Suspect in Slaying Was ‘Gentleman’ : Child: Friend says Hooman Ashkan Panah admitted involvement in ‘something real bad.’ The body of Nicole Parker, 8, was found in his closet.

To Rauni Campbell, her friend Hooman Ashkan Panah appeared a caring, friendly young man who was courteous and attentive on dates and never seemed capable of violence.

“He was a gentleman,” she said.

Panah, 22, of Woodland Hills is accused of murdering and sexually molesting 8-year-old Nicole Parker, whose nude body was found stuffed in a suitcase in Panah’s bedroom closet.

In a tense, hourlong interview late Friday, Campbell said she had known Panah only three months before he appeared at her West Hills apartment with slashed wrists one Sunday morning, saying he wanted to kill himself because he “was involved in something real bad.”

He did not mention Nicole at first, but Campbell had seen news reports of the girl’s disappearance and said she quickly guessed her friend was somehow involved. It was hard to believe and still is, she said. They were casual friends and she doesn’t know why Panah reached out to her on the day after police say he killed the little girl.

“We were never boyfriend-girlfriend or anything like that,” Campbell, 20, said of her relationship with Panah, which began when they met in an employee break room at a Mervyn’s department store where the two worked in Canoga Park.

“I was new and he was outgoing,” she said. “Mostly we went out for dinners and lunches and took our breaks together.”

Campbell, who holds down two jobs, as a sales associate and a waitress, and is taking general education courses at Moorpark Community College, said Panah was popular at the store where he worked as a sales associate since 1989.

“He knew a lot of people and, as far as I know, most people either liked him or got along with him,” she said. “I don’t think he had any enemies.”

On dates, she said Panah was always careful to introduce her to his friends and that she was never expected to pay.

“I would never have believed for a second that he could kill someone,” she said of the stylish dresser who drove a black BMW and listened to rap and dance music.

She said Panah, who was known to friends as “Niko,” seemed very open, adding that she had been introduced to several of his friends and family members, including his mother.

“He put me into his life,” she said. “They were all nice, outgoing people.”

Campbell said Panah did enjoy smoking marijuana and drinking in social situations, but he did not appear to smoke or drink excessively.

“He didn’t deal drugs or anything like that,” she said. “He just liked to have fun.”

She said she knew nothing of the sexually explicit videotapes and magazines police said they found in Panah’s apartment, and that he never talked about sex.

“I was never aware of anything like sexual videotapes,” she said. “We didn’t have that kind of relationship.”

She said there was never a hint of anything out of the ordinary.

Then on Nov. 21, Panah appeared at her front door, bleeding from the wrists. He had tried to kill himself, but wanted her to help him buy sleeping pills to finish the job, she said. She agreed.

“I didn’t want to help him, but I knew by getting him the pills and taking him back to my house that I’d have a way to get help for him,” she said. His wrists were hurting so badly by then, she said, that she had to cut open pill packets for him and fetch him a glass of water so he could take them.

“He told me, ‘Just let me go through with this and I’ll leave you alone,’ ” she said.

At first, Panah had only said he had done something bad. Finally, he brought up Nicole. “He told me it had something to do with the little girl,” she said. “There was a mention to me that there was a tape, and that it made him look bad.”

Once back at her apartment, as Panah began to gulp the pills, Campbell ran downstairs to the building manager’s apartment and called 911.

When police arrived at her Northgate Avenue apartment, Panah fled, but was caught on a nearby street. Campbell said she was taken to the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Valley station and told investigators what Panah said about the videotapes. The tapes did not show Nicole, but did show Panah having sex with women, police said.

These days, Campbell says, she feels no sympathy for her friend.

“I hurt that something this horrible would happen to a child like that,” Campbell said. “He was never a monster to me. But if he had anything to do with this then he definitely deserves whatever he has coming to him.”