#536 - Cooking Up Murder - Lomita, California
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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yay! Choo-choo! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you folks so much for joining us all aboard the murder train, pulling away from the station with some insanity today. Absolute insanity. It's one of those stories that it starts out one way and you think it's going one way and you go, oh, wow, that took a...

quite the turn that's one of those kind of stories it is definitely 10 pounds of murder in a two pound bag this week so we'll get to all that before we do shut up and give me murder.com head there right now for your tickets get tickets to live shows also merchandise tons of stuff there but tickets for live shows here we are the 18th in kansas city october the 18th if you're listening to this when it

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Be one of the people on Patreon. Patreon.com slash crimeinsports is where you get all of the bonus material for both crime and sports and small town murder. Right. And we say you get it all for $5 a month. Anybody $5 or above, you get every last thing we put out. For crime and sports this week, you're going to get the 1993 Florida State football scandal. Boy. That is the Seminoles winning the national championship and having all sorts of cheating scandals. They took these kids on just shopping sprees. It was wild. Wow.

And then for small town murder, we're going to talk about, I've been waiting to do this. I can't wait. The 1976 Ted Bundy psychological evaluation from the state of Utah. Imagine being a psychiatrist and getting 90 days with Ted Bundy just to try to figure out what's going on in that head. It's.

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Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. Here we go. What do you say? Let's go on a trip, shall we? Let's get on it. Yeah. We are going this week all the way to the West Coast.

California, here we come. Here we go. We're going to Lomita, California. Oh. Do you know where that is? Not Alameda. It's kind of in between like Torrance's. It's by Torrance and kind of Long Beach in that area over there. It's in L.A. County, but it's its own little suburb over here. Okay. Here, Lomita, obviously in Southern California. It's Los Angeles County, as a matter of fact. That's about 30 minutes. Anywhere from 30 minutes to seven, eight hours. Tomorrow.

Depending on traffic to downtown L.A., you never know. See, you know, middle of the night you can zoom there, but any other time, good luck. It's seven hours and 25 minutes to Grass Valley, California, which is our last episode there, which was episode 481, Layers of Evil.

I remember that one. Wild shit there. Population of this town, 20,884. Okay. So not a huge town. It's weird because it's like its own little thing over here, even though it's technically in the Los Angeles metro area. Median household income here is a little higher than the national average, $85,852. Okay.

Which is good, $15,000 above the national average. But the median home cost makes that completely irrelevant. Median home cost here, $846,100. So you're making $100,000 a year and living in an apartment is what that is. That's tough. History, a little bit of history here. The Sepulveda family established and started raising cattle on Rancho Los Palos Verdes, which pissed off another family, the Dominguez family.

Yeah, because the Sepulveda's hadn't actually got a land grant. They just started using the land. So the Dominguez's were like, you fence jumping bitches. I don't think so. They fought all the time. And part of the present day Lomita is like right where they were fighting all the time. They didn't resolve this until 1841 when the Sepulveda's finally got a signed deed. And then everyone was like, OK, fine, that's fine. Yeah.

This area, they did well until the 1860s when a shitload of natural disasters hit the Southern California area. Oh, what happened? Too much rain in 1861 fucked up all the crops and everything. Too little rain in 1862 fucked up all the crops and everything. So there's that.

A, quote, paralyzing smallpox epidemic happened in 1862. Also, when there's no rain, that's not good. The grasslands were ravaged by swarms of grasshoppers in 1863. Oh, that had to be frightening. It didn't rain at all in 1864. Yeah.

And by 1865, basically, there's no cattle here anymore. That five-year period just destroyed the entire Southern California ranching industry. All the rain, none of the rain, none of the rain, none of the rain. All the rain. Smallpox, smallpox, grasshoppers. Great. This is doing great. Then it was grasshoppers with smallpox, which you really don't want to fuck with them.

They're especially dangerous. Yeah. In 1935, a vaudevillian actor, you know, showbiz guy named Frank Gum of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, leased the Lomita Theater here to present his singing and dancing daughters, who were Mary Jane, Dorothy Virginia, and Judy, who was Judy Garland.

So her dad's father. Yeah, that's how that worked out. Wow. Interesting, right? Reviews of this town. There's a bunch and they're hilarious. So I'll get to a few of them here. Here's a five star real kind of simple. I love Lomita. Aside from living near a hospital and hearing the ambulance frequently, it's pretty quiet here.

Yeah, that's... Apart from the sirens. You bought a house where sirens go. I don't know what to tell you. Outside of the fire department always busting out of there with their sirens on. It's not bad. I also love it. I love that when graffiti appears anywhere, someone covers it. The only thing I would... Someone. We don't know. The graffiti guy. The only thing I would like to see change is for the grass to be cut regularly on some of the side streets again.

Again, it used to be. Not a lot of complaints if you're just wishing they'd cut the grass on the side street more. Pretty good day. Here's three stars. I wish there were less drug addicts everywhere. Well, that's a pretty general statement. Let's all wish that. Also, the drinking water in Lomita is absolutely disgusting and is not safe for human consumption. That goes for the entire Southwest. Arizona, New Mexico. Yeah.

Those are your three worst water states. New Mexico's the worst. Arizona's the second worst. I bet Nevada's not so great. Nevada's bad, too. Yeah, the desert, they don't have a lot of good water here. Two stars. Bad. I wouldn't want a vacation here.

Well, it's not a vacation spot, so that's probably why. That makes sense. Yeah, good news for you. And then finally, five stars. Great little neighborhood has a small town feel. Get only 15 minutes from Redondo Beach and 20 from L.A. Lots of fairs and festivals year-round. Reminds me of home.

It does? Okay. Where's home? That's what I'm wondering. Where's home? Is home Anaheim? Well, there's a reply here to this, which is great. What the hell are you talking about is the reply. I love when it starts out aggressive like that. I disagree. Yeah.

Yeah. What the hell are you talking about? It's totally overcrowded, nasty and dirty. Homeless poop on lawns and bums everywhere. What freaking small towns are you talking about? Meth towns? Maybe. Maybe they're from a little Midwestern meth town. We have no idea. Suburban Cleveland. We're not sure. Homeless pooping on your lawn? That's not true, right? You know what? Even if it was, I'm actually, we've been to Sacramento where the poop covers the sidewalk. I prefer they poop on the lawns.

I'm not walking on the lawn. Because that's where dogs are going, too. So the dogs are allowed to shit there, but not the people. So interesting here. So things to do. Not a lot going on here, I'll be honest with you. Things to do. You could go to L.A., which is right there, and have anything to do on Earth that you want to do. Sure. Go to the beach. Instead, they also have the Home Halloween Decorating Contest.

Oh, they got a contest. When you look at their shit, they really try to make it like it's a small town there. They really want that feel of like, we're not in L.A. We're in a small town. We're not L.A. They said, we're looking for the spookiest house in the neighborhood. Oh, boy. Contest will run. Oh, my God. They're going to have the commission, the Lomita Parks and Recreation Commission is going to go around like scoring your house.

