Board Clears Molester of Parole Violation Charges

The Department of Parole released a convicted child molester this week whom officials had been holding at the Los Angeles County Jail pending an investigation of possible parole violation, officials said.

John Norris Shupe, 55, was released to a Southeastern region of Southern California, where he will serve his three-year parole. As a new condition to his parole, Shupe will also be electronically monitored, said Tip Kindel, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections.

Shupe, who has been incarcerated four times since 1966 for molesting girls ages 7 and under, had been serving his parole at his mother’s Linda Vista home until neighborhood outcries lead to a parole violations investigation, officials said.

The Shupes’ next-door neighbors made the allegation that he violated parole when the admitted pedophile spoke with the neighbor’s 5-year-old daughter, said Fenton Harvey, the girl’s father.

Unaware of Shupe’s criminal past, Harvey told the little girl and her friend to ask if they could play on the Shupes’ yard swing set, he said. Shupe reportedly said that the girls could use the swings “this one time, but that’ll be it,” Harvey said.

Because he did not instigate the interaction between himself and the girls, Shupe did not violate any conditions of his parole, Kindel said.