‘I love you,’ Vegas man headed to prison tells sister he tortured
He tortured his sister for years, authorities said, and would bind her hands and feet as he beat her with his fists and whipped her with whatever he could find, leaving scars that may never heal.
And perhaps the last time he would see her, before a judge sent Edmund Bobby Ho to prison, he turned toward the courtroom gallery, where his sister was seated.
Given a chance to speak Tuesday, in a moment when defendants often apologize for their actions, the 30-year-old had only this to say to his victim:
“I love you.”
Even District Judge Douglas Herndon seemed offended.
Ho had pleaded guilty in two separate cases of abuse against Sophia Parker that detectives said stemmed from one of the most savage cases they’ve ever seen.
“If you love this woman — I don’t mean to be cute — but you sure have a funny way of showing it,” the judge said. “Your only response is to say ‘I love you.’ Really? I mean, really? A lot of times I think that people plead guilty because they truly have some remorse for what happened. I suspect that you plead guilty because after the state’s opening statement and the testimony of the doctor, you realized the train was heading down the tracks.”
For years, the only blood relative Parker knew, her brother, a man with whom she felt a powerful connection, a man she thought she loved, had whipped her and beat her and choked her.
“If this person who cared about me could do something like that to me, why am I going to look anywhere else for help?” she said Tuesday after the judge ordered Ho to serve 16 years to life in prison. “He’s supposed to care about me more than anyone else. I didn’t believe there were people that could care about me or my situation or anything I’ve been through. But I’ve been proven wrong.”
Parker first found her brother after she finished high school, while searching for biological family. Ho and Parker have the same mother but different fathers.
He was in a Nevada prison for drug possession at the time, and they exchanged letters for two years, supporting each other.
In early 2009, as Ho was about to be freed, Parker moved to Las Vegas from Hawaii, where she was raised by adoptive parents in an abusive household.
Studies have shown that people abused as children often end up in abusive relationships as adults, said Lisa Lynn Chapman, director of community relations at Safe Nest, a shelter for victims of domestic violence. Though it’s not exactly clear why, Chapman said domestic violence victims may miss warning signs of a potential abuser.
Parker and Ho grew intimate almost instantly, and they had a daughter together.
She often told him she didn’t feel comfortable about their relationship and said she doesn’t know whether she thought it was wrong at the time.
The Review-Journal typically doesn’t name victims of sexual abuse, but Parker said she wanted to be identified for this article.
“It’s been difficult to tell the truth without taking into account the fact that we were together and we did love each other,” she told the judge. “I don’t know what it would take for both of us to be healthy individuals in this society, and despite everybody’s opinion, because there are a lot of opinions, I just want this to be over with. I want the right thing to be done. I want both of us to seek the help that we need.”
The first attack came when she was six months pregnant, and he backhanded her across the face, she said.
Soon, the abuse turned to torture. He would punch her stomach and tell her she was not worthy of having his child.
Their daughter, born healthy, was placed for adoption, and they moved to Arizona.
In 2011 they returned to Las Vegas, where she started selling her body so they could eat and have a roof over their heads. Ho introduced Parker to meth, which she said helped numb the pain of his fists.
A year later, he was arrested for whipping her repeatedly with a belt and choking her until she passed out. Police said he would wake her and beat her again. Ho would eventually plead guilty in that case.
Last week, as Parker prepared to testify against Ho in his trial on dozens of charges, he also pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree kidnapping in connection with attacks from May to December of last year.
Prosecutor Robert Stephens said Parker endured a series of beatings as the couple bounced between weekly apartments and an abandoned building.
Ho would whip her with an electrical cord from a karaoke machine, or a hair straightener, or a cellphone charger, or a cable cord, or a rock inside a sock. He would punch her and choke her and tell her that if anyone knocked on the door he would kill her.
He tied up her hands with clothing or rope or bed sheets so she couldn’t block the attack.
Ho blindfolded her and punched and kicked her from head-to-toe, breaking her ribs, nose and an eye socket.
Her lung collapsed. She suffered acute kidney damage after he refused to give her food or water.
By the end, she was numb to the pain, she said, and didn’t even react.
Ho kept walking when Parker collapsed in a motel parking lot, minutes from death. No one expected her to survive. Doctors could not even count the number of scars on her body, the prosecutor said.
After poring over pictures of Parker’s bruised and scarred body, the judge called Ho’s actions “depraved torture” and “brutal, systematic abuse.”
Parker, now 27, is unsure of what will become of her brother in prison or whether being institutionalized will help his problems.
“I know that both of us need help,” she said. “I am looking for it. I hope he gets it.”
On Tuesday, Parker stepped out of the courthouse and into a new life, though the scars across her body might forever remind her of far worse days. She recently landed a job as a dispatcher for a plumbing and air conditioning company. She starts today.
“I’m going to do my best to be normal,” she said.
Contact reporter David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker
