Man who ate his wife's boiled corpse sentenced 15 years to life in prison

 The California chef who killed his wife and cooked her corpse in boiling water was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison Friday.

Acting as his own lawyer, David Viens gave a rambling 40-minute speech during the court session in Los Angeles. He said the story he told police about stewing the cadaver was a lie — and that he deserved a new trial.

"I loved my wife. I didn't cook my wife," he told the judge, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The judge didn't buy it.

In two separate police interviews played for jurors during trial, Viens described how he bound and gagged his wife's mouth, feet and hands with duct tape so he could sleep in peace back in October 2009. He found her lifeless four hours later, he claimed.

He previously told Los Angeles County sheriff's detectives that he placed the body of 39-year-old Dawn Viens in a 55-gallon drum filled with water and left her to simmer for four days in his restaurant near Long Beach, the Thyme Contemporary Café.

David Viens, 49, later claimed he wasn't thinking clearly when made the startling confession in early 2011.

He had just leaped off an 80-foot cliff in Rancho Palos Verdes as police closed in and was on pain medication following surgery for his injuries, he said.

Prosecutors called him a "manipulator" with a long history of drug crimes.

Dawn Viens was last seen on Oct. 18, 2009. Her body was never found.

The couple's marriage was falling apart at the time of the murder, according to trial testimony.

Dawn told a friend her husband was physically abusive. Another friend heard David say he wanted to "kill that b----."

He later claimed Dawn stormed off after an argument and never returned. Not long after that, he started dating a 23-year-old waitress who eventually moved in with him.

His plot began to unravel when David drunkenly told his daughter from a prior marriage what really happened, the daughter testified at trial.

He confessed to tying Dawn up and said she apparently choked on her own vomit, the daughter told jurors.

He purportedly told the daughter that investigators would never find the body and asked her to send a text message from Dawn's phone to a friend.

"This is Dawn. I'm OK. I'm in Florida and I'm here to start over," the message read, according to the daughter's testimony.

David Viens eventually learned that his daughter spoke to investigators. He jumped off the cliff after he was confronted by Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputies and gave the chilling account of cooking her remains shortly afterward.

"I cooked her four days, I let her cool, I strained it out," he reportedly said.

Source: NYdailynews