Shocker in the Dawn Viens Missing Person's Case

by Cathy Scott

As promised by Los Angeles County Sheriff's Lt. Dave Coleman in 2011, detectives planned to talk at length with David Viens, who has long been suspected of killing his missing wife, Dawn.

Investigators did more than that. They interviewed David Viens' daughter, from an earlier relationship, about the goings-on immediately after Dawn disappeared in 2009 from the quaint village of Lomita, California.

In 2011, investigators jack-hammered and tore down interior walls of the Thyme Café, owned by Dawn and David Viens. Deputies also used a cadaver-sniffing dog.

They were on the right track. This week, the sheriff's department announced a shocking revelation gleaned from interviews with the daughter and the confession of her father. It is this: David Viens told police he "slow cooked" his wife's body for four days in a brand-new cooker he'd purchased for the cafe. He then hid her skull and jaw in his mother's attic.

David had been having an affair with a younger woman and, a week after Dawn's disappearance, witnesses saw him tossing out Dawn's clothing. Then he moved his new girlfriend into his home. On top of that, the girlfriend took over Dawn's duties at the cafe.

Dawn, who was in her late 30s, was last seen by friends on October 18, 2009 leaving her the cafe.

Not long after her disappearance, however, as law enforcement zeroed in on David, as a deputy tailed him while driving on Pacific Coast Highway, David stopped his car, ran to the cliff and jumped 80 feet to the beach below. He survived but suffered multiple fractured bones and internal injuries. After he recovered, he confessed to police and he was indicted for murder.

Meanwhile, in exchange for the daughter's damning statements about her father David and to secure her eventual testimony in court, the daughter reportedly was given immunity from prosecution. She told deputies that the day after Dawn disappeared, David Viens gave her Dawn's cell phone and asked her to pose as Dawn and send text messages to Dawn's friends and family saying she needed time for herself and would be out of town for a few days. As days turned into weeks, David became the main person of interest.

These kinds of details, albeit some of them grisly, have the makings for a true crime story. In fact, the Dawn Viens story is my next true crime book (I started the manuscript late last year). You can't make this stuff up.

Read More

Drew Peterson's Body Language During Verdict, and Sociopathic Seduction of Women

by Dr. Lillian Glass

When we look back at the trial of serial killer  who received the death sentence, Ted Bundy, it was reported that he showed no emotion.

When we look back at the reaction of Scott Peterson who was convicted to death for killing his wife and unborn baby, we all witness that he had a mask like facial expression and showed no emotion. Now we have seen the same thing with Drew Peterson. As soon as the "guilty" verdict of was read for killing his third wife Kathleen Savio, Drew Peterson showed no emotion.

That lack of emotion is typical of a sociopath’s reaction when found guilty. They detach and tune out as though the situation had nothing to do with them. They may even joke and make light of their situation. Peterson was overheard saying, after hearing the verdict,  “I guess that ruins my Christmas.”

His joke clearly reflects that he feels no remorse for what he did.

Peterson  will be spending the rest of his natural life behind bars where like most sociopaths will insist he did nothing wrong and how it was everyone else’s fault he is in prison. This sociopath will be where he deserves to be so he can no longer seduce, marry,  and harm women who fall prey to him.

He fancies himself  as being irresistible to women. Like many sociopaths, his seductive personality  lured them in. The fact that he was a policeman and considered to be on the right side of the law, initially  made many women feel safe and secure. But once he got  them into his clutches, it was a different story.He became controlling and  abusive.

Thank goodness 24-year-old Christina Raines' father put an end to her engagement with Peterson a few years ago. Her father told the media that Peterson tried to control his daughter and use her to watch his kids.

The young woman’s father was her savior; he went to Peterson’s home with police in tow to collect his daughter, escorting them to and from he home with police units. Peterson, who was  more than twice the young woman’s age, blamed her father and the press for the breakup. In typical sociopath form, Peterson said, "This is what the media always does to me. As soon as the story got out on Chrissy, I knew it would be a problem for us.“

If you listen close enough to what a sociopath says, they often reveal themselves as  Peterson did in his "Nightline" interview years back when  Peterson said, after he was asked about Christina Raines’ family, “I’d be wary of me too.” He also  admitted  when the romance is gone in his relationships he tends to have flings and move on.

Thankfully, his comments sparked a fight between the couple, and Christina Raines returned the engagement ring and a cell phone.

Christina Raines, 24, is still alive. It's unlucky that Stacey Peterson, who is still missing,  was just 17 when the affair began while he was still married to Kathleen Savio. Kathleen was 10 years his junior when he married her. Most of the women he married or went after were  young and petite. These were women  Peterson  felt he had some control over.

