SANTA ANA – An Anaheim man who strangled a transgender activist to death during a 2014 sexual encounter was sentenced Friday to 15 years to life in state prison.
Randy Lee Parkerson, during his sentencing hearing, apologized to the family of Zoraida Reyes who he killed and whose body he left at the edge of a dirt lot next to an Anaheim Dairy Queen.
“I am truly sorry for what I did to your daughter,” Parkerson read in court from a letter he wrote to Reyes’ mother. “I never meant for anything like this to happen. … I wish I could trade places with her, so she could be with you.”
Parkerson, 40, said the 28-year-old Reyes’ death was not because of “who she was.” He acknowledged that he neither “expects or deserves” the forgiveness of Reyes’ family.
Jisell Neel, a longtime friend who first met Reyes in a transgender support group, told a reporter she was “a gentle, peaceful person who lit up a room wherever she went.”
In court, speaking to Parkerson during Friday’s hearing, Neel said: “You took from her mother her first born, her sister a role model, and her friends a community leader. I hope you find peace, that you can accept responsibility, and that you can become a voice to those who have been injured.”
Parkerson, in the midst of a meth and sex binge, met Reyes online, setting up a meeting in her hometown Santa Ana, were he agreed to pay for sex. During his spree, he had sex with men and transgender women, in their homes, in motel rooms and in his parked car, his lawyer said.
Parkerson told authorities that as their sexual encounter intensified, Reyes asked him to perform auto-erotic asphyxiation by intentionally choking her.
After realizing that Reyes was dead, Parkerson admitted to keeping her body in the trunk of his car for two days as he tried to find a place to leave the body. At the lot, he left her partially unclothed, her body half-hidden by bushes.
Parkerson’s attorney argued that Reyes’ death was the result of a tragic accident. But jurors disagreed, finding Parkerson guilty of second-degree murder.
In the final years’ of her life, Reyes had become an increasingly strong voice advocating for the rights of transgender people and undocumented immigrants.
Friends remembered her as an overachiever who dreamed of becoming a public-health educator.
Contact the writer: semery@ocregister.com
