David Viens, chef who boiled his wife, convicted of 2nd-degree murder (VIDEO)

A jury found David Viens, the chef who told police he boiled his wife for four days after she died to hide evidence, guilty of second-degree murder on Thursday.

The 49-year-old Lomita, California man admitted to police he boiled her body and dumped what was left with other restaurant waste before hiding her skull in her mother’s attic.

Dawn Viens, 39, disappeared in 2009.

“He treated her like a piece of meat and got rid of her,” friend Karen Patterson told The Associated Press.

A judge is to sentence Viens on November 27; he faces 15 years in jail.

Police had charged him with first-degree murder.

The six-man, six-woman jury deliberated for three days before reaching the verdict, NBC Los Angeles said.

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Viens said he argued with his wife about missing money, restraining her with duct tape only to find her dead the next morning.

He panicked and tried to dispose of the body.

Dawn Viens’s remains were never found.

“I took some, some things like weights that we use and I put them on the top of her body, and I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days,” Viens told police, according to evidence presented in court.

When he learned police wanted him in connection with the disappearance, Viens jumped from an 80-foot cliff last February, AFP reported.

He attended his trial in a wheelchair.

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