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Restaurant Owner Admits He 'slowly cooked' Wife's Dead Body For 4 Days After Accidentally Killing Her
The disappearance of South Bay restaurant owner Dawn Viens was strange enough, as was the time when her husband, David, learned he was the prime suspect in a newspaper article and jumped off a cliff to flee police. However, what David Viens said on tape about disposing of the body of his late wife is truly strange: He cooked her remains for several days.
Viens is on trial for the murder of Dawn, though her body has never been recovered. Missing for 16 months by March 2011, authorities dug up the entire floor of the restaurant the couple owned and operated together, but did not find Dawn's remains.
An audio recording played in court this week had David Viens revealing he had come up with a unique way to handle his wife's corpse: "I just slowly cooked it, and I ended up cooking her for four days," said Viens.
The recording was made about three weeks after Viens jumped from the cliff when detectives interviewed the suspect, according to City News Service.
Other gruesome details from the recording: Viens used weights to keep his wife's 105-pound body submerged in the water. When he was done, he combined the remains with other waste ("strategically placed in with debris and other crap," said Viens) and put it down the grease pit of the couple's restaurant, the Thyme Contemporary Cafe. Other portions of the remains were distributed into trash bags and tossed out.
Viens said he kept one piece of his wife: Her skull. It's in his mother's attic.
A search of the mother's attic turned up nothing.
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Though Viens had confessed to killing his wife, he pleaded not guilty to her murder. He claims he killed her accidentally after an argument, when he bound her hands, feet, and mouth with duct tape, took a sleeping pill, and left her in the living room. When he awoke he said he found Dawn dead, and stashed her body temporarily in the closet before putting it in a bag and taking it somewhere to be cooked.
The defense begins their portion of the case in court today.
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