California Chef Who Murdered His Wife May Have Cooked Her Remains

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

Police arrested Viens after his then-girlfriend told authorities that he’d also confessed to the murder, then tried to escape by jumping off an 80-foot cliff. Unfortunately for him, he survived the fall, but is now confined to a wheelchair.

Dawn Viens’s body had never been found by police, who spent weeks tearing up the concrete around the Thyme Contemporary Cafe, a restaurant the couple both ran. Though the restaurant is now closed forever, the menu boasted a fine selection of contemporary, American takes on old-world classics, like risotto, steak frites, and insalata. Luckily, we see nothing on the menu that resembles a fine British meat pie.

[HuffPost]