Pictures Sought to Link Man, Slain Girl : Crime: Police were searching the suspect’s home for incriminating videotapes or photos when they found body of 8-year-old Nicole Parker.

Police were searching for videotapes and pictures they believed would link a suspect to the disappearance of 8-year-old Nicole Parker, when they found the girl’s nude body hidden in his bedroom closet, according to court documents released Friday.

Hooman Ashkan Panah, now in jail charged with murder and sexual assault, had confessed to his girlfriend that he was responsible for Nicole’s death and lamented “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.

The girlfriend then helped Panah buy sleeping pills, but when she realized he had taken an overdose, she called police, authorities said.

Based on the girlfriend’s statements, police sought a search warrant to look for photographic evidence in the apartment linking Panah to Nicole.

“It is (my) opinion that the suspect photographed and videotaped the victim, and ultimately murdered her in order to prevent his identification,” Price wrote in his request for a search warrant, filed hours before Nicole’s body was found.

But when the warrant was served the night after Nicole disappeared--which was actually the third time police had searched Panah’s Woodland Hills residence--her body was discovered inside a suitcase. She had been sodomized and choked, but officials have yet to determine what caused her death.

No photographic evidence linking Panah to the crime was found at the scene or at any other location, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter S. Berman, who is prosecuting the case.

In addition to the body, court records show that police recovered eight videotapes and a videotaping system that was set up in Panah’s bedroom. The videotapes show Panah having sex with women and also include commercially produced pornography.

“There is nothing to indicate an interest in children,” Berman said, “and there is nothing bizarre in the sexual activity depicted.”

One thing authorities never found were Nicole’s clothes.

“One could infer he got rid of them, and if anyone finds them I would appreciate a call,” Berman said, adding that if Panah did make a videotape of Nicole, he may have disposed of it with the girl’s jeans, white T-shirt and baseball glove.

The search warrant reveals a bizarre and unexplained detail: when Panah was arrested and examined to determine if he had sexually assaulted the girl, officials learned that all his pubic hair had been shaved.

“The suspect was asked about the shaved pubic region, and he stated that he had shaved it recently because he was getting ready for Friday night,” Price wrote. Price was not available to elaborate on the statement.

The court documents made public Friday reveal other details in the frantic search for Nicole, who disappeared Nov. 20 from the courtyard of her father’s Ventura Boulevard apartment building, where the girl often spent weekends. Panah lived in a unit directly across from where Nicole’s father lived.

Police had first searched Panah’s apartment within hours of Nicole’s disappearance, because one of the victim’s brothers reported seeing Panah speaking with the girl, according to Berman.

Panah was apparently at work at the time, but police entered the apartment anyway in hope of finding Nicole. They found no sign of the child during a cursory search, so they left and continued looking throughout the neighborhood--a search that Panah even joined for a time, Berman said.

The day after the killing, Panah appeared at the West Hills residence of his girlfriend, Rauni Campbell, according to the search warrant. He had already made superficial cuts to his wrist in an apparent suicide attempt, and Panah told Campbell “he had done something bad,” Price wrote in the affidavit.

Based on interviews with Campbell, authorities have determined she drove with Panah to a drugstore and purchased a box of over-the-counter sleeping pills. Campbell reported that Panah consumed a number of the pills before she realized the suicide attempt was real and called 911, according to the documents.

When police arrived at Campbell’s Northgate Avenue apartment, Panah fled, but was caught on a nearby street. After he had had his stomach pumped, Panah told police he had dumped the girl’s body “somewhere off of Mulholland Drive near a waterfall,” according to Price’s report.

But it was Campbell’s comments about possible videotapes that led police back to Panah’s apartment, where they broke down the door for a second time, Berman said.

Again, Nicole was not found, so police decided to delay a more thorough search of the apartment and to concentrate their efforts in the Santa Monica Mountains.

“They thought he may have left her for dead, but she may have been still alive,” Berman said, explaining why police sealed off the apartment and focused on the hillside search into the night.

A judge signed a search warrant for Panah’s apartment on Nov. 21 at 8:30 p.m. Two hours later, as police catalogued the video equipment, tapes and other items, they made the unexpected grisly discovery.