Woman Gets 27 Years to Life in Husband’s Mutilation

A woman who bludgeoned her husband, chopped up his body and cooked parts of it was sentenced Friday to 27 years to life in prison after being compared to notorious cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer and the fictional Dr. Hannibal Lechter.

Omaima Nelson, 24, was convicted of second-degree murder for killing William Nelson, 56, in 1991 in the Costa Mesa apartment the newlyweds shared. She then skinned the torso, cooked the head and fried the hands in oil.

Nelson showed no emotion during a brief sentencing hearing in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana, but she apparently is hopeful for her future. Nelson has become engaged to a man in his 70s and hopes to return to college someday to become a counselor to abused women, according to a sentencing report.

Nelson, a native of Egypt and a former model, told jurors that her husband was raping her when she killed him in self-defense. But prosecutors depicted Nelson as a predator who stalked men and traded sex for money and drugs.

In addition to the second-degree murder charge, Nelson was convicted of assaulting a former boyfriend, Robert Hannson of Huntington Beach, in 1990 by tying him up and demanding money at gunpoint.

When she married William Nelson, a pilot, he was still legally married to another woman and had been convicted of drug smuggling.

Omaima Nelson was arrested for the slaying after she stuffed body parts into garbage bags and offered a friend $75,000 to help her dispose of them. The friend called police, who made the grisly discovery.

During the trial, a psychiatrist testified that Nelson told him she put on a red hat, red shoes and red lipstick before spending hours chopping up her husband’s body. She tossed some of the body parts down a garbage disposal. She also told her therapist she had feasted on some of her dead husband’s body parts, but she later denied engaging in cannibalism.

In a court-ordered sentencing report by the Orange County Probation Department, Costa Mesa Police Officer Robert B. Phillips stated: “Omaima Nelson is the most bizarre and sick individual I’ve had the occasion to meet. No one needs to look to the Dahmers of Milwaukee or the Hannibal Lechters of the screen. A new predator has emerged, named Omaima.”

But Deputy Public Defender Thomas G. Mooney said Nelson had lived an exemplary life before coming to the United States and settling in Orange County in 1987, where she had repeated brushes with the law, mostly for taking cars from male friends without permission, drunk driving, petty theft and numerous traffic violations.

Mooney said Nelson was unprepared for living in a foreign land, given her limited education and ability to speak English, and her abusive upbringing.

A therapist selected by the defense said in court records that Nelson suffered from a mental condition and endured repeated sexual and physical abuse while growing up.

On her own behalf, however, Nelson told a probation officer she is really a “warm person who wouldn’t hurt a mosquito,” according to the probation report.