David Viens admits killing his wife Dawn Viens, is charged with 1st Degree Murder!/Murder trial began 9.10.12/Veins admits to 'cooking' Dawn for four days!/Viens GUILTY of 2nd degree murder!/3.22.13 Veins sentenced to 15 - life in prison

Authorities say the husband of a Los Angeles County woman missing for 16 months and presumed dead is in critical condition after jumping off a cliff in Rancho Palos Verdes.
Sheriff's Lt. Dave Coleman says 47-year-old David Viens will be charged with murder if he lives.
Viens evaded deputies and plunged 80 feet down an embankment Wednesday, just hours after it was reported that he was a suspect in his wife's disappearance and likely homicide. The newspaper said investigators found blood spatter on the walls inside the couple's former home in Lomita.
Dawn Viens hasn't been seen since Oct. 18, 2009 after walking away from the couple's restaurant, Thyme Contemporary Cafe in Lomita,Calif. Investigators say her husband never reported her missing.
"He [Viens] was the subject of our investigation for a long time," Steve Whitmore, a Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman told the L.A. Times.
Sheriff's officials say deputies went looking for David Viens Wednesday after he was identified as a suspect.
Whitmore also said authorities do have enough evidence to connect Viens to his wife's killing, but they have not determined where her body is.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.


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Nothing says guilty like a good suicide attempt!

Slys Hunny wrote:Nothing says guilty like a good suicide attempt!

He survived the jump and attempted suicide for a reason. I hope it is so he stands trial for murder.

Friends to mark anniversary of Lomita woman's disappearance
Posted: 10/16/2010 07:11:29 AM PDT

A missing Lomita woman's friends will gather Monday to mark the one-year anniversary of her mysterious disappearance.

Dawn Viens, who would have been 40, has not been heard from since Oct. 18, 2009. Although nobody knows if she is alive or dead, homicide investigators recently took over the case from a missing persons detective.

Viens' close friend, Karen Patterson, said that she, her husband, Mike Wade, and friend Joe Cacace will raise a toast to her and look at photographs.

"It's a terrible feeling," Patterson said. "I think we are just going to get together and remember her."

Patterson said she considered holding a vigil at Lomita City Hall, but decided not many people would be there because "Dawn just wasn't allowed to have any friends."

Viens' husband, David Viens, the proprietor of Thyme Contemporary Cafe on Narbonne Avenue, spoke to the Daily Breeze in April, when he said he had previously chosen not to talk because "the husband is always considered a suspect."

Last month, when Sheriff's Department officials transferred the case to homicide investigators, he refused to speak to a reporter.

David Viens, who has a criminal record that includes drug trafficking in Florida, previously told friends that he told his wife to leave their home when she refused to go into rehabilitation. She walked away, he said, with a Louis Vuitton bag. In the interview, he blamed their problems on alcohol and drugs.

When she disappeared, Viens did not take her Jeep, which recently was towed away. Her cell phone has since stopped working. She also left behind about $600 she had left with a friend.
Friends noted last month that neighboring businesses had Viens' missing persons flier in their windows, but David Viens' restaurant did not. Viens' girlfriend has taken over the job once held by Dawn Viens as hostess and server.

Patterson, Wade and Cacace have pushed investigators to look for her. They suspect she is dead and question why her husband has not been involved in the search for her.

"You don't think that you really need friends or what friends are about in life," Patterson said. "Dawn definitely needed a friend. I'd hate to think about what would happen right now if she didn't have Joe, Mike and myself."

Wade and Patterson have heard little from the detectives assigned to the case. The investigators did not return phone calls last week.

"I guess it's just a matter of waiting," Patterson said. "It's pretty heartbreaking."

Patterson said she continues to wear the Chance perfume her friend gave her a year ago for her birthday, just before she disappeared.

"Every day I wear it, I feel like she is with me a little bit," she said.

Dawn Viens' sister, Dayna Papin, believes the detectives are doing all they can.

"I think they know everybody is looking for answers to to try to figure out what happened," she said. "I spent an afternoon with these detectives and they are pretty hard-core."
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Detectives rip up Lomita restaurant in search of Dawn Viens' body

Investigators armed with shovels began digging up the floor of a Lomita restaurant Tuesday, searching for the body of a woman missing for 16 months. Digging continued this morning.

A cadaver dog alerted detectives of a possible location were Dawn Viens 39, might be buried at her husband's restaurant, Thyme Contemporary Cafe, sheriff's homicide Lt. Dave Coleman said.

Detectives, who on Monday arrested Viens' husband, David, on suspicion of murder, said they had received information that Dawn Viens' body might be entombed under concrete at the Narbonne Avenue eatery.

The search was focused on the rear portion of the restaurant, where a restroom and a patio area are located.

"It is mind-boggling if we find her here and he has been coming here every day running his business with the knowledge she's buried here," said Dayna Papin, Dawn Viens' sister, as she stood watching detectives carry bags of dirt excavated from the restaurant.

Detectives served a search warrant at the restaurant, along with other locations associated with David Viens, including his mother's Lomita home, his brother's plumbing business in Gardena and the home he shares in Torrance with his new girlfriend.
Papin for 16 months has wondered what happened to her older sister, who worked in the restaurant with her husband. Last week, after a Daily Breeze article reported that David Viens was a "person of interest" in his wife's disappearance and that detectives had found blood spatter on the walls of their former Lomita home, David Viens jumped from a Rancho Palos Verdes cliff.

Viens, who has a criminal record that includes drug trafficking in Florida, survived the 80-foot drop and remains hospitalized in serious condition at County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Described as sedated on Monday when detectives tried to talk to him, he was more lucid on Tuesday, Coleman said.

Investigators again went to the hospital. Prosecutors are expected to charge Viens with his wife's slaying as soon as today.

Coroner's investigators focused their digging Tuesday on areas of the restaurant that underwent remodeling shortly after Dawn Viens disappeared. David Viens broke down a wall and expanded into a neighboring business that once had housed a dog grooming business.

During an interview with a Daily Breeze reporter in April, plumbing work was under way in the area of the building where the search was occurring Tuesday. Viens said at the time he could not afford to put up a reward to find his wife because of the renovation costs.

Friends and Papin reported Dawn Viens missing a few weeks after she disappeared without a trace. Her husband told them she had walked away with her Louis Vuitton bag after he urged her to go into drug rehabilitation.

But she vanished without her Jeep and cash she had stashed with a friend in the event she ever did leave her husband, who was described as controlling and who did not let her see many people.

As time passed, Dawn Viens' cell phone contract ran out and there was no movement on her bank accounts. Her husband, detectives said, never made any contact with them to help find her.

"He looked me in the eye and said, `You know I didn't have anything to do with this,"' said Papin, who confronted David Viens on her sister's birthday last March 16. "He kept saying, `She left, she left."'

Friends said Tuesday was the 499th day of her disappearance.

"He was my friend," said Karen Patterson, who, with her husband, Mike Wade, often socialized with the Vienses. "It's tragic he did this to my other friend."

Investigators have not revealed what they believe happened to Dawn Viens and how she was killed.

As Papin, Patterson, Wade and a crowd of spectators watched, forensic detectives carried tables, outdoor heaters, umbrellas and pavers from the restaurant before carrying out bags of dirt into the late afternoon.

"I never thought something like this would happen," said Mary Rodriguez, who works at a dentist's office where Dawn Viens was a patient next door to the restaurant. The dentist has supplied her dental records to investigators.

