WOODLAND HILLS : Looking for Videos, Photos Led Police to Girl’s Body
Police were searching only for videotapes and photos they thought might link a suspect to the disappearance of 8-year-old Nicole Parker when they instead found the girl’s nude body, hidden in a bedroom closet, according to court documents released Friday.
Hooman Ashkan Panah, now in jail charged with murder and sexual assault, had confided to his girlfriend that he was responsible for Nicole’s death and lamented that “the police were going to find the video and photographs,” according to a search warrant affidavit written by Los Angeles Police Detective Joel R. Price.
After Panah took an overdose of sleeping pills, the girlfriend called police. Based on her statements, police sought to search Panah’s Woodland Hills residence.
No photographic evidence linking Panah to the crime was found--though police did discover pornography and tapes of the suspect having sex with women, according to court records. “There is nothing to indicate an interest in children,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter S. Berman, “and there is nothing bizarre in the sexual activity depicted.”
Nicole disappeared Nov. 20 from the courtyard of her father’s Ventura Boulevard apartment building.
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