Just barking in front and counting how many headstones I have. It's running. Yeah, bulbs burned out. It's so weird. It's running right now from October 1st to the 18th. And look at this. I don't like that. That ghost is last year's model. You know what? Target's got new ones. That cobweb is obviously caught. It's obviously a large plastic spider in there. I give it one star.

Not even close. So you have to send a photo of your home and yard to enter, and then I think they come out and check on it. And prizes and custom lawn signs will be awarded to the best decorated homes. You get a lawn sign. Wow. Oh, my. There's also the Lomita Railroad Museum.

It is devoted to the California's railroad history. Exhibits include a full-sized steam locomotive with tender and caboose and a station housing scale models, photographs, and paintings of trains. Yeah. That's what I want to go look at. Oh, look, it's a painting of a train. I need to paint it. I think you have the train right there. It's a full-size. Look at that.

What are you doing? It was founded in the early 1960s, and the museum building is a replica of a 19th century depot, which is kind of neat the way they do that. I guess it's a replica of the station that was in Wakefield, Massachusetts in the 1800s. Sick.

I do love a train depot. Yeah, they're cool shit. Yeah, they look really nice. The depot in Salt Lake that we play there, that's an old train depot. That's the coolest fucking thing on the planet. That's dope, and you don't have to hear trains anymore, which is also good here. And you can go to the Lomita Railroad Museum night at the museum here. So you can spend, it says, calling all railroad enthusiasts.

So if you're an autistic 70-year-old man, this is for you. The only railroad enthusiasts I know are autistic 70-year-old men.

There's an autistic 40-something on TikTok that just loves trains, man. He just goes and tells you all about them. It's the coolest thing. My son used to like them, too. It's a thing. It's a common thing. I think it's because they're on a schedule, on time, on a track, so it's all very... And there's a whole reason that it does what it does. Yeah. You know what I mean? That's a good point. Well, that said, let's talk about a murder and some really, really disturbing shit here. Okay. Uh-oh.

Let's go back to 1993. We'll start. All right. Yeah. And we'll talk to a guy, talk about a guy named David Robert Vines here. V I E N S. So veins, veins, almost veins there. So vines is how it said. Now, at this point, he is going through a divorce in 1993 is in the middle of a marriage falling apart. He has three kids from this marriage. Oh,

Yeah, this is in Vermont he lives in, including his youngest daughter who was born about 1990. So he's got a name, Jacqueline. So he's got a young daughter. He's got three kids. There's a lot going on. He's a chef, David, and we'll talk about this. Now, in 1993, he is convicted in Vermont for distribution of cocaine, which you might go, oh, that's weird. He's a family man chef. But if you ever worked in the restaurant business, that's just –

Yeah, he's just helping you get through table 9 and 12 and 13. If you really, really ever want drugs, just go hang out by the back door of a restaurant. Someone there sells Coke. I guarantee it. The bartender, one of the sous chefs, someone selling Coke, someone selling everything. They've got enough to sell you. Or there's a guy at the bar they know who sells it. There's always somebody in a restaurant that's willing to give drugs away. There's Coke here. There's Coke here, for sure.

So I guess police asked him to help break up, help cooperate with police to get out of this. And he does. So he cooperates. Now, the cop who worked with him over this said he was an agent's dream to work with. He returned calls. He was there for every deal that we needed him to be there for. And he was on time. So H.R. loves this guy. Drug H.R. He is punching in on time.

A punctual drug addict. Isn't that nice? That's rare. He's a dealer, not really an addict. That's a good point. Because what he's trying to do is he's always trying to open a restaurant. He's a chef. So when you're trying to open a restaurant, if you have a small restaurant, it just bleeds money for the first two years. So you have to figure out a way to make a living, and that's what he's trying to do here. So he meets a young woman here in the midst of all this. Because this is the perfect guy to get settled into a relationship. He's

Trying to like snitch off his Coke bust.

in the middle of a divorce with three kids. He's like, this is the guy you want to start a relationship with right here. But the kitchen somehow always just has a flow of women. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's always two, three women strung along somewhere. And he's a very forceful kind of in charge guy as well, as we'll find out. So I think maybe that's part of it and the fact that he can cook. People like food. Maybe that's, yeah, that's what it is. It's got to be, right? And it's something you can watch somebody do what they're good at.

Like if you're a chef and you cook at home for someone, most chefs don't really want to cook at home. But if they do, you can watch somebody do like this amazing thing. Most people don't get to see the person that they love do what they're good at ever. You know what I mean? Like if they're at work or doing something, you're going to sit there and go, man, look at him collate. That's amazing. Or look at him. You know, that's not what it's not normally like that. Spread the shit out of that. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's why comedians get way more women than they're really entitled to, honestly. Musicians. Musicians, yeah. They can be hideous. It doesn't matter. But there's also like the food, water, shelter is your fucking three basics. And if you can do one of those fucking incredibly, that's amazing. I think that's probably something coming from the inside of caveman shit. You know what I mean? Of like, oh, wow, they can...

That's probably part of it. They can feed me. That's incredible. Makes it attractive. So he meets Don here. Now, he meets Don. This is around 1994. They get together. And they marry in 1997. That was fast. So, yeah, it's David and Don here getting married. About three years and they get married. But I don't know when his divorce was final or any of that. When his coke shit was over. Like, this is...

He's got a lot going. A lot of pots with shit in them, James. He's got a lot of fucking irons in the fire. Pots on the fire. A lot of steaks on the grill right now. There it is. He's touching them for temperatures all over the place. Oh, shit. Fuck, that's supposed to be medium rare. That's medium now. These all got to come off. It's a mess. So they get married. They're going to move around a whole bunch around the country. They're going to be in Florida. They're going to be all over the country before they end up in California in a two-bedroom apartment in Lomita. Yeah.

So he owns his own restaurants. He tries to open up restaurants wherever he goes. And Dawn is usually like front of house hostess, you know, manager or whatever. She's the front of house person. He's the back of house person. Dawn's brother, David, another David. So Dawn's might as well. Dawn's brother said when I knew him, he was very dominant, I guess is the best word. Very charismatic. He he was very charismatic. He walked into a room and you knew he was there. Yeah.

And he was this guy said he was just a kid when David Vine started dating Dawn, his older sister, because they worked at the same restaurant. He was the chef and she was waiting tables. That's how they met. And he said about about David, quote, he was very passionate about his food. We would have Sunday dinners, him and I and Dawn. I mean, it was a spectacle to have him in the kitchen. I ever never ate so good in my life. I believe it. Yeah.

That's pretty awesome. So and also heard his daughter, Jackie, here, the one who was born in 1990, says he was a good dad, said every time we would visit him, we'd always have fun things to do. And we always really looked forward to being with him. I always just really loved him. I think everybody that ever met him thought he was a great person to be around. And I also really like Dawn. She didn't have any kids, so she treated me like her daughter.