Papin, who believes her sister is dead but holds a tiny hope that she is not, said her father and two brothers are following the search on the Internet from their homes in Vermont and Florida. Family members hope to find her remains and bury Dawn Viens properly.

"I haven't been sleeping well," Papin said. "I'm hoping they find her, wherever it may be."
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Crews work Wednesday morning removing bricks from the back patio of the Thyme restaurant in search of the body of Dawn Viens.

BREAKING NEWS: Lomita man confesses: 'I killed her'

The husband of a Lomita woman missing for 16 months has admitted to detectives that he killed her, investigators said today.

David Viens, 47, confessed to investigators that he killed his wife, Dawn Viens, 39, when they questioned him Tuesday at County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center near Torrance, sheriff's homicide Sgt. Richard Garcia said.

His girlfriend, Kathy Galvan, also implicated David Viens in the death of his wife shortly after he jumped from a Rancho Palos Verdes cliff last Wednesday, Garcia said.

Investigators believe Galvan had not been aware of the slaying until then.

The search for Dawn Viens' body continued today at the Thyme Contemporary Cafe on Narbonne Avenue in Lomita, where firefighters were using jackhammers and heavy equipment to excavate the concrete floor.

Dawn Viens worked at her husband's restaurant until she was last seen October 18, 2009.

When an article appeared in the Daily Breeze last week, Viens' girlfriend confronted him, according to Lt. Dave Coleman.

"He did confess to her he committed the murder," Coleman said. "He cracked."

The article reported that detectives found blood splattered on the walls of a bedroom
and another room in the Oak Avenue house where the couple lived. Detectives said they believed the blood was an indication Dawn Viens was dead and they called David Viens a "person of interest" in her slaying.
Investigators also traveled to South Carolina to interview Viens' daughter from a previous relationship. She told detectives that she believed her father committed the homicide, Coleman said.

The couple had a volatile relationship and both used drugs, Coleman said.

Viens remains hospitalized. Coleman said he has two broken hips, shattered legs and foot and ankle problems.
Dawn Viens' sister, Dayna Papin, has been at the Lomita restaurant waiting as firefighters search for her sister's remains. She pumped her fist when asked for her reaction to Viens' confession.

"Thank God," Papin said. "How's he going to hide from it? I'm very, very happy to hear that David confessed. It was kind of 50-50 to see whether he would show some kind of a soul and admit what he did."
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Dawn and David Viens

BREAKING NEWS: Viens charged with first-degree murder


A Lomita restaurateur was charged today with first-degree murder in the suspected death of his wife, who was last seen alive 16 months ago.

David Viens, 47, who confessed to detectives on Monday, remains hospitalized at County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. His arraignment date has not been set, prosecutors said.

Viens, who jumped from a Rancho Palos Verdes cliff in a suicide attempt Feb. 23, is suspected of killing his wife, Dawn Viens, 39, who was last seen Oct. 18, 2009. Although her body has not been found, detectives said they believe the Lomita woman is dead because they found blood spatter on the walls of a bedroom and another room in the Oak Avenue house the couple once shared.

Authorities conducted a two-day search at Viens' restaurant but did not locate her remains. Detectives said they received information that she might be buried under concrete at the Thyme Contemporary Cafe, where Viens recently completed renovations.

Firefighters and coroner's officer workers used jackhammers to excavate the concrete floors, but did not find anything.

Viens, who served a prison sentence in Florida for drug trafficking, could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted of the murder charge.

Although he implicated himself in the crime, Viens has not told detectives where they can find his wife's remains.
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A slain Lomita woman's body will never be found and her exact cause of death will never officially be known, a detective said today as prosecutors began outlining the murder case compiled against her husband in court.

Dawn Viens' whereabouts remained a mystery as her husband's preliminary hearing opened in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom.

"We don't have a body to know how she was killed," sheriff's homicide Sgt. Richard Garcia said when he took the witness stand to discuss the investigation.

David Viens, charged with killing her in 2009, sat in his wheelchair, took notes and talked with his attorney as Deputy District Attorney Deborah Brazil began questioning witnesses.

Viens is disabled after jumping from a Rancho Palos Verdes cliff on Feb. 23, 2011, when a Daily Breeze article identified him as a "person of interest" in his wife's disappearance and presumed death.

As the case opened, Dawn Viens' friend, Joe Cacace, described how suspicious he was when his friend suddenly disappeared. He last saw her on Oct. 18, 2009.

"(David Viens) told us she wasn't going to be at the business anymore,"

Cacace testified. "He had fired her because she had made a mistake with the money and was drinking too much."
Cacace said he believed it was odd that she disappeared just days after telling him she planned to bring him an envelope containing $1,000 to stash at his business in the case of an emergency. He already kept an envelope for her containing nearly $700 at his business nearby the Thyme Contemporary Cafe on Narbonne Avenue, where she worked with her husband, the chef. said he considered it suspicious that the day she disappeared, he saw David Viens' new girlfriend, Kathy Galvan, and his daughter, Jackie Viens, park behind the restaurant and discard a box of women's clothes in the garbage bin. They looked at some of the clothes before tossing them. Cacace said he recognized them as belonging to Dawn Viens.
The preliminary hearing is scheduled to resume this afternoon and continue Thursday and possibly Friday.

Viens allegedly confessed to killing his wife, detectives said at the time of his arrest. It is unclear whether he told them what happened to her body.
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Dawn Viens

Defendant David Viens in court during his preliminary hearing in downtown Los Angeles on charges of killing his wife, Dawn Viens. Defense attorney Fred McCurry is at left.

A Lomita restaurateur admitted to his daughter and his girlfriend that he killed his wife by taping her mouth shut overnight because he was upset that she was keeping him awake with incessant talking, court testimony revealed Wednesday.

David Viens, 47, told both women that the death of his wife, Dawn Viens, 39, in October 2009 was an accident.
He admitted to killing her while drinking vodka with his daughter, Jacqueline Viens, several weeks after his wife vanished, and later when he attempted to kill himself with a cliff jump in a panic over a news article that pegged him as a "person of interest" in the homicide.

"He told me he tied her up," Viens' girlfriend, Kathy Galvan, testified Wednesday during Viens' preliminary hearing in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom. "He said he left her in the living room and he fell asleep. When he woke up, she was stone cold."

Viens, sitting in a wheelchair, taking notes and conferring with his attorney during the proceeding, listened as Deputy District

Attorney Deborah Brazil laid out some of the evidence against him in the crime.
Dawn Viens' body has never been found. Friends last saw her Oct. 18, 2009.

Judge Mary Lou Villa de Longoria is expected to rule today if prosecutors have enough evidence to take Viens to trial. The hearing should conclude this morning.

The hearing's testimony also revealed:

- Detectives obtained evidence during their investigation that indicated they will never locate Dawn Viens' remains. Sheriff's Department homicide Sgt. Rich Garcia did not elaborate, but added that her exact cause of death will never be known.

"We don't have a body to know how she was killed," Garcia said.

- In the weeks leading up to his wife's disappearance, Viens told a friend that he suspected she was stealing money from their business, Thyme Contemporary Cafe on Narbonne Avenue.

Todd Stagnitto testified that Viens told him he believed she was stealing "$20 here, $50 there" from the restaurant.

"He said he was very disappointed in what she was doing," Stagnitto said. "He basically said, `I'm going to kill that bitch.' I told him he needed to calm down. He said, `You're just a pussy."'

- Garcia said detectives had a wiretap on Viens' telephone and had placed him under surveillance during their investigation. Undercover detectives sometimes ate in the restaurant to watch his interactions with the people there.

