LOS ANGELES — A California chef on trial for the 2009 murder of his wife told authorities that he slow-cooked her body for days to help make disposing her body easier.
David Viens, who ran a Los Angeles-area restaurant, is accused of killing his wife, Dawn Viens, in October of 2009.
According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, in a video interview with detectives played for a jury on Tuesday Viens said that the reason police were unable to find his wife’s body was because he had slow-cooked it in a 55-gallon drum of boiling water for four days. He then mixed what was left of the body with other debris and then threw it away.
The only part he couldn’t destroy in the water was his wife’s skull, which he says he hid at his mother’s house, the Times reports.
“I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days,” said Viens on the March, 2011, police video.
Prosecutors say that Viens had first taped his wife’s mouth closed and bound her hands and feet with duct tape following an argument on October 18, 2009. She died the next morning, and Viens then stuffed her body into the drum of boiling water.
Viens attempted suicide in March of 2011 by jumping off an 80-foot cliff after learning that police wanted to question him in his wife’s disappearance. He is still wheelchair-bound from that incident.
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