ROCKED BY TRAGEDY DETECTIVE TELLS HOW HE FOUGHT BACK FROM EFFECT OF SHOCKING FIND.

Byline: BETH BARRETT

Staff Writer

Joel Price had been a Los Angeles police officer for 14 years when he and his partner found the body of 8-year-old Nicole Parker stuffed in a suitcase in a Woodland Hills apartment.

A seasoned homicide detective, he was unprepared for the flood of emotions the discovery unleashed, or the memories that still bring him to tears more than a decade later.

"I can just remember trying to breathe ... breathe. I thought, 'You've got a job to do -- pull yourself together.' I was just trying to suck air into my lungs -- fighting off the emotions, I guess."

The 1993 case was the beginning of an emotional roller coaster that brought Price close to the victim's family, led to a brief retirement from the Los Angeles Police Department, and saw him return to the job he loved.

"Joel cried with me every single day," said Nicole's mother, Lori Parker-Gladstein. "I learned he's human, a father, a husband, he has feelings."

Even as a rookie on patrol, Price knew he wanted to solve murders.

"I went to my first homicide in 1979," he said. "It was raining that night and there was a guy lying (shot) in the middle of the street."

Price looked over the scene, but his relatively untrained eye didn't see any evidence.

"I asked (the detective), 'Will you ever solve this?' He said, 'Yeah, kid, I think we will.' A few days later they had the suspect. I was just amazed and I thought, 'God, if I could become one of them."'

Six years later, he was. And as he sharpened his skills as a detective, he also learned how to put aside his emotions at grisly crime scenes and autopsies, to leave work at the station, to laugh through the tough spots.

But on Nov. 20, 1993, while he was filling out an overtime slip at the West Valley station, Price heard that a little girl had been reported missing.

Gruesome discovery

The next day, Hooman Ashkan Panah was arrested after telling his girlfriend he wanted to kill himself because of a missing girl.

Price and other detectives got a search warrant for Panah's Woodland Hills apartment, where they found a small suitcase tucked in a closet.

"(My partner) realized the suitcase was heavier than it should be. That's when he unzipped it and pulled back some sheets and saw the flesh."

It was the body of Nicole Parker.

Price remembers remaining in emotional control until he got home, where his three young children were waiting.

"When I did go home, I hugged each one of my kids, and it was different. I put myself in (the Parkers') shoes in just having lost a child."

Price didn't think he needed counseling. He was fine, he said, even during the girl's autopsy.

"It wasn't until later that the emotions really kind of flooded. And when I say later, I mean months later, a year."

After his partner sobbed on the witness stand while testifying at the murder trial that brought Panah a death sentence, Price said he was determined not to break down.

"If I felt it was getting out of hand, I'd think about something else. ... I'd take myself as far away as I possibly could. Just think about something else, so I could get back on track."

Career decisions

Price says his decision that year to leave homicide to head West Valley's community relations unit -- and his retirement in 1999 to expand his security company -- had more to do with career decisions than Nicole's death.

But Lori Parker-Gladstein believes her daughter's case also contributed.

"He could never be involved in finding another child like Nicole," she said.

After a couple of years, however, Price discovered he missed being a cop. He returned to the LAPD in 2002, working the theft detail in West Los Angeles, but after just a couple of months was drawn back to homicide.

"Once you get a little taste, there's nothing more exhilarating than the thrill of the hunt and solving one of these things," said Price, now 48 and the head of Devonshire Division's homicide unit.

He says his love for the job has been burnished by his dedication to the Nicole Parker Foundation for Children. The nonprofit group founded in Nicole's memory has raised more than $200,000 for Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles and the hospital's program to treat suspected victims of child abuse.

Price is the foundation's CEO and president. Lori Parker-Gladstein is chairwoman and her son, Travis, is chief financial officer.

"It's been healing," Price said.

beth.barrett(at)dailynews.com

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CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Lori Parker-Gladstein and Joel Price, head of Devonshire Division's homicide unit, hold a photo of murder victim Nicole Parker near her grave in Thousand Oaks. Grisly cases like Nicole's can plunge investigating officers into years of emotional turmoil.

(2 -- color) Lori Parker-Gladstein and the LAPD's Joel Price place flowers on the grave of Parker's daughter, Nicole. The two have formed a foundation to benefit victims of child abuse.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer