And then, even more confounding, Park posted several amateur promotional videos to YouTube for Scouts Honor that he starred in. These films also aren't funny, but for very different reasons. They show Park, who calls himself a "Texas Ranger," in a brown leather coat and cowboy hat, hoisting a shotgun. In one scene, there are racist remarks. Park, playing the "Texas Ranger," tells a Korean masseuse, "You don't understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?...Oh, you're not Chinese? You all look the same! Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese. All the same."
The period during which Park was making these videos was, presumably, when his relationship with Council Member Brown intensified. But again, even that's unclear. Of the nearly two dozen people interviewed who had connections to Brown — friends, adversaries, political acquaintances, work colleagues and staff members — not one person knew anything about Brown's personal life or her relationship with Park. When Brown was approached about Park's financial history, she said, "I apologize, but I cannot talk to you at this time."
Photo by Chris Curry
Before Helena Brown got into office, she posted numerous rants commingling Catholic dogmas with conservative doctrine to a private Google Group called "Friends of Freedom." There is an "infiltration of commies in the church who like to teach liberation 'theology,' open borders, and social 'justice' all against what is true Catholic teaching," she wrote January 3, 2011. "It makes me sick!"
Photo by Chris Curry
Houston City Council meetings on Tuesdays begin at 1:30 p.m., but Council Member Helena Brown usually doesn't show up until around 2 p.m., often one of the last people to take her seat in the chambers.
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Some of Brown's employees say they don't think she knows about Park, but none of them are sure. In fact, most were unable to relate details beyond Brown's faith or politics. The common refrain: "I didn't feel comfortable asking her."
William Park had found one more person to manipulate.
This wasn't what Leticia Ablaza or R.W. Bray had expected. In the beginning, the dynamic in Brown's office had been "hopeful," said Bray, who was Brown's deputy chief of staff. They swept into office with the same idealism and relative naiveté that infects most people around freshman legislators: They were going to change things. Do right by their constituents. Return all phone calls. Work together.
But it didn't happen that way. Instead, "William Park happened," Ablaza said.
Ablaza first noticed something strange in his relationship with Brown last January at a Spring Branch super-neighborhood meeting, an extremely ordinary civic function that council members attend to meet constituents. At the gathering, Ablaza recalled, Park — not Brown — did all the talking. "It was really odd," Ablaza said. "That he was speaking and she didn't really speak. I can see where people would think, 'Is he the City Council member, or is she?' I could see where someone would say that."
Park circulated business cards there and elsewhere emblazoned with the City of Houston seal. The cards advertised Park as Brown's "chief adviser." City Attorney David Feldman later stopped Park, saying the city emblem couldn't be used on a volunteer's business cards.
Back in Brown's office, mystery begat mystery. One staff member, who requested anonymity, said Brown would agree with their policy recommendations during prep sessions, but later "she'd vote some other way. Or we'd get a call before the meeting saying, 'The vote has been changed.'"
At those Council gatherings, Brown would deliver lengthy prepared statements with graphic imagery that no one on staff had heard before: "How about showing our young people how to free themselves from the slavery of sexual promiscuity...Our nation needs to return to our foundation of Biblical principles being taught in schools, versus the government trying to educate folks on how to plan a family, when they can't even define a family. Rather sterilize our young girls."
At a City Council meeting January 11, Brown ferociously opposed the construction of a $2.3 million bike path, triggering a 30-minute fracas between Council members that Mayor Parker couldn't corral. It ended — like most things involving Brown — in bizarre fashion. She read a statement from her phone that someone appeared to have shot her mid-meeting; it's still unclear who had sent it to her.
"We're going to make Houston start looking like an aging Hollywood actress," Brown said, tripping up and stuttering. "Just racking up bills on excessive jewelry and cosmetic surgery while the infrastructure falls apart and other bills go unpaid. A very sober thought."
What followed would become a familiar arc to Brown's story. The Council ignored the councilwoman, passing construction of the bike paths 16-1. Only Brown dissented.
Brown never explained the behavior, baffling her staff and affording rumors the fodder to proliferate. "We don't know what happened to Helena between meetings with us and City Council sessions," one senior staff member said.
Some weeks later, there was a Galleria Chamber of Commerce gala that Park and Brown both attended along with hundreds of others. Neither Brown nor Park drinks alcohol. Park complained at dinner — over dry, tasteless chicken — that he wanted to refinance city bonds but couldn't get the answers he needed. "I've worked on these deals before. They don't make information public," one attendee, who requested that her name not be used, recalls Park saying.
The woman remembers the night vividly. Park, she recalled, wore a dark blazer, and later entered a discussion about Brown and City Council. He said he and Brown would continue voting against any proposal that compromised their principles. He frankly hadn't expected to be in the position he found himself in. He and Helena had thought Stardig would glide into another term. "We're surprised the election went so well," he reportedly said during the discussion.