That's nice. That's nice stepmom. This seems to be working out. A lot of her friends and family, everybody describes their marriage as a typical marriage, nothing crazy. Nobody does anything nuts. There's not cheating scandals or any of that. They appear to...

each other at least they work together every day too right they work in this restaurant I mean that's a goddamn hour of every goddamn day yeah that's a 12 hour day of working yeah and then they're making it happen they're making it work so I mean they argued at times but who the fuck doesn't and if you're in the restaurant business everybody argues with everybody in the restaurant business the whole goddamn time whether you're married or not it's just the way it works

Whether you're married or not working there or eating there, we're all arguing with each other. On a busy Friday night, everybody's arguing with everybody. It's a lot of arguments. It's all arguments. It's so busy. It's so much. It's just so much. Yeah. So no one ever witnessed David beat up Dawn or any physical violence or any of that stuff. Great relationship. Yeah. But he did say some funny things, I guess. Funny in quotes. I don't know. Ha-ha or just funny. Weird. But funny.

when Jacqueline and the other siblings were younger, David would make jokes that if he ever needed to kill somebody, he'd get rid of the body by cooking it.

But he'd say it as a joke, like, I'll kill that guy and cook him up. No one will ever find him. Shit like that. So Jackie was close with everybody, though. Close with her father. Close with Dawn. Even lived with them for a time when she was a teenager. She came in and stayed with them for a while. They moved all around the country, like I said. They lived on Anna Maria Island off Florida's Gulf Coast, which I don't know if that still exists anymore after this last week. But who's off the Gulf Coast? That's who knows.

Yeah, depending on how far south it was. It might be all the way up in Sarasota. It might be fine. It might be by Key West or something, and then it'd be fine. Pensacola, Sarasota. That was right where it hit. That's where it came through, yeah. So this is David, Don's brother, not David Vines. Don's brother said, we would wake up early, early in the morning, and we would walk an hour, hour and a half, and down the beach, power walk, just to get our day off right.

He would say this would be the three of them. So David Vines, our main guy, made Don's brother the manager of Beach City Market and Grill, which was a restaurant he owned at the time. Yeah.

So that meant he could concentrate on his other business because he had to. Because running a restaurant, like I said, especially in the beginning, you're just hemorrhaging money. Hemorrhaging money. Shit breaks. Need a new fridge. All this shit. You don't have that guy. You don't have 20 grand to just drop. Yeah. Fires. Fucking shit has to be done for inspection. So to do this, he was...

wholesaling hundreds of pounds of weed and selling them, selling it to other people. Sure. It's a smaller dealer. So he's just doing a wholesale weed guy. And, um, he said later on when asked about it, the younger brother, Dawn's brother said, they asked, said, did you know about his pot smuggling? Uh,

And Don's brother said, I knew about his business, sure, but that business was separate from the business he and I had together, like the restaurant. That was a separate thing. What's his thing? In 2005, though, David is arrested for selling weed. Wholesale, lots of weed. And this is obviously not his first drug arrest either. Right. So they end up, guys end up working on the case, and he was sentenced to, again, he did some cooperation this time. David knows how to get out of drug shit.

Yeah. Because if you're willing to cooperate, you can always get out of drug shit. There's always somebody bigger than you. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. You know, so if you're deep enough in it, you know who that is. You know who that is or you know the guy just above you. And that's all they want is that guy. That's the guy. So then they're going to go get the guy above him. That's it. And he ends up getting about a year in prison. He's sentenced to a pretty large bust, too. So not bad. So in 2008, that is when he and Don head to California to

And end up in Lomita in a two-bedroom apartment. So here they are. Yeah. So there's some history behind them. Restaurants failed and opened and this and that. Drug arrests, all that kind of shit. At the bottomed-out market of the housing crisis, that's kind of nice. That's not bad. Yeah. It's still working. So now Jackie, the daughter, said both she, meaning Jackie, and Dawn were both heavy drinkers. Okay.

Dawn is a drinker, boy, and there's nobody who doesn't say that. Yeah, she's one of those hair-of-the-dog type of people. You know what I mean? Is that right? Every day she's waking up to fix yesterday. That's kind of how it works here. And she said that Jackie said she and Dawn would drink booze throughout the day together.

Booze. This is well before she's 21, obviously, Jackie. Yeah. So they said they also would use drugs together from time to time. Oh, is that right? Yeah. They're not drinking beer. They're drinking booze. They're drinking booze, yeah. They're not drinking wine. They're drinking booze, man. And with Dawn, a lot of people say when they're talking about drugs, they're not talking about weed. They're talking about coke and meth. Coke and meth, yeah. That's what they're into, uppers.

So Jackie said, quote, I remember waking up and she'd be in the kitchen just chugging a beer at nine o'clock in the morning. That's hardcore shotgun. And of course, once you're once you start doing like Homer Simpson shit, you really need to check your life and go, wait a second. This isn't going on. This isn't good, right? Morning. I don't even know if I have a job anymore. What's happening? Wow. So she said, and then she'd hide the can under the sink so that he wouldn't know that she'd been drinking already. Yeah.

I think he's not going to smell. I was going to say, beer at 9 in the morning is like, Jesus, what the fuck is that? You might as well shit on the kitchen floor. Have the same impact. I can smell you in the bedroom. Wow. Jackie said, I think she was just confused with her life and as to how she got to where she was. You know, I think she wanted things to be different. She just basically let my dad take care of her whole life.

So spring of 2009, they opened a restaurant in Lomita called the Time Contemporary Cafe.

And they make like healthy California type of food. Now, if you would like to hear some reviews of this, because there's a bunch of them. Love to. Absolutely. Listen to this week's Your Stupid Opinions because they are going to be on there. It's called the Time, not like a clock, Time like the spice. Time Contemporary Cafe is what it's called. Okay.

Okay. So we're absolutely going to do the reviews of that on your stupid opinions, which you'll see in a whole new light when the story's over, let me tell you. Keep in mind, this isn't a murder story. This isn't a murder story. Okay.

So the restaurants open from Tuesday to Saturday usually, but they close it for a major remodel. I don't know where the fuck he's getting the money to do a major remodel if he borrows everything from the bank or what, but a huge remodel between May and September 2009. So the whole summer basically it's closed down.

He would spend long hours working, David. He'd be there 80 hours a week at least on the remodel. And Dawn, while this is going on, she is waiting tables at another restaurant so they can pay their bills. Yeah. Because otherwise they can't pay their bills. He's working on this. A lot of trouble, yeah. Yeah. So summer of 2009, there's a guy named Joe Cacase here, and he owns a motorcycle repair shop in the same shopping center as the cafe. Cool. Old Joey C over here. Yeah.

Now, Kekase is friends with both of them, with David and Dawn, and would see them at the restaurant every day. And they work right next to each other. During the summer, as they became better friends, Dawn came to Kekase with an envelope with $640 in cash in it. And she doesn't want drugs either. No, she asked him if he would hold this for her.

And she said the money was a nest egg, and she wanted to put it aside for later. So rather than put it in a bank... Give it to a guy that runs a motorcycle show. Give it to the motorcycle guy, I guess, to put in a saddlebag for later. Worked out for that chick that sued the electric company in California. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Must have been a trustworthy guy, I guess. August 2009. God damn it. Everyone's named David or Karen in this whole fucking story. What the fuck?

