David Allen Funston peered at a four-year-old child’s Beauty and the Beast underwear before he brutally raped her in 1995, the prosecutor in his case told The California Post.
The disgusting detail stuck with former Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert in the decades since the convicted child molester was thrown in prison for molesting eight children.
Funston had lured the Disney underwear wearing toddler to his vehicle with a Barbie doll before transporting her to a house. He then bathed with her, placed her on a bed, and held a knife to her throat while saying he would kill her if she ever told her family. Funston then raped the child to such a degree that she bled.
He raped seven girls and one boy, and established a pattern of luring them with candy or toys. One instance saw him lure a victim with Skittles, and another with a Tootsie Pop.
The prosecutor said Funston “hunted” children to satisfy his “perverse desires.”
In another brutal case, Schubert said, he beat and raped a young girl after using candy to lure her in 1995 around Highland Hills. While raping the child, he shoved her underwear down her throat to “shut her up,” she said.
Schubert horrifyingly said the child was “screaming hysterically over being forced to give him a blow job.” He then dumped the child along Highway 50.
Funston was sentenced to decades in prison plus three consecutive life sentences for his crimes in 1999.
But Gov. Gavin Newsom’s elderly parole program, passed in 2020, gave him a chance to walk among the public again. He recently faced a parole board that granted him release until new criminal charges put him back behind bars again.
Schubert is outraged Funston ever got the chance to walk free.
“What human being, what rational person thinks that that kind of behavior isn’t despicable,” she told The Post. “I don’t know how any rational group of commissioners could think this man should be released.”
Disregarding his past behavior, Funston stated before the board that he still lusted after children. He even said there was “a possibility that I’ll relapse.”
“He’s masturbating in prison to fantasizing about these children,” Schubert said.
“That speaks volumes…somebody once said the best prediction of future behavior is past behavior, and so you’ve got this combination of that past behavior, but you still have a man that is admitting he’s sexually attracted to children,” she added. “So how is he going to operate? What parent would ever feel safe being having their child around him?”
The former Sacramento DA, who left office in 2022, also pointed out that Schubert hadn’t attended any rehab programming until 2020 — the same year Newsom implemented the elderly parole program, open to anyone aged 50 and older who has served 20 years.
“He started taking those classes because the elderly parole law says you can get out. To me, it’s just all foam, no beer,” she said. “It’s just an individual who wants to get out, he’s going to say what they need to say.”
Schubert believes Funston’s admission that he is still sexually attracted to children “should make everyone’s hair stand up on their necks.”
She said she would tell the parole board that he “continues to be a danger to children in our community.”
Schubert hopes that Funston’s temporary release will “ignite” the fire to alter the elderly parole program, which she believes should not include sex offenders.
“You’re going to see this movement hopefully, and it will happen hopefully that our legislature that we will have a bipartisan effort to change these laws,” she said.
Funston’s arraignment on his new charges, related to his 90s’ sex crimes, is set for March 9 in a Roseville, California court, court records show.