\u201cI\u2019ve never admitted to anybody that I boiled the body until the beginning of 2024,\u201d he told the panel.<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cI took Dawn\u2019s life,\u201d Viens said, noting the impact that the killing has had on her family. \u201cI know they\u2019re hurting every day because of what I\u2019ve done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Viens described himself as \u201cperpetually angry at that time,\u201d and said he snapped when she told him to \u201ctell your mommy to write me a check and I\u2019ll leave,\u201d saying that he restrained her with tape as he had done twice before.<\/p>\n
He said he now believes she was justified in her request.<\/p>\n
He said he was \u201cdevastated\u201d and \u201ccouldn\u2019t believe what I had done in my rage\u201d when he woke up and found his wife dead. He said he initially didn\u2019t think he would get away with it and then thought maybe he would as time went on.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel horrible for what I\u2019ve done,\u201d he said. \u201cI know the harm that I\u2019ve caused. \u2026 I believe I\u2019m no longer a threat to anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
He described his judgment as being impaired at the time, and acknowledged that he knows he can never drink or use drugs again.<\/p>\n
Deputy District Attorney Steven Weiss told the parole board panel that he didn\u2019t think Viens was suitable yet for parole, while Viens\u2019 attorney contended that his client has changed during his stay in state prison, where he works as a peer support mentor for fellow inmates.<\/p>\n
During Viens\u2019 trial, jurors heard tape-recorded interviews in which he told sheriff\u2019s detectives in March 2011 that \u201cfor some reason I just got violent\u201d and that he bound his wife\u2019s mouth, hands and feet with duct tape. He said he had taped her up \u201cprobably twice\u201d on other occasions because he \u201cdidn\u2019t want her driving around wasted, whacked out on coke and drinking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Viens, who ran the now-shuttered Thyme Contemporary Cafe, told investigators he woke up four hours later and panicked once he discovered that she was dead.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cooked her four days. I let her cool, I strained it out as I, as I was in there,\u201d he told sheriff\u2019s detectives in a March 15, 2011, interview, adding that he dumped the remains in the trash.<\/p>\n
In an interview two weeks before that, he told sheriff\u2019s detectives that \u201cfor some reason I just got violent.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said it \u201cseemed like it had to do with her stealing money\u201d from the restaurant and that he snapped and duct-taped her before he fell asleep, then woke up and panicked to find her dead.<\/p>\n
Just before being sentenced in March 2013, Viens disputed that he had killed his wife over a few hundred dollars, saying it was \u201cridiculous to think I would harm my wife for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also denied cooking his wife, saying that he loved her and had undergone \u201ctwo major surgeries\u201d in the hours before he was recorded speaking to sheriff\u2019s detectives in March 2011 and didn\u2019t even remember talking to them while hospitalized at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center near Torrance.<\/p>\n
During his 45-minute statement at his sentencing hearing, Viens said he was \u201challucinating\u201d when he spoke to sheriff\u2019s detectives and does not know how he could have called them to his bedside when he was handcuffed to the hospital bed.<\/p>\n
\u201948 Hours\u2019 report: David Viens, Lomita chef convicted of killing his wife, sticks to accident story (video)<\/a><\/p>\nViens attended his trial in a wheelchair as a result of injuries suffered when he jumped 80 feet down Inspiration Point in Rancho Palos Verdes on Feb. 23, 2011, after learning that his wife\u2019s disappearance was being investigated as a homicide.<\/p>\n
Viens\u2019 girlfriend \u2014 with who he acknowledged becoming involved a few weeks after his wife\u2019s death \u2014 grabbed his clothes in an unsuccessful effort to stop him from plunging from the oceanfront cliff.<\/p>\n
He told the panel he jumped from the cliff to \u201cavoid taking responsibility, saying that he \u201cdidn\u2019t want society to know what I did.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By TERRI VERMEULEN KEITH A former Lomita restaurateur who told sheriff\u2019s detectives that he bound his wife with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250305,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[7,1312,138,25658,131,133,132,137,100,200,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-250860","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-courts","10":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","11":"tag-lomita","12":"tag-long-beach","13":"tag-long-beach-headlines","14":"tag-long-beach-news","15":"tag-los-angeles-county","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-south-bay","18":"tag-top-stories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}