A furious Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper condemned state parole officials’ decision to grant elderly parole to a serial child rapist serving multiple life terms in state prison for 1995 attacks in Sacramento County.
David Allen Funston cruised Sacramento-area streets during a 1995 crime spree, luring children into his car with toys, dolls and sweets. The North Highlands man, 34 at the time of his attacks, then raped and beat them in his vehicle and at a home before dumping them along capital region roadsides.
“He lured them with candy and Barbie dolls. He stole their childhoods. I’ve seen the reports. They’re horrific. To let him out? It doesn’t make sense,” Cooper said at a news conference Monday at the Sheriff’s Office headquarters in Old Foothill Farms. “The things he did to these kids cannot be undone. Victims come first, especially children. I’m pissed.”
Cooper, a former state assemblyman, also blasted lawmakers for failing, in his words, to enact legislation to better protect California children from sex predators.
“Protect our children,” Cooper said. “Where’s the compassion for victims? We have to stand up and fight for our kids.”
Sacramento Sheriff Jim Cooper speaks with a victim of David Allen Funston, who was convicted of kidnapping and child molestation in 1999, after a news conference on Monday, Feb. 23, 2026 at the Sheriff’s office headquarters. HECTOR AMEZCUA hamezcua@sacbee.com
Funston’s crimes stunned the Sacramento region when they unfolded 30 years ago, with detectives describing a methodical pattern of luring young children from apartment complexes in North Highlands, Foothill Farms and Carmichael.
“He was hunting for young children,” said Anne Marie Schubert, the former Sacramento County district attorney and now a victims’ rights advocate, who prosecuted Funston in Sacramento County’s first DNA case. “It boggles the mind. He’s the poster child for why sex offenders should be exempt from elderly parole.”
Court records at the time showed Funston had a prior sexual assault conviction in Colorado before moving to California. According to authorities, he served time in a Colorado prison for third-degree sexual assault but was never required to register as a sex offender when he relocated to Sacramento County.
“He is a serial predator is what he is,” Deputy District Attorney Hillary Bagley said in 1996 as charges mounted ahead of his 2½ month trial, according to previous Bee reporting. “He is every parent’s worst nightmare.”
How Funston was caught 30 years ago
Authorities said the case broke when a neighbor obtained Funston’s license plate number during the attempted abduction of two girls, ages 4 and 5, outside a San Juan Avenue apartment complex in December 1995. Detectives later linked him through eyewitness identifications and DNA evidence to a string of kidnappings and sexual assaults involving children ages 3 to 7.
One 5-year-old North Highlands girl was abducted from her apartment complex and found hours later in Pollock Pines, 50 miles away. Prosecutors said she had been molested and beaten before being dumped along a rural road.
Funston’s child victims knew him only as “the man” and remembered details of the attacks: the color of his car, the candy and the toys he gave them, his flowered bed — and what he did to them. There were eight victims — seven girls and one boy. The youngest was 3, the oldest was 7.
A Sacramento Bee graphic from Jan. 5, 1999, shows the locations of seven kidnappings and sexual assaults in Sacramento and Placer counties as the trial of David Allen Funston opened in Sacramento Superior Court. The map identifies where each child was taken or assaulted in 1995 and 1996, including sites in North Highlands, Fair Oaks, Foothill Farms, Roseville and Rocklin. The Sacramento Bee
In March 1999, a Sacramento County jury took three days to convict Funston of 16 counts of kidnapping and child molestation. Schubert, at the time a deputy DA, called the penalties “multiple life terms plus.”
At sentencing, Superior Court Judge Jack Sapunor did not mince words.
“You became the monster parents fear the most,” Sapunor told Funston before imposing three consecutive life terms plus additional prison time designed to ensure he would, at the time, never receive a parole hearing.
Sapunor said the evidence of guilt — “both scientific and otherwise” — was overwhelming and gruesome.
“The terror the children felt is too terrible to contemplate. From the parents you stole any sense of security they may have had to take their eyes off their children for but a few seconds,” the judge said, according to past Bee reporting.
At the time, according to prosecutors Funston would die in prison.
Why is California allowing elderly parole?
California’s elderly parole program originated from a federal court order aimed at reducing prison overcrowding, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
In 2014, a three-judge panel in the long-running Plata-Coleman prison health care case directed CDCR to implement a parole process for incarcerated people who were 60 years or older and had served at least 25 years of their sentence. The Legislature later codified the program in 2018 — in Assembly Bill 1448, introduced by then-Assemblymember Shirley Weber, a San Diego Democrat — by adding Section 3055 to the Penal Code.
Cooper, who represented Elk Grove in the Assembly at the time, voted NVR — short for “no vote recorded” — twice as the bill wound its way through the Legislature. It was signed into law by then Gov. Jerry Brown.
Nearly three years later, lawmakers expanded the program under AB 3234 by Assemblymember Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, lowering the eligibility age to 50 for people who had served 20 years of continuous incarceration, CDCR said in a fact sheet outlining the program. Cooper voted against the final version of the bill, which passed both houses and was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September 2020.
Some categories of inmates — including those sentenced to death, life without parole or certain strike-law terms — were excluded from the statutory program but could still qualify under the original court-ordered criteria.
Under the expanded law, according to CDCR, eligibility begins once an incarcerated person turns 50 and has served at least 20 years of continuous time in prison. Funston, housed at the California Institution for Men in Chino, has served 27 years. At elderly parole hearings, the Board of Parole Hearings “shall give special consideration to the individual’s age, time served, and diminished physical condition, if any, when determining the individual’s suitability for parole.”
It was not known where or when Funston would be released once he is paroled or whether he would be classified as a sexually violent predator under state law. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation does not provide information on a person’s time or location of parole release, citing safety and security reasons.
David Allen Funston is seen in a photo from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The state Board of Parole Hearings on Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026, reaffirmed its decision to grant Funston elderly parole, a move that has drawn condemnation from Sacramento County Sheriff Jim Cooper and the victims of his 1995 child rape convictions. CDCR ‘He deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison’
Funston was granted suitability for parole by the state Board of Parole Hearings in September, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officials said Monday. Gov. Gavin Newsom in January referred Funston’s case back to the board, asking parole commissioners to review the decision.
The Board of Parole Hearings panel at its Feb. 18 meeting reaffirmed its decision to recommend Funston receive parole, CDCR officials said.
The decision to free the now 64-year-old Funston on elderly parole angered his victims and the local authorities who put him away more than 25 years ago. Cooper was joined Monday by a victim and an investigator who learned of David Allen Funston’s pending release from a story Sunday by the Los Angeles Times.
“He is a very horrible person. He took innocence from myself and others,” said one victim, who was 3 when she was sexually attacked and who later testified against him at trial. “The years he’s done are not enough. I stood before him in elementary school and I will do so again.
“He deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison.”
Retired sheriff’s detective Rafael Rodriguez worked on the Funston case and called Cooper with the news of Funston’s planned release. He remembered investigators’ urgency to find Funston and said he was angered to learn he would be freed.
“I was outraged. I was hoping he’d perished in prison long ago,” Rodriguez said. “The victims here? They get a life sentence.”
The Bee’s Daniel Hunt contributed to this story.
This story was originally published February 23, 2026 at 6:24 PM.
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The Sacramento Bee
Darrell Smith is a local reporter for The Sacramento Bee. He joined The Bee in 2006 and previously worked at newspapers in Palm Springs, Colorado Springs and Marysville. Smith was born and raised at Beale Air Force Base and lives in Elk Grove.