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Nancy Grace

Chef Kills, Cooks Wife

Aired September 20, 2012 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

NANCY GRACE, HOST: Breaking news tonight, live, Lomita. The young wife of a fine dining restaurateur vanishes without a trace. Just days after wife Dawn goes missing, her husband of 15 years plants a brand-new girlfriend in the family home and promotes the girlfriend to the wife`s job as hostess at the restaurant.

Then he goes on a cleaning kick, throwing out his wife`s clothes, her shoes, all her belongings straight into the dumpster, even having Dawn`s black Jeep Cherokee towed away.

The case sits dormant until we report on it, and we confirm traces of blood spatter in the family home. So what does hubby do? He takes an 80- foot plunge off the rocky coastline, and survives.

Bombshell tonight, a sick and stunning development. Did Dawn`s husband, a chef, slow cook his own wife for four days until the meat literally fell off the bones? He slow cooks his wife in a human crockpot.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "I grab her right by the hand, both hands, and I bring her out into the living room. And I go ahead and I force her onto the floor and I wrap her hands up real quick. I wrap her feet up real quick, and I take a piece of clear duct tape, wrapping tape, and I put that over her mouth, and that was it. I said, Good night."

"And that`s when I came up with the idea of cleaning the grease traps and commingling the excess protein in those units. I manipulated her so the face was -- the face is down, and I took some -- some things like weights that we use and I put them on top of her body, and I slowly cooked it. And I ended up cooking her for four days. I cooked her four days. I let her cool. I strained it out as I -- as I was in there, OK?"

(END AUDIO CLIP)

GRACE: Good evening. I`m Nancy Grace. I want to thank you for being with us.

Bombshell tonight. To Lomita, the young wife of a fine dining restaurateur vanishes without a trace. And tonight, a sick and stunning development. We saw all the signs, and now the worst. Her husband, a former chef, slow cooks his own wife for four days until the meat literally falls off the bones? He slow cooks his wife Dawn in a human crockpot?

We are taking your calls. I want to go straight out to John Phillips with KABC. John, fill us in. I mean, this case sat there fermenting until we reported on it and stirred the pot, pardon the pun, and got the case reignited. And now this?

JOHN PHILLIPS, 790 KABC (via telephone): Yes. Well, it`s an unbelievable story, Nancy, and if you believe and if investigators believe that what this guy is saying is true, the soup du jour at this restaurant was wife soup, with this guy, David Viens, taking his wife -- and we don`t yet understand the full story. He has two different competing stories that are out there now as to what sparked this rage, what sparked him to kill his wife and cook her in this huge crockpot, as you described.

One of the theories is a theory that he told investigators when he was laying in the hospital after he tried to kill himself by jumping off a cliff pants-less. His pants were off when he tried to do this. He thought this was going to be the end. He didn`t know he was going to survive...

GRACE: Wait a minute. John Phillips, why do I need that fact? Why do you have to tell me he thought this was the end and he took his pants off? I`m going to have to go to the shrink with that in a minute. Why does a man take his pants off when he tries to commit suicide? Unsuccessfully, I might add!

Go ahead, Phillips.

PHILLIPS: Yes, well, there`s a lot of unsuccessful things this guy could have been doing with his pants off, but that`s besides the point at this point!

Anyway, he`s in the hospital. He`s talking to investigators. And when he is in a huge amount of pain -- this guy is drugged up -- this guy tells investigators this unbelievable story that he came home, his wife, he said, was drugged out of her mind. She was drunk. They get into a fight. He takes a sleeping pill. He wants to go to sleep, but the wife won`t leave him alone. So he takes out duct tape and he ties up her hands...

GRACE: What do you mean by, "his wife won`t leave him alone"?

PHILLIPS: Right. That she...

GRACE: Are you implying that the wife was pestering him for sex? Because I don`t believe that.

PHILLIPS: Yes, well, who knows what was going on in the house that day. But yes, he said that she wouldn`t leave him alone. And so he ties up her hands. He ties up her feet. He puts a piece of Scotch tape -- he does it all with tape -- around her lips so she can`t scream. She can`t yell. He can`t hear her...