Karen Patterson, who's an interior designer for restaurants and a close friend of David and Dawn for years. She works with David on the remodel of the Time Cafe, and she saw the couple at the restaurant several times a week. During that summer, Karen Patterson and Dawn became very close after Dawn's mother died of cancer. So they became she was helping her get through that. On one occasion in August 2009, Karen Patterson saw red marks on Dawn's neck.

It's never a good sign. Patterson asked her about it, which good for her for asking about it and just push that under the rug. Dawn started crying and said that David had been drinking and tried to choke her. Not good. So Dawn also said that David had been very angry with her and that there were other incidents in the past where he had hurt her.

So now it's coming to the surface that he's been abusing her here. September 2009, Dawn called Karen Patterson late at home one night and said that she had locked herself in the bathroom of her home. Not by accident. She wasn't like, can you come over with the key and spring me from the bathroom. Locked herself in there to keep him out. Yeah. She said David was angry with her and she was afraid he was going to beat her. Yeah.

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So Patterson said, let me call the police. But Don said, please don't because David will lose his restaurant when that's all we have, basically. So we'll lose everything. So Don decided to wait in the locked bathroom until David went to sleep. Don called Patterson back a short time later and said David had gone to bed and I'll be all right. He's sleeping it off now. Now, the drugs are a bit of a problem here.

And people on the outside who don't know her very well, Dawn, don't know about the drugs, really. They just know she likes to drink. But people who know her very well know about it, as a lot of people hide that kind of shit. Jackie said, this is the daughter, Jackie said, I couldn't even go home without her asking me to find something for her. And the interviewer said, something meaning what? And she said, like Coke or meth.

Find Coke for me. Not in the house. I didn't know. Yeah. Go out and get it for me. Yeah. Yeah. Go out 18 year old and get me Coke. So also in September 2009, the cafe reopens. OK. And so he David works as the chef in the kitchen while Dawn is the hostess and a server as well. And Matt does managerial shit, too. So Sunday, October 18th, 2009.

This guy, by the way, in different documents has different names, but the court document has him as Richard Stagnito. Dickie Staggs over here. Old Dickie Staggs is a friend of David and a former business associate of David's family. On this night, Dickie Staggs here went to the Time Cafe to install a pot and pan rack in the kitchen. About 10 p.m., he got done doing that. This guy sits down with David and another man who was interviewing for a chef position, for like a sous chef position.

So he's got people here. David is complaining that the restaurant wasn't working out the way he wanted and that Dawn was drinking too much and not doing her job as a hostess. He said Dawn was a, quote, sloppy mess at work and that it was embarrassing to have her in the restaurant while he was trying to start this business and run it.

Like a junkie for a wife. Yeah, like a junkie for a wife. Yeah, that's exactly right. You're going full De Niro here. So David was reviewing the restaurant receipts as he talked, and he became very angry when the receipts didn't balance out. He yelled out, that bitch is stealing from me. They're married, by the way. I mean, she's just taking the house money. Yeah, that bitch is stealing from me, and nobody steals from me, and I will kill that bitch.

And Dickie Staggs told him to calm down. He goes, why don't you chill out? He goes, you got to relax a little bit. Don't get so upset about this. He said, why don't you send her to rehab? Maybe that'll work. Yeah. Yeah. And which is a reasonable response. David says, you're just a pussy.

That's not how you do it. That's how that works. So, uh, vines then is shortly after that David and the chef guy interviewing for the position left to go to a club. They went to a pool hall to have a couple of beers. I get to know each other. Yeah. I think it's to see if you can work together. Yeah. You know,

You'd want to hang out with somebody because kitchen's long hours, man. Find out what he'd do if his wife was stealing from him. What about you? You'd beat her ass, right? That's what I'm saying. You'd choke her. Come on. Let's go to the pool hall and get weapons and beat our wives together. Jesus, what do you say? Get a stick. The ones that unscrew. A half a stick will really wield that thing. Stick one down your pant leg. We can walk out of here together. That's right.

So at 11.01 p.m. that night, Dawn called Case now, the biker guy, motorcycle on the phone. She told him she had some more money saved that she would drop off at the motorcycle shop. I got to make a deposit. I got to make a deposit. Okay. Well, when will a teller be available is basically what she's saying. So she said, next day or tomorrow, I'm going to bring you the money. So 11.49 that night, Dawn called Dickie Staggs.

Okay. During their phone conversation, Stagnito told Dawn that David was upset with her and had accused her of stealing money from the restaurant. Dawn became very upset on the phone, started crying hysterically.

And they had a few more phone calls back and forth that night, mainly about if she knew where David was and how he would get home. And after that call, he didn't hear from her anymore after a few calls that night. Dawn never shows up the next day to drop off the money to the motorcycle guy. Oh.

So in the morning, Monday, October 19th, early in the morning here, David had a meeting with the employees at the Time Cafe. He looked tired and pissed off, and he told them that Dawn wouldn't be working there anymore and that they needed to figure out a new management system to keep the restaurant running smoothly. So to do that, he taps a waitress here who's a 22-year-old waitress.

Yeah. Who just started working here. Kathy Galvin is her name. See? More Kathys. She'd been working here. That was Karen earlier, wasn't it? Oh, it was Karen. You're right. This is Kathy. So she'd been working as a part-time server at the restaurant for a few weeks. Barely got there. So during that time she worked with Dawn, she observed that Dawn was moody, got pissed off really easy, and yelled at the staff whenever there was an error in an order or any regular restaurant mishap that happened.

At this meeting, David asked this woman, Kathy Galvin, to take on some of the managerial duties. So she started working at the restaurant full time. And soon they'll be living together and hooking up, David and Kathy. Now, Tuesday, the next day, October 20th, 2009, Dawn is supposed to meet Karen Patterson at the hospital where Patterson's undergoing treatment for cancer.

Oh, my. And Dawn doesn't show up. So Patterson and her husband decided to stop by the restaurant to see if she was OK. They didn't find Dawn, but they talked to David, who seemed disheveled and agitated and not himself. And now Karen Patterson said he was drained or drenched in sweat, seemed to be distraught and had a large bandage on his hand.

Interesting. David told Karen that he and Dawn had an argument because she refused to go to rehab and that she left him on Sunday night. She packed her shit up and left. He also said that he was viewing rest reviewing restaurant receipts and was concerned that Dawn was taking money from the business for a long time. So at David's request, Patterson reviewed a large pile of receipts, but found only a small, a small difference in the balance of about twenty five dollars.

which is nothing in the course of a restaurant's evening. You know what I mean? Jesus, that's so easy. That's somebody doing bad math, not adding two drinks together. So Patterson asked David whether Dawn had taken her belongings with her and why her car is still in the parking lot if she took off.

