Viens gave detectives the interview as he lay in a hospital bed in March 2011, after leaping off an 80-foot (24-meter) cliff in Rancho Palos Verdes. Authorities say he jumped after learning he was a suspect in her death.
Viens, whose injuries from the leap have him attending his trial in a wheelchair, said in the interview that he stuffed his wife's body in a 55-gallon (208-liter) 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 the only significant thing left was his wife's skull, which he stashed in his mother's attic at her home in Torrance. But a search of the house turned up nothing, nor did an excavation of the restaurant.
On the recording played in court, sheriff's Sgt. Richard Garcia asked Viens what happened on Oct. 18, 2009, the night his wife disappeared.
Viens said he had noticed money missing from the restaurant he owned and suspected his wife. When he arrived home that night Viens said his wife got angry with him and he forced her onto the floor where he wrapped her up and put a piece of clear duct tape over her mouth.
He said when he awoke four hours later, his wife was dead.