GRACE: Did you say Scotch tape?

PHILLIPS: With tape, yes.

GRACE: OK, well, Scotch tape wouldn`t work. That doesn`t make sense. I mean...

PHILLIPS: Yes, well, this is the story that a guy who jumped off...

GRACE: OK, tell me. Go ahead. Go ahead.

PHILLIPS: ... jumped off a cliff and wasn`t able to kill himself had to say. And then he believes that she choked on her own vomit and that`s how she died and it was an accident.

GRACE: Everybody, we are taking your calls. But I want to go out now to Matt Zarrell. Matt, this is a story that sat festering. Nothing was happening with it until we actually heard from her friends and family and we reignited the investigation here on our program.

And it has resulted in a new investigation that apparently caused the husband, a well-known restaurateur, a former chef at a fine dining restaurant, to jump off a cliff. After his wife disappears -- she was the hostess there at the restaurant -- he moves all of her belongings out within days into a dumpster. He moves his new girlfriend into the home and plants her in as the new hostess of the restaurant. Well, that didn`t smell right to me, and the investigation embarked from there.

But now a stunning and sick development. Do we finally discover what has become of his wife, Dawn? All this time, we have continued our own investigation. Is it true he slow cooked his wife in a human crockpot?

Matt Zarrell, take it from the top. What clues am I missing?

MATT ZARRELL, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER (via telephone): OK, now, he allegedly told cops that he slowly cooked his wife, Dawn, for four days in a 55-gallon drum. Now, what he did was he actually boiled her body in water and then discarded her remains in his restaurant`s grease pit.

Now, in addition, Nancy, not only that, but there was -- the skull was remaining. He actually hid the skull in his mother`s attic. Now, police went to the mother`s attic to try and recover it. They were not able to find it, but they do believe his story is true.

GRACE: We are taking your calls. Matt, if they couldn`t find the skull, then why do they believe his story is true?

ZARRELL: Based on the evidence that they have found, including blood evidence in the home and statements from people...

GRACE: Matt, Matt, I don`t mean to be argumentative with you. But Matt, we`re the ones that came one the blood in the home. We`re the ones that reported. That I know there`s blood in the home. But that doesn`t -- that doesn`t tell me, that doesn`t indicate to me that he slow cooked his wife in a human crockpot, all right, just because there`s blood in the home.

Why do they believe that this story is true?

ZARRELL: They believe his story based on the evidence that they have found, including witness statements from the daughter, when the father allegedly admitted to the daughter what he had done to his wife, in addition to telling police and in addition to telling the girlfriend.

GRACE: I see. OK, now you`re talking, Matt Zarrell. Now you`re making sense to me. So this is not just some drug-induced story he came up with after he jumped off a cliff, after we reported on him. Now this is something that he is actually telling other people, not just telling detectives while he`s under the influence of drugs in the hospital, right? He`s told other people this.

ZARRELL: Yes. In fact, Nancy, he allegedly joked with his daughter what he would do to get rid of a body, saying he would cook it. That was before Dawn vanished.

GRACE: OK, I don`t want to hear one person on tonight`s program say he`s insane, before I even go to the lawyers. I know that`s what they`re going to say. Just save it.

Let`s go to the lines. Lynnann in Arkansas. Hi, Lynnann. How are you, and what`s your question?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, hi, Nancy. I am so privileged to be able to talk to you!

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: ... but thank you. Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Normally, when people have accidents, they call the police and the police investigate. But it seems like -- but you know, and we`ve seen that last year, what happened. Now this guy, he`s nuts. And you can bet there`s going to be some bleeding-heart defense lawyer that`s going to pick it up and say, Well, it wasn`t his fault.

GRACE: But you know, Lynnann, how can they say it`s not his fault? Because if he`s been telling people for years, Hey, the way I would get rid of a body is I would cook it -- and now we see the stunning and sick development in the last hours. Did he slow cook his wife in a human crockpot?

So how can he say he didn`t mean to do it, Lynnann? That doesn`t make any sense to me. Do you really think a jury would buy that?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, defense lawyers, as we know, they can spin it any way they want. And I mean, I wouldn`t.

