California Chef Accused Of ‘Cooking’ His Wife To Get Rid Of The Body
Los Angeles, CA – Allegations raised about the disappearance of Dawn Viens emerging during the murder trial of her husband, David Viens, paint a gruesome picture of the California woman’s final moments. The accused murderer’s daughter, Jacqueline Viens, 22, testified that her father admitted during a drunken conversation in 2009 to killing her stepmother. The alleged motive for the murder and the supposed events which unfolded after her death took the jurors down an extremely macabre path.
The daughter claims her dad said his wife was pestering him when he wanted to go to sleep. Jacqueline stated under oath that he said he tried to block his spouse from entering the bedroom by placing a dresser in front of the door. When that did not work, David allegedly tied up Dawn, 39, and taped her mouth shut, the Los Angeles Times reports. If the testimony is accurate, the victim choked on her own vomit and died sometime during the night. While in the witness chair, the chef’s offspring also maintained her father had told her that the body would never be found.
After learning that his offspring had chatted with police detectives about the alleged murder during the fall of 2011, David jumped from an 80-foot cliff in nearby Rancho Palos Verdes, the Daily Mail reports. The accused wife killer arrived in court on Wednesday for the start of his trial in a wheelchair. The accused is still suffering from the severity of the injuries sustained in the cliff jumping incident. During a police interview, the restaurant owner reportedly told the officers a tale very similar to the one relayed earlier by his adult child.
Law enforcement officers ripped apart both the floor and the walls of his Thyme Contemporary Café in Lomita. Deputy District Attorney Deborah Brazil hinted at a rather grizzly theory to explain why the police officers were unable to find any remains: The chef cooked his wife. At one point during her testimony, the daughter said her father had joked about cooking a body to get rid of it.
Defense attorney Fred McCurry attempted to cast some doubt on Jacqueline’s ability to remember the context of the 2009 conversation correctly, noting the young woman had admitted to smoking marijuana the same evening. She also testified that, at one point, her father told her to send a text message from his wife’s cellphone to one of her friends. She was allegedly instructed to pretend to be the missing parent and say she was fine and that she had moved to Florida to start over.
The family saga, which played out in the courtroom, also included admissions that the victim was heavy drinker and that the witness and her stepmother had taken cocaine together. Substance abuse allegations aside, the victim’s stepdaughter also declared her love for the woman who taught her to tie her shoes and how to write in cursive. David Viens pleaded not guilty to the first-degree murder charges.
