff's spokesman Lt. David Gee said there were obvious signs of a struggle but he gave no further detail.

In California, Singleton drew public ire in 1987 when he was freed eight years, four months into a 14-year sentence for the 1978 mutilation-rape of a 15-year-old hitchhiker, who was left to die along a road. She survived.

After he was paroled, prison authorities shuttled him from city to city as residents staged angry demonstrations and even filed suit to keep him out of their communities.

Finally, prison authorities wound up housing him in a mobile home on the grounds of San Quentin Prison until his parole ended in 1988.

He returned to his home state of Florida, where he has had several run-ins with police, Gee said. He was arrested in 1990 and again earlier this month on shoplifting charges.