L.A. Chef Trial: David Viens Admitted To ‘Slow Cooking’ Wife To Get Rid Of Body

The trial of L.A. Chef David Viens continued on Wednesday, the day after the jury heard evidence from police officers proving that Viens slow-cooked his wife’s body for days, before disposing of her remains.

Viens’ wife, Dawn Viens, disappeared in October 2009 and in March 2011, the Los Angeles chef told investigators in a taped interview that he cooked his wife’s body, in order to easily dispose of the remains, reports The Los Angeles Times. An interview played for jurors on Tuesday showed Viens saying:

“I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days.”

Viens already admitted to investigators that he taped his wife’s mouth shut and bound her hands and feet with duct tape, because she wouldn’t stop annoying him. The next morning, she was dead from choking on her own vomit. The taped account is very similar to what the L.A. chef told his daughter and ex-girlfriend later. The two testified during the trial last week.

In the interview, Sargent Richard Garcia asks Viens what happened on the night of October 18 (the last time his wife was seen). he responds that, “For some reason I just got violent” after telling the officer what happened to her.

The Huffington Post notes that the L.A. chef was wheelchair-bound during his trial, after he jumped from an 80-foot cliff headfirst in a suicide attempt, after he discovered that investigators were on to him for his wife’s murder. He later stated in an interview that he stuffed his wife’s body in a 55-gallon drum of boiling water, keeping it submerged with weights.

After four days of cooking, he mixed what remained with other waste, dumping some in a grease pit at his restaurant, putting the rest in the trash. He added that the only thing left that still resembled a human was Diana’s skull, which he stashed in his mother’s attic. A search of his mother’s house hasn’t turned anything up, and neither has an excavation of the restaurant.

While the video tape interview played on Tuesday, the L.A. chef sat staring and scribbling notes while an astonished jury listened to his taped confession.