GRACE: Unleash the lawyers. Let`s go with what Lynnann had to say. With me is John Manuelian, LA, Kirby Clements, former felony prosecutor, now defense attorney, Atlanta, Becca Crumrine, family law attorney.

All right, first to you, Manuelian. If he has been telling people for months, for years, Hey, a perfect way to get rid of a body, I cook it -- he`s a chef. He`s a restaurateur. He owns a fine dining restaurant. It`s very well known in the area. So how could he -- if he really did slow cook his wife in a human crockpot, how could he claim insanity?

JOHN MANUELIAN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: He probably can`t, but he doesn`t need to. Where`s the evidence that he slow cooked his wife? Words are not enough, Nancy. You need some sort of evidence, and that`s what you tell the jury. Words in this case are not going to be enough to convict him. And if there`s any evidence that he slow cooked her, then it`s going to hurt him. But there`s no evidence here.

GRACE: OK, Kirby Clements -- Clements, as you and I both know, a confession alone is not enough to prosecute a case with. You got to have more than a confession. That`s because there are such things as, rarely, false confessions.

But here, there is blood spatter. There is circumstantial evidence that before the search for her really even got started, he had thrown away all of her belongings into a dumpster, that he moved a new woman into the home he shared with his wife within a couple of days of her going missing. He obviously knew she wasn`t coming home.

There`s tons of circumstantial evidence to corroborate his confession, so there is more than just his words, although a confession`s pretty strong.

KIRBY CLEMENTS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Well, no, there`s corroboration of the fact that she`s missing. That`s all we have. You don`t have corroboration of the murder.

GRACE: How about the blood? How about the blood?

CLEMENTS: Well, at this point, until there`s DNA typing, until there`s something else that links...

GRACE: There is DNA typing.

CLEMENTS: And it does not...

GRACE: There is DNA typing. It is her blood.

CLEMENTS: When was that blood established? Because I don`t think, from what I`ve read in the material, that he said he cut her up in the room. From what I`ve got, he supposedly boiled her in some 55-gallon pot. Where? At his house? At the restaurant?

GRACE: But that doesn`t mean...

CLEMENTS: Where did all this other stuff happen?

GRACE: ... that`s how he killed her, Becca Crumrine. He could have gotten rid of her body by slow cooking it after he killed her, producing the blood spatter. It`s ABC. It`s elementary, Kirby Clements!

Go ahead, Crumrine.

BECCA CRUMRINE, FAMILY LAW ATTORNEY: I mean, this is absolutely disgusting. I mean, (INAUDIBLE) have had to eviscerate her body to put it into the pot. There are corroborating witnesses. His own daughter, he evidently told and actually had her send a text message from the victim`s phone, telling her friends that she`s OK. The corroboration is overwhelming. And this is just sick.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Law enforcement records a shocking confession. The husband of missing woman Dawn Viens allegedly admits he cooks his wife for four days. "I cooked her four days. I let her cool. I strained it out as I was in there, OK?"

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He didn`t alert the authorities for three weeks.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That speaks volumes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He always just had a problem with her because she was a very honest, simple person. And he was kind of a shady guy.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He jumped off an 80-foot cliff.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: We are taking your calls. A chef, a restaurateur at an upscale fine dining restaurant -- he owns the place -- his wife goes missing. But literally within hours, within about 48 hours, he moves his girlfriend into the home. He plants her in as the new hostess at the restaurant, not the least bit concerned that it would raise eyebrows or make someone wonder, What the hey is going on?

I mean, everybody at the restaurant worked with Dawn. They knew her. They loved her. She was very well liked. She goes missing, and suddenly, who`s this girl propped up as the new hostess? That was the question.

But we asked another question. We said, Where`s Dawn? And we ignited a dormant investigation and police jumped all over it. They reignited the investigation within their own department. And now suspicions that her own husband slow cooked her in a human crockpot.

Straight out to Alexis Tereszcuk, senior reporter, Radaronline.com. What more do we have? Is there any corroborating evidence to support his confession about his slow-cooking afternoon?

