In a jaw-dropping decision that’s igniting fury across California, state officials have approved the parole for one of Sacramento County’s most reviled child predators — despite promises he would die behind bars.
David Allen Funston, 64, was granted parole under California’s Elderly Parole Program this week, stunning victims and prosecutors who believed he would never walk free. The program allows inmates over the age of 50 who have served 20 years to petition for release.
“He shouldn’t be breathing the same air that we’re breathing at all,” one of Funston’s victims, who was taken and assaulted by him at 4-years-old, told the Los Angeles Times. “I disagree with him getting paroled out because he’s a horrible person. That man is a monster.”
The monster in question earned his reputation through a reign of terror in the mid-90’s. Living in a suburb of Sacramento, Funston reportedly kidnapped and molested at least eight children — seven girls and one boy — luring them in with Barbie dolls and candy.
One victim, a five-year-old immigrant girl who spoke limited English, was assaulted and abandoned 50 miles from her home in a rural county.
“He lures this little girl, takes her up to hills, rapes her,” Anne Marie Schubert, who was the prosecutor on the case, told the Sacramento Bee. “She’s five, OK?”
He was only caught after a neighbor spotted him luring two more children into his car and scribbled down his license plate number. Funston was arrested in 1996 and sentenced in 1999.
“You became the monster parents fear the most,” Sacramento Superior Court Judge Jack Sapunor told Funston during sentencing, the Sacramento Bee reported.
Despite being denied parole in 2022, a 2025 hearing ultimately approved his release, and that decision was upheld on Feb.18 by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Board of Parole, state records show.
Schubert, former Sacramento County District Attorney, has reportedly asked officials to prevent his release into the community by placing him in a state hospital under the Sexually Violent Predator Program, which would keep him off the streets and confined indefinitely. Schubert has said it was the most severe child sexual predator case she had ever prosecuted.
Funston is currently held at the California Institution for Men in Chino, and it’s unclear when he might be released.
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