Forensicwx
Final Roll Call 4153. STLCO 10-42 10/13 @ 1519
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.
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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.
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“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.
More info here:
http://m.reviewjournal.com/news/las...as-man-headed-prison-tells-sister-he-tortured
And here:
http://m.reviewjournal.com/news/las...es-justice-after-years-horrific-abuse-brother