HONOLULU -- A Circuit Court judge sentenced Kirk Lankford to a mandatory life in prison with the possibility of parole for the 2007 killing of Japanese national Masumi Watanabe.

During the trial, Lankford claimed he slightly injured Watanabe with his truck on the North Shore, that she fell and hit her head on a rock and then tossed her body in to the ocean because he did not want to lose his job.

Her parents spoke through an interpreter about their shy daughter. The talked about her love for Hawaii and the horror of losing a child.

"I can hear Masumi's calling for us to take her home. Her crying is incessant in my ear," Watanabe's father, Hideichi, said.

"We still bow humbly to you to beg and plead to show us to return her remains to her home town in Japan," Watanabe's mother, Fumiko, said.

In court, Lankford said he apologized to the Watanabe family for dumping Masumi's body, but he still insisted he did not commit the murder.

"What I did was heartless. What I did was wrong, but I did not kill Masumi Watanabe," Lankford said.

Lankford broke down when his father spoke in court, saying he believed his son was still innocent, a church-going man with two boys of his own.

"Kirk Matthew Lankford is a fine young man. He's loving, kind, caring," Howard Lankford said.

The judge called Lankford a danger.

"The court concludes that you are a predator," Judge Karl Sakamoto said.

Prosecutors said Lankford deserved the long prison sentence.