If you’ll excuse me, I just had to post Tommy Tutone’s 8675309 on FB; needed to hear it badly, for some odd reason. But it’s maybe only an anodyne for my ghastly efforts to peck out an analysis of what may have got into David Viens, when he packed up the body of his wife, Dawn Viens, and took her over to his sandwich shop (Tyme), and stewed her in a gigantic pot (a 55-gallon drum, actually) for 4 days straight. Alright, that was a little painful, so I had to put ‘Jenny I Got Your Number’ on again!
Did David actually murder his wife (before he cooked her up)? This is what the jury will want to determine in his trial, which is commencing in Los Angeles starting this week. The jury is hearing some police tapes of David Viens, telling his version of what had happened to his wife, Dawn Viens, after he had jumped off a cliff in Rancho Palos Verdes. Let’s see, the situation of him duct-taping his wife, leaving her, then crashing to the tune of an Ambien, is his account for why it’s an accident only.
It seems reasonable that it was an accident, yet we’re hearing that David had done this sort of thing before. His rationale is that Dawn was highly intoxicated and would have left, then driven when drunk. Also, we know David was very angry with her, since she had lifted quite a bit of cash from the till at the Tyme sandwich shop. The incident in question (or the crime in question) occurred on October 18, 2009 in Lomita, California. Lomita is in the southern part of LA (don’t care to get bogged down in a geography lesson on LA today).
I will link for you a piece in The Daily Beast (David Viens Murder Trial: Chef Says He Slow-Cooked His Wife’s Body by Christine Pelisek)), which seems to have quite a bit more detail on what went down that fatal day in October of 2009. As far as the slow-stewing of his wife goes, excruciating details of this are coming forth also, to the point where David had come up with a clever brainstorm of commingling his wife’s bodily fluids with other meat grease in the grease trap!
LA news anchors (such as KTLA 5) are having to give stern warnings about the contents of their broadcast coverage of David Viens’ trial. Rightfully so! I do a good bit of crime reporting myself, and I don’t recall anything quite as morbid as a chef cooking his wife up to disguise the fact that she’s dead. As for it being an accident, forcefully tying someone up is not exactly non-violent preventive maintenance (since she was drunk and could have harmed someone).
The testimony of Todd Stagnitto seems to provide some support for the idea that David Viens intended to kill his wife that October day in 2009. Dawn was stealing him blind, and this can be suggested as his motive. Longshoreman Todd Stagnitto, when interviewed by detectives, said it this way: “That bitch is stealing from me. Nobody steals from me. I will kill that bitch.” Moreover, Dawn had stashed away the money with Joe Cacase, the owner of a motorcycle repair shop next to the Tyme.
Dawn would pick up the money the next day, according to the detectives interview with Joe Cacase. For me, this is a harbinger that Dawn was about to bail out on her trusty chef, David Viens. I betcha the chef knew this, and that’s why he tied her up, so she couldn’t get away. The excuse that she was drunk, is only part of the reason he tied her up. But what about the Ambien pill he took to catch some Zs? What if he knew she was already dead, and he was just trying to kill the pain of knowing what he had just done?
David Viens Murder Trial: Chef Says He Slow-Cooked His Wife’s Body – Print View – The Daily Beast
