LaGRANGE, Ky. -- A former Kentucky basketball player serving a life sentence for rape charges is granted parole.
68 year old Tom Payne has been granted parole from the Kentucky State Reformatory at LaGrange. Payne is serving time in Kentucky for a 1971 rape in Jefferson County.
He was arrested in Atlanta in 1972, charged with raping a woman and attempting to rape two others, serving five years there before being sent back to Kentucky for five more years in prison. He had been paroled in 1983 and moved to Los Angeles where he was caught raping a woman in 1986. He was released from jail in California in 2000 and brought back to Kentucky to serve a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
Payne was the first black player at the University of Kentucky, playing only one year in Lexington before playing a season with the Atlanta Hawks.