Molestation Brings 11-Year Term

A 33-year-old San Pedro man was sentenced to 11 years in prison Thursday for his part in a South Bay child molestation ring that claimed an unknown number of victims during 1988 and 1989, according to a Los Angeles County prosecutor.

The sentencing of Russell Hillburn, convicted of two counts of molesting a 14-year-old boy, ends a case that first came to the attention of authorities when Hillburn’s two co-defendants were arrested for shoplifting in November, 1989, with a teen-ager.

The arrests, at a Target department store in Torrance, led to an admission by the teen-ager that he and other boys engaged in sex with Hillburn and the two men, Norman Felts, 47, of Wilmington, and Robin Shockey, 36, of Anaheim. They were previously sentenced in the case.

Felts, the alleged ringleader, is serving a 60-year prison sentence, and Shockey, who helped prosecutors in their case against Felts, is serving a prison term of just under four years.

The three men, who met as inmates at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo, were convicted in separate trials in 1990 of operating a child molestation ring in which boys as young as 8 years old were abused. The trials were held in Long Beach Superior Court.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Cindy Zuzga, who prosecuted the trio, said that although five youths testified that they were molested, the actual number of victims in the case was unknown. “We believe there were countless victims,” she said, citing testimony that the trio’s victims included runaways and that Felts “bragged to his co-defendants that he never had a victim who spoke up.”