- Viens' daughter and girlfriend threw Dawn Viens' clothes into a trash bin behind the restaurant in the weeks after her disappearance, apparently under the impression from David Viens that she was never coming back to claim them.

- Viens asked his daughter to send a text message to one of Dawn Viens' friends following her disappearance to make it seem she was alive. "This is Dawn," it said. "I am OK."

Jacqueline Viens, 22, said she returned from her home in South Carolina to work in her father's restaurant on Nov. 1, 2009, about two weeks after her stepmother disappeared. Her father, she said, told her he needed her. He explained that he and Dawn had a fight and she left. He asked her to put all her clothes into plastic bags and place them in storage.

"I believed she had taken off and wasn't coming back," the daughter said.

But a month to six weeks later, while drinking with her father, Viens told her a story of what happened to the woman who taught her how to tie her shoes.

One night after work, he told her, Viens arrived home from work and wanted to sleep. Dawn Viens arrived home and wanted to talk. He told her to leave him alone.

"She wouldn't leave him alone and kept badgering him," the daughter said. "He was trying to get some sleep and wanted her to stop bugging him."

When she didn't go away, he tied her up and gagged her with tape over her mouth. During the night, as he slept, Dawn Viens vomited, choked and died, he told his daughter.

"He was very upset," the daughter recalled. "He repeatedly told me it was an accident. She wouldn't leave him alone."

Galvan told a similar story in court, saying she became romantically involved with Viens after he told her that his wife had moved out and was never coming back. At one point, Viens showed her a text message purported to be from his wife that said she had travelled to Florida to take time to think.

"I still love you babe," Galvan recalled it saying.

Galvan said she believed Viens when he said his wife took off after an argument, but questioned him when the Sheriff's Department opened a missing persons case. Galvan said she was eating dinner at a Mexican restaurant with Viens before Christmas 2009 when she read a news article that reported the case.

"He looked at it and said, `Why is this a missing persons case?"' Galvan said. "He said, `I don't know. She'll probably turn up."'

Galvan said she believed him that Dawn Viens would show up one day.

Galvan said she was "a little freaked out and irritated" when a Daily Breeze reported visited the restaurant Feb. 22, 2011, to ask Viens questions for a story. Galvan said she got him to leave.

That night, the Daily Breeze reported on its website that detectives had found blood in the house, believed Dawn Viens was dead, and that her husband was considered a "person of interest" in the case.

Viens, she said, awakened the next morning, appeared to be upset and went out to buy the newspaper. When he returned, he showed it to her.

"I began to read the article," Galvan said. "Before I can completely finish, he said, `I'm sorry. She is not coming back. It was an accident.' I said, `What do you mean?' He said, `I've been wanting to tell you for a long time."'

Viens told her he planned to take pills and kill himself, she said. He left the house, so she went with him.

"It scared me that he was going to hurt himself," she said. "We got in the car and started driving toward the cliffs. ... He was very frantic."

Viens, she said, told her during the drive that his wife had come home "upset about pizza" the night she died. Trying to sleep, he restrained her, put her in the living room, locked his bedroom door and put a dresser in front of it. He took a sleeping pill.,

"She was getting pretty wild," Galvan said. "He felt the best way for her to be safe was to restrain her until she relaxed."

As Viens drove toward the Palos Verdes Peninsula, his daughter called him. Detectives, she said, had interviewed her and she told them what she knew. He began speeding near the cliffs.

Police cars were soon following them. Galvan said she yelled at him to slow down, shoved the gear into park and tried to grab the steering wheel.

"I don't want to die," she recalled telling him.

Viens pulled over next to a cliff. "He kept saying, `No one is going to believe me,"' Galvan said. "I did what I could to stop him."

She grabbed him by the clothes, but she could not stop him. She pleaded with the police officers to help.

"I kept telling David not to jump," she said. "He said, `Tell my mother and brother that I love them. He shoved me and he jumped."

After his jump, detectives said Viens confessed in the hospital to killing his wife. None of those statements were revealed in court during the preliminary hearing.

Nothing was found when detectives excavated the floor of the Thyme restaurant in search for Dawn Viens' remains, Garcia said.
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Wow, thanks for this link. I don't know how I missed this case!!

This is a local story here, funny thing is Lisette posted it so it must have made some national attention at some time which I wasn't aware of. Horrible story too.

By Larry Altman Staff Writer
Posted: 04/12/2012 11:57:31 AM PDT
Updated: 04/12/2012 12:11:28 PM PDT

A judge today ordered a Lomita restaurateur to stand trial for the 2009 killing of his wife, whose body has never been found.

David Viens, 47, who remains in custody, was ordered to return to court for arraignment on April 26. He faces one count of murder in the death of his 39-year-old wife, Dawn Viens, who was last seen Oct. 18, 2009.

"My family and I are very excited that this is happening and we are going to get some justice," Dawn Viens' sister, Dayna Papin, said today.

Judge Mary Lou Villar de Longoria issued her ruling following a daylong preliminary hearing on Wednesday in downtown Los Angeles.

During the proceeding, Viens' daughter and girlfriend testified that Viens admitted to killing his wife, but told them it was an accident. He told them he tied her up and gagged her mouth with tape when she wouldn't stop talking when he wanted to sleep. He said she vomited and was found dead in the morning. An "Accident" because she "wouldn't stop talking???" You've got to be kidding me! What did he think would happen by tying her up and gagging her mouth w/tape? That she'd untie herself and fix him dinner? FGS!!

A friend of his testified that Viens also told him "I'm going to kill that bitch."

Viens attorney, Fred McCurry, argued that the charge against Viens should be dropped from murder to manslaughter, but the judge ruled the murder charge would stand.

Police said Viens confessed to the killing while hospitalized last year. On Feb. 23, 2011, he jumped from a Rancho Palos Verdes cliff when a news article identified him as a "person of interest" in the case.

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And if I'm reading things right the gf and David Veins daughter knew that he killed Dawn and didn't report it to LE? If this is true then why are they not charged with something?
The story about him taping her mouth and her dying much to his surprise is BS in MOO.

Jury selection began Monday in downtown Los Angeles Superior Court for the trial of a Lomita restaurateur charged with killing his wife, who was last seen nearly three years ago and whose body has not been found.

The panel must decide whether David Viens, 48, murdered 39-year-old Dawn Viens, who vanished on Oct. 18, 2009.

According to testimony at his preliminary hearing earlier this year, Viens told his daughter and girlfriend that his wife accidentally suffocated when he gagged her and tied her to a chair because she was making too much noise as he tried to sleep.

Prosecutors believe he murdered her, and say Viens confessed to detectives while in the hospital in the days after a Feb. 23, 2011, suicide attempt at a cliff in Rancho Palos Verdes.

Viens jumped the day a Daily Breeze article reported that detectives found blood in the house he once shared with his wife and suspected he had something to do with her death.

Once a jury is selected, the trial is expected to last at least three weeks.
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raine1953 wrote:And if I'm reading things right the gf and David Veins daughter knew that he killed Dawn and didn't report it to LE? If this is true then why are they not charged with something?
The story about him taping her mouth and her dying much to his surprise is BS in MOO.

Exactly!!!!

California Chef Who Murdered His Wife May Have Cooked Her Remains


WTF
by Tina Nguyen11:30 am, September 14th

Why do chefs who murder always end up, well, murdering like chefs? There was that sushi chef who killed his dad with a fish knife, and now there’s David Viens of Lomita, California, who confessed to killing his wife back in 2009 after investigators were unable to find her body. According to his daughter’s testimony, however, Viens may have disposed of her mother’s body by cooking her.

“He is a chef,” explained Jacqueline Viens on the witness stand, according to the Daily Breeze. ”He would joke about cooking a body.”

Even more disturbing is that Viens freely admitted to practically everyone that he’d murdered Dawn Viens, his wife of 17 years, though he had never told anyone what had happened to her remains. During her testimony, Jacqueline said that he drunkenly described in very graphic detail how he’d killed Dawn — after an argument, he tied her up and taped her mouth shut with duct tape, whereupon she choked on her own vomit — and “tearfully admitted” that no one would ever find her body, probably because he hinted that he cooked it.
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David Viens, the former chef and owner of a restaurant in Lomita, Calif., has reportedly admitted to numerous people that he killed his wife. But investigators have been stumped for almost three years about how to locate Dawn Viens' body.

Now Viens' daughter, Jacqueline Viens, may have given investigators a grisly clue about where her step-mother's remains could be.

At the opening day of David Viens' trial Wednesday, Jacqueline Viens testified that her father used to joke about the best way to dispose of a body.

"He is a chef," explained Jacqueline Viens on the witness stand. "He would joke about cooking a body," reports the Daily Breeze.

Jacqueline Viens went on to testify that after her step-mother went missing, her father drunkenly admitted to tying up his wife and taping her mouth shut. While bound and gagged, Dawn Viens choked on her own vomit, confessed David Viens to his daughter.

She also testified that her father had tearfully told her that Dawn Veins' body would never be found, reports the Los Angeles Times.

David Viens was the owner of Thyme Contemporary Cafe, now closed. He ran the restaurant with his wife of 17 years, Dawn Veins, and Jacqueline Viens moved to the area after Dawn Viens disappeared in October 2009 to help her father with the business.

After David Viens confessed his crime to his daughter, Jacqueline Viens packed up and moved back to her home in South Carolina, where she told no one but her sister about the confession, reports the Daily Breeze. Eventually, investigators confronted Jacqueline Viens, and she told them everything.

When the Daily Breeze reported that David Viens was a person of interest in his wife's murder in Feb. 2011, his current girlfriend confronted him with the story. He reportedly confessed to the crime and then tried to elude officers by jumping off a cliff. David Viens survived the 80-foot fall, but is now wheelchair bound.

After the incident, authorities spent a day tearing up the concrete around Thyme Contemporary Cafe but found nothing, reports ABC 7. David Viens had remodeled the restaurant, which included pouring new concrete, around the time Dawn Viens disappeared.

While authorities were looking for Dawn Viens' body, her sister Dayna Papin spoke with ABC 7 about the suspicions she had about her brother-in-law. "He lost it on me two months ago, started screaming at me, threatened to call the police on me, to get off his property. I know now he couldn't look me in the eye anymore," said Papin to ABC 7.


Dawn Viens was 39 years old when she disappeared. David Viens had claimed to the police that his wife left him because he was working so hard, reports the Daily Breeze. Below is a message Dawn Viens left weeks before her disappearance on an online review site about Thyme Contemporary Cafe:

HI, I'm Dawn My husband /chef is David We are a work in progress, only open for 16 days. I know we are not yet perfect, but we work 14 hours a day to become so! No more server check outs in restaurant, and we have added a "please use your cell w/discretion" on menu. Thank you for your input, and try us next time. = )
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Chef David Viens was angered by wife, then threatened to kill her, witness tells court

By Larry Altman, Staff Writer
Posted: 09/14/2012 08:40:59 PM PDT
Updated: 09/14/2012 08:52:22 PM PDT

Suspecting his wife was stealing money from him, an angry Lomita chef threatened "I'm going to kill that bitch," the night she was last seen alive, murder trial testimony revealed Friday.

Richert Todd Stagnitto, who welded a custom-made pot and pan rack for David Viens' Thyme Contemporary Cafe and helped install it that night, said Viens became "very angry" as he flipped through his receipts while sitting in a booth.

"He's '$5, $10, $20, numbers of dollars,' " Stagnitto testified during Viens trial in Superior Court in downtown Los Angeles. "He said, 'That bitch is stealing from me. Nobody steals from me. I will kill that bitch."'

Stagnitto said he told Viens to calm down and suggested he send her to rehabilitation for an alcohol problem. Stagnitto said Viens then invited him to join him at a strip club about 10 p.m. Oct. 18, 2009, but he declined.
That was the last day anyone saw Viens' 39-year-old wife, Dawn Viens, alive.

Stagnitto said Dawn Viens called him at 11:49 p.m. He told her that her husband was upset with her work. She became hysterical.

"She was very upset," Stagnitto said. "She was crying and at times kind of incoherent and upset David was not happy with her work."

Dawn Viens called him a couple more times that night, and he never saw her again.

Prosecutors believe Viens killed his wife that night. Her remains have never been found.

Viens, who jumped off a cliff in a suicide attempt
hours after a Daily Breeze article Feb. 23, 2011, reported he was a "person of interest" in her disappearance and likely homicide, has confessed to killing her, but told his daughter she died accidentally when he covered her mouth with duct tape to keep her quiet while he was trying to sleep.

In the days after her disappearance, Stagnitto said he received a text message, purportedly from Dawn.
"Hi, this is Dawn," Stagnitto said one message began. "I'm not going to see you for awhile. I'm leaving town. I need to clear my head."

Prosecutors believe Viens sent text messages to Dawn Viens' friends to make it appear she was alive. Viens daughter, Jacqueline Viens, testified that she sent at least one for her father to one of her stepmother's friends.
Stagnitto said Viens told him that his wife left him. "He told me she had refused to go to any rehab program and she left him," he said. Prosecutors said Viens' told detectives he killed his wife, put her body in a trash bag and in a garbage bin, and that "it will never be found." Detectives dug up the floor and walls of the Thyme cafe, but found nothing. Viens' daughter testified earlier this week that her father once joked that if he ever had to get rid of a body, he would dispose of it by cooking it.
In other testimony Friday, Joe Cacace, who formerly operated a motorcycle repair shop next to the Thyme cafe, said Dawn Viens stashed $640 as a "nest egg" in an envelope with him a couple of months before she disappeared. She called him at 11 the night before she vanished, telling him she planned to drop off more. Cacace said he never saw or heard from her again.

Cacace added that he posted missing person fliers with Dawn Viens' photograph in his business' window, but the Thyme restaurant did not.

Kathy Galvan, hired to be a server in the restaurant a couple of weeks before Dawn Viens disappeared, said Viens assembled the staff and told them his wife would not be returning. Galvan, who took on her job, also became romantically involved with Viens and moved in with him a couple of weeks later.

Galvan said she believed Viens' account that his wife left him, and discounted missing person fliers and newspaper accounts of an investigation into her disappearance. She recalled when a Daily Breeze reporter visited the restaurant in search of Viens on Feb. 22, 2011, to tell him he planned to report that detectives believed Dawn Viens was dead and he was a "person of interest" in the case. Galvan threw the reporter out but said Viens was in the restaurant at the time.

Galvan said Viens awakened early the next morning, went out and bought a newspaper, and "looked shaky" when he returned home.

"I'm really, really sorry," she recalled Viens saying. "She's not coming back. It was an accident. I wanted to tell you. I wanted to tell you."

Galvan suggested they visit a lawyer, but Viens, crying as he drove, headed to a cliff near the Point Vicente Interpretive Center in Rancho Palos Verdes. Despite her attempts to stop him, he jumped.

