Butchering of Husband Detailed in Testimony : Trial: Psychiatrist says defendant admitted eating a portion of victim. He said she later denied cannibalism. She says slaying was self-defense.

Omaima Nelson testified Thursday that she killed her husband in self-defense and then butchered the body so she could more easily dispose of the evidence.

In gruesome detail, Nelson testified that she castrated her victim for revenge and boiled his hands to eliminate fingerprints. She also told a packed courtroom that she boiled the head and skinned the body of William Nelson.

As shocking as Nelson’s account was, her testimony was overshadowed by her psychiatrist, who spoke of cannibalism.

Dr. David J. Sheffner said he diagnosed Nelson as psychotic shortly after the slaying. He said she suffered from mental disorders that could be caused in part by sexual and physical abuse she claims she has suffered since a little girl.

“I believe she was psychotic when engaged in this mutilation and almost cannibalism,” Sheffner testified, adding that he has never seen anything “so bizarre, so psychotic” in his 20 years of practice.

That Nelson committed the slaying has never been in question. But Deputy Public Defender Thomas G. Mooney is trying to convince jurors that Nelson is a battered woman who turned on her assailant after repeated rapes and beatings during their two-month marriage.

Nelson, 26, told jurors her husband was sexually assaulting her in their Costa Mesa home on Nov. 30, 1991, when she reached for a pair of scissors, stabbed him and then “freaked out,” beating him with an iron and other objects until he lay dead.

Prosecutors, however, say Nelson is charged with first-degree murder because she is a “predator” who killed her husband, possibly for his money. William Nelson, 56, was a convicted drug smuggler known to carry large amounts of cash, although none was found at the home. Omaima Nelson denies stealing anything from her husband.

Sheffner recalled that Nelson told him she put on red lipstick, a red hat and red high-heel shoes as part of a ritual during the nightlong butchering.

She also told the psychiatrist that she ate William Nelson’s ribs after cooking them in barbecue sauce, he said.

“I did his ribs just like in a restaurant,”’ Sheffner quoted Nelson as saying. She then sat at her kitchen table with the food and said out loud, “It’s so sweet, it’s so delicious. . . . I like mine tender,” he said.

The doctor said Nelson later denied eating her husband’s flesh.

Sheffner said Nelson told him she mutilated William Nelson’s body for revenge. The doctor’s testimony also includes details that partially contradicted Nelson’s recollection of the slaying.

Nelson said she was in a trance-like state after killing her husband and then spent up to 12 hours cleaving flesh from the body and packing up the pieces for easy disposal. She said she had trouble remembering many details because it was a “nightmare.”

During aggressive questioning by prosecutor Randolph J. Pawloski, Nelson admitted boiling her former husband’s hands to remove his fingerprints and mixing up body parts with leftover Thanksgiving Day turkey to help avoid detection in the garbage dumpster.

Pawloski sarcastically asked Nelson for help in finding evidence. He said investigators have yet to find all the “meat” missing from the large man.

“We’re missing about 130 pounds of Bill. You know where he might have gone?” Pawloski asked.

“No, he was all there,” Nelson said.