LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Los Angeles-area chef on trial for his wife's murder told sheriff's investigators that they couldn't find his wife's body because he had slow-cooked it for days in boiling water until little was left but her skull.

The recorded interview with David Viens was played for jurors at his trial Tuesday.

The Los Angeles Times  says Viens was interviewed as he lay in a hospital bed in March 2011 after leaping off an 80-foot cliff when he learned he was a suspect in the 2009 disappearance of his wife, 39-year-old Dawn Viens, whose body was never found.

Viens said in the interview that he put her body in a 55-gallon drum of boiling water, keeping it submerged with weights and disposing of what remained along with other waste.

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