Police Described Bloody Scene Filled With Body Parts

Police investigating one of the most bizarre spousal murder cases in Orange County history encountered a nightmare when they searched the apartment where William Nelson was killed and cut to pieces.

Officers combed the modest two-bedroom unit at 2117 Elden Ave. on Dec. 1, after receiving a tip that Omayma Aref Nelson had killed her husband and tried to hire an acquaintance to help her dispose of several trash bags containing body parts.

Costa Mesa police have repeatedly declined to talk about what they saw that day. But search warrant records made public for the first time Friday reveal that officers found a scene filled with blood-soaked furnishings and pieces of human flesh wrapped in tin foil or placed in 11 bags and cardboard boxes.

According to the documents, investigators removed numerous bloodstained items for crime-lab analysis, including portions of two sofas, clothing, lengths of carpet, sections of wall and a headboard to a bed. From the dining room and kitchen, police confiscated parts of cabinets, a large soup pot, a red and white cooler, a deep-fat fryer “with residue” and a glass jar “with contents.” Authorities did not say what the residue and contents were.

Although officers removed almost 20 knives from the apartment, police said Friday that they have not yet determined whether any of them was the murder weapon. Coroner’s officials concluded that William Nelson died of multiple stab wounds. Their autopsy was not unlike federal aviation investigators putting a jetliner back together after a crash.

The list of items seized by police was unsealed Friday after Nelson, 23, appeared in Harbor Orange County Municipal Court for arraignment on a single murder count. The proceeding was postponed until Jan. 10.

Police had obtained a court order to keep certain search warrant documents secret until they were satisfied that no other people were involved in the case. Sgt. Ron Smith, a spokesman for the department, said investigators have no other leads and firmly believe that Nelson is the only suspect.

On Friday, she appeared almost jovial in court as she talked to her attorney through the glass window of a holding cell. When she first entered the courtroom, she smiled and waved at her lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Thomas Mooney, and Chuck E. Cluse, an investigator for the county public defender’s office.

Mooney requested that the arraignment be postponed because he said he was recently assigned to the case and has not had time to adequately review it. Outside the courtroom, he declined to comment, except to say that his client was “very upset by the incident.”

Omayma Nelson, an Egyptian who emigrated to the United States in 1986, met William Nelson this fall. Though they claimed to have been married in an Egyptian ceremony in November, no official marriage records could be located by The Times.

At the time of his death, William Nelson’s divorce from his previous wife, Kathy Nelson of Santa Maria, was not final.

Among the other items seized from the apartment were computer components, bloodstained stationery, a divorce manual, a zippered athletic bag containing body parts, and two bags of trash containing bloody clothes.

From the apartment’s bathroom, police said they found “HIV paperwork” for Omayma Nelson, a reference to the AIDS virus, but the search warrant documents offered no further explanation. A lock of hair was found on a stereo table in the living room.

Smith said officers also confiscated a small safe belonging to the victim from a garage at the apartment complex. The safe contained “only a small amount of cash--about $100,” he said. A key witness has alleged that Omayma Nelson claimed to have had $150,000 in a safe, and that she would split the money with him if he helped get rid of Nelson’s body.