Paroled Molester Moved After Protest by Residents

A man on parole for molestation and attempted murder was moved from his parents’ West Covina home Tuesday, hours before a City Council meeting to discuss a lawsuit to force the state to relocate him, city officials said.

The state Department of Corrections told West Covina police at 1:30 p.m. that Steven Conklin, 39, had been moved, City Atty. Arnold Alvarez-Glasman said.

Conklin was released from prison in September and lived with his mother and stepfather in West Covina briefly before parole officials, worried that angry residents posed a threat, moved him out. But after a short incarceration for violating his parole, he returned to West Covina on Jan. 22.

Conklin served nine years in Lancaster state prison for molestation and attempted murder. In 1993, police found a 6-year-old girl who lived in his Long Beach apartment building stuffed in a storage box in his closet. She had nearly suffocated.

Her mother and residents have protested in front of Conklin’s mother’s house throughout the controversy, saying he should have to live farther away. State law bars sex offenders from living within 35 miles of their victims if they or their parents request the distance.

West Covina officials said the state freed him without telling his victim about a parole hearing before his release.

But a state official said Conklin had a determinate sentence; when his time was up, he had to be freed -- without a hearing.