"He said, 'Nobody is going to believe me. Tell my mother and my brother that I love them,' " Galvan recalled. "He pushed me and jumped off the cliff."

Lomita sheriff's Deputy Jeffrey Farmar said Viens was traveling at 80 mph when he tried to pull him over, saw Viens climb a fence at the cliff's edge and stand there for a moment. Galvan, he said, also climbed over, and grabbed hold of Viens' clothes to try to stop him.

Viens then shoved his girlfriend in the chest with both hands, knocking her back. She held onto his clothes, pulling his pants off as he jumped.

Farmar said Viens leaped feet first, his arms outstretched above his head, and yelled, "Ahhh" as he plunged.

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A Lomita chef accused of killing his wife whose body was never found told detectives that he slowly cooked her for four days in a 55-gallon drum, boiling her body in water and discarding her remains in his restaurant's grease pit, according to a taped confession played today in court.

David Viens, 49, said he hid his wife Dawn Vien's skull and jawbone in his mother's attic, but a detective said he could not find it. Viens described the grisly disposal of his wife's remains after calling detectives to his Los Angeles hospital room about a week after he jumped from a Rancho Palos Verdes cliff.
The recording was played this afternoon in Superior Court in downtown Los Angeles.

"I manipulated her so the face was - the face is down, and I took some - some things - like weights that we use, and I put them on the top of her body, and I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days," Viens said in his March 1, 2011, confession.

"You cooked Dawn's body for four days?" sheriff's homicide Sgt. Richard Garcia asked.

"I cooked her four days," he said. "I let her cool. I strained it out as I - I was in there, OK."
Viens is charged with killing his wife, who was last seen Oct. 18, 2011. He continued working in his restaurant until Feb. 23, 2011, when he attempted suicide as sheriff's detectives built their case against him.

In the recorded confession, the second of two Viens gave to detectives, Viens said he taped his wife's mouth shut with duct tape because she was "raising hell" in their Lomita apartment and he wanted to sleep.

"I grab her right by the hand - both hands, and I bring her out into the living room, and I go ahead and I force her onto the floor, and I wrap her hands up real quick," Viens said. "I wrap her feet up real quick, and I take a piece of clear duct tape - wrapping tape and I put that over her mouth. And that was it. I said, `Good night."'

Viens said he awakened four hours later, "I'm like Dawn.' I just freaked. I go, `Oh my God. And I go rushing out there and she's gone," he said.

Viens said he asked himself how this could have happened.

"I obviously can't bring her back to life," he told detectives. "And - but what can I do? What can I do? What can I do? And that's when I came up with the idea of cleaning the grease traps and commingling in the excess protein in those units. If you ever really looked at that, you would see where we mix up real good."

Viens was not asked where the boiling took place, but it was implied it was at the Thyme Cafe restaurant where the grease pit was located. Restaurants use the equipment to collect used cooking grease and oil, which is later sucked out by a disposal company.

Viens said he poured seven or eight pounds of grease from the drum into his grease trap using a trash bag.

Viens told detectives he took his wife's skull and jaw in one piece and hid it in the attic of his mother's Torrance home.

The rest of the remains were placed in trash bags and buried them in debris in the trash bin behind his restaurant.

"That's the God's honest truth," he said.
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OMG that sick POS!!!!! I am so glad I've never eaten at that restaurant!!!

That is cannibalistic!!

David Viens Murder Trial: L.A. Chef On Tape Admitted He Cooked Wife
09/19/12 11:35 AM ET

LOS ANGELES -- Trial resumes Wednesday for a chef who told investigators he accidentally killed his wife and then cooked her body for four days in boiling water to get rid of the evidence.

David Viens has pleaded not guilty to murdering his 39-year-old wife, Dawn, in late 2009. Her body has never been found.

Jurors on Tuesday heard a recording played in court of Viens telling sheriff's investigators they couldn't find his wife's body because he cooked it until little was left but her skull.

"I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days," Viens, 49, could be heard saying on the recording.

Viens gave detectives the interview as he lay in a hospital bed in March 2011, after leaping off an 80-foot cliff in Rancho Palos Verdes. Authorities say he jumped after learning he was a suspect in her death.

Viens, whose injuries from the leap have him attending his trial in a wheelchair, said in the interview that he stuffed his wife's body in a 55-gallon drum of boiling water and kept it submerged with weights.

He said he mixed what remained after four days with other waste, dumping some of it in a grease pit at his restaurant in Lomita, and putting the rest in the trash.

He said the only significant thing left was his wife's skull, which he stashed in his mother's attic at her home in Torrance. But a search of the house turned up nothing, nor did an excavation of the restaurant.

On the recording played in court, sheriff's Sgt. Richard Garcia asked Viens what happened on Oct. 18, 2009, the night his wife disappeared.

Viens said he had noticed money missing from the restaurant he owned and suspected his wife. When he arrived home that night Viens said his wife got angry with him and he forced her onto the floor where he wrapped her up and put a piece of clear duct tape over her mouth.

He said when he awoke four hours later, his wife was dead.

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And yet he pleads Not Guilty? There isn't a court in the world who would find him innocent. He admits duct taping her mouth and wrapping her up..in what I am not sure, then dismembering her and cooking her body parts for 4 days? Then, he jumps from an 80 ft cliff when he learns he's a suspect? This guy is probably certifiable but NOT legally insane if that makes sense. I would bet he was abusive to her many times before he killed her.

Posted on Sep 19, 2012 @ 07:30PM print it send it

By Debbie Emery - Radar Reporter

A Los Angeles-area chef currently on trial for the murder of his wife told police that he used his professional skills in the kitchen to dispose of the body by slow-cooking her remains for four days.

David Viens, of Lomita, Calif., finally revealed the gruesome truth to sheriff's investigators who had been searching for his wife, Dawn, 39, following her disappearance on October 18, 2009, reported the Los Angeles Times.

"I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days," revealed Viens in a taped confession from March 2011 describing the grisly disposal of the body in a 55-gallon drum, which was played for jurors Tuesday. "I manipulated her so the face was down, and I took some - some things - like weights that we use, and I put them on the top of her body.

"I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days. I let her cool. I strained it out."

When asked by Sgt. Richard Garcia what triggered the vicious attack, 49-year-old Viens replied: "For some reason I just got violent," because his wife had been "raising hell" in their apartment and he just wanted to sleep, he then went on to explain how he bound her hands and feet and duct-taped her mouth. "And that was it. I said, 'Good night.'" He literally said, "Good night?" This guy is nuts!!

Viens told police that he had previously taped her up to prevent her from "driving around wasted, whacked out on coke and drinking."

When he woke up in a panic the next morning and realized what he had done, (I think HE was the one that was wasted, whacked out on coke and drinking if he's trying to sell us a bill of goods that he only realized what he did when he woke up the next morning!! MOO.) the culinary expert came up with the idea of getting rid of her body in the heavy duty equipment to collect used cooking grease and oil, which is later sucked out by a disposal company.

After pouring seven or eight pounds of grease from the drum into his grease trap using a trash bag, the murder suspect told detectives that he took his wife's skull and jaw in one piece and hid it in the attic of his mother's Torrance home. The rest of the remains were placed in trash bags and he buried them in the trash cans behind his restaurant.

Viens has not revealed exactly where the cold-hearted act took place, but it has been implied it was at the Thyme Cafe restaurant in Lomita, between Torrance and San Pedro in Los Angeles County.