ALEXIS TERESZCUK, RADARONLINE.COM: Well, he actually told the employee of the restaurant who installed this brand-new pot the night before the murder happened that he was furious with her. He was saying that he thought Dawn was stealing money from him. And he literally said to this man, I am going to kill this "B" word. He had been telling other people, threatening her life. And then after he was...

GRACE: You`re actually afraid to say bitch, OK, because before I started prosecuting cases, Alexis, I wouldn`t even curse at all. But then when I would have to read back to juries what defendants, murder, rape, child molestation, so forth, defendants had said?

OK, so this is what I`ve gotten, according to a police report. A witness says he angrily threatened, I`m going to kill that bitch the night Dawn was last seen alive. He said, quote, "Nobody steals from me. I will kill that bitch" -- the night she goes missing, Alexis! I think that`s what you were trying to get out?

TERESZCUK: I was. That`s exactly what I was trying to say. Thank you. This man was with David the night before she went missing. He said that he was furious with her. Then he goes home and he comes up with some story that he`d been out drinking in a bar. The first story was he came home and Dawn was angry at him, with no evidence whatsoever. He then comes up with a story that Dawn was doing cocaine and he didn`t want to do cocaine with her, so that`s why they got in a fight.

He had every story in the book. And there are quite a few witnesses. In fact, he also told that girlfriend that moved in with him 48 hours -- he confessed to her that he killed Dawn.

GRACE: OK, you know, Pat Brown, criminal profiler and author, Alexis Tereszcuk is absolutely correct. What do you make of it? You`re the expert at criminal profiling.

PAT BROWN, CRIMINAL PROFILER: Well, this is one sick duck, shall I say, a total psychopath. And everybody who says, You keep calling people psychopaths -- this guy is the poster boy for psychopathy. He absolutely did what he did, I believe, and he`s lying about what happened, why he killed her. That`s what you call blaming the victim. So he has a -- he gives himself justification for killing her. That blood on the walls, my guess is a very, very violent death.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) cliff and jumped off the cliff.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A husband allegedly admits to disposing of his wife`s body in an extremely unusual fashion, by cooking her.

"The whole skull and jaw came out in perfectly one piece. That`s the only thing I didn`t want to get rid of in case I wanted to leave it somewhere. That`s the God`s honest truth. I manipulated her so the face was -- the face is down, and I took some -- some things like weights that we use and I put them on top of her body. And I just slowly cooked it. And I ended up cooking her for four days. I cooked her four days. I let her cool. I strained it out as I -- I was in there, OK?"

"I`m, like, Dawn, I just freaked. I go, Oh, my God. And I go rushing out there, and she`s gone. I obviously can`t bring her back to life and -- but what can I do? What can I do? What can I do? And that`s when I came up with the idea of cleaning the grease traps and commingling in the excess protein in those units. If you ever really looked at that, you would see where we mix up real good."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: You know, I don`t have to be a professional chef to understand what he`s saying.

A stunning and sick development in the search for Dawn. Did her chef restaurateur husband slow cook her to death, until the meat literally came off the bones?

To you, Matt Zarrell. The defense lawyers, Manuelian and Clements, say there`s not enough evidence aside an alleged confession. What about text messages, Matt Zarrell?

ZARRELL Yes, Nancy, that`s very important evidence, actually. Prosecutors believe that Viens sent text messages to the wife`s friends to make it appear that Dawn was still alive. And this is in the days after the disappearance.

One witness said he received a text message allegedly from Dawn saying, Hi, this is Dawn. I`m not going to see you for a while. I`m leaving town. I need to clear my head. The husband/chef also allegedly asked his own daughter to send a text message from Dawn`s phone to one of his wife`s friends.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN AUDIO VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "I grab her right by the hand, both hands, and I bring her out into the living room. And I go ahead and I force her onto the floor, and I wrap her hands up real quick. I wrap her feet up real quick. And I take a piece of clear duct tape, wrapping tape, and I put that over her mouth, and that was it. I said, Good Night. I just freaked. I obviously can`t bring her back to life and -- but what can I do?"

