The Case of the Missing Body
Warning: Contains graphic content

By Jorge Casuso and Anne LaJeunnese

In a riveting videotaped confession shown to a Santa Monica jury Wednesday, a weeping Amber Lee Williams graphically explained how she bludgeoned her roommate Nina Raquel Arrabal with a bottle, pressed a hot iron to her back then helped drown her in a bath tub.

The confession is the major piece of evidence linking the Feb. 22, 1998 murder to Williams, 24, who also told police that she and her friend Ricky then threw the body in a dumpster behind Arrabal's Santa Monica apartment the stormy morning of Feb. 23.

Arrabal's body, which the pair had hid inside a futon cover, was then likely dumped along with more than four million pounds of waste into the 592-acre Chiquita Canyon landfill in Valencia later that day.

Police arrested Williams after her mother called police on Feb. 24 telling them that her daughter had sought her help in leaving town because she had been involved in Arrabal's killing, according to authorities. Ricky, who Williams met on Venice Beach, has neither been identified nor found.

During the emotional confession, Williams sometimes clung to her mother and wept or touched and showed the bruises from her struggle. Near the end of the interrogation she was left alone to wrestle with her emotions and broke into a dramatic monologue whose chant-like cadences lent it a strange emotional power.

"Why can't they just give me a lie detector test?" she told herself. "It would show I didn't kill her. But I would still be an accomplice, huh. But that would still be less time. I guess my life's taken a turn here, huh. Oh, mommy, oh mommy.

"Well, I know I can at least handle myself, huh. I'd rather die than go to the prison. I would rather die, I would rather die, I would rather die, I would rather die, I would rather die, I would rather die than be locked up again. Why did you die? Why does this f----d up thing have to happen to me?"

The gruesome killing occurred shortly after Williams had moved into Arrabal's apartment on the 1500 block of Sixth Street to recover from an abortion. Arrabal, 37, who Williams said had been turning tricks for a living, had cleared out her apartment so she could stay there.

"She loved me," Williams said. "She kicked everyone out of the house so I could stay there… Nilda was crazy. She got us into trouble a couple of times… She had mental problems."

An argument ensued after Williams brought Ricky to stay at the apartment. "She was upset because I had that boy over there. She was jealous…. She said I was stupid because I give it away, sex."

When Williams went to the bathroom, Arrabal followed and tried to choke her, the defendant said. "She grabbed my throat… I couldn't breathe, and then she busted the mirror. That's when she started getting violent."

But Williams fought back. "I grabbed her hair, I pulled her down to the ground. She attacked me and I beat her and I beat her and I beat her… till her brains came out the back of her head. But she wouldn't die… All I know is I got hurt and she got hurt more and I was left standing."

Williams dragged Arrabal into the living room -- where she said Arrabal beat her with the phone -- , then into the kitchen, where Arrabal bit her. Williams then grabbed an iron.

"I plugged it in first and I burned her back," Williams said. "Richard tried to stop me. I said no, no, no, no."

Arrabal made it to the front door. "She had the door open. She was screaming, 'Help, help, call the police.' I grabbed her and said shut up….'"

Ricky cleaned the door, Williams said, and they took Arrabal to the bathroom. He ran the water at room temperature and they put Arrabal in the tub.

"I used my hand, but it wasn't enough," Williams said. "He stuck his foot (on her neck) to hold her down."

The two then wrapped Arrabal's body in a futon cover and dragged her down the stairs.
"We dragged her and threw her in the dumpster," Williams said. "It took four times. She was water logged."

Willaims then cleaned up the bathroom and Ricky took care of the kitchen. They used bleech to wash out the "guts and blood and brains too." Then showered and fell asleep. "We were exhausted."

"Why did you clean up the blood?" Det. Daniel Salerno asked.

"So there wouldn't be any evidence," Williams replied.

"Did you mean to kill her?"

"Yeah, because I knew if I didn't kill her, she's have me killed…. If it's her or me, then it's her…. I have no remorse at all."

The alleged murder - one of 12 homicides in a year of bizarre killings - occurred several days before Shevawn Geoghegan was strangled to death in the basement of an abandoned mental health facility where the killers performed Satanic rituals.

Closing arguments are expected to begin Thursday in Santa Monica Superior Court, Department M.