The graphic confession was made while Viens was hospitalized after leaping off an 80-foot cliff in Palos Verdes in a suspected suicide attempt, but he has since pleaded not guilty to his wife's murder. He was so severely severely injured in the jump that he is attending his murder trial in a wheelchair.

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September 20, 2012 11:46 AM

(CBS/AP) LOS ANGELES - A chef accused of killing his wife and then cooking her body for four days in boiling water won't take the stand in his own defense in his murder trial, according to his attorney.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the judge reminded David Viens, 49, Wednesday that it was his decision whether to take the stand, regardless of what his attorney may want.

Viens has pleaded not guilty to murdering his 39-year-old wife, Dawn, in late 2009. Her remains have never been found.

Jurors on Tuesday heard a recording played in court of Viens telling sheriff's investigators they couldn't find his wife's body because he cooked it until little was left but her skull.

"I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days," Viens could be heard saying on the recording.

Detectives interviewed Viens in March 2011 as he lay in a hospital bed. Viens leapt off a cliff after he learned he was a suspect in her death.

Viens, whose injuries from the jump have him attending his trial in a wheelchair, said in the interview that he stuffed his wife's body in a 55-gallon drum of boiling water and kept in submerged with weights.

He said he mixed what remained after four days with other waste, dumping some of it in a grease pit at his restaurant in Lomita, and putting the rest in the trash.

He said the only significant thing left was his wife's skull, which he stashed in his mother's attic at her home in Torrance. But a search of the house turned up nothing, nor did an excavation of the restaurant.

Viens said he had suspected his wife of stealing from his restaurant. When he arrived home the night he allegedly killed her, he noticed money missing. Viens said his wife got angry with him and he forced her onto the floor where he wrapped her up and put a piece of clear duct tape over her mouth.

He said when he awoke four hours later, his wife was dead.

During opening statements, Viens' defense said he took Ambien before he bound his wife, City News Service reports.

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NG is discussing this case as I type and is already getting argumentative.

By Larry Altman Staff Writer
Posted: 09/20/2012 02:24:12 PM PDT
Updated: 09/20/2012 04:49:33 PM PDT

A Lomita chef on trial for allegedly killing his wife and cooking her body in a drum suddenly jumped up from his wheelchair Thursday in court, raised his right hand and said, "Your honor, I object!"
David Viens' outburst occurred immediately after his attorney, Fred McCurry, announced his defense case was complete and he would not be calling more witnesses.
"Just have a seat, sir," Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rand Rubin told Viens, asking the jury to leave the courtroom.
Until that moment, Viens had not publicly stood since his Feb. 23, 2011, leap from a Rancho Palos Verdes cliff. During his weeklong trial, he has sat in his wheelchair, but used his legs to move about in his chair.
Rubin asked McCurry to speak with Viens, noting Viens "literally did jump" from his wheelchair. They talked for a moment, but Viens said nothing more to the judge to explain his objection.
The dramatic moment occurred about 90 minutes after Viens told Rubin he had lost confidence in his defense and wanted to represent himself.
Viens is charged with killing his 39-year-old wife, Dawn Viens, who was last seen Oct. 18, 2009. In two chilling confessions following his suicide attempt, Viens admitted to detectives that he bound and gagged his wife with clear duct tape because she was "raising hell" as he tried to sleep. He took an Ambien sleeping pill, awakened four hours later, and discovered "she was hard."
He told detectives he placed her entire 105-pound body into a 55-gallon drum filled with water and boiled her for four days in his kitchen at his Thyme Contemporary Cafe, discarding fat and flesh in his restaurant's grease pit. The rest was placed in bags in a trash bin behind the Narbonne Avenue business, where Viens continued to work until his cliff jump.
Viens, 49, has appeared at times during the trial to be seething and glaring at his attorney.
After he was wheeled into the courtroom Thursday, Viens announced he had lost confidence in his defense and wanted to act as his own lawyer.
"We have a difference in the trial tactics, your honor," Viens said, adding he wanted to call more witnesses.
Asked by the judge if he wanted to represent himself, Viens said, "I'm afraid to do that, but I feel I have no choice."
"You understand it's very dangerous," Rubin said, asking Viens if he had attended law school or tried a case in court.
Viens, who was convicted of drug trafficking in Florida and served a prison sentence before moving to California, said he needed time to prepare and asked, "How would I go about building my own exhibits?"
Rubin responded by denying his request, saying the trial was nearly over and it was too late.
Viens' mother, Sandra Viens, said later her son was upset because he believes the judge is working against him with his rulings.
"It's very biased," she said. "He feels he is getting no defense."
Viens' mother said "it was very surprising" to see her son stand up and object. She said her son can stand, but not walk.
On Wednesday and Thursday, McCurry called three witnesses during his defense case, including a man who said he did not hear Viens say, "I'll kill that bitch" the night Dawn Viens was last seen. A prosecution witness testified otherwise.
During testimony Thursday, Dr. Marvin Pietruszka, a forensic pathologist paid to testify by the defense, said that Viens broke his pelvis, right foot, right lower leg, his neck, ribs and spine when he jumped from the cliff. He also suffered a collapsed lung and blood clots.
Pietruszka, however, was not involved in the treatment of Viens at County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center near Torrance or at County-USC Medical Center in Los Angeles.
When Viens made his hospital-bed confession on March 15, 2011, he was taking an anti-anxiety drug, as well as painkillers including morphine, Pietruszka said.
The doctor suggested the drugs could result in side effects such as confusion and altered memory. Pietruszka also said Ambien can cause hallucinations.
The judge did not allow him to comment directly on how the drugs could have affected Viens.
Closing arguments are scheduled for Monday.

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09/20/12 07:31 PM ET EDT

LOS ANGELES -- A chef who is accused of murdering his 39-year-old wife and boiling her body for four days to get rid of the evidence won't be allowed to represent himself in the last days of the trial.

The 49-year-old stood up from his wheelchair Thursday to object when his attorney Fred McCurry told the court that the defense had no more evidence to present.

Viens is accused of murdering his wife Dawn sometime before she vanished in October 2009, and was badly injured when he jumped off an 80-foot cliff in Rancho Palos Verdes after learning he was being investigated as a suspect.

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oh raine that thought gave me chills up my spine!!!

Oh it makes me want to ! It's about three miles away from where I live! I could have eaten there, thank God I didn't know about that place!

AAAAHHHHH KANSAS THERES NO PLACE LIKE HOME !!! lol

This story is so gross, that poor woman.

September 24, 2012 | 9:29 am

Closing arguments are scheduled to begin Monday for a chef who told authorities he accidentally killed his wife and then cooked her body to dispose of it.

The proceedings will get underway despite a late effort last week by David Viens to ditch his attorney, Fred McCurry.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rand S. Rubin rejected Viens' request, which was made outside the jury's presence and before the defense's last witness testified. Rubin said Viens' attorney had represented him competently and that it was too late in the proceedings for Viens to take over his defense.

Viens, 49, told the judge he was "afraid" to represent himself and needed help figuring out how to prepare witnesses and build exhibits. But, Viens said, he felt like he had no choice because he and McCurry disagreed on trial tactics. Viens has pleaded not guilty.

Viens was clearly still smarting from the judge's decision after testimony wrapped up Thursday morning. When McCurry indicated that the defense had no more evidence to present, Viens, who has appeared in court in a wheelchair during the six-day trial, stood up in front of the jury and said: "Your honor, I object!"

