California chef David Viens reportedly killed and cooked his wife after she gave him
California chef David Viens reportedly killed and cooked his wife after she gave him the cold shoulder
Posted on February 3, 2014
Just before she was killed by her husband and her body slow cooked until only her skull remained, Dawn Viens was stashing money and preparing to runaway.
That is the latest revelation from a new investigation into the gruesome crime for which chef David Viens, 50, attempted suicide over and is now serving 15-years in a Californian prison.
Local businessman and friend Joe Cacace claims Dawn gave him more than $1000 to hold for her a week before she went missing in October 2009, then when he confronted David Viens about his wife’s disappearance was stunned by his brazen ‘lying’.
Cacace told CBS News’ 48 Hours that he developed a very close rapport with Dawn and that he ‘loved her’.
The 39-year-old hostess, who worked with her husband at their own restaurant in the sleepy village of Lomita, confided to Cacace that David Viens had become too controlling.
One day she handed him $700, ‘And she said… ‘If I bring more, can you put it in there?’ I said, ‘Yeah, it’s your spot. You can put anything you want.’
Cacace claims that Dawn had saved more than $1000 and had wanted to bring it over on Monday for him to look after.
However, Monday came and Dawn never showed up. After a few days he went to confront Viens – who claimed he had dispatched his wife to rehab because she had a drinking problem.
‘I’m just stunned. I’m thinking to myself, ‘Did you forget who I am? I’m over your restaurant every night, your wife’s over here every day,’Cacace said. ‘This isn’t flying. You’re – you’re lying to me…’
The lengthy report by CBS News also reveals that Viens was a middling drug dealer with convictions in Florida and Vermont for pushing narcotics.
Before the two moved to California, Dawn and David Viens had lived on Anna Maria Island off Florida’s Gulf Coast.
In 2005, Viens was arrested for selling marijuana in Manatee County, Florida and in return for a lesser sentence of one-year, helped authorities break up the drug ring he was involved in.
In September, 2012 at his trial, David Viens’ daughter from a previous marriage said that her father drunkenly confessed that his wife choked on her vomit after he tied her up and taped her mouth shut.
The body of Dawn Viens, 39, has never been found after she vanished in October 2009. Jacqueline Viens told the court her body would never be found and had previously joked that cooking someone was a good way to get rid of the body.
Police tore up the floors and walls of Viens’ Thyme Contemporary Cafe in Lomita with shovels and cadaver dogs to try and find her remains, but to no avail.
His daughter recalled the conversation she had with her father one night in 2009. She recalled him saying that Dawn Viens had been needling him and he just wanted to sleep.
He’d tried barricading their bedroom door with a dresser but when that didn’t work, he tied her up and taped her mouth. The next morning, Dawn Viens was dead.
She said her father told her, through tears, that her body would never be found.
When he was arrested, he told investigators a similar story.
Viens claims his wife ran away to the mountains from their restaurant 16 months ago after an argument over whether she should go for drug rehabilitation.
But authorities were suspicious because of ‘inconsistent statements’ he gave and the fact she left behind her wallet, mobile phone and other personal belongings.
His new girlfriend, Kathy Galvan, then took over Mrs Viens’s job and moved into her home, before he was seen throwing out his wife’s belongings into a dustbin behind his restaurant, police said.
Speaking about this, Jacqueline said she had been asked by her father to bag up Dawn’s clothes and take them to a storage unit. The rest were thrown out.
The 22-year-old also said that Dawn Viens was no saint.
‘She’d wake up in the morning and drink all day long,’ adding that the pair had done cocaine together.
She also told jurors yesterday that after the ‘drunken confession’, her father asked her to send a text message from Dawn Viens’ phone to one of his wife’s friends saying: ‘This is Dawn. I’m OK. I’m in Florida and I’m here to start over.’
Then she got rid of the phone to protect her dad.
During his trial, Los Angelese Superior Court jurors heard Viens make a similar confession during a recorded interview with sheriff’s investigators.
‘I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days,’ Viens could be heard saying on the recording, according to the Los Angeles Times.
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 when he learned he was a suspect in the late 2009 disappearance of his wife, Dawn Viens, 39, whose body was never found.
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, keeping it submerged with weights and mixing what remained with other waste before disposing of it.
He said the only thing left was his wife’s skull, which he stashed at his mother’s house.
But a search of the house turned up nothing, nor did an excavation of his restaurant Thyme Contemporary Cafe in Lomita, Los Angeles.
On the recording played in court, sheriff’s Sgt. Richard Garcia asked Viens what happened on Oct. 18, 2009, the night his wife disappeared.
‘For some reason I just got violent,’ said Viens, who has pleaded not guilty to murder.
During his sentencing in March of 2012, Viens repeated his innocence and said, ‘I loved my wife. I didn’t cook my wife.’
Viens said that he did not remember making the confessions, including one that took place after he underwent 12 hours of surgery following his plunge, which he said was accidental.
The convicted killer also said that his former attorney should have presented more evidence about his medical condition and allowed him to testify.
During the trial, those who knew the Vienses testified that their marriage had been in trouble, with Dawn telling one of her friends her husband had choked her and David telling another friend he wanted to ‘kill that bitch’ because he suspected her of stealing $300 from the restaurant.
Following Dawn Viens’ disappearance, her husband told people that his wife had left him. In an attempt to conceal the truth, prosecutors said the chef sent fake text messages from his dead wife’s phone to her friends.
But the victim’s sister was not convinced and filed a missing persons report in November 2009.
In February 2011, when Mr Viens learned that he has become a suspect in his wife’s disappearance, he attempted to end his life by leaping off a cliff.