"And that`s when I came up with the idea of cleaning the grease traps and commingling in the excess protein in those units. I manipulated her so the face was -- the face is down, and I took some -- some things like weights that we use and I put them on top of her body, and I slowly cooked it. And I ended up cooking her for four days. I cooked her four days. I let her cool. I strained it out as I -- as I was in there, OK?"

(END AUDIO CLIP)

GRACE: The stunning development in the search for Dawn. Did her husband, a chef and restaurateur, slow-cook her body for days to hide evidence? Basically, in a human crock pot.

Joining me, Heather Walsh-Haney, Ph.D., forensic anthropologist. Joining me from Florida Gulf Coast University.

Heather, thank you for being with us. A couple of questions. I`m getting a barrage of e-mails and phone calls. If you slow-cook a human, is there a distinct smell, an aroma unlike cooking anything else in the kitchen like chicken? Beef? Would there be anything noticeable to patrons?

HEATHER WALSH-HANEY, FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGIST, FLORIDA GULF COAST UNIVERSITY: Oh, Nancy, the odor would probably be very much the same as what you would smell from large pieces of meat from cow, venison, mutton or so forth.

GRACE: OK.

(CROSSTALK)

WALSH-HANEY: The problem with that --

GRACE: I doubt if anybody has ever asked you that particular question before. Go ahead. Go ahead, Dr. Walsh-Haney. Go ahead.

WALSH-HANEY: So what ends up happening when we have offensive odors, that`s when the process of decomposition has taken place. And from the newspaper accountings that I`ve read, it seems as though he didn`t allow the process of decomposition to take place. That she was freshly killed. So it may be unlikely that the restaurant patrons would have smelled anything different. Especially if he had added other things from the kitchen into the pot.

GRACE: You mean like what?

WALSH-HANEY: Well, it`s been documented in several cases that serial killers have tried to dismember human remains in the same way, through cooking, with pig, for example. We still use pig today as a proxy for human soft tissue and viscera or organs. So those smells would be very much similar.

GRACE: If he had put seasoning of any type in it, would it have changed the smell?

WALSH-HANEY: I don`t think so. I think that if no decomposition had taken place, that the odor would have been the same as what you would have had with spices being added to a pig, chicken, cow, venison, so forth.

GRACE: I want to go to Dr. Bill Manion, New Jersey medical examiner. Joining me out of Philly.

Doctor Manion, the thing here is there`s no way to really -- well, I don`t know. I`m just a lawyer. You`re the M.D. I`m just a J.D. If a human body is cooked, without, in the absence of, for instance, a bullet. Is there going to be any way to determine cause of death?

DR. BILL MANION, M.D., MEDICAL EXAMINER, BURLINGTON COUNTY, NJ: Probably not. The bones would not be destroyed by the cooking. So if he put all this grease and decayed protein, oil protein and boiled skin and fat, if he mixed them with the bones, those bones should still be available. In fact, the company that does the recycling of this grease has some large area where they recycle, perhaps they could dredge that huge pot and see if they could recover any bones.

If they could recover bones, we could probably test the bone marrow to see if that bone marrow belongs to that woman -- to his wife who disappeared. The bones are very hard. They have calcium. If you decalcify bones, when we get a person with bone cancer, for instance, we have to decalcify the bone and then the bone is very rubbery because bone is mainly collagen or like scar tissue which just has a lot of calcium in it.

But slow cooking will not destroy those bones. The bones should still be recoverable. If we can find her skull, we may be able to find fractures in the skull because there`s blood spatter. Maybe he hit her with a bat or with some heavy object and that`s what caused the blood spatter. Her skull may very well have fractures and maybe that`s why we can`t find it. He got rid of all the bones.

GRACE: Out to the lines. Amy in Oregon. Hi, Amy, what`s your question, dear?

AMY, CALLER FROM OREGON: I just want to know why he would boil her in water and not say he didn`t kill her? Like attempted killer?

GRACE: You know what? Interesting. Interesting. To Caryn Stark, psychologist. That is a good question. Why would he admit to boiling her, basically slow-cooking her in a human crock pot but not come clean about killing her?

