A Sacramento man once described by a judge as “the monster parents fear the most” seemed destined to spend the rest of his life in prison after he was convicted of 16 counts of kidnapping and child molestation in 1999.
Instead he is now set to go free after being granted elderly parole — much to the anger and horror of some of his victims, as well as the prosecutor who oversaw his case.
“He shouldn’t be breathing the same air that we’re breathing at all,” one victim, who was kidnapped and assaulted when she was just 4 years old, told The Times in an interview. “I disagree with him getting paroled out because he’s a horrible person. That man is a monster.”
David Allen Funston approached children playing outside their homes in the Sacramento suburbs and used candy and toys to lure them into his vehicle in 1995 and 1996, prosecutors said.
Following his conviction, he was sentenced to 20 years and 8 months in prison, as well as three consecutive sentences of 25 years to life. Now 64, he is incarcerated at the California Institution for Men in Chino.
Under California’s elderly parole program, inmates are generally eligible for a parole suitability hearing if they are over 50 years old and have been incarcerated for at least 20 continuous years. The individual can then be released if the parole board determines they do not pose an unreasonable risk to public safety.
Funston was initially denied elderly parole in a May 2022 hearing, according to records from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. However, he was granted parole at a board hearing in September, and that decision was recently upheld in a review Wednesday by the full board, CDCR records show.
CDCR did not respond to a request for comment Friday on Funston’s estimated release date or on the Board of Parole Hearings’ rationale for deeming him suitable for elderly parole.
But those involved in Funston’s case struggle to understand how the program’s criteria could apply to him.
“A lot of people get out of prison and I don’t scream about it, but this is one I’m screaming about,” said former Sacramento County Dist. Atty. Anne Marie Schubert, who prosecuted the case against Funston while serving as a deputy district attorney.
Funston used a Barbie doll to lure the victim who spoke with The Times into his vehicle in Foothill Farms in 1995. He then took her to a house, bathed with her, put her on a bed, held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her if she told her family, prosecutors said. He performed multiple sex acts on her, causing her to bleed.
“He’s one sick individual,” the victim said. “What if he gets out and and tries to find his old victims and wants to kill us?”
The Times generally does not name victims of sexual assault.
Schubert used DNA evidence found on one of the victims to help prove that Funston had kidnapped and abused her. Schubert later rose to prominence for her role in the case against Joseph James DeAngelo — also known as the Golden State Killer — where she pioneered the use of DNA evidence in securing cold case convictions.
Although the DeAngelo case attracted national attention, Funston’s always loomed large in her mind.
“It was the worst child sexual predator [case] I’ve ever prosecuted, hands down,” she said.
Eight children — seven girls and one boy, all of whom were under the age of 7 when they were victimized — testified in the case against Funston, according to reporting from the Sacramento Bee. Before these offenses, he had also been convicted of sexually assaulting a woman in Colorado.
In one incident in 1995, prosecutors said Funston used candy to lure a 5-year-old girl into his car in Highland Hills, took her up into the hills and assaulted her.
“He beat her. He took her underwear and shoved it down her throat because she was screaming. He then raped her to the point that she has vaginal trauma,” Schubert said.
Afterward, Schubert said, he dumped the girl on the side of Highway 50, where she was found crying and walking barefoot.
In November 1995, Funston took a 5-year-old boy into some bushes pulled down his pants, and orally copulated him, prosecutors said. Four days later, he kidnapped two sisters, ages 4 and 5, from outside their grandmother’s apartment by offering them candy and a ride home. A woman witnessed the girls getting in his car and called the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office.
“He dropped us off after driving us a few hundred feet and we got out of the car, went home and there was already a sheriff questioning my mom,” one of the sisters told The Times. “We were the lucky ones. There were other victims who were not so lucky.”
That victim said she believes granting Funston elderly parole is “a huge disservice to all Californians,” saying that his sexual attraction to young children is “an illness that doesn’t go away.”
Schubert sent a letter to CDCR on Friday asking that Funston be referred for screening as a sexually violent predator. Under California’s sexually violent predator program, offenders who are eligible to be released from state prison can be civilly committed to a state hospital and prevented from being released into the public.
“The pattern of behavior demonstrates predatory intent, multiple victims, use of force, threats of lethal violence, and sexual offenses against prepubescent children,” she wrote, “precisely the category of offender for whom the SVP Act was enacted.”
