One of
the most bizarre things about the United States of America is the variability
of our legal system. You steal $100.00 and you go to jail, you steal a $100,000
and you have a congressional hearing and keep your fortune. A murder in one
state will send you to the electric chair, but if you're a different color and
commit the same crime 20 miles away in another state you might get life in
prison. On Wednesday, October 5, America will again bear witness to the bizarre
vagaries of our legal system when Omaima Aree Nelson seeks parole after serving
20 years in a California prison for one of the most ridiculous and grotesque
crimes in U.S. history.
Omaima
Aree immigrated to the United States in 1986, and soon found work as a nanny
while also working part time as a model. After a series of dysfunctional
relationships with men since coming to the states, she finally thought she'd
found the “one” when she met 56-year-old pilot William E. Nelson in 1991 who
swept the 23-year-old off her feet with a one-month courtship. They were
married and moved to his apartment in Costa Mesa, California but after two
months the relationship got fairly complicated and there is no cut and dried
way to explain what happened next.
One
morning in early December Omaima Nelson ran to a neighbor's apartment claiming
that she had killed her husband after he tied her up and brutally raped her. Of
course something seemed amiss when Jose Alfredo Esquivel finally made his way
to the Nelson's apartment to help her. He witnessed a brutal scene that made it
hard to believe her story was completely on the up and up.
Omaima
Nelson had actually bludgeoned her husband to death over the Thanksgiving
weekend, then cut his body into pieces and spent days driving around the city
in his red Corvette trying to get rid of the body parts. When that wasn't
working fast enough she got a little more creative. She skinned his torso,
decapitated the body and began frying and eating parts of her husband. Esquivel
testified that Omaima Nelson didn't appear to have much remorse about her
cannibalism after she dipped one of his ribs into barbecue sauce and once
joked, “Nothing tastes as good as
the man I married. It's the sauce that does it."
After
realizing that she might've bitten off more than she could chew the trophy wife
turned cannibal offered Esquivel and several ex-boyfriends up to $75,000 to
help her dispose of the body. When the police finally caught her with bloody
garbage bags in her car and finally recovered the remains of William they
discovered that she had either eaten or hidden up to 80 pounds of his 230-pound
frame.
Now I am
the last person to pretend that this story isn't rife with humorous
opportunities for stand up comedians for the next several days. In fact, I'm
sure that even the history channel would get great ratings if they did an early
1990's special on castration cases starting with Nelson and ending with Lorena
Bobbitt and her penchant for taking off marital extremities. However there is a
larger and slightly less humorous issue at play in this case that makes
Nelson's second appeal a sad affair as opposed to just an opportunity for penis
jokes. The woman claimed in 1991 and today that she was sexually victimized as
a child and that her husband brutally raped her at knifepoint over and over
during their marriage before she snapped and killed him. In fact, psychologists
at the time assessed that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and
that she was likely psychotic.
She was
still convicted and sentenced to 28 years to life.
I'm not
suggesting that this woman be set free since she was raped, but it is worth
noting that only a crazy person would cut their husband into bits and eat them.
Moreover in pointing out that this woman was a psychopath we can't discount the
real problems associated with martial rape especially in cases such as hers
where relatively naïve foreigners are taken advantage of by lecherous men twice
their age. Nelson is likely too dangerous and unstable to ever be set free and
that's a good thing for society. Although I'm sure if she was let out, the
former model would find plenty of suitors again. There are plenty of guys out
there looking for a pretty woman who can cook.
Jason
Johnson is an associate professor of political science and communications at
Hiram College in Ohio, where he teaches courses in campaigns and elections, pop
culture and the politics of sports.