CARYN STARK, PSYCHOLOGIST: Nancy, you`re talking about somebody who is pathological. So he is not going to say much that makes sense. I want to tell you, though, that if he was obsessing and imagining that the best way to kill somebody would be to cook them, then this guy was having a ball long before she died.

In his mind, he was ready to do this. So he just needed the perfect opportunity to go ahead and act it out. He is not normal. So he was enjoying this whole process.

GRACE: But not normal certainly does not rise to insane. And have you ever noticed, Dr. Caryn Stark, people will start talking about murder. Well, they`ll start talking about it. Then they talk more and more and more. And the more you talk about it, you become more desensitized to it. It is not as heinous and offensive. It becomes almost regular.

It just comes off, it slides off your tongue. And it becomes more the norm. And then by the time you finally do it, you`re primed to do it. It`s something you`ve been entertaining and considering for quite some time.

STARK: And that`s what imaging is, and obsessing like that, Nancy. That`s exactly what you`re describing. So not only was he imagining it. But I really believe he was longing to do something like that because he is a killer and it excites him. And that`s I think exactly what happened here.

GRACE: Dawn in Iowa. Hi, Dawn, what`s your question?

DAWN, CALLER FROM IOWA: Hi, thank you for having me. Well, I`m just wondering, do you think that David -- is there any chance that David Viens -- do you believe that he`s not -- just didn`t do a premeditated murder here?

GRACE: I think it was premeditated and I`ll tell you why because he discussed with so many people how he would get rid of a body by cooking it. He also said, I think she`s stealing from me, I`m going to kill that bitch, talking about his wife. I don`t think she was stealing from him at all. I think that was a ruse.

I want to go to Pat Brown. Criminal profiler, author of "How to Save Your Daughter`s Life." What -- what is the meaning of the term, the jargon, "criminally insane"? And what do you make of Dawn in Iowa`s question regarding premeditation?

PAT BROWN, CRIMINAL PROFILER, AUTHOR OF "ONLY THE TRUTH": Yes. Criminally insane would mean that he no idea what he was doing. He completely did not understand reality. But clearly he did because he planned it in so many stages. Yes, this was premeditated but not quite the way maybe we think. What likely happened was he started getting annoyed with his wife. Fed up with her. Wanting to move on. Get himself a new woman. Get rid of her.

And as he started getting those ideas, he started working himself toward her murder. So yes, eventually it was premeditated but when and exactly it was going to happen, I think he then got very angry that night and that was his moment. He was going to move ahead and do it. Premeditated yes, but maybe not quite -- like, "I`m going to kill my wife" type thinking.

GRACE: Everyone, something exciting. Friday night, 8:00 p.m. Eastern. Cold-blooded murder. Gambling. Jealousy. Inside the most baffling, the most heinous crimes ever committed. Cutting edge technique. Science, combine with crime sleuthing.

We uncover what makes the average man or woman cross the line to commit murder? Sometimes the answer is simple. Other times, the answer is never found.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRACE: We are back in 90 seconds. Tonight we remember Air Force Senior Airman Bradley Smith, 24, Troy, Illinois. Silver Star, Purple Heart. Air Force Commendation Medal. 5K run in his honor. Parents, Gary and Paula, brother, Ryan, widow, Tiffany, daughter, Chloe.

Bradley Smith, American hero.

Back in 60 seconds.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: A husband allegedly admits to disposing of his wife`s body in an extremely unusual fashion. By cooking her.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "The whole skull and jaw came out in perfectly one piece. That`s the only thing I didn`t want to get rid of in case I wanted to leave it somewhere."

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The husband claims to police, he boils all of her body except for her head which he allegedly hides in his mother`s attic. But authorities search for the head and it is nowhere to be found.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: Do we need the skull? I don`t think so.

We are taking your calls. Beth in Texas, hi, Beth, what`s your question?

BETH, CALLER FROM TEXAS: Hi, Nancy, how are you?

GRACE: I`m good, dear.

