Victim or Killer? Missing Body Case Goes to Jury

By Anne La Jeunesse

It is now up to a Santa Monica Superior Court jury to decide whether Amber Lee Williams is a brutal, callous killer or if she is herself a victim who killed her apartment mate by bashing in the older woman's skull with a coffee jar and clothing iron, repeatedly burned her with the appliance and, finally, helped drown her in a bathtub -- all in self-defense.

Judge Leslie W. Light handed the week-long case over to the jury at noon Friday after Deputy Public Defender Stuart Glovin and Deputy District Attorney Renee Meckler delivered compelling closing arguments -- each with opposing interpretations of both the evidence and a gripping videotaped confession Williams made to police.

Jurors were excused until Monday after lunch, however, when one of them became ill.

In his closing argument Glovin said that Williams, 23, killed Nilda Raquel Arrabal, 37, in self-defense after an aggressive and controlling Arrabal choked his client in the bathroom of an apartment in the 1500 block of Sixth Street that Arrabal opened to Williams, a shelter resident who was recovering from an abortion.

Police were tipped to the crime by Williams' mother, who told them her daughter had called for help getting out of town because she had killed someone, according to authorities.

Williams' riveting videotaped account of the killing is the only "real evidence" in the case, Glovin told jurors. "Everything else is merely circumstantial."

Williams told Detective Dan Salerno during the video session that the killing occurred after Arrabal, who Williams said was in love with her, tried to kill her by choking her. Williams said that she beat Arrabal with a telephone, discount store coffee jar and a clothing iron slammed into her skull until it shattered into pieces. Before the iron broke, however, Williams said, she plugged it in and burned Arrabal's back as she lay weakened in the apartment on Sixth Street.

Glovin said that the only true evidence in the case is the "ultimate Candid Camera" videotaped account of the crime as Williams revealed all to Salerno. In that tape Williams volunteers some gruesome details, describing how she plugged in the clothing iron and used it to burn Arrabal's back when the woman was down on the floor after having been beaten, then admitting she used the iron to further bash Arrabal's skull until her brains seeped out of her skull and nose.

"If you're going to make up a story, that's not the story you tell the police if you're trying to help yourself out," Glovin said.

The tape also shows Williams stating that she has no remorse for the killing, which Glovin said is common in self-defense killings. He also reminded them of scratches, bruises and bite marks the defendant bore after the ordeal as evidence of a struggle and noted that a person can be choked without bearing significant markings on their throat.

"She gives him the good, she gives him the bad, she gives him the ugly," Glovin said. "She gives him the truth."

He asked the jurors to believe that Williams had an honest belief that it was her or Arrabal -- that she was defending herself in the fight that led to Arrabal's death. He asked the jurors to hold Williams accountable for her actions, but beseeched them to find her guilty of voluntary manslaughter -- "nothing less and nothing more."

Voluntary manslaughter does not require premeditation and carries a lesser sentence than murder.

Prosecutor Meckler's rebuttal to Glovin's quiet account of his client's ordeal was strident and indignant by comparison. She called the claim of self-defense "ridiculous."

In the second and final portion of her closing argument Meckler gestured animatedly and strode confidently before the jury box as she took her argument from podium to a display board featuring an enlarged transcript of Williams' statement.

Arrabal's choking of Williams in the bathroom was not enough even to make Williams lose her breath, Meckler said.

The bite marks sustained by Williams, Meckler noted, were on Williams' knees and legs down to her ankles, the only body parts Arrabal would have been able to reach after she had been beaten down.

"The only thing Nilda could do to get the defendant to stop was to bite her," Meckler said. "She's on the ground and she is fighting for her life."

Despite allegedly being in fear for her own life as Arrabal was choking her, Meckler pointed out, Williams told "Ricky," a man she had brought to the apartment, not to intercede when he tried to stop her from fighting with Arrabal. (Ricky has never been identified.)

Williams also admittedly later told Ricky to go outside wipe blood from the apartment's exterior door after Arrabal crawled through the living room in a desperate attempt to call for help, Meckler said.

Sadly, that is a moment when Nilda might have been saved if two witnesses who heard screams for help and saw "Ricky" wiping down the door, had called police, Meckler told jurors.

Williams and "Ricky" then made certain that Arrabal was dead by drawing water in a bathtub and holding her under, Meckler reminded jurors that Williams' told police. Williams tried unsuccessfully to hold Arrabal under the water with her hands, but needed "Ricky" to stand on the woman's throat to force her under water, and finally into death, according to the statement.

Admitting having burned Arrabal's flesh with an iron was not an act of honesty, Meckler said, but a perverse revelation that she enjoyed torturing the victim.

"This defendant enjoyed what she did to this victim and she enjoyed telling the detective about it after," Meckler said.

How much of a threat could Arrabal have been to Williams after she had been beaten down and her blood splattered throughout the apartment, Meckler reasoned, wondering why Williams then did not call 911 or stop her assault or even express any remorse.

"Even if you had to defend yourself -- wouldn't you feel bad that someone was dead?" Meckler asked. "Wouldn't you feel bad that you had to bash them in the head?"

The burning of Nilda's back with the iron should convince jurors find that Williams tortured her, a finding that could add time to her sentence if she is convicted.

Meckler asked jurors to return a verdict of first degree murder, saying that Williams' reluctance to blame the crime on Ricky was in her own self-interest, because he could be a witness to what actually occurred inside the apartment that day.

Williams said that with Ricky's help, she wrapped the body in a futon cover and then, after four attempts, hoisted it into an apartment house trash Dumpster. After the trash was hauled away by a carrier, investigators working with corpse-sniffing dogs were unable to find Arrabal's body at a landfill where it was determined the trash from the Santa Monica neighborhood was dumped.

As a final statement to jurors, Meckler cautioned them not to believe she was honest just because of the in-depth interview she gave to police.

Although Williams denied having taken any of Arrabal's property after the killing and an inept bleach-job cleanup, Meckler said, she was found to have in her possession Nilda's identification and medication, which Meckler intimated was an effort to thwart inquiries about Nilda's absence.

"Who would believe Nilda went on a vacation without her ID. and her medication? -- No one," Meckler said.

As for the premeditation and deliberation necessary for a first-degree murder verdict, Meckler reminded jurors of a statement Williams made to police.