David said Dawn took some luggage, but not her car because it wasn't registered and was breaking down. So she took off some other way. She described David as nervous throughout the conversation and appeared very irritated by the questions he was being asked. At one point when they were asking about Dawn, he said good riddance to her. I don't care. Fucking tired of it. Glad she's gone. So a few days go by October 23rd, 2009 now. Yeah.

Karen Patterson asked David about Dawn again. And David said he'd been communicating with Dawn via telephone and text messages and that she'd conveyed to him that she needed some time away. So she asked David to have Dawn call her because she's worried about her. That same afternoon, she gets a text message from Dawn. Karen does. And it says that she just needs some time to think.

So, you know, just take it off. Need some time to think, which is fine. Sure. But at the same time, she signs it. She has a nickname here and that with her friend Karen here. And that is Pixie. It's P-I-X-I-E or Pixie. So she signs every text. Love, Pixie.

Yeah. Every one of them. This text, by the way, contained a number of spelling errors, which is unusual for Dawn. She's very good at spelling. And it says, love pixie P-I-X-Y.

Which she's never spelled it like that before. I don't think anybody's ever spelled it like that. Never, never. I don't know why anybody would. I think the only one that's ever spelled that way is the sticks. Yeah, no shit. So this is not usual behavior. And she signs, it's every text is Love Pixie. So although that's really weird and she's a little bit distraught over that. And the message stated that Dawn was moving back east and would provide a new phone number once she was settled down.

So a neighbor, by the way, says during this time she heard a fight last week and backs up David's

rendition here. This is Donna Morton lives in the same apartment complex. She said in October 2009, she doesn't know the exact date, but she overheard an argument between David and Dawn. Didn't know what they were saying, but they were both yelling and it sounded like objects were being thrown around their apartment. She said after about 15 minutes, Dawn stormed out of the apartment with some bags and she never saw Dawn again.

So she did leave with bags. So that's what David said. That's backing her up. She doesn't know what day this was, though. That's the thing. They said it's the 18th. She said, beats the shit out of me. Could have been the 12th. Could have been the 18th. I don't know. That's our leave. That's it. So later on, this lady asked David about Dawn, and he said they were no longer together because Dawn didn't want him to stay in the restaurant business. He also said Dawn had a drinking problem and didn't want to get help, and she decided to, quote, go live in the mountains.

Just in a cave somewhere, just in a tent on a mountain. So over the next several weeks, Karen Patterson repeatedly tries to get a hold of Dawn on her phone but can never get a hold of her. On multiple occasions, Karen asked David about Dawn's whereabouts, and he told different stories about who Dawn might be with and what she might be doing.

Now, Kekase, the motorcycle guy, also asked David about Dawn when he noticed he hadn't seen her in, you know, a week or so, two weeks. And David said he fired her because she was drinking on the job and making mistakes with money. Interesting. Now, a week after Stagnito last spoke with Dawn, he received a text message from her cell phone, and the message said that Dawn was leaving town for a while and needed to clear her head. David later told Stagnito that Dawn refused to go to rehab and had left him. So...

November 8th, 2009, Dawn's sister files a missing persons report with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department.

So they took numerous steps to locate Dawn. They distributed flyers with her photograph to law enforcement. They reviewed her cell phone records for activity and her banking records, interviewing her friends and family, and doing a nationwide missing persons database search with all of her shit. So they're looking for her. What they find is no leads, nothing. Nothing.

Her bank account has not been used since the 18th. Yeah. It's very interesting. So that's right away. Chase has got to be wondering, what am I supposed to do with this eight grand that she gave me? Yeah, $640 or whatever. Right. What's $640? Yeah. So they're saying, and that's what they're saying. They're saying if she didn't take the money that she was saving from him, she's not using her bank account. How the hell is she surviving or where? How is she getting anywhere? What's she doing? Yeah.

So it's really difficult. They interview David at their apartment on November 11th, 2009. And he said, listen, he and Dawn, we had ongoing marital problems. Dawn's drug use and alcohol abuse got out of control. We got an argument about me working too hard at the restaurant. And he said that Dawn left that day after the argument and hadn't contacted him since.

what do you want from me she does drugs and she drinks she's not reliable man i don't tell you and he said they said well why didn't you report her missing he goes because she left what am i gonna do that's wouldn't that be stalking after a while if you're if your ex-wife won't talk to you and you report her missing that's if i call the police every time somebody leaves the room i run a restaurant man yeah there's a lot of people i'm gonna have to file reports on no shit

So about two weeks after the disappearance, David and Kathy Galvin begin their romantic relationship. When Kathy first visited the apartment, she noticed that all of Don's belongings were still there.

So she was like, is she coming back? Like, what am I doing here? Am I is this like a hookup or what's going on? David assured her that Dawn had left him. The marriage is over. I'm all all about you. So he ends up David calls his daughter, Jackie, who was living in South Carolina and asked her to come out here and help him with the restaurant. So I can trust you. You're my daughter. So he made no mention of Dawn, but later told her that Dawn had taken off for a few days because they had a fight.

Jackie gets here in November 2009, stays for about six weeks. David, right after she got there, David asked Jackie to pick up Dawn's clothes, her pack up Dawn's clothes, and place them in storage because Dawn's not coming back. Kathy came over to the apartment and helped Jackie move Dawn's clothes into a rental storage unit. Wow. And then Kathy ends up moving into the apartment in mid-November with David.

Later, Vane showed David shows both Kathy and Jackie text messages he claims were from Dawn, said Dawn's phone, and stated that Dawn still loved David but was leaving him. Okay. End of 2009 now, David and Jackie were driving home together from the restaurant. They were both drunk and Jackie was stoned as well. So, driving home. Good example to set for your teen daughter. Way to go, Dad.

As he's driving, David begins crying out of nowhere. All right. I don't know. How much have you drank, sir? It's a good dad to get hand-dugged and cry to his daughter. I just wanted to tell you I love you. That's going to go real great. That won't fuck up her future of how she sees men. So he confessed that Dawn's not coming back.

Shit. She's like a stray cat. Uh-huh.

And this seems like a reasonable next step, right? Okay. Decided to tie her up and restrain her mouth. You stay here. He duct taped her up. He duct taped her hands and ankles together and put duct tape over her mouth and said, there, now I can get some sleep. Walked away. Uh-huh. He said when he woke up the next morning, Dawn was dead. She must have choked on her own vomit, he said.

Okay. He told her repeatedly it was an accident. It was an accident. I didn't mean for it to happen. And he also said, Jackie said, well, where the fuck is she? What did she do? And he said, her body will never be found. Don't worry. And then he requested Jackie send a text message to one of Dawn's friends from Dawn's cell phone, which he still has, and he shows her, oh, yeah, all these messages have been coming from me. Idiot. Which states that Dawn is okay and starting over in Florida. Yeah.

So Jackie does this, sends a text message and then keeps the phone and throws it out as an attempt to go, Dad, you can't have her phone on you if you're going to try to get away with some shit here. This is insane. I am 19 and stoned and I'm smarter than you. This is terrifying. I'm already a better murderer. Wow. So December 9th, 2009, police do a phone interview with David. I don't know why they wouldn't just go see him.

