Innocence Project director is outed for exchanging intimate messages and videos with convicted murderer who demanded $2 million to keep their prison romance secret – as their saucy texts are revealed
A California lawyer who built her career on exonerating convicted murderers has been accused of exchanging sexts with one to secure the other’s freedom.
Paige Kaneb of the Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP) won international praise for overturning the conviction of Maurice Caldwell 20 years after he was imprisoned for the 1990 murder of Judy Acosta after a drug deal went wrong.
She began corresponding with Marritte Funches after he admitted to killing Acosta while he was in prison for a separate murder.
Funches, now 53, claims Kaneb sent him sexually explicit messages in an attempt to secure his cooperation and released the messages after he turned on the lawyer and allegedly tried to blackmail her for $2 million.
“You make my heart skip a beat,” Kaneb told him in one text. ‘You give me butterflies. And somehow it has always been that way.”
Paige Kaneb of the Northern California Innocence Project (left) exchanged thousands of messages with convicted murderer Marritte Funches (right)
Funches’ testimony helped secure a new trial for Maurice Caldwell, who saw his 2010 murder conviction overturned after three years of Kaneb’s work
Caldwell won an $8 million settlement from San Francisco in 2021, one of the largest in the city’s history, for fabricating evidence.
The city attorney investigated Kaneb’s relationship with Funches in 2016 and defended Caldwell’s lawsuit when she admitted Funches had shown sexual interest in her.
Funches told the SF standard that he helped Kaneb find new witnesses for Caldwell’s retrial in 2010, but that he ended their relationship when she broke a promise not to reveal their names publicly.
But Funches got in touch again in March last year and the pair are said to have exchanged almost 9,000 messages over the course of a year.
In one, Kaneb recalled her first encounter with the killer when she visited his prison in Nevada with NCIP founder Linda Starr.
“On that first visit, I remember you looking at Linda the whole time and me pulling my hair out,” she texted.
“I wanted you to look at me, I’ve never admitted that before.
“I remember she left for a few minutes. It was like my chest exploded. And we started talking…. ❤.’
In another conversation, she apologized for their argument in 2010.
In one conversation, the pair reflected on their first meeting in a Nevada prison in 2010
Funches, who is still serving a life sentence for another murder, released their exchanges after Kaneb ignored his alleged $2 million blackmail demand
NCIP maintains that Funches’ testimony was incidental to the case they built for Caldwell’s release
“I’m sorry everything fell apart and had such a negative effect on you. I never wanted that,” she wrote last July.
‘I love you. I always have. Never stopped. It always will be,” he told her in one text.
“I love you too,” she wrote in response. ‘Always have, always want.’
She also sent him a series of risqué selfies, including two of her dressed in a sarong in front of a mirror.
“Nothing worse in those last two,” she teased.
“My imagination is running wild right now,” he texted back.
But their relationship began to deteriorate late last year when Funches began asking for money and her help to get out of jail.
A spokesperson for NCIP said this SF Chronicle that Funches began blackmailing her, demanding “$2 million.” After taxes. In a trust that belongs to ‘me’.’
‘I recorded every phone call and saved every text message. And copies of every video. You can try to clean it up. But you will never practice law again. Your career is over,” he wrote in an email.
Funches made good on his threat and released what he believed to be their correspondence with the SF Standard.
‘She pretended to take a personal interest in me. We started a romantic relationship,” he told the newspaper. ‘It was the art of seduction at its best. All so I can finally help Mr. Caldwell.”
Lionel Rubalcava was one of 25 people whose murder convictions have since been overturned through NCIP’s work, while Kaneb has risen to become the organisation’s legal director.
A spokesperson for Kaneb said she did not begin responding to Funches’ sexualized messages until August 2023, long after Caldwell’s release had been secured.
NCIP, based at Santa Clara University, has begun an investigation into Kaneb, who is now legal director.
It has helped to overturn a further 25 murder convictions since Caldwell was released and underlines that his acquittal is safe.
“As with every unit of the university, when we receive allegations of inappropriate behavior by an employee, we refer the matter to the university for investigation,” director Todd Fries said in a statement.
“We take this information seriously,” a spokeswoman for the San Francisco city attorney said. “And will investigate the matter.”