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Chef caníbal mata y cocina a su esposa

David Viens deberá rendir cuentas con la justicia, pues estuvo cocinando y comiéndose a su esposa durante cuatro días.

Tiene 49 años de edad y es un reconocido chef de South Bay, pero ahora pasará el resto de sus días tras las rejas.

Este chef de primera cometió el crimen el 18 de octubre del 2009, pero apenas dio a conocer sus actos.

El sujeto confesó la verdad tras ser interrogado, pues alcanzaron a rescatarlo cuando intentaba quitarse la vida.

Dijo que asesinó a su mujer después de haber discutido con ella. Relató que la rencilla la inició él, pues acusaba a su mujer de haber robado dinero de la caja de uno de sus restaurantes Thyme Contemporary.

La golpeó y la ató de pies y manos, también la amordazó para evitar que gritara, y según cuenta el chef, al día siguiente la encontró muerta. Así que tuvo que usar sus conocimientos en la cocina, para cortarla en pedazos e irla comiendo poco a poco.

La cocino en una olla, la refrigeraba y la volvía a cocinar, y esto lo realizó durante cuatro días: "La cocí a fuego lento, herví el cuerpo durante 4 días y luego arrojé el caldo al drenaje". El cráneo lo escondió en el ático de la casa de su madre.

Según TVnotas, el abogado Fred McCurry, aseguró que los actos de David fueron motivado por un medicamento llamado Ambien, que ayuda a conciliar el sueño, pero que provoca la perdida de memoria, a la ira y a tendencias suicidas.

Chef David Viens convicted of killing, cooking wife

Chef David Viens convicted of killing, cooking wife

(CBS) LOS ANGELES - A jury has found chef David Viens guilty of murdering his wife after he told police he cooked her body for four days in boiling water to get rid of the evidence.

The jury reached its verdict Thursday in the trial of 49-year-old David Viens.

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

In a recorded interrogation presented by prosecutors during the trial, Viens can be heard saying he cooked her body for four days.

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.

Chef who said he 'cooked' wife guilty of second-degree murder

Chef who said he 'cooked' wife guilty of second-degree murder

September 27, 2012 | 11:40 am

A Los Angeles jury has found David Viens, the chef who told authorities that he cooked his dead wife’s body to dispose of it, guilty of second-degree murder.

Jurors deliberated about 5 1/2 hours over three days.

Dawn Viens, 39, disappeared almost three years ago. Her body has never been found. Her husband gave a grisly explanation as to why in an interview with sheriff's investigators.

David Viens said he packed his wife's body into a large drum and slow-cooked it in boiling water for days, according to the interview played for jurors. He poured much of what remained into the grease trap of his Lomita restaurant and threw other remains in the trash, he said.

"I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days," he said.

In the weeks that followed, Viens tried to cover his tracks with a string of lies and fake text messages, according to court testimony. "He tried to manipulate everyone who asked, 'Where's Dawn?' " Deputy Dist. Atty. Deborah Brazil told the jury. "Don't let him manipulate you as well."

Defense attorney Fred McCurry did not challenge the premise that Dawn Viens was dead, nor did he suggest that she was slain by someone other than her husband.

But he said the evidence didn't support the first-degree murder conviction the prosecution was seeking, which requires proof of premeditation.

"Dawn Viens died as an unintentional result of David Viens' actions," McCurry said. "That's not murder."

In the defense's telling, which mirrors the account Viens gave to his daughter, Viens duct-taped his wife's mouth, bound her hands and feet and fell asleep. When he woke up, she was dead.

Convinced no one would believe the death was an accident, Viens tossed his wife's body in a trash bin at his restaurant, Thyme Contemporary Cafe, the defense argued. In February 2011, after Viens learned that investigators suspected that he had killed his wife, he leaped off an 80-foot seaside cliff in Rancho Palos Verdes.

While hospitalized with multiple fractures, he gave two interviews to investigators that were played for the jury; in the second, he described a grisly body-disposal process that his attorney said was too fantastical to believe.

At the time, McCurry reminded jurors, Viens was suffering from "excruciating" pain and taking a cocktail of drugs that a defense expert suggested could impair his alertness and memory.

During the interview, Viens spoke of being "confused" by his dreams and, while he told investigators that he'd stashed his wife's skull in his mother's attic, authorities never found it. McCurry also brought up more practical matters.

"Is it even feasible to boil a body in water?" he asked.

And if Viens did so in a fully operating restaurant, wouldn't someone have complained about the stench?

"They wanted to get you with emotion to override your reason," McCurry said. Brazil countered that Viens, according to testimony from the couple's friend Karen Patterson, had a pattern of abusing his wife.

Patterson said that in August 2009, when she asked Dawn Viens about marks on the right side of her neck, Viens said her husband had choked her. The next month, Patterson said, her frightened friend called her and said she'd locked herself in the bathroom to keep her enraged husband at bay.

Patterson said she heard David Viens pounding on the door and screaming. Patterson wanted to call the police, she said through tears, but Dawn Viens begged her not to. On the night of Oct. 18, 2009, according to the couple's friend Todd Staggnito, David Viens was convinced that his wife had been stealing money from their restaurant.

"I'll kill that bitch," Staggnito quoted him as saying.

But a chef who was also present during the conversation, Charlie Negrete, testified that he didn't recall hearing that. Sometime after midnight on Oct. 19, both sides said, Dawn Viens was dead.

Brazil pointed to Staggnito's testimony as proof of premeditation, and reminded jurors that "a cold, calculated decision to kill can be reached quickly."

She added that without a body there was no way to know whether Viens died in a more brutal way than her husband suggested; perhaps that's why he got rid of the evidence.

David Viens told his wife's worried friends and relatives that she'd left him. To them, he appeared oddly unconcerned. Within weeks, he started dating a Thyme waitress named Kathy Galvan who was two decades his junior.

Meanwhile, his daughter, Jacqueline Viens, testified, that her father admitted during a drunken conversation that his wife was dead. He also asked her to send a text message from his wife's phone to Patterson to assuage her suspicions.

But the message rang false, Patterson testified, particularly since it misspelled her friend's nickname, Pixie, as "Pixy." In November 2009, Dawn Viens' sister — not her husband — reported her missing.