Panah Pleads Not Guilty in Girl’s Death : Crime: He has been charged with murder, kidnap and sexual assault of Nicole Parker.

A Woodland Hills man charged by a grand jury with murdering, kidnaping and sexually molesting an 8-year-old neighbor pleaded not guilty Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, and his lawyer said he expects to use an insanity defense.

“Not guilty,” said Hooman Ashkan Panah, a pale, slightly built 22-year-old who wore his dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. As he spoke, Lori Parker, the mother of slain Nicole Parker, began to weep in the courtroom’s front row and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

“I want him to die,” Parker later said. “She was so little. What went through his head? What was he thinking? If they just gave me a reason why he did it.”

Panah also denied an allegation that he had killed Nicole while kidnaping, molesting and sodomizing her, special circumstances that carry the death penalty or life in prison without parole.

Outside the courtroom, attorney Robert Sheahen offered the first hint of Panah’s possible insanity defense. The lawyer said Panah previously has been hospitalized for a mental condition and may suffer from brain damage as a result of physical and sexual abuse by “a relative” while growing up in Tehran, Iran.

Panah had attempted suicide at least twice prior to his arrest for Nicole’s slaying, the defense attorney said. Sheahen declined to elaborate further on any mental condition or his client’s background, saying he was awaiting court-ordered psychiatric reports.

But Nicole’s parents said Panah’s mental state made no difference to them.

“I tell them, ‘Good luck,’ because the kid wasn’t unstable,” Lori Parker said. “He went to work right after he killed her. . . . It’s no excuse. He still killed my daughter.”

Her estranged husband, Ed Parker, agreed. He said he’d spoken to Panah several times in the courtyard of the Woodland Hills apartment complex where he and Panah lived, and Panah did not seem to be disturbed. “He was just your average kid,” Parker said.

Nicole’s nude body was found on Nov. 21 stuffed in a suitcase hidden in Panah’s bedroom closet. Her body was found the day after she disappeared from the courtyard of the Ventura Boulevard apartment complex where both her father and Panah lived.

Police searched Panah’s apartment after he allegedly made incriminating statements to officers, according to court records. A friend told police he had mentioned being “involved in something real bad” in connection with Nicole’s disappearance and that there was a videotape that “made him look real bad.”

In the bedroom, police found camera equipment and tapes showing Panah having sex with adult women. They found Nicole’s body in the closet.

Nicole had been choked, but a coroner’s autopsy determined that she died from “traumatic injuries.”

Panah’s mother, Mehry Monfared, waved as deputies led him from the courtroom. She and Lori Parker avoided each other. At an earlier hearing, Parker had become upset when Monfared approached her.

“I just tried to tell her as a mother to accept my sympathy,” Monfared said.

But Parker said she doesn’t want to hear from the mother of the man accused of killing Nicole. “I just don’t feel I need that from her,” Parker said. “We have nothing to discuss unless she can tell me why he did what he did. We have nothing to talk about.”