Appellate Court Upholds Conviction of RPV Cliff Jumper who Killed, Cooked Wife

By TERRI VERMEULEN KEITH
City News Service

A state appellate court panel today upheld the second-degree murder conviction of a former Lomita restaurateur who told sheriff's detectives he bound his wife with duct tape, panicked when he awoke to find her dead and "cooked" her body for four days to get rid of her remains.

The three-justice panel from California's 2nd District Court of Appeal rejected the defense's contention that there was insufficient evidence to support David Robert Viens' September 2012 conviction for the October 2009 killing of his wife, Dawn.

He is serving a 15-year-to-life state prison sentence.

"The prosecution presented ample evidence from which a rational jury could disbelieve Viens' statement that he killed Dawn accidentally, and instead find beyond a reasonable doubt that he acted with the requisite malice for murder. There was substantial evidence that Viens had a motive for murder based on his actions and statements prior to Dawn's death," the appellate court panel found in its 27-page ruling.

"To prevent her remains from being recovered, Viens disposed of Dawn's body in a particularly grisly manner," the justices noted. "The gruesome manner in which Viens disposed of his wife's body not only demonstrated a consciousness of guilt, but also a level of callousness that was inconsistent with Viens' later claim that Dawn had died accidentally. In addition to disposing of Dawn's body so that it was never found, Viens engaged in an elaborate cover-up of her death."

The appellate panel also rejected the defense's contention that jurors should have been instructed on involuntary manslaughter, along with the instructions that were given on first- and second-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter and excusable homicide.

The justices noted that Viens told investigators that he grabbed his wife, wrapped duct tape around her hands, feet and mouth and left her on the floor bound and gagged while he went to sleep. He said he panicked when he woke up and discovered she was dead.

During his trial, jurors heard tape-recorded interviews in which Viens told sheriff's detectives in March 2011 that "for some reason I just got violent" and that he bound his wife's mouth, hands and feet with duct tape.

He said he had taped her up "probably twice" on other occasions because he "didn't want her driving around wasted, whacked out on coke and drinking."

Viens, who ran the now-shuttered Thyme Contemporary Cafe that had been leased by his mother, told investigators he woke up four hours later and panicked once he discovered that she was dead.

"I cooked her four days. I let her cool, I strained it out as I, as I was in there, O.K.," he told sheriff's detectives in a March 15, 2011, interview, adding that he dumped the remains in the trash.

In an interview two weeks before that, he told detectives that "for some reason I just got violent."

He said that it "seemed like it had to do with her stealing money" from the restaurant and that he snapped and duct-taped the victim before he fell asleep, then woke up and panicked to find her dead.

Just before being sentenced, Viens disputed that he had killed his wife over a few hundred dollars, saying it was "ridiculous to think I would harm my wife for that."

He also denied cooking his wife, saying that he loved her and had undergone "two major surgeries" in the hours before he was recorded speaking to sheriff's detectives in March 2011 and didn't even remember talking to them while hospitalized at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance.

During his 45-minute statement at his sentencing hearing, Viens said he was "hallucinating" when he spoke to sheriff's detectives and does not know how he could have called them to his bedside when he was handcuffed to the hospital bed.

Viens attended his court proceedings 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's disappearance was being investigated as a homicide. Viens' girlfriend grabbed his clothes in an unsuccessful effort to stop him from plunging from the oceanfront cliff.