Viens is accused of murdering his wife, Dawn, who was 39 when she vanished in October 2009. After Viens learned in February 2011 that investigators suspected he'd played a role in her disappearance, he leaped off an 80-foot cliff in Rancho Palos Verdes — feet first, arms raised, screaming.

From his hospital bed, Viens spoke twice to sheriff's investigators. In both interviews, he admitted to accidentally killing his wife -- something he'd also told his daughter and ex-girlfriend, who both testified for the prosecution.

Prosecutors have no physical evidence of what happened to Dawn Viens, but her husband said in the interviews that he taped her mouth and bound her hands and feet with duct tape, then went to sleep. When he awoke, he said, she was dead. Viens' daughter said that he told her that her stepmother choked on her own vomit.

In the second interview with investigators, Viens described why authorities never found Dawn Viens' body. He said in the interview that he packed it into a large drum of boiling water, held it down with weights and simmered it over four days. Then, he told investigators, he mixed much of what remained with other waste and poured it into the grease pit at his Lomita restaurant, Thyme Contemporary Café.

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OMG! I wonder how the people feel that did eat at that restaurant. Glad you never went there Raine.

That sure is the same thing I wonder about people who did eat there!

A Lomita chef might have covered his wife's mouth with duct tape, but he did not intend to kill her, and there is no evidence to support his own confession that he cooked her body in boiling water, his defense attorney said Monday.

In his closing argument to jurors, defense attorney Fred McCurry said David Viens was not guilty of first-degree murder, and appeared to be trying to steer the jury toward acquitting the 49-year-old restaurateur or convicting him of a lesser offense.

"He panicked because he did not expect to wake up and find her dead," McCurry said.

Although McCurry will not complete his argument until today, the attorney apparently was asking jurors to believe one of Viens' two confessions, but not the other. In that second confession to police, the chef described in grisly detail how he placed his wife's 105-pound body into a large pot and boiled her for days at his restaurant, Thyme Contemporary Cafe on Narbonne Avenue, discarding the resulting soup in his kitchen's grease trap.

Viens is charged with killing his 39-year-old wife, Dawn Viens, who was last seen Oct. 18, 2009. During his trial in Superior Court in downtown Los Angeles, Deputy District Attorney Deborah Brazil played two recorded confessions Viens made to detectives after he jumped from a Rancho Palos Verdes cliff in 2011 as police built a case against him.
In the first confession on March 1, 2011, Viens said he bound his wife's hands, feet and mouth with duct tape in the living room of their Oak Street home in Lomita to quiet her because she was "raising hell" as he was trying to sleep. He said he took an Ambien sleeping pill and awakened to find his wife "hard."

Panicking, he said he put her body in a trash bag and tossed it into a trash container behind his restaurant. He told the same story to his daughter, Jacqueline, who told homicide detectives the story on Feb. 22, 2011, the day before Viens attempted suicide.

But in a second confession on March 15, 2011, Viens said he had cooked his wife's body.

McCurry told jurors that detectives found no forensic evidence to prove the cooking occurred. The confession, he said, was made while Viens was in severe pain and taking a cocktail of pain medications. Viens suffered a broken pelvis, broken leg, spinal injuries and other fractures in his cliff jump.

McCurry acknowledged that jurors might have a difficult time believing Viens did not intend to kill his wife with the duct tape, but the chef said in his confession he had done it two times before and she did not fight back.

"Would sheriff's detectives have believed David Viens had he called then on Oct. 19 and said there was this terrible accident?" McCurry said. "They probably would not have."

Instead, Brazil said in her closing argument, Viens began a series of lies to cover up the killing, sending fake text messages on his wife's cellphone to himself and her friends to make it appear she had run away.

Viens, Brazil said, was angry at his wife, whom he accused of stealing money from their restaurant, where she helped him as a hostess and server. "I'll kill that bitch, nobody steals from me," a friend testified Viens said while looking at his restaurant's receipts in the hours before Dawn Viens went missing.

After his wife's death, Viens eventually told his then 19-year-old daughter that he had killed her accidentally with duct tape, and asked her to send fake text messages.

"He used her to manipulate others into believing that Dawn had simply left voluntarily," Brazil said.

The daughter kept the secret for 16 months until finally revealing it to homicide detectives.

Brazil said Viens went back to his life running his restaurant and started a relationship with a waitress he had hired. She took over Dawn Viens' job and moved in with him.

Day after day, customers and Dawn Viens' friends asked what had happened to her.

"He knew what he did and yet he lied every single day," Brazil said.

Viens jumped from the cliff on Feb. 23, 2011, hours after a Daily Breeze article that morning indicated sheriff's detectives found blood in his house and believed his wife was dead.

He also learned that day that his daughter had spoken to detectives.

McCurry told jurors that detectives planted the news story to see if Viens would act because they had no evidence against him. Brazil said Viens picked up the newspaper that morning, admitted to his girlfriend that he had killed his wife, drove to the cliff and jumped.

"He jump was a consciousness of guilt," Brazil said.

Viens survived the fall near the Point Vicente Interpretive Center, and three weeks later described the shocking way he disposed of his wife's body. Her head and jaw, Brazil said, were stashed at his mother's house. Brazil suggested that Viens could have placed the skull and teeth in the mountains or desert in the hope that one day someone would find it. It would look as if she ran away and died, Brazil said.

"I wonder if some of you are thinking, `Could he really have done that?"' Brazil told jurors.

"It sounds so gruesome, something you would see in a made-for-TV movie that is an exaggeration of real life. This is no exaggeration."

Brazil said dogs that sniff out cadavers hit on a shed behind the restaurant during a search.

Detectives believe the chef kept his wife's body there during the day while the restaurant stayed open for business, and then cooked her body at night.

McCurry said he believed that to be nonsense, asking whether it was even feasible. Wouldn't customers have detected a stench in the tiny cafe? he asked. The attorney said detectives discovered no evidence at the restaurant to show it happened.

But Brazil said it did happen, and played Viens' recorded confession one more time. The courtroom fell silent, one of Dawn Viens' friends walked out, and one juror appeared to put a hand across her face.

After the recording played, Brazil reminded jurors that Viens once joked to his daughter that he was a chef and knew how to dispose of a body.

"Lest you think his explanation of this horrendous and unspeakable act of boiling his wife's body for four days is something made up, consider that David Viens told his daughter, Jacqueline, `If I were ever going to get rid of a body, I would boil it,"' Brazil said.

McCurry and Brazil will finish their arguments today. The case could go to the jury in the late afternoon or Thursday.
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Bla bla bla re: the duh-fence. This guy needs to fry like his poor wife did!!

also.

Jurors deciding the fate of a Lomita chef accused of killing his wife and cooking her body in boiling water went home for the day Wednesday without reading reaching a verdict, but asking the judge to clarify the meaning of second degree murder.

The jury must decide whether David Viens, 49, is guilty of first- or second-degree murder, or manslaughter in the death of his wife, Dawn. She was last seen Oct. 18, 2009. First-degree murder includes premeditation. Second degree does not.

Viens confessed in 2011 to duct taping his wife's mouth when she was keeping him from sleeping and awakening to find her dead. In one confession he said he tossed her body into a trash bin behind his restaurant, Thyme Contempory Cafe on Narbonne Avenue.

In the other confession he said he cooked her body for four days in boiling water and poured her remains into his kitchen grease trap.

Viens attorney argued the death was an accident. The jury's question appeared to indicate they are considering whether Viens acted with premeditation.

Jury deliberations continue Thursday in Superior Court in downtown Los Angeles.
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Chef accused of cooking wife's body found guilty of 2nd-degree murder
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This is breaking news so no text was available when I read this good news!

