One of the attackers later pleaded guilty to the assault and testified that Sconce paid him to do it, but theres no record of him explaining what the hell kind of message he was trying to send with the jalapeno sauce. For many, cremation was becoming a cheaper and more attractive option. David Sconce had not been raised in the funeral business. In 1990, while Sconce was still in prison, new charges were brought against him for Waterss death, but the case was ultimately dismissed after three separate toxicologists, including Dr. Fredric Riederswho later testified in the O. J. Simpson casecould not agree if there was oleander poison in Waterss blood. Sconce was involved in the. Desperate for a job after leaving school, David found work as a dealer in a casino and as an usher at a hockey stadium. He liked to attend hockey games with a bunch of beefy, ex-football players that he called his boys. Sconces boys testified that they listened to his boasts, ran his errands and roughed up his enemies. In May 1988, a pile of charred bones, teeth, and prosthetic devices was found in the crawl space beneath David Sconces former rental home in Glendora, where he had lived until early 1987. David Sconce secretly set up a new crematorium about 70 miles away in a warehouse in Hesperia, California. David didnt last long in college, dropped out after his teams losing streak started hurting his prospects. Instead, the ashes were scattered in a vacant lot in the foothills. He had even tried to enlist in the police academy, but failed to get in when the vision test showed him to be colorblind. At the warehouse, the soles of their shoes stuck to floors slick with human fluids, and when they pried open one of the hinged doors of Sconces kilns, the remains of a human foot fell out, engulfed in flames. Presents an account of the gruesome crimes committed by the Lamb Funeral Home, describing how David, Jerry, and Laurieanne Sconce were involved in such crimes as mutilation of corpses and murder Print length 364 pages Language English Publisher St Martins Pr Publication date January 1, 1992 Dimensions 4.5 x 1.25 x 7 inches ISBN-10 0312928203 The previous owner, Frank Strunk, who lived on the premises in Los Angeles, drove them off by shouting that he had a gun, he said. Sconce operated the Lamb Funeral Home with his wife, Laurieanne Lamb Sconce. Good evening, and welcome to another episode of Lawyers & Liquor Presents Freaky Friday. Area. A Ghoul is defined by Websters dictionary as a legendary evil being that robs graves and feeds on corpses. David Sconce certainly fit that definition. They wanted the Laurieanne Lamb to make sure they were laid to rest peacefully. The tissue harvesting itself was, unsurprisingly, not handled delicately. He had to operate the new business under the license of a ceramics factory, because that's what the massive diesel fueled kilns he was using were designed for. We would like to just close it., Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Desperate mountain residents trapped by snow beg for help; We are coming, sheriff says, Hidden, illegal casinos are booming in L.A., with organized crime reaping big profits, Look up: The 32 most spectacular ceilings in Los Angeles, Elliott: Kings use their heads over hearts in trading Jonathan Quick, Newsom, IRS give Californians until October to file tax returns, This fabled orchid breeder loves to chat just not about Trader Joes orchids. Literally flames and whatnot would be coming out of their chimney, says Jay Brown, whose familys mortuary was next to the Lamb crematory. The cost benefit for Coastal Cremations came with the sheer number of bodies Sconce intended to burn: he would keep the fires going all day, planning to burn multiple bodies at once, sometimes five or six at a timea misdemeanor in the state of California. It is used, but in great shape. Compromise is the language of the devil, Bruce Lamb said. Coke was originally supposed to make you smarter or something. The Sconces were arrested on numerous charges relating to forgery of donor consent forms, removal of organs and body parts from the dead and selling them to organ banks and for scientific research, removal of gold dental fillings, and theft of funds from trust accounts. Wales had received a call from a neighbor, a veteran of World War II, who complained about the smell of the smoke coming out of the factory. David Wayne Sconce made headlines in the late 1980s when he pleaded guilty to the gruesome charges of commingling bodies and taking gold from the dead. David Sconce secretly set up a new crematorium about 70 miles away in a warehouse in Hesperia, California. She thought it was crucial to look your best when you met your maker. In July of 1986, David (along with his parents) created a new side business: Coastal International Eye and Tissue Bank. Twenty percent of them.. The floors were laid with new wood and a kitchen was added, with white granite countertops, a subzero fridge, and a wine cooler. The autopsy report found traces of the heart medication digoxin in his bloodstream, only Waters was not on any heart medication. How in the world did David Sconce manage to get away with this for so long? He knew what Sconce was up to with his cremation racket, and threatened to out him in the industry newsletter, Mortuary Management, which was run by a fellow mortician, Ron Hast, and published local gossip and stories about the latest trends in the funeral business. Theyre dead.. At 300 pounds, the 24-year-old was considered morbidly obese. She loved funeral work, especially the task of beautifying the dead: applying makeup to the waxen skin of the embalmed. Oh, they had always existed in one form or another, dating back really to prehistoric times, but mainly people wanted to bury their loved ones, not burn them. In May 1988, David Sconce, Jerry Sconce, and Laurieanne Lamb Sconce were together charged with 67 felony and misdemeanor counts, including, the Los Angeles Times reported, illegally harvesting eyes, hearts, lungs, and brains for sale to a scientific supply company, conducting mass cremations, falsifying death certificates, and embezzling funeral trust account funds. David was also charged separately with assaulting three morticians who voiced suspicions about the familys cremation operation.. Two months later, after spending Easter ill in bed at his mothers house in Camarillo, Waters died of what was assumed to be a heart attack. In March of 1985, Careless Whisper by George Michael was a Billboard hit single. Harvested hearts, eyes, and brains were then sold on the black market for up to $95 a pop. Although he was caught, he avoided jail after leading police to the stolen equipment. And then his employees broke the record, fitting 38 bodies in a single ovenbreaking the leg of one, blocking the chimney, and setting the premises aflame. This month, we have a real treat for you, a home cooked meal if you wish, arising from the curious case of Pasadena Californias Lamb Funeral Home and its erstwhile owner, David Sconce, whose attempts to make it exceedingly clear You cant take it with you led to a massive reform of the California mortuary laws and regulations. They anointed their boss with a grandiose nickname: Little Hitler.. The three bedrooms available for rent in the former funeral home were given walk-in closets, and the master bedroom outfitted with a freestanding soaking tub. As the story goes, Nimz opened the door to two large men posing as policemen who sprayed him in the eyes with a mixture of jalapeo juice and ammonia; they hoped to blind him, so they could beat him up without being identified. The drawing room chapel of his Spanish mission-style building was filled with comfortable sofas and arm chairs. Fantastic. Lawyers & Liquor is run out of my pocket, so every bit helps me do shit. Gill said the state investigator in Southern California was suspicious of the Sconce crematory and began trying to find out how the cremations were being done. The Lamb Family Funeral Home still stands on the corner of Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena. (And lest you think stuff like this was confined to the barbaric past, uh, we have bad news. 7 years ago. Every person should get the burial they want, so money can be raised online to help with this. The first crematorium in the United States was built in 1876 in Pennsylvania. The scandal that surrounded David Sconce back in the late 1980s has all of the hallmarks of a riveting true crime story: greed, corruption, theft, fraud, murder, strange plot twists, all centered around a fourth-generation family business. 7 years ago. His dad, Jerry, had played for the University of California, Santa Barbara, and later became the head coach at Azusa Pacific College, where David enrolled in 1974. California passed new laws (and may have inspired other states to follow suit) that expanded the resources for state inspectors and authorized them to be able to inspect these facilities on demand. One of Sconces boys would later testify in court that Sconce had bragged to him about putting something in Waterss drink in a restaurant, leading the state to charge Sconce with the poisoning in 1990. Up to 100 bodies would lie in the mortuarys cold room awaiting transportation to the crematory, where David used a wood 2-by-4 to pack them into the ovens like cordwood, according to witnesses at the Sconces preliminary hearing, which ended earlier this year. He decorated the interior with couches, chairs, and various other accoutrements to make mourners feel comfortable. The $15.5 million suit in 1991 involved 20,000 relatives of people cremated at the funeral home. His company, Coastal Cremations Inc., would advertise itself to funeral homes in Los Angeles that didnt have access to a crematorium. When Assistant Fire Chief Will Wentworth went to investigate the facility, he found everything inside covered in soot, and trash cans filled to the brim with ashes and prosthetic devices. By 1913, when the Cremation Association of America was founded, there were 52 crematoriums across the nation, including the Pasadena Crematorium, which would later be purchased by the Lamb family. They were, for lack of a better term, working in bulk. When Dan Fritschie isnt reminding everyone that monsters still exist in this world, he can occasionally be seen performing stand-up comedy somewhere. No matter how weird you think a story about the funeral business could be, prepare to be surprised and pretty grossed out. . . Cue dramatic organ music. . Im certain that he used his good looks to sort of offset any suspicion about what he was up to., In addition to his effective salesmanship, David Sconce was also ruthless and intimidating. SCONIERS FUNERAL HOME - Columbus Send Flowers Publish an Obituary In any newspaper and Legacy.com (706) 322-0011 836 5TH AVE, Columbus, Georgia , 31901 Visit the Funeral Home's Website. Cindy testified she worked for her father, Frank Strunk, at his business, the Cremation Society of California (CSC). In one case, according to prosecutors, survivors were prevented from viewing their loved ones body because the eyes had already been taken. It all began with the Lamb Family Funeral Home, a decades-old business that serviced its clientele from a gracious Spanish Revival building on busy Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena, bounded by a strip mall on one side and a residential neighborhood on the other. 8 pages of shocking photographs. His daughter Laurieanne Lamb Sconce began assuming control in the mid-'70s. Due to various plea deals, Sconce would ultimately serve only two and a half years of his sentence. Price . Perhaps David Sconces most effective legacy in the funeral industry is being the boogeyman; the kind of monster that no funeral home director would ever want to be compared to. In the winter of 2018, the owners saw an opportunity for the second floor of the building. The Lamb Funeral Home was the essence of an old-style mortuary, operated by a family that was the All-American stuff of advertising copy. Charles F. Lamb, then-president of the California Funeral Directors Association, oversaw the building of the structure in 1929. But he was denied entrance to the Altadena facility because he did not have a search warrant. Traditionally, Cemetery Board investigators have spent more time looking at audits than on enforcement, Gill said. As the director of the funeral home, Laurieanne was the first person to greet guests with a box of tissues and a comforting lilt. Los Angeles, 17 things to do in Santa Cruz, the old-school beach town that makes for a charming getaway, 12 reasons why Sycamore Avenue is L.A.s coolest new hangout, K-Pop isnt the only hot ticket in Koreatown how trot is captivating immