David Viens guilty: Chef boiled Dawn Viens, convicted of second-degree murder Thursday

 LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A chef who boiled his wife's body for four days to hide evidence of her death was convicted of second-degree murder Thursday.

   In a recorded interrogation presented by prosecutors during the trial, David Viens, 49, can be heard saying he cooked the body of his 39-year-old wife, Dawn, in late 2009 until little was left but her skull.

   The chef spoke to authorities from a hospital bed in March 2011 after leaping off an 80-foot cliff in Rancho Palos Verdes. Authorities say he jumped after learning he was a suspect in her disappearance

   The trial relied heavily on recorded interviews with authorities in which the chef acknowledged the crime in detail.

   "I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days," Viens could be heard saying on the recording.

   Viens, who attended his trial in a wheelchair, said in the interview that he stuffed his wife's body in a 55-gallon drum of boiling water and kept it submerged with weights.

   He said he mixed what remained after four days with other waste, dumping some of it in a grease pit at his restaurant in Lomita, and putting the rest in the trash.

   He said he stashed his wife's skull in his mother's attic in Torrance. But a search of the house turned up nothing, nor did an excavation of the restaurant.

   On the recording played in court, Viens was asked what happened on Oct. 18, 2009, the night his wife disappeared.

   He said he had noticed money missing from his restaurant and suspected his wife. They got into an argument, he said, and he forced her onto the floor where he wrapped her up and put a piece of duct tape over her mouth before going to bed.

   He awoke to find her dead and panicked, he said.

   Viens had pleaded not guilty.