Williams Found Guilty of Murder in Missing Body Case

By Jorge Casuso

After less than two days of deliberations, a jury Tuesday found amber Lee Williams guilty of murder in the first degree in the Feb. 22, 1998 killing of Nina Raquel Arrabal, whose body has never been found.

The jury, however, did not find that Williams had engaged in torture when she plugged in an iron and pressed it to Arrabal's back during a bloody fight at the victim's apartment on the 1500 block of Sixth Street.

Arrabal's body, which Williams told police she and a friend named "Ricky" had thrown in a dumpster behind Arrabal's apartment, was never found despite police searches of two landfills where Santa Monica dumps its waste. Waste experts noted that the chances of finding the body, which would have been dumped during a fierce El Nino storm, were next to impossible.

The main evidence tying Williams to the murder was a videotaped confession the defense compared to a "candid camera," claiming police had never informed the defendant she was being recorded. During the confession, Williams hugged her mother and cried, then engaged in a monologue weighing her options when she was left alone in the interrogation room.

Williams, 23, who dressed in a nave blue outfit with a flowered vest, sat stoically while the jurors delivered their verdict. Then she seemed to dab tears from her eyes while the judge discussed a sentencing date.

An effort by the defense to delay sentencing to Sept. 14 was nixed by Williams, who said preferred the earliest date she could be sentenced, Sept. 7.

In her tapped testimony, a sometimes tearful, sometimes giggling, Williams described how she bludgeoned Arrabal with a glass jar, then an iron, which she used to burn the victim's back. Efforts by Arrabal to escape were thwarted when Williams dragged her back from the front door.

She and "Ricky," then led Arrabal down a blood drenched path to the bathroom, where they filled the tub with lukewarm water and submerged her, Williams told police.

The two then cleaned the blood-smeared apartment and dumped the body in one of three dumpsters behind the building.

Williams faces life in prison. Her alleged accomplice, "Ricky," has never been found.