I had the opportunity to  briefly see Peterson when I was at CNN. Peterson was there to do the Larry King show and was in the makeup room, where,  according to the makeup artist, he  hit on her. She told me that he stared directly into her eyes and didn't break the gaze as she applied his makeup.

Perhaps Peterson  wanted to see if he could control this curly haired, glasses-wearing,  pierced, short-statured woman with colorful and strange tattoos all over her arms, chest and neck. The eye stare was no doubt  his test to see if he could assert control over  this different-looking woman. Most likely, Peterson has played this staring game with many other women. Those who blinked, turned away, or women he sensed were intimidated  by his stare were the ones, if circumstances allowed, he probably took to the next level of seduction.

Even though Peterson will live out his years behind bars, don’t be surprised if you hear that he has landed another relationship. Unfortunately, there are emotionally disturbed women out there who are attracted to men behind bars and who feel empowered by defending them.  They have the illusion  the criminal  would never do any harm to them because they are special and they have control over the situation, which is only true  when the perpetrator is behind bars.

Little do they realize that sociopaths like Peterson will still be in control as he plays mind games with them in an engaging way with manipulation and emotional abuse, which is  typical of a sociopath like Drew Peterson.

Read More

Eerie Deaths in Thailand of 2 Sisters

Wikipedia Commons

by Deborah Blum

The Phi Phi Islands sit off the western coast of Thailand, floating like jewels in a turquoise sea, a picture-perfect image of a tropical getaway. Director Danny Boyle filmed his 2000 psychothriller, The Beach, on the largest of those islands and if you know the movie, you know, despite the gem-like setting the story ends badly.

They say, though, that the movie put the largest of the islands, Ko Phi Phi Don, on the map as a tourist getaway, a reasonably priced home to glittering beaches and unlimited partying. And that’s undoubtedly what drew two young sisters from a small Canadian village, just north of the Maine border, to travel there for a summer break from their university studies.

Noemi Belanger was 26 and her sister, Audrey, 20, when they planned the June vacation. Both sisters lived in their hometown of Pohenegamook, Quebec. Did I mention that it was small, the kind of place where people know each other, stay close? The population is about 3,000 and both girls worked for their father, Carl, in his grocery store before starting university classes. They were happy girls, friendly, residents say, involved in their community, helping out at the local library, at public beaches.

This summer, they were ready to fly a little, indulge in a splashy vacation. So they saved their money and flew to Thailand in June, went to visit the Phi Phi Islands. And there, as a flood of mid-June news stories made obvious, things went very wrong. Very, very wrong.

The stories were puzzled, horrified. A story in Canada’s National Post described a hotel maid finding the sisters dead in their room, with lesions tracked across their bodies, their fingernails and toenails turned an odd grayish blue. They were huddled in their beds, relayed the Global Post, smeared with vomit and blood.

Rumors flew of an exotic poison, of a lurking killer. Dismissive statements from the police added to the sense of mystery. “We found many kinds of over-the-counter-drugs, including ibuprofen, which can cause serious effects on the stomach,” one investigator said, sounding as if packing painkillers was the real problem. Mysterious poison deaths of tourists visiting the Phi Phi Islands were recalled: the 2009 death of a Seattle woman, still unsolved today. The similar and also unexplained death of a 22-year-old woman from Norway the same year. An odd cluster of deaths in another Thai city during winter of last year, including a 23-year-old woman from New Zealand. The conspiracy theories expanded to include the unexplained deaths of two young women in Vietnam this summer. “Is this a cover-up?” asked a letter writer in the Bangkok Post after the police went on from the ibuprofen theory to one that involved food poisoning.

And not just any food poisoning. A leak from the investigation suggested that detectives were considering the possibility that the sisters had dined – somewhere – on either poisonous mushrooms or blowfish, sometimes called pufferfish or fugu. The fishes are considered a delicacy but they must be carefully prepared to exclude any contact with the liver or other internal organs, which contain an exceptionally potent neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin.

Neither of these suggestions, though, were an ideal match for the described symptoms. Tetrodotoxin is most famous for its ability to induce a corpse-like paralysis in victims; they may remain alert but unable to move or communicate, gradually suffocating as the lungs fail. Poisonous mushrooms tend to kill by gradually destroying the liver. As quickly as the suggestion was floated it seemed to disappear, leaving the questions to further simmer over the summer.

Until last week, when a preliminary autopsy report was announced, which apparently indicated a toxic level of exposure. According to news reports, toxicologists in Thailand now believed that the two sisters had been drinking a popular local cocktail that contains Coca-Cola, cough syrup, ground up leaves from the kratom tree, and the well-known mosquito repellent DEET and is admired for its hallucinogenic qualities. In their case, apparently, too much DEET had ended up in the drink.

Or as the tourism-focused island paper, Phuket Wan, wrote following the announcement:

Phi Phi is renowed as a rites-of-passage destination for 20-somethings and it transforms from a haven for day-trippers in the sunshine to a less beguiling island party after dark. Alcohol is just one of the many ingredients that Phi Phi’s party people mix in their buckets. Each bucket is a concoction of all kinds of juices and substances that are mixed into containers of various sizes and usually sucked through straws all night long.

It’s a nicely sinister portrait of cocktails in the Phi Phi islands. Still my first reaction was a kind of “DEET, really?” skepticism. We’re not talking about anything like tetrodotoxin here; this is a compound we routinely spray all over ourselves on camping trips and summer hikes. Our Environmental Protection Agency estimates that about 30 percent of the U.S. population uses a DEET-infused product every year. Plenty of us have accidentally swallowed a little during an over-enthusiastic assault on mosquitoes without getting sick (including myself). Not that you’d want to take it by the tumbler, of course. But it’s reasonable to ask whether it would take a tumbler to kill you

The short answer, yes, pretty close to that. DEET, by the way, stands for N.N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide, which is basically chemist-code for a formula that includes the familiar elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen. It apparently works as a repellent by disrupting insect olfaction-detection systems. And an EPA analysis found that it is slightly toxic to birds, fish, and aquatic invertebrates and has”very low toxicity potential” in mammals, such as ourselves.

So, it’s not surprising that the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry reports that people have committed suicide with the repellent but only by drinking full “bottles of DEET” along with quantities of alcohol. In other words, The stories were puzzled, horrified. A story in Canada’s National Post described a hotel maid finding the sisters dead in their room, with lesions tracked across their bodies, their fingernails and toenails turned an odd grayish blue. They were huddled in their beds, relayed the Global Post, smeared with vomit and blood.

Rumors flew of an exotic poison, of a lurking killer. Dismissive statements from the police added to the sense of mystery. “We found many kinds of over-the-counter-drugs, including ibuprofen, which can cause serious effects on the stomach,” one investigator said, sounding as if packing painkillers was the real problem. Mysterious poison deaths of tourists visiting the Phi Phi Islands were recalled the 2009 death of a Seattle woman still unsolved today, and the similar and also unexplained death of a 22-year-old woman from Norway the same year. An odd cluster of deaths in another Thai city during winter of last year, including a 23-year-old woman from New Zealand. The conspiracy theories expanded to include the unexplained deaths of two young women in Vietnam this summer. “Is this a cover-up?” asked a letter writer in the Bangkok Post after the police went on from the ibuprofen theory to one that involved food poisoning.

And not just any food poisoning. A leak from the investigation suggested that detectives were considering the possibility that the sisters had dined – somewhere – on either poisonous mushrooms or blowfish, sometimes called pufferfish or fugu. The fishes are considered a delicacy but they must be carefully prepared to exclude any contact with the liver or other internal organs, which contain an exceptionally potent neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin.

Neither of these suggestions, though, were an ideal match for the described symptoms. Tetrodotoxin is most famous for its ability to induce a corpse-like paralysis in victims; they may remain alert but unable to move or communicate, gradually suffocating as the lungs fail. Poisonous mushrooms tend to kill by gradually destroying the liver. As quickly as the suggestion was floated it seemed to disappear, leaving the questions to further simmer over the summer.

Until last week, when a preliminary autopsy report was announced, which apparently indicated a toxic level of exposure. According to news reports, toxicologists in Thailand now believed that the two sisters had been drinking a popular local cocktail that contains Coca-Cola, cough syrup, ground up leaves from the kratom tree, and the well-known mosquito repellent DEET and is admired for its hallucinogenic qualities. In their case, apparently, too much DEET had ended up in the drink.

Or as the tourism-focused island paper, Phuket Wan, wrote following the announcement:

Phi Phi is renowed as a rites-of-passage destination for 20-somethings and it transforms from a haven for day-trippers in the sunshine to a less beguiling island party after dark.

Alcohol is just one of the many ingredients that Phi Phi’s party people mix in their buckets.

Each bucket is a concoction of all kinds of juices and substances that are mixed into containers of various sizes and usually sucked through straws all night long.

It’s a nicely sinister portrait of cocktails in the Phi Phi islands. Still my first reaction was a kind of “DEET, really?” skepticism. We’re not talking about anything like tetrodotoxin here; this is a compound we routinely spray all over ourselves on camping trips and summer hikes. Our Environmental Protection Agency estimates that about 30 percent of the U.S. population uses a DEET-infused product every year. Plenty of us have accidentally swallowed a little during an over-enthusiastic assault on mosquitoes without getting sick (including myself). Not that you’d want to take it by the tumbler, of course. But it’s reasonable to ask whether it would take a tumbler to kill you

The short answer, yes, pretty close to that. DEET, by the way, stands for N.N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide, which is basically chemist-code for a formula that includes the familiar elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen. It apparently works as a repellent by disrupting insect olfaction-detection systems. And an EPA analysis found that it is slightly toxic to birds, fish, and aquatic invertebrates and has”very low toxicity potential” in mammals, such as ourselves.

So, it’s not surprising that the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry reports that people have committed suicide with the repellent but only by drinking full “bottles of DEET” along with quantities of alcohol. In other words, evidence is that it would take that tumbler full to kill you. I also looked at the other ingredients in the suspect cocktail, except for the Coca-Cola (which hasn’t contained cocaine for more than a century). The codeine in cough syrup could, in a high enough amount, add to a sleepy buzz. And kratom – while known to be hallucinogenic – can also bring on a numbing lethargy in too high a dose. It is generally, though, considered to be most risky for its addictive qualities than for its acute toxicity issues.

Which brings us back to the DEET theory of death. And that requires someone to pour a ridiculously large quantity of this pale yellowish liquid into a drink served to two sisters from Canada. Could someone be that careless? Sure, especially if they were enjoying the island brew themselves. Still, only the Belanger sisters died after that night on the beach; under this theory only one over-toxic cocktail was served. And that does raise a few other questions. For instance, why – as you may have noticed from my fatality list – is it mostly young women who are dying of mysterious chemical poisonings in a tropical paradise?

Even Phuket Wan (which seems remarkably tough-minded for a publication focused on tourism) seems unconvinced by the mosquito repellent hypothesis, noting that it would be unusual for only two people to be poisoned by a shared bucket drink.

Could it be a cover up, the paper asked, for a heavy-handed use of insecticide in the sisters’ room? Insecticides have been suspected in some of the other deaths. Could it be that island authorities were trying to hide the existence of a killer who was deliberately spiking drinks? Or, slightly less creepily, that the women had been killed by excessive use of insecticides by hotel management and that authorities were moving to protect reputations? “All options remain open,” the paper warned, until the authorities produce evidence of a much more meticulous investigation.

And, yes, you’ll find me in the “options remain open” camp as well. It may well be that this is as simple as it sounds, two trusting travelers from rural Canada drinking an untrustworthy bar drink.

Still, at the moment, if I felt a sudden urge to go party in the Phi Phi islands, you would find me insisting on a nicely capped container – and, I think, opening that bottle myself. Which, frankly, makes good sense -- most of the time anyway.

evidence is that it would take that tumbler full to kill you. I also looked at the other ingredients in the suspect cocktail, except for the Coca-Cola (which hasn’t contained cocaine for more than a century). The codeine in cough syrup could, in a high enough amount, add to a sleepy buzz. And kratom – while known to be hallucinogenic – can also bring on a numbing lethargy in too high a dose. It is generally, though, considered to be most risky for its addictive qualities than for its acute toxicity issues.

Which brings us back to the DEET theory of death. And that requires someone to pour a ridiculously large quantity of this pale yellowish liquid into a drink served to two sisters from Canada. Could someone be that careless? Sure, especially if they were enjoying the island brew themselves. Still, only the Belanger sisters died after that night on the beach; under this theory only one over-toxic cocktail was served. And that does raise a few other questions. For instance, why – as you may have noticed from my fatality list – is it mostly young women who are dying of mysterious chemical poisonings in a tropical paradise?

Even Phuket Wan (which seems remarkably tough-minded for a publication focused on tourism) seems unconvinced by the mosquito repellent hypothesis, noting that it would be unusual for only two people to be poisoned by a shared bucket drink.

Could it be a cover up, the paper asked, for a heavy-handed use of insecticide in the sisters’ room? Insecticides have been suspected in some of the other deaths. Could it be that island authorities were trying to hide the existence of a killer who was deliberately spiking drinks? Or, slightly less creepily, that the women had been killed by excessive use of insecticides by hotel management and that authorities were moving to protect reputations? “All options remain open,” the paper warned, until the authorities produce evidence of a much more meticulous investigation.

And, yes, you’ll find me in the “options remain open” camp as well. It may well be that this is as simple as it sounds, two trusting travelers from rural Canada drinking an untrustworthy bar drink.

Still, at the moment, if I felt a sudden urge to party in the Phi Phi islands, you would find me insisting on a nicely capped container – and, I think, opening that bottle myself. Which, frankly, makes good sense -- most of the time anyway.

Read More