NBC Miami

By Greg Wilson

A former model who killed, cooked and ate her husband 20 years ago will make a bid for freedom next week.

Omaima Aree Nelson is slated to appear before a California parole board to plead for an early release from Chowchilla State Prison, where she is serving 27 years to life, according to KTLA-TV.

Nelson killed her 56-year-old husband, William Nelson, over Thanksgiving weekend in 1991, just amonth after they married. She had come to the U.S. five years earlier from Egypt, where she worked as a model and nanny.

"It was the most gruesome case I saw," Former Costa Mesa Police Sgt. Bob Phillips told the Los Angeles Times. "She did not seem like a person that was coherent."

At the time of her arrest, Phillips told the Times, "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 Lecters of the screen. A new predator has emerged, named Omaima."

Nelson claimed at trial she had been abused and her husband had raped her the night before she killed him in their Costa Mesa apartment, according to the Los Angeles Times. After murdering him, Nelson boiled her husband's head on the stove and fried his hands in oil, the Daily Pilot reported.

She once admitted, but now denies, dipping his body in barbecue sauce. Neighbors at the time said the garbage disposal was on for "a long time" and "constant chopping sounds" were coming from the home, according to the Daily Pilot newspaper.

"Of course, she says that [she doesn't remember] because the parole board doesn't want to let a cannibal out," Senior Deputy District Attorney Randy Pawloski told the Daily Pilot.

Nelson offered ex-boyfriends $75,000 to help her dispose of some of the body parts, according to police. She found no takers and was arrested Dec. 2, 1991, after police found trash bags containing human body parts in the couple's apartment and in the victim's Corvette.

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