BETH: OK. I was just wondering if any family members knew of any marital problems before he actually did this?

GRACE: Beth in Texas, even I know about marital problems, OK? I know that. A couple thousand miles away.

Straight out to you, John Phillips, KABC. Marital problems.

JOHN PHILLIPS, HOST, 790 KABC: Well, according to the daughter, he loved her. They were in a happy relationship. But look, I mean, there were drugs involved --

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: Whoa. Is that the same daughter that he asked to take Dawn`s cell phone and send text messages from it saying, I`ve just got to clear my head and I am in Florida for a few days? That daughter is the one saying that they had a happy marriage?

PHILLIPS: Yes, and she was the one that sent those text messages and she was the one that disposed of the clothes after he asked her to do it.

GRACE: Whoa.

PHILLIPS: So this was clearly --

(CROSSTALK)

GRACE: Why isn`t she charged with accessory to a crime?

Matt Zarrell, what about this daughter? This adult daughter? It`s not Dawn`s daughter. It is his biological daughter from another relationship.

MATT ZARRELL, NANCY GRACE STAFFER, COVERING STORY: Correct, Nancy, but what happened is that she has been cooperating with cops and the cops actually used the information she gave them in order to force Viens` hand.

GRACE: To you, I want to go to Steve Kardian, former police detective, expert. Lead instructor, Defend Universities.

Steve, what do you make of not having the skull? After he allegedly slow-cooks his wife in a human crock pot?

STEVE KARDIAN, FMR. POLICE DETECTIVE, SELF-DEFENSE EXPERT, LEAD INSTRUCTOR AT DEFEND UNIVERSITY: It`s a circumstantial case, Nancy. With regard to him duct-taping her arms, very difficult to do to an uncooperative person. And we also see the comfort in a suspect going to what he knows. Being the cooking crock pot to put her into that. So a good circumstantial case if they find the skull, it`s going to enhance it dramatically. But it is not something that`s necessary (INAUDIBLE) for the prosecution.

GRACE: But Steve Kardian, what about this? The fact that not only do we have the statement by him that he now claimed he gave under the induce many of drugs trying to get it thrown out. What about the fact that he told different stories? He told some people she was in rehab. That she was in drug rehab. That she went to Florida and she went to the mountains to clear her head. He told all these different stories to different people.

KARDIAN: It`s typical in this type of case to see the deception of an individual that`s suspect in this typed of a case or that has committed this type of a case to lie repeatedly. It only enhances and helps law enforcement`s investigation.

GRACE: Michelle in California. Hi, dear, what`s your question?

MICHELLE, CALLER FROM CALIFORNIA: Hi, I was wondering if Jacqueline, the daughter, has, since she`s been cooperating, was offered any kind of immunity?

GRACE: Good question. Alexis, has she been offered immunity?

ALEXIS TERESZCUK, REPORTER, RADAROLINE.COM: I believe that she has. She`s working with the police and that they`re not going to prosecute her, as you were saying, as an accessory to murder. She has been very vocal about it. She described in detail how she sent the text messages from her stepmother`s phone to her friend. And then she actually threw the phone out.

She said she was only protecting her father. But now that there`s so much more evidence, this is not going to work anymore. The police, I`m sorry, the state has offered her immunity so that they can go ahead and have her testimony.

GRACE: OK. Unleash the lawyers, Becca Crumrine, John Manuelian, Kirby Clements.

All right, Kirby. He asked his own adult -- where`s Kirby? I don`t see him. He asked his own adult daughter to take his wife, Dawn`s, not her mother, cell phone and send fake text messages. Hi, I`ve got to clear my head. B.S. Told other people she was in rehab. That she was in the mountains.

Come on, Kirby. He asked his own daughter to do his dirty work and you`re still telling me there`s not a case?

KIRBY CLEMENTS, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Yes, I`m still telling you there`s not a case, Nancy. You haven`t found that skull that he supposedly put in the mother`s attic.

GRACE: I don`t need a skull.

CLEMENTS: Which refutes -- well, it just goes to refute what he said. Like you only wanted to believe the parts that he said that helped your case.

