In a shocking turn of events that has sparked outrage throughout California, state authorities have granted parole to one of Sacramento County’s most notorious child predators, despite previous assurances that he would spend his life incarcerated.
This week, 64-year-old David Allen Funston was released under California’s Elderly Parole Program, leaving victims and prosecutors in disbelief. The program permits inmates aged 50 and older, who have served at least 20 years, to seek parole.
“He should not be breathing the same air as us,” one of Funston’s victims, who was abducted and assaulted at the age of four, expressed to the Los Angeles Times. “I strongly oppose his release because he is a truly horrible individual. That man is a monster.”
Funston earned his infamy during a horrifying spree in the mid-1990s. Residing in a Sacramento suburb, he reportedly kidnapped and molested at least eight children—seven girls and one boy—using Barbie dolls and candy as bait.
Among his victims was a five-year-old immigrant girl with limited English skills, who was brutally assaulted and left 50 miles from her home in a remote area.
“He lures this little girl, takes her up to the hills, and rapes her,” Anne Marie Schubert, the prosecutor in the case, recounted to the Sacramento Bee. “She was only five, okay?”
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.
