Murder Count Filed in Dismembering

Prosecutors filed a murder charge Tuesday against a Costa Mesa woman who allegedly stabbed her newlywed husband to death and dismembered his body.

With her car loaded with two trash bags of human organs, an 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.

The murder charge was filed in Orange County Harbor Municipal Court.