It makes no sense, but they tape record the phone interview. And he said prior to her disappearance, Dawn had been drinking about 18 beers a day.

She is drinking beers. Beers. That's what she's into. And she's skinny, too. That's the thing. Her missing persons poster, she's like 5'7", a buck-oh-five. She must not be eating food. She must just be drinking. That's the only way to do that. That's a lot of meth and coke, man. Yeah. And he said she was yelling at restaurant staff, causing cash shortages of $200 to $300 by miscalculating customer bills.

Right. He said, Oh? Right.

I've been in the mountains. I've been sleeping on the ground. I've been doing all sorts of shit in the mountains, guy. You'd be surprised how comfy a tree stump is. Come with me. She comes in smelling like she's been sleeping on Venice Beach. And David said, no, you need to get into rehab. And he said that Dawn agreed. But then two days later, she took off with some of her shit. She had a couple of suitcases and she took off.

So over the next few weeks, he received some text messages from her and they spoke on the telephone twice. In one text message, David said that Dawn said that she loved him and they needed time to work things out. And again, they asked him, why didn't you call the police? And he said, after she left a few days later, maybe a week to two weeks, I'm not exactly sure when it was, but I got a text message from her and she said, I'm OK. I'm with a friend.

And by the way, I talked to her, my wife, Dawn, on the phone. I talked to her the day I picked my daughter Jackie up from the airport. And when I spoke to Dawn on the telephone, she told me she was with a friend and needed time to herself. So why would I call the cops? So now lots of time goes by. Yeah. That was November 2009. Now we're talking about August 2010. Yeah.

Ten months later, there's been no contact from Dawn, the detective at this point. After ten months of no contact and no trace of this woman existing on Earth, he finally starts to form the opinion that Dawn might not have left her home voluntarily. I wonder where she is. Wow, this guy, he really should wear that detective sleeve strong. That's a title right there.

Sherlock Holmes would be jealous. Wow. So he and Sergeant Richard Garcia led the homicide investigation. In October 2010, Sergeant Garcia arranged for a search of David's apartment in Lomita, which, by the way, David and Kathy Galvin had recently moved out of. Oh. So it's not a search because he's letting them search. It's a search because the apartment complex doesn't give a shit. So they ended up finding bloodstains. Oh.

On the bedroom wall and bathroom floor. But the samples were too degraded for any kind of testing. So they couldn't tell DNA or anything like that. No other physical evidence is recovered from the apartment. Now, February 22nd, 2011. It's going by. Jackie is contacted by two L.A. County Sheriff's detectives as a part of the investigation. During the interview with the detectives, this is in South Carolina. They go out there to talk to her.

They did a fucking phone interview with a guy who lived two miles away. Wow. Okay. South Carolina is beautiful in February. Everybody loves it there. Everyone knows that.

So when they're talking to her, they say the detectives asked Jackie to call her dad. Basically, while they're talking to her, she admits she said, this is what my father told me. Yeah, she's a 1920 year old kid. She's not going to, you know, this is a homicide fucking interrogation. So then the detectives asked Jackie to call her dad and let him know that she talked to the police.

They did this to, as I would call it, to anger the hive a bit, basically. To kick it a little. Yeah. See that hornet's nest? Spray the hose at it once and see what happens. That's what they're doing. See if anything's inside it. Just shake it. Give it a good smack with your one hand. That's what they're doing to see if maybe he starts doing some weird shit. Yeah.

And they said, and she did that. And she said to her dad that in one call, dad, I told the police they're going to come after you. I told them everything. So that's the 22nd of February, 2011. Yeah. On the morning of February 23rd, David showed Kathy Galvin an article in the local paper, which indicated that Dawn's disappearance was now being investigated as a homicide. Yeah. So that was in there too. They wanted this, they timed this perfectly. So he would hear this from his daughter, then see this and be like, holy shit. Uh,

After reading the article, David tells Kathy he's really sorry, but Dawn's not coming back.

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Oh, he also said that it was an accident. So now he's telling her about it, too. Yeah. David and Kathy Galvin got in his car and drove them, drove to the nearby cliffs. OK, there's cliffs overlooking the ocean. David was crying as he drove and told Kathy Galvin he's going to jump off the cliffs, man. He's going to do it. Yeah.

Now, a police car began following them on purpose because this is what they were trying to do. And he tries to initiate a traffic stop. But David guns it. He floors it. Won't stop. This is L.A., sir. We're driving. We're driving. They stop at the at the cliffs now. He guns it to the cliffs.

He gets out of the car, walks to the edge of the cliff with Kathy behind him. Yeah. He apologizes to Kathy and said no one's going to believe him and they're never going to get to be together after this. He also said to tell his mother and brother that he loved them very much and then he leapt off the fucking cliff. Yeah.

jumped off a giant cliff. Holy shit. He survives the jump. He falls into the rocks. Yeah. Fucks his back. I mean, fucks himself up royally, but survives this. He's rescued by a police helicopter and taken to the hospital. Forget all that stuff you told Kathy. You can tell him yourself. Wow. Once you can regain the gift of speech, well, you can tell him anything you want.

He said, I decided I didn't want to live. I didn't want to go to prison. I did not want to take responsibility for the harm I've caused. I tried to kill myself jumping off that 80-foot cliff. He thought it was... He should do it. He thought it was sure suicide. Somehow he survived. Imagine landing and going, fuck! I'm still alive! God damn it! And I'm too fucked up to hurt myself now. And then the water came in or some shit. The wave saved him. High tide! High tide! You son of a bitch! Shit!

So following this, Sergeant Garcia executes search warrants on his new residence, which is his mother's house and the Time Cafe. No physical evidence relating to Dawn's death is recovered during those searches. However, a cadaver dog that was used for the search of the Time Cafe stopped at a shed and several other areas behind the restaurant.

But they didn't find anything. Did he keep her there, you think? They didn't find anything. We'll find out in a minute here. March, we know exactly what he did with her. March 1st, 2011, the cops come to his hospital bed to talk to him. Wakey, wakey, yeah. Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey, fucker, let's do this.

He made the following statements here. He said on October 18, 2009, Dawn wanted to use cocaine with David. He said, you tried to get me to do some lines. He agreed, but he didn't like it. He said he wasn't into coke. And some people don't like it. And I can sympathize with that because I'm one of them.

Do you ever over it? No, I don't. I go, oh, God, I don't ever want to do this again. Why'd you give me that? I'm going to saw your head off. I need weed now is what it is. Later that night, David got violent, he said, quote, unquote, because he had caught Dawn stealing money from the business. And when he found her with the money, he said he just snapped, quote, unquote.

He said she started the fight with him as he was trying to fall asleep after they fought about the money. He said, I came home at about 1230. Dawn still wasn't home. I assumed she'd gone to get cocaine and I really needed to sleep. I worked 90 hours that week. David said he thought he suspected Dawn would be high when she got home. So that's why he blockaded the bedroom door because he didn't want to argue with her when she's high.

