Rod Matthews: Parole Granted, Conditions, and Prior Denials

The Massachusetts Parole Board voted 4 to 3 on November 6, 2024 to grant Rod Matthews parole, clearing the way for his release after 37 years in prison for the 1986 baseball-bat killing of his 14-year-old classmate Shaun Ouillette in Canton. The decision was his fifth try at parole, and it came with conditions: a nine-month step-down program in a lower-security facility first, then GPS monitoring, a curfew, drug and alcohol testing, mandatory mental health counseling, and a stay-away order protecting the victim’s family.¹

The June 2024 Hearing

Matthews appeared before the board on June 4, 2024. He was 51. “I’m not that 14-year-old kid anymore,” he told the panel. “I’m a 51-year-old mature, responsible adult.”²

He had been convicted of second-degree murder in 1988 and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, becoming the first juvenile in Massachusetts tried and convicted as an adult for murder. At trial he told the court he killed Ouillette “just for the heck of it.” Prosecutors said he had told classmates weeks before the crime that he “wanted to know what it was like to kill someone,” and picked Ouillette because he “would be the least missed.”²

Why the Board Granted Parole

Board chair Tina Hurley wrote that Matthews had “demonstrated a level of rehabilitation that would make his release compatible with the welfare of society.” The four-member majority cited his programming record, his conduct in prison, and the circumstances that shaped him as a child.

He had completed intensive rehabilitative programming, including additional programs since his 2021 hearing that the board said “increased his insight, empathy, and appreciation for the harm he has caused the victims and the community.”
He had no record of violence during incarceration and no history of substance abuse. He worked six days a week as a medical companion, helping other incarcerated people with daily living needs.
The board weighed his age at the time of the offense and cited “a history of adverse childhood experiences and untreated mental health issues contributing to his offense.”²¹

Matthews had also gone through years of psychotherapy that he said helped him understand what drove the crime and taught him to control his anger.¹

Conditions of Release

The vote does not mean Matthews walked out of prison. He must first complete a nine-month step-down program at a lower-security facility. Once released to the community, he will be subject to:

GPS electronic monitoring
A curfew
Drug and alcohol testing
Mandatory mental health counseling
A stay-away order protecting Ouillette’s family¹

Available reporting does not confirm whether Matthews has finished the step-down program or been physically released.

Who Opposed the Parole

The Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office, Canton Police Chief Helena Rafferty, and Shaun Ouillette’s mother, Jeanne Quinn, all argued against release at the June hearing.¹

Rafferty told the board the 1986 killing had “disintegrated” the town’s sense of safety and said elderly residents had approached her “terrified that Mr. Matthews may get released and severely harm them or another.”³

Quinn said she had forgiven Matthews but did not think he should ever leave prison. “I am frightened right down to my socks,” she told reporters after the vote. “There is such a thing as evil, and I believe he is evil.”¹ She described her son’s death as an unending presence in her life: “I bury Shaun every day. Every morning when I get up.”²

Who Supported It

Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, who had attended the 1988 trial alongside Quinn, told the board he had come to believe Matthews deserved parole. Fox pointed to research on adolescent brain development and impulse control and said, “I’m secure in the fact that he will not recommit a crime.”² Fox had testified for Matthews before, at a 2007 hearing, when he told the board that Matthews had not understood the consequences of his actions as a teenager and was “a different person today.”⁴

Four Prior Denials

Matthews had gone before the board four times before 2024, and each time the answer was no. In May 2007, at a hearing in Natick, he told the board he had come to see the murder as a way of venting rage over his parents’ marital problems. At a 2016 hearing, he offered a different explanation, saying he had killed Ouillette “to prove that he could do it.” A fourth denial followed in June 2021.⁵

Why He Was Eligible

Matthews was sentenced in 1988 to life in prison with the possibility of parole, not life without parole, so his eligibility for release did not depend on the wave of juvenile-sentencing decisions that followed. Massachusetts law and case decisions in the years afterward, including the state Supreme Judicial Court’s 2013 ruling in Diatchenko v. District Attorney barring life without parole for juveniles, reshaped the framework the board applies when weighing a juvenile offender’s capacity for rehabilitation, but the parole hearings themselves were built into his original sentence.⁶

1
WCVB. Rod Matthews Parole 2024: Canton Murder Shaun Ouillette
2
CBS News Boston. Rod Matthews Parole: Shaun Ouillette Murder Canton
3
The Canton Citizen. Rod Matthews Parole Hearing
4
Alamy. James Alan Fox Testifies at Rod Matthews Parole Hearing
5
The Patriot Ledger. Canton Murder: Rod Matthews Parole, Shaun Ouillette
6
Justia. Diatchenko v. District Attorney for the Suffolk District, 466 Mass. 655