Wife Charged in Husband’s Grisly Slaying

Prosecutors filed a murder charge Tuesday against a Costa Mesa woman who allegedly stabbed her newlywed husband to death and dismembered his body in one of the most macabre homicide cases in Orange County history.

With her car loaded with two trash bags containing human organs, a hysterical Omayma Aref Nelson admitted killing her spouse to a friend Sunday, then tried to enlist him in a bizarre plot to dispose of the remains, according to the friend.

“ ‘I killed him, I killed him. I cut him to pieces and put his head in the refrigerator,’ ” Al Esquivel quoted Nelson as telling him shortly after she went to his Costa Mesa apartment.

Esquivel said that Omayma Nelson, who appeared distraught and had shallow cuts all over her body, arrived at his Monte Vista Avenue home Sunday in a red Corvette and offered him $75,000 to help get rid of several trash bags containing parts of William E. Nelson’s body.

“She pulled me into the kitchen and said: ‘There is a safe of money, $150,000. I’ll give you half if you will help me,’ ” Esquivel recalled. “I played along, asking her for more. She said, ‘You can have anything you want.’ ”

Omayma Nelson, 23, who immigrated to the United States from Egypt in 1986 under the name Stainbrook, was questioned by police all Sunday night. She was arrested Monday morning after Costa Mesa officers found plastic bags filled with body parts in her husband’s Corvette and the couple’s home on Elden Avenue.

A murder charge was filed against Omayma Nelson during an arraignment hearing on Tuesday afternoon in Orange County Harbor Municipal Court. Prosecutors also allege that she used a knife during the attack, which would add to her penalty if she is convicted. She did not enter a plea, and her arraignment is scheduled to continue Dec. 20 before Judge Christopher Strople. She is being held without bail in Orange County Jail.

At the hearing, Strople repeatedly asked Omayma Nelson to speak up, rather than nod in answer to questions. The petite woman, with dark curly hair, dressed in a gray jail uniform, stood without expression as she acknowledged the charges against her.

Authorities would not comment on the dismemberment or what police found in the apartment, allegedly where William Nelson was slain. Investigators have not established a motive, police said, and no weapon has been found.

“Most (murders) are shootings and beatings,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Randolph J. Pawloski. “The manner of the death is just very unusual.”

Earlier Tuesday, the Orange County coroner’s office positively identified the remains as those of William Nelson, 56, of Costa Mesa. An autopsy concluded that he died of multiple stab wounds to the heart and lungs.

“Our feeling is that she murdered this gentleman and that’s it,” said Capt. Tom Lazar, a spokesman for the Costa Mesa Police Department. “A murder is a murder and all are bad. I am not going to make this one out to be any worse than the others.”

Authorities in Laredo, Tex., where the victim used to live, assisted in a fingerprint analysis used to make the identification of the remains.

The Nelsons were last seen together about midnight Saturday at the Madeleine restaurant and bar at 103 Santa Isabel Ave. in Costa Mesa, according to bar patrons. Early the next afternoon, Omayma Nelson reportedly went to Esquivel’s apartment at 157 Monte Vista Ave. looking for help.

“She was crying; she said she was nervous and had gotten into a fight with her husband,” Esquivel, 25, told The Times. “She said they had been at a bar the night before and he was upset because he thought she had been flirting” with another man.

Omayma Nelson apparently told Esquivel that when they went home from the Madeleine, her husband tied her up on their bed and tried to rape her at knifepoint. During the struggle, she said, William Nelson cut her repeatedly.

“At one point she said she was afraid he would kill her,” Esquivel recalled, adding that she loosened the rope and used a bedside lamp to knock him unconscious. Then, she said, she grabbed the knife.

At that point in her story, Esquivel said, Omayma Nelson asked him to help her clean her home and dispose of several trash bags containing human remains that were in her apartment and stored in her car.

“ ‘There is stuff all over the apartment,’ ” he quoted her as saying.

Esquivel told her he would go get a truck, but instead he called police, triggering an investigation into the most grotesque spousal murder case in local history. The young man said he gave a detailed statement to detectives.

“It’s absolutely shocking,” said Costa Mesa Mayor Mary Hornbuckle. “To the best of my knowledge, nothing like this has ever happened in Costa Mesa before. We’re all in a state of shock. I cannot imagine anyone committing this sort of crime.”

The victim, who married Omayma Nelson about a month ago, is a former Texas rancher and private pilot who served four years at Lompoc federal penitentiary for drug smuggling.

Former Assistant U.S. Atty. David Almaraz, now a defense lawyer in Laredo, said Nelson was found guilty in 1984 of plotting to bring thousands of pounds of marijuana into the United States aboard an old DC-3 transport plane.

Almaraz, who prosecuted the case, said several Colombian nationals, a soccer star from Scotland and William Nelson’s brother Jerry were also convicted in the highly publicized criminal case.

“Nelson was flying old transport planes, DC-3s, down to South America and bringing back large amounts of marijuana,” Almaraz said. “He contended as part of his defense that he worked for the CIA and was flying for the (Nicaraguan) Contras. That was never proved.”

Omayma Nelson also had trouble with the law. According to the state Department of Motor Vehicles, she has been convicted at least 12 times since June, 1989, of moving violations, hit-and-run driving, drunken driving and auto theft. She has had her driver’s license suspended six times.

After being paroled, William Nelson went to work as a messenger and part-time computer programmer for Cannon Mortgage Inc. in Tustin. The president of the company said she last saw him alive Wednesday, just before he left the office for the long Thanksgiving holiday.

Contributing to this report were Times staff writers Gebe Martinez, Eric Bailey and Eric Young.