Jurors found a Lomita chef accused of killing his wife and then cooking her remains to destroy the evidence guilty of second-degree murder.

The trial took place in the downtown Los Angeles criminal justice center. Jury deliberations spanned three days.

David Viens' wife disappeared in 2009. In a taped interview played in court last week, Viens -- a former chef at the Thyme Contemporary Cafe in Lomita -- told deputies about what he did with Dawn Viens' remains.

"I took some, some things like weights that we use and I put them on the top of her body, and I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days," Viens said on tape.

Viens told authorities he argued with his wife, then restrained her with duct tape. Viens told investigators that he found his wife dead the morning after the argument.

Defense attorneys argued that Viens did not intend to kill his wife. The second-degree murder verdict indicates jurors did not believe the murder was premeditated or planned in advance.

Viens had jumped off a Rancho Palos Verdes oceanside cliff in 2011 after he learned he was under suspicion in the 2009 death.

After being hospitalized in what police said was a suicide attempt, Viens implicated himself in the killing, police said at the time.

After Viens' arrest, authorities dug underground at the Pacific Coast Highway restaurant, looking for Dawn Viens' remains, which were never found.
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NOT surprised at all, only wish it was 1st degree!!!

Chef found guilty of murder in boiled body case

By LINDA DEUTSCH | Associated Press – 11 hrs ago

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A chef who told police he boiled his wife's body for four days to hide evidence of her death was convicted Thursday of second-degree murder.
David Viens showed no reaction as the verdict was read. The sister of his victim burst out sobbing.

In a recorded interrogation presented by prosecutors during the trial, Viens, 49, can be heard saying he cooked the body of his 39-year-old wife, Dawn Viens, in late 2009 until little was left but her skull.

"He treated her like a piece of meat and got rid of her," said Karen Patterson, the couple's best friend who spoke to reporters outside court.

She was the key witness in Viens' trial and the person who prodded police to investigate her friend's disappearance.

At a news conference, she tearfully warned others to take heed of domestic violence among friends and call police. She apologized for failing to call 911 when Dawn Viens called her during an incident of abuse but begged her not to call police.

"Maybe you have to go beyond your friend's trust and try to save lives," she said.

Juror Tal Erickson said it was Viens' own words in two confessions that convinced them of his guilt.

The chef spoke to authorities from a hospital bed in March 2011 after leaping off an 80-foot cliff in Rancho Palos Verdes. Authorities say he jumped after learning he was a suspect in her disappearance.

The trial relied heavily on recorded interviews with authorities in which the chef acknowledged the crime in detail.

"I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days," Viens could be heard saying on the recording.
Viens, who attended his trial in a wheelchair, said in the interview that he stuffed his wife's body in a 55-gallon drum of boiling water and kept it submerged with weights.

He said he mixed what remained after four days with other waste, dumping some of it in a grease pit at his restaurant in Lomita, and putting the rest in the trash.
He said he stashed his wife's skull in his mother's attic in Torrance. But a search of the house turned up nothing, nor did an excavation of the restaurant.

Erickson told reporters the gruesome evidence shocked jurors.

"A few of us had a hard time sleeping at night," he said. "I would think about it and ask, 'Why?'"

If there was any question about the guilt of Viens, it was wiped out by his plunge off the cliff, Erickson said.

"My opinion was if he was innocent, he wouldn't jump off a cliff," the juror said.

On the recording played in court, Viens was asked what happened on Oct. 18, 2009, the night his wife disappeared.

He said he had noticed money missing from his restaurant and suspected his wife. They got into an argument, he said, and he forced her onto the floor where he wrapped her up and put a piece of duct tape over her mouth before going to bed.

He awoke to find her dead, and he panicked, he said.
Viens was charged with first-degree murder, which means the killing was premeditated, but jurors had the option of convicting him of that or second-degree murder or manslaughter. The six men and six women on the panel deliberated for about five hours before reaching the verdict.

Erickson said the jury did not believe the killing was premeditated, even though Viens had threatened to kill his wife after finding the money missing.

"Anyone can say that and not follow through," the juror said.

Viens' lawyer, Fred McCurry, declined comment on the way out of the courtroom except to say he planned to appeal.

Viens is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 27. He could face 15 years to life in prison.

Dawn Viens' sister, Dayna Papin, said, "There's no happy ending. Two families have suffered tremendously. This is a man I've known for 20 years who was like a father to me."

Patterson, the longtime friend, said she would like to visit Viens in prison.

"Even through all this, he is still my friend," she said. "I struggle with the lovely person who killed another lovely person. I would remind him of how much Dawn loved him."

She said she was satisfied with the second-degree murder verdict.

"Murder is murder," she said.

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A Lomita chef who killed his wife and cooked her body in his restaurant's kitchen fired his attorney Tuesday, delaying his sentencing to prison.

David Viens, 49, who was convicted of second-degree murder in September for killing his 39-year-old wife, Dawn, was set to receive a sentence of 15 years in prison in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom. Dawn Viens has not been seen since Oct. 18, 2009. Her remains were never found.

Superior Court Judge Rand Rubin granted David Viens' request during a brief hearing. Viens' attorney, Fred McCurry, quickly left the courtroom after Viens smiled at him and shook his hand.

"Thank you, Fred," Veins said.

Why Viens fired McCurry was not disclosed. It should make no difference for his mandated sentence, but Viens can argue himself for the verdict to be dismissed, something that virtually never happens at the end of a trial.
During his trial in September, Viens' facial expressions often displayed displeasure at his attorney's work and questioning of witnesses. When McCurry rested his case, Viens stood from his wheelchair and announced, "Your honor, I object!"

Although prosecutors - armed with two recorded Viens' confessions - argued the killing was premeditated and sought a first-degree murder conviction, McCurry argued that jurors should return a conviction on a lesser charge of second-degree murder or manslaughter.

Jurors chose second-degree murder after just five hours of deliberation. A first-degree conviction would have brought a sentence of 25 years to life.
After his wife disappeared, Viens told her friends and the Daily Breeze that she had simply left him. But after months without a trace of her, sheriff's detectives opened a homicide case. On Feb. 23, 2011, Viens jumped from a Rancho Palos Verdes cliff after a Daily Breeze article reported that detectives considered him a "person of interest" and believed his wife was dead after finding blood in the house they once shared.

At the same time, Viens' daughter, Jacqueline, told detectives that her father had admitted to killing his wife, though accidentally, by placing duct tape over her mouth because she was keeping him from sleeping. He awakened to find she had vomited and was dead.

Viens survived the fall and remains in a wheelchair. He wore a back brace in court Tuesday.

While hospitalized, Viens confessed twice to detectives, once telling the same story he told his daughter and later saying he placed his wife's body in a large pot and cooked her over four days, dumping her remains in his restaurant's grease trap.

Dawn Viens' sister, Dayna Papin, and father, Michael Papin, who lives in Florida, appeared in court Tuesday with plans to speak at the sentencing. Dayna Papin said she expected the postponement.

"My dad came all this way and was not able to experience the feeling of justice," Dayna Papin said.

During a break in the court proceedings, Michael Papin spoke with David Viens' mother, Sandra Viens. Michael Papin said later that they had dated in junior high school and it was a coincidence that their children later married. He had not seen her in 50 years.

He said he had no animosity toward her.

"We just talked about old times," he said.

David Viens asked for a continuance.

After a few courtroom appearances to receive trial transcripts and file motions, Viens is set to be sentenced on Feb. 1.
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