He said, I go in, I take the Ambien, I move the big bureau in front of the door. She gets in. She just she just raising hell outside the door. And I keep saying the same thing over and over. I keep telling her and I keep telling her either go spend the night somewhere else or you're not or something because you're not staying here because I can tell I'm going to jail any minute for this domestic violence.

He's like, I'm going to hit you if you don't leave. Yeah, he kept talking like this while I tried to sleep. He said, and up until this point, I haven't seen her or laid a hand on her. So I lay back down and the Ambien kicks my ass. I got real lightheaded on these things. So I'm laying there and the next thing I know, she's all over me and she's got the light in my face calling me all kinds of mean names and stuff. Oh, not mean names and stuff. Yeah.

The ambient man. Not that. Yeah. 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. And then I get up. I grab her right by the hand, both hands, and I bring her out to the living room and I go ahead and I force her onto the floor and I wrap her hands up real quick, 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 I said, that was it. I said, good night. And I walked away. So he placed duct tape around her. First of all, he had easily accessible duct tape to be able to pull off lungs. Like, seems like you had a plan when you left the bedroom there. He said that she didn't cry, scream, or even resist as he restrained her. And he said he didn't recall seeing any blood or anything. He said he woke up the next morning and she was dead.

He said she was dead. He said he panicked and he placed her body in a plastic garbage bag and brought her to work, to the restaurant. Yeah. He said, for some reason, I just got violent. It seemed like it had to do with her stealing money. So you found her with the money and you snapped? And he said, yes.

He said, and I go out there and I wake her up and I find her and her body was cold and hard. She was dead. And oh, my God, I couldn't believe it. Oh, my God, I was just numb.

He said, I walked around. I said, you need to think about this. This doesn't look good. Yeah, no, it doesn't look good. Your dead wife? No. Your dead wife who you duct taped fucking in a restrained way on the living room floor. It looks real bad. And you're giving an account that is incredibly nonviolent and then saying, I got violent. What the fuck? What'd you do, man? Tying someone up with duct tape is pretty violent.

Is it? I don't know. Fuck yeah. If someone tackled you and tied your hands and feet and mouth with duct tape, you'd go, why are you being violent? Why are you doing this to me? This is how violent crime starts. I don't like it. I'm not a fan. Yeah, I wasn't bleeding when they did it to me and when they duct taped me and stuck me. It was frightening. Yeah. It's incredibly violent. It seems violent. Yeah.

So he said, you're going to be in trouble. And so they asked him, let's be clear. Did you mean to kill her that night? He said, absolutely not. They said, did you have homicide in your heart, Mr. Vines? Homicide in your heart. He said, no, I just wanted to sleep. I just wanted to calm the situation down so we could deal with it in the morning. I'll just duct tape her until I'm ready to wake up. He said he initially put her body in the closet and later in a garbage bag. And then he placed that garbage bag in a dumpster behind the restaurant.

Yeah, that dog's chasing him. He said, yeah, he had to. He said, this wasn't new. I have duct taped her before and this didn't happen. I said, what? You did what now? He said, I did it before because I didn't want her driving around wasted, whacked out on Coke and drinking. He's like, she was out of control and she was trying to go back out for more Coke and she was all drunk and wasted. And I was like, no, it's dangerous. Duct taped her to a chair. Duct taped her to a fucking chair. Like walking in Suicide Kings.

So later that day, he says he triple bagged Dawn's body, put it in his car, drove to the restaurant. That's when he spotted a garbage truck. He said, I picked the bags up and I put them in the dumpster. And I went back there, washed my hands and thought to myself, you're going to hell, David.

No shit, man. Now, that's not what actually happened, though. No. The first part might be, but the disposal is not it. What? And searching, there's a way they can search where that dumpster ended up getting dumped and all that kind of thing. They can't find her. The grid that they put it in the lunch. Yeah. They come back and go, hey, David, about four days later. The grid's empty. Can't find her anywhere. Yeah.

And so, yeah, he said, you know, they talked about it again. He said, I worked 100 hours. I'm drinking. She's drinking, using Coke. She's doing all this. I was at the restaurant. He does his whole thing. The ambient, everything else is the same, except later on, he said, you know, he woke up and she was dead. And they said, what did you do with her?

And he said, after realizing I was dead, I came up with the idea of cleaning the grease traps in the restaurant and commingling the excess proteins in those units. What? He placed Don's body in a 55 gallon vat of boiling water and slow cooked it for four days. Four days? Four days. He slow cooked his fucking wife.

And then put her into the grease trap? And then mixed it all up together with that shit so it would get dumped. Wow. This is die a fucking bollicle, man. Boiled her to a... Four days. To a slurry. To a slurry. Made a broth out of his wife. Yes. Oh my God. He made a... My miso wife over here is what he made. This is... A bisque of wife. Oh my Christ, man. This is terrifying. So...

I don't know what the fuck to say about this. I've never... Four days! He said he slow-cooked her for four days and then disposed of what was left in the grease pit or garbage bags because it could look like regular restaurant shit. He said, I manipulated her so the face was... The face is down. And I took 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.

So the detective, this is the first time he hears this. He said, you cooked her body for four days, which is about all you could say. What now? Okay. What the fuck did you say? 96. Is that right? 96 hours. He said, I cooked her for four days. I let her cool. I strained it out. I mixed her in with some of the other shit. Some of the other shit. That's his exact quote. When you put an exact quote in it, it really makes it much crazier, doesn't it? Ha! Ha!

See what I'm saying? Unbelievable. Mixed it up with some other shit. Then he told detectives that he hit his wife's skull and jawbone because they wouldn't break down for safekeeping in his mother's attic in Torrance. Stop it. So he said, that's the only thing I didn't want to get rid of in case I wanted to leave it somewhere. Like in case to set up what she's ran away. He can go up in the mountains and just leave it there.

He said, yeah, he mixed her remains up with grease and other debris from the restaurant, placed them in large garbage bags inside the dumpster. The only body part was the skull that he didn't get rid of. They said he appeared to be in pain during the interview but didn't show signs of being overly medicated or confused or anything. So following the interview, they do a search of the attic in the mother's house, but they can't find her skull. How deep is it? And they never do find her skull, ever. They never find her skull. He lies.

Where the fuck did he put it? Why would he say it's in his mother's attic if it's not there? It's crazy. It's a good point. They're going to look for it. And you just told them you boiled your wife for four days. What are we doing here? Are we trying to save face now? Like, what's the shocking part, man? I think it's over, bro. Whatever you did, you could say it now because you told them you boiled your wife for four days. So the trial, he's obviously charged with murder here. They didn't go, well, it was an accident. I mean, everybody duct tapes their wife. You know, that happens.

So the prosecutors say he killed his wife in a fit of rage over missing money. They said, in this case, you're going to learn about a once happy couple, a couple who had hopes and dreams and used their efforts to build a future. The evidence in this case will reveal to you just how tragic a once hopeful relationship can turn.

Now, he's in a wheelchair in court, by the way, because he's all fucking messed up. Sure. He pleads not guilty, says he didn't try to kill his wife intentionally. But during the trial, he told the judge that he would not be taking the stand in his own defense as well. So now what is their defense? Because he's admitted to everything. What can the defense possibly be?