GRACE: What about it, Manuelian?

JOHN MANUELIAN, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Nancy, no body, no murder, not guilty.

GRACE: Becca, do you agree?

BECCA CRUMRINE, FAMILY LAW ATTORNEY: Absolutely not. It`s one thing if somebody says hey, my wife disappeared or I threw her in a bag. But this story is so amazingly detailed and specific and he said it over and over again.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Law enforcement records a shocking confession.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "What about the rest of her? Did you duct tape her? Her body? Her legs? Her arms? Or anything? Did you duct tape her feet and hands?" "Yes, I did," he replied. "And I fell asleep."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: We are taking your calls. Did he slow-cook his wife in a human crock pot? He`s a former chef, a restaurateur, the owner of a fine dining restaurant.

Back to you, Matt Zarrell, what if anything did he tell other witnesses?

ZARRELL: OK, Nancy. There`s one witness we haven`t talked about who`s very important. Karen Patterson. She says that Viens said his wife had left him and said, quote, "good riddance." Now the reason that this witness is also important is that in the months leading up to Dawn`s disappearance, she noticed that Dawn had -- there was violence between the couple. That two months before Dawn had marks on her neck that she said were from Viens choking her.

And a month before she vanished, Dawn actually called her friend Karen Patterson to say she had locked herself in the bathroom in fear of her husband was about to hurt her. Now Dawn did not want the friend to call police. But the friend still says to this day she really regrets she never called.

GRACE: You know, Pat Brown, I really want to get inside your head on this. I`ve got my own opinions, but they`re anecdotal from many, many years of trying felonies and murders. What do you make of this guy?

BROWN: Well, he is a total psychopath. He`s committed the crime (INAUDIBLE). And I disagree with the lawyers. The circumstantial evidence on this case is phenomenal because it links it all together bit by bit by bit. I don`t think they`re going to have a problem trying him and convicting him.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "So I`m laying there and the next thing I know she`s all over me. That she`s got the light in my face calling me all kinds of mean names and stuff. And I keep telling her the same thing. Just leave me alone. I just need to sleep. I just need to sleep. Just let me sleep. For some reason I just got violent. Seemed like it had to do with her stealing money."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRACE: He allegedly slow-cooks his wife in a human crock pot. He is a chef, a restaurateur. The owner of a fine dining establishment.

I want to go to Heather Walsh-Haney, PhD., forensic anthropologist. Florida Gulf Coast University. She`s joining me out of Naples today.

Heather, I want to talk to you about the process of what he allegedly did. How hot would the water have to be for that water to actually break down the human bones?

WALSH-HANEY: Nancy, actually for -- in his -- we have historic cases --

GRACE: What about Dahmer?

(CROSSTALK)

WALSH-HANEY: Right. We have cooked remains. Boiled them in water, the process is called maceration, M-A-C-E-R, where we are boiling those remains in water to remove the soft tissue. You can have it at a slow boil, you can have it at a hot high boil. Over days and sometimes over weeks.

I really believe, as the pathologist said earlier, that her skull, the bones of her thighs, the bones of her arms, her legs, those were all still there. Probably the only things that went into that grease trap were maybe the spongy bone from her vertebral column or the spongy bones from her wrists and her ankles. If he put her remains in that pot fresh, blood, fat, hair would come to the surface. In the newspaper accountings we heard that he screened the broth, the soup basically, just as he would cooking a regular soup in his kitchen.

GRACE: OK. Heather Walsh-Haney, would there be any evidence that her body was slow cooked? Would there be any evidence left, say, in the kitchen equipment or by nature would boiling water kill the evidence?

I mean I know you need something beyond bleach to get rid of DNA. Something akin to a muriatic acid. But would boiling water decompose the DNA?

WALSH-HANEY: No, it wouldn`t. It would still be there. They need to go carefully over all of that equipment and look for DNA because I`ve had personal experience with cases that it has still been there.

GRACE: Everyone, the tip line for Dawn Viens, 800-222-8477. "DR. DREW" up next. I`ll see you tomorrow night 8:00 sharp Eastern. And until then, good night, friend.

END