Cannibal Omaima Nelson's Thanksgiving: Sex Games and a Husband BBQ (9 photos)

Former Egyptian model Omaima Nelson murdered her husband on the eve of Thanksgiving inside their California home. The 23-year-old beauty then grilled human flesh alongside a holiday turkey right in her backyard, devouring it with dipping sauce. She later insisted to investigators that she had acted in self-defense and claimed she never ate the flesh, but merely threw it out. (Warning: Disturbing content).





Little is known about Omaima's early life. Born in Egypt in 1968, she worked as a nanny and model. She later told her attorney that her devout Muslim parents had subjected her to female genital mutilation at a young age. Omaima also claimed she had been repeatedly sexually assaulted in her homeland.



Police records only picked up her trail in 1986, when the 18-year-old Egyptian moved to the United States in search of a better life. Finding little success as a model, she bounced between various odd jobs over the next five years.

Her fortunes seemed to turn when she met 56-year-old William Nelson, a wealthy older man. The couple married just days after meeting. But immediately following a cross-country honeymoon across the United States, the young bride brutally murdered her new husband.

According to Omaima, on the morning of November 28, 1991, her husband Bill tried to strangle her. Fighting back, she struck him over the head with a desk lamp before stabbing him with the first thing she grabbed—a pair of scissors. The violent struggle played out in Nelson's home in Costa Mesa, California.





Former military pilot William Nelson

Prosecutors, however, painted a very different picture. They argued that the couple had engaged in a sexual roleplay session during which Omaima tied Bill to the bed. Once he was securely restrained, she bludgeoned him with the table lamp and stabbed him repeatedly with scissors.

This was no sex game gone wrong; prosecutors maintained she was motivated by cash. After ensuring her victim was dead, the killer set about disposing of the body—a grim and grueling task, given that Nelson was a large man weighing roughly 220 pounds.

Omaima began by severing his head, hands, and penis, and skinning the corpse. She grilled his hands, believing the heat would destroy his fingerprints. While the hands sizzled, his head boiled in a pot nearby. The macabre cooking session lasted 12 hours—a period the defendant claimed she barely remembered.



A bag containing the remains of Omaima's feast

A psychiatrist who interviewed her behind closed doors uncovered even more horrific details. After dealing with the hands and head, Omaima put on her finest red dress and red high heels, then cooked her husband's ribs in barbecue sauce. The model feasted on the morbid dish for dinner that very night. "I cooked them just like they do at a restaurant," the cannibal candidly confided to the doctor once she was sure they were alone.

At trial, however, Omaima vehemently denied the story, and verifying her claim proved impossible. No one had witnessed the cooking, and whatever remained of Bill Nelson had been mixed with leftovers from the Thanksgiving turkey and stuffed into trash bags.



Bill Nelson's foil-wrapped head inside the refrigerator

Interviews with neighbors revealed that on the day of the murder, they had heard chopping noises coming from the Nelsons' kitchen. They assumed it was just routine holiday prep. In reality, the young woman was hacking up her husband's body with knives and a hatchet. Yet despite her efforts, she couldn't manage to dispose of the dismembered corpse on her own.

Desperate, she called an acquaintance, offering him $75,000 from her late husband's safe if he would help her dispose of the body. When he refused, Omaima called another friend and begged him to help pull the teeth from the corpse. He turned her down flat as well.

Her ultimate plan was to dump Bill Nelson's remains into Back Bay, but she only managed to pack them into trash bags. When police raided the Nelson residence on December 2, 1991, they found the homeowner's remains in the refrigerator and inside two plastic trash bags, mixed with turkey bones. Catching the killer was inevitable; she had already confided her crime to too many people.



Omaima standing near the Corvette she planned to use to haul away the remains

The killer maintained that she had acted in self-defense during a temporary psychotic break, portraying her husband Bill as a sadistic abuser. However, during the investigation, troubling details from her past emerged. Her ex-boyfriend, Robert Hanson, who dated her a year before the murder, recounted a chilling incident.

While visiting his home one day, Omaima tied him up at gunpoint, demanding cash and jewelry. Hanson managed to escape unharmed, but the unsettling encounter proved telling. Mr. Nelson would not be so lucky. Former Costa Mesa police sergeant Bob Phillips later recalled his impression of the gruesome case:

"It was the most horrific crime I ever dealt with in all my years on the force. She [Omaima] didn't strike me as someone in her right mind."



Orange County Deputy District Attorney Randolph Pawloski shared grim details of the search with the Los Angeles Times:

"We found several suitcases and plastic bags containing blood-soaked body parts. Mr. Nelson's hands were in the oven, and his head, riddled with puncture wounds, was found in the refrigerator. She had packed his entrails into her Corvette."

Defense attorney Thomas Mooney argued that his client bore minimal culpability. He went to great lengths to portray Bill Nelson as a dangerous, unstable menace. Mooney claimed that Nelson had once thrown Omaima's cat out the window of a car speeding at over 75 mph. He also alleged that Bill routinely handcuffed his young bride to a table to beat and assault her for hours.



Omaima Nelson listens to her sentence

The investigation and trial of the Costa Mesa cannibal lasted two years. In 1993, the court found Omaima guilty and sentenced her to 27 years to life in prison. In 2011, she applied for parole, insisting she was deeply remorseful and truly sorry for her actions.

Her seemingly sincere pleas for rehabilitation might have touched the board had she not made a bizarre misstep. While behind bars, Omaima had remarried a 70-year-old man. The couple were allowed unsupervised visits a few times a month in a designated family room.



Omaima listens as the court denies her release

As proof that she was reformed, Omaima pointed out that despite spending hours alone with her new husband, he was still alive and well. Needless to say, the killer's unsettling logic alarmed the parole board, and her petition was promptly denied.

The horrific story of Omaima Nelson is shocking, yet twisted female killers are not entirely unheard of. One of the most famous cases involving mutilation was that of Japanese killer Sada Abe, who kept a rather intimate part of her victim as a souvenir.