David Viens is on trial for the murder of wife Dawn, who has been missing since 2009.LOS ANGELES: A US chef who says he accidentally killed his wife - and then boiled her body for four days to remove the evidence - has pleaded not guilty to murder.  

David Viens has pleaded not guilty to murdering his 39-year-old wife, Dawn, in late 2009. Her body has never been found.

Jurors heard a recording played in court of Viens telling sheriff's investigators they couldn't find his wife's body because he cooked it until little was left but her skull.

"I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days," Viens, 49, could be heard saying.

Viens gave detectives the interview as he lay in a hospital bed in March 2011, after leaping off a cliff in California. Authorities say he jumped after learning he was a suspect in her death.

Viens said in the interview that he stuffed his wife's body in a drum of boiling water and kept it submerged with weights.

He said he stashed his wife's skull in his mother's attic. But a search of the house turned up nothing.

When asked what happened on October18, 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. He says he forced her onto the floor, wrapped her up and put a piece of tape over her mouth.

He said when he awoke four hours later, his wife was dead.

- AP