Mother of murder victim suing city

By ERICA JAHN

Staff writer

The mother of a woman who was raped and murdered by a convicted sex offender she claims slipped through community supervision is suing the city of Federal Way.

In her lawsuit, filed in King County Superior Court April 9, Shirley Tuthill claims the Federal Way Police Department failed to verify the address of Roy Elexie Webbe and failed to try to find him when he moved from Seattle. If they had, police would have learned Webbe did not register with Federal Way, which was a Class C felony, according to Tuthill.

Tuthill, mother of Webbe’s victim, Deborah Funk, alleges the King County Sheriff’s Office notified Federal Way police of Webbe’s change of address, but city police didn’t follow up by verifying if the address was correct.

Webbe was convicted in 1991 of first-degree rape and first-degree burglary involving an attack of a Federal Way woman in her apartment, according to court records. On parole in 1998, he leered at two teenage girls on a bus and, using a knife, attacked a man who came to their aid.

On April 14, 2000, Webbe entered a woman’s home and began choking her, court records said. The woman’s adult daughter, who was in the home, screamed and pounded on a neighbor’s door and Webbe fled.

The next day, Tuthill called police after she found her daughter, Deborah Funk, 40, lying dead on a bed in her home. Funk had been sliced in the back of the neck so severely it severed her spinal cord, according to court records.

Police said Webbe attacked and raped Funk while she was taking a bath. He stabbed her in the neck with a steak knife, stole a cellular phone from her home and cooked eggs with Canadian bacon, a plate of which he left sitting on the arm of a couch, before he left.

Police later arrested him on suspicion of failing to register as a sex offender. He was then arrested in connection with Funk’s murder.

Last December, a jury found Webbe guilty of aggravated murder, felony murder and burglary. He was sentenced Jan. 17 to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Tuthill sued the state Department of Corrections in October 2001, saying Webbe’s corrections officer didn’t monitor him closely enough and didn’t report violations that included failing to make contact with the officer, failing drug tests and failing to register as a sex offender when he moved to Federal Way.

According to that lawsuit, the corrections officer left Webbe “to wander the streets without treatment for his mental health conditions and without treatment for his drug addiction, knowing that he was violent and dangerous.”

Tuthill was awarded $3.1 million in a settlement with the state and King County. In the lawsuit against the city, she seeks damages as allowed by law, legal fees and other relief as determined by the court.

Staff writer Erica Jahn: 925-5565, ejahn@fedwaymirror.com