WARNING – GRAPHIC CONTENT: David Viens, owner of Thyme Contemporary Café in Southern California, fatally choked Dawn, his partner of 17 years, in a “drunken rage” in 2009

For a 12 years, chef David Viens hid the truth about his wife’s gruesome death.

At his 2013 trial for the murder of his spouse, Dawn, Viens said: “I loved my wife, I didn’t cook my wife.”

Despite his claims, he was found guilty of second-degree murder and received a sentence of 15 years to life. It wasn’t until a parole hearing over a decade after his incarceration that the Southern California based restaurateur chillingly confessed to having ‘boiled’ his deceased wife and disposed of her liquidated remains via his eatery’s grease trap.

Dawn, who worked as a hostess at Viens’ Thyme Contemporary Café, disappeared back in October 2009. Viens led his employees to believe she left him due to his insistence on her getting treatment for substance misuse.

Yet, doubts began to surface when Dawn’s car was found at their Torrance home. Further details emerged when it was discovered Dawn hadn’t collected funds she’d entrusted to a friend, intended for her use should her marriage crumble, reports the Irish Star.

Alarms were further raised by texts purportedly sent from Dawn arranging to take a friend to a medical appointment; these messages contained misspellings of her own nickname. Moreover, they suggested ignorance of her friend’s cancer situation, sparking even greater concern.

At last, concerned for her wellbeing, Dawn’s sister Dayna Papin filed a missing persons report. Dawn’s acquaintances, the couple Karen Patterson and Mike Wade, noted that when they questioned Viens about his wife’s vanishing at his diner, he seemed “tired”.

It was later revealed that Viens had appeared so weary because he had been in the process of disposing of Dawn’s body just before being approached by the pair.

In August 2010, homicide detectives took control of the missing person’s case after discovering blood splattered inside the couple’s former residence. Once Viens learned that he was a prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance, he attempted to take his own life by leaping from an 80-foot cliff at Pelican Cove.

Viens was left with severe injuries, including numerous fractures. After this desperate act, Viens admitted his role in the death, prompting police to dismantle the café’s flooring and walls with shovels and cadaver dogs in a futile search for Dawn’s remains.

When Viens finally shared the horrific details of how he got rid of his wife’s remains, he admitted: “I took some, some things like weights that we use and I put them on the top of her body, and I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days.”

Viens claimed he disposed of her bones by placing them amidst other refuse in the bin outside his diner, and confided that while her skull remained intact, he stashed it in his mother’s attic; however, it has yet to be discovered. On the fateful day, Viens told police he used duct tape on her mouth, hands, and feet following a row, explaining his intent was to prevent his wife from “driving around wasted, whacked out on coke, and drinking.”

Dawn had protested she couldn’t breathe, but heartlessly, her cries fell on deaf ears.

After taking an Ambien, he fell asleep, only to wake and find that she had suffocated to death.

“I wasn’t trying to murder her,” Viens insisted to the parole board in 2024, claiming it was an outcome of a “drunken rage in the cycle of domestic violence. And my actions – my careless disregard for her life – brought forth her murder.”

His initial admission made two years after the crime – ending with Viens transporting his wife’s body to his workplace wrapped in plastic bags – was replayed during his trial. It was then that the defendant retracted his statement, alleging it was induced by hallucinations at the time.

But he silenced that unsuccessful argument at September’s hearing, confessing to members of his wife’s family that he felt “horrible, ashamed, deplorable.”

This frank admission was coupled with an apology to the victim’s relatives and provided unprecedented insight into the case, over a decade since police were unable to locate a body.

Dawn’s sister, Dayna Papin, was among the family members listening as Viens finally made his long-overdue confession. However, those present doubted the sincerity of his revelation, suspecting it was a ploy to persuade the California Parole Board panel of his eligibility for release.

Despite his confession and claims of remorse – positioning himself as a suitable candidate for early parole – his application was denied.

“I thought about suicide,” Viens disclosed to the three-person panel, as per a transcript acquired by The Mercury News. “I went back to the house where Dawn’s body was – the sun was already starting to go down – and I had a panic attack, I was absolutely freaking out,” he recounted.

“I was talking out loud to myself, ‘Oh my God, you have to do something. You have to do something.’ “At that moment, that’s when I thought back about something I had seen on TV. I decided right then that I was going to go ahead and boil the body.

“I was afraid, I was panicked. I was new to LA I didn’t really have any friends. I’d already lied to everybody that morning [about her leaving me],” he further disclosed. “I did it and I regret it.”

Following his confession, the victim’s family expressed to Mercury News their desire for Viens to stay incarcerated.