Morbid Details Resurface in Female Hannibal Lecter Case, She 'Did His Ribs Just Like in a Restaurant'

As a state parole board wrestles with freeing Omaima Aree Nelson, the ex-model who murdered her husband then cooked and ate his body parts, morbid details surrounding the case are expected to resurface.

Nelson, who has been behind bars at California Central Women’s Prison in Chowchilla for 20 years, is asking for early release from her 27-year sentence for the 1991 murder of her husband William E. Nelson, 56. Nelson was an Egyptian model who immigrated to the U.S. in 1986.

During the Orange County case, detectives compared Nelson to Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the fictional cannibal serial killer character in the 1991 film "The Silence of the Lambs." Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Randolph J. Pawloski, the veteran prosecutor who sent her to prison, opposes Nelson's release, saying he will never forget the horror of visiting the Nelson's home, according to L.A. Now. Below are specifics on what exactly Pawloski witnessed.

“There were suitcases and plastic bags soaked with dark liquid from his body parts. In the fry cooker there sat Mr. Nelson’s hands and when we opened the refrigerator there was Mr. Nelson’s head with stab wounds,” Palowski recalls. “She had his entrails in his Corvette and she was trying to get an ex-boyfriend to yank out the dentures from the head so she could dump it in the Back Bay.”

Nelson was the first defendant in Orange County who used a "battered wife" defense, saying that she was raped the night before she murdered her husband. Jurors deliberated for six days before rejecting her defense. Due to a lack of premeditation, the murder was deemed second-degree.

Palowski will appear at Wednesday's parole hearing to personally fight her early release. “It is certainly one of the most gruesome and notorious crimes ever committed in Orange County, and sometimes people need reminding of that,” he said. “It is probably the most egregious mutilation murder we’ve had here.” Palowski plans to tell the parole board that the way she defiled and mutilated her husband demonstrates an exceptionally callous disregard for human life.

During Nelson's trial, a psychiatrist testified that Nelson wore red shoes, a red hat and red lipstick while spending hours chopping up her husband's body. "'I did his ribs just like in a restaurant,'" the psychiatrist quoted Nelson as saying. Nelson also revealed that as she sat at her kitchen table with her husband’s cooked remains, she said out loud: "'It's so sweet, it's so delicious .... I like mine tender,'" the doctor recalled.