Woman who ate portion of murdered husband’s remains denied parole

After hearing from the victim’s daughter and the prosecutor on the case, on Wednesday the state denied parole for a Costa Mesa woman who killed her husband and then froze, cooked and tasted portions of his body over Thanksgiving weekend in 1991.

Omaima Aree Nelson, 43, has served about 20 years of her 27-years-to-life sentence for killing William Nelson, 56. According to court testimony in her trial, she ate portions of his ribs and other remains.

The original prosecutor on the case, Orange County Senior Deputy District Attorney Randy Pawloski, and the victim’s daughter, Margaret Nelson, attended the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation hearing to urge the board not to release Nelson, according to the D.A.’s office.

Margaret Nelson, according to a press release, said she regretted that her late father never got to see her as a mother.

Costa Mesa police arrested Nelson in 1991 after she tried to have an ex-boyfriend help her dispose of some of her dead husband’s body parts. She had been married to Nelson, about 30 years her senior at the time of the killing, for three weeks before she killed him.

Wednesday was the second time Nelson, once a part-time model in her native Egypt, has been denied early release. The parole board rejected her release in 2006.

Prosecutors argued Nelson showed no remorse for the slaying, saying her disciplinary record while in prison and violent past before the murder show she’s a continued threat to society. In prison she also apparently has continued a pattern with of relationships with older men, some of them making conjugal visits to her at Chowchilla State Prison in the Central Valley.

Nelson was also convicted of tying up her boyfriend at gunpoint in Huntington Beach in 1990, and battery against a security guard in 1989.

Bob Phillips, who was the lead detective on the case for the Costa Mesa Police Department, said it was the worst he’d come across in his long career.

Nelson is up for parole again in 2026.

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Twitter: @JosephSerna