A fugitive child molester from Fayette County who violated a court order by trying to organize trips for youth choirs has died in Mexico.

John Shallenberger, 87, of Connellsville, had been wanted by Pennsylvania authorities since 1996, when he placed an advertisement in an alumni magazine, seeking young people to join him in Mexico where he claimed to be serving as a Christian missionary.

State prosecutors contend that advertisement violated a judge's order forbidding Shallenberger from organizing youth choir trips abroad.

Shallenberger, a former choir director in Connellsville, was convicted in 1975 and 1985 of sexually abusing young boys during choir trips. He was ordered to stop organizing choir tours and recruiting children to sing on those tours.

Instead, Shallenberger began using an alias, John Shortridge, to recruit 12 children from Illinois for a trip to Mexico in 1994. When law enforcement authorities learned about the trip and tried to bring him to court, he fled to Mexico. Mexican authorities were closing in on him in 1999, but Shallenberger managed to elude them.

Mexican officials filed a death certificate for Shallenberger, who died of a heart attack Jan. 2 in Chapala, Mexico, state prosecutors said.

"The long, dark chapter of John Shallenberger is now closed," the state attorney general's spokesman, Kevin Harley, said.

Shallenberger was cremated and his remains turned over to his family, authorities said.