Well, one guy here, a chef who had worked with him, he said he met – this is the guy who he met for the job that night. He said that they talked to him and he said that he spoke briefly with Vines and another man, which is Dickie Staggs there, but he couldn't recall their conversation. He said he didn't remember Vines making any statements about Dawn. Later that night, this guy said they left the Time Cafe, went to a couple bars where they drank. They returned to the cafe, then went their separate ways.

That's his testimony. So they were like, what was he doing that night? So the detective who talks about Karen Patterson, he talked to her in November 2009, and he said he could not recall Patterson's exact words during the interview, but her report indicated that Patterson said that she had seen Dawn strike David in the past. So their defense is Dawn's hit him, so he can boil her for four days and that's fine. Yeah.

Unbelievable. She didn't mention in the interview that she had seen bruises on Dawn's neck or that Dawn had told her that David had previously choked her. So she does not – didn't say that in the initial interview. She did say in the initial interview Dawn had hit David, but not the other way around. But later on, she said that David – She switches it. Yeah, she switches it. So I don't know if she switches it or just adds to it or what, but –

Karen, I want to say she's lying. I don't know that. So Patterson also said that she didn't not mention that David had said good riddance in reference to Dawn, which you think he would have said she would have mentioned that to the cops in the first place.

The detective who also interviewed Stagnito in December said Stagnito did not disclose in the interview that David said, I'll kill that bitch when talking about Dawn or had made any statements about Dawn stealing. So all this came later. None of the people said that shit at the time, which is strange. So his main defense is Ambien. Fucking Ambien. All whacked out. Why does everybody? All right.

I mean, I get it fucks you up and you makes you sleepwalk and shit, but it's a very common defense in these cases. It is. It's a really powerful substance. I mean, it is a drug, but at the same time, I can't say I did a bunch of fucking coke and then killed somebody. So that's an excuse. Like, I don't know why that's an excuse.

So Dr. Marvin Piotruska was a forensic toxologist and pathologist. He testified the drug Ambien could create significant confused states in which the user might not be aware of his or her surroundings and might have a problem with alertness. None of that says you would murder somebody by accident, though. Other potential side effects include drowsiness, lightheadedness, fatigue, delusion, hallucination, tremors, and irritability. That sounds great. Sign me up for a bunch of that.

Alcohol use while taking Ambien could aggravate the side effects and could cause the user to become irrational, experience memory loss, or develop delusions such as seeing or hearing things that aren't there. They reviewed David's medical records from March 2011 when he was hospitalized. He had been prescribed lorazepam, hydrocodone, morphine, and Benadryl. Lots of lay down shit. Yeah, lots of get tired. Well, I guess in the hospital if you're all fucked up. Yeah, that's what you'd want.

So that's really his only defense is I took Ambien because they play his whole confession in court. So the jury hears him say, I boiled my wife. I did it for four days. Rendered her. Yeah. It's not a detective testifying that he said it is his voice with him sitting there in a wheelchair. It looks terrible.

If you're a juror and they're playing it and you're listening to it, then you look over at him and you're like, that voice comes out of that fucking head. Yeah. And that guy's got to go shadow of a doubt. Come on. Yeah. Give me a fucking break here. So the verdict comes in. The trial court instructs the jury on first and second degree murder, voluntary manslaughter and excusable manslaughter, excusable homicide, but refused the defense request to instruct the jury on involuntary manslaughter.

As at the prosecution's request, the trial court gave a special pinpoint instruction to that verbal provocation was insufficient to reduce an intentional homicide to manslaughter. Can't just talk shit to somebody and then it's OK. The jurors come in. They find him guilty, obviously, of second degree murder.

Yeah, we can't prove that it was premeditated. Yeah, although he had duct tape. Where did he get duct tape? You have to go into your junk drawer to get duct tape. He said cleared packing tape. That's not even duct tape. That's way higher on the shelf. That's in the closet waiting for Christmas. Waiting for the Christmas presents to come around. That's in the closet waiting for the lease to be up. Yeah, to move. Yeah. Yeah.

It's not duct tape. That's way further back. So sentencing comes in. You, sir, may fuck off. Court sentences him to 15 years to life in state prison. Okay. Because it's second degree murder. That's the guidelines there. So in 2014, he appeals from what he says is insufficient evidence, which is...

The craziest thing ever. Yeah. They just hit play and they're like, sounds pretty sufficient to me to appeal denied. Fuck off. Come on, man. Then in 2021, he's going to appeal again on a minor technicality and that gets thrown out too. In 2021, he's up for parole already.

Press play. What the fuck? Yeah. That's nuts. He's 58 at this point. Too young. Way too young. Yeah, we need you to calm down a lot. Yeah. A lot. I mean, I get it. Your legs probably don't work real well, but still, calm down. Old men can boil water. I don't like this. Nope. He had a six-hour hearing. Six hours they had to talk to this fucking guy for. He had to provide a detailed account of how he killed his wife in a jealous rage. Wow.

He said he also backpedaled, though, on his 2011 confession that he boiled her corpse for four days and a 55 five gallon drum and instead called the story outlandish. Dog, you did it and you said it.

Fuck are you talking about, man? That's a giant pot, man. Wow. He said, I'm so sorry for what I've done. I regret it. I will live with it forever. He said, I don't expect your forgiveness. There is no justification for this ugly crime I committed. I was selfish, cruel, and cowardly. He said that to Dawn's siblings. Okay. Asked by one of the board members what he would say to Dawn. Yeah.

He said, quote, I'm just so sorry. My God, I'm sorry I didn't treat you better. I'm sorry that I murdered you. That's a good... I'm sorry that I murdered you. And I'm sorry I told people I mixed what was left with some other shit. Some other shit. Just so cold. My wife's remains are, quote, some other shit.

He said, I'm sorry I didn't listen to you, didn't appreciate you, didn't get help. I'm going to live the rest of my life in regret, remorseful for what I've done. It was horrible.

Him and his attorney provide positive reports showing he had attended Alcoholics Anonymous and other counseling programs. He was working toward a bachelor's degree while jailed at the substance abuse treatment facility at the state prison in Corcoran. He said, I lived after jumping off that cliff for some reason. It was a pivotal moment. I guess so. Yeah.

I really worked hard at becoming a better person. I see myself being in service to others. I'd like to become a certified counselor in anger management that specializes in domestic violence. Take it from me, man. You don't want to hurt her. No, trust me. Check out my legs and I'm in prison. It's bad.

The commissioner, Maria Gutierrez, took less than a half hour to come back and tell him, get the fuck out of here, white boiler. Ain't happening, chief. No, we're going to hang on to you for a bit here. There's nothing left of her. Nope. He's still in prison. Yeah.

There you go. That is one of the craziest. Unbelievable. He made a fucking stew out of her. Wow. A stew slurry. That is horrific. Horrible. Fucking my wife, the bouillabaisse is not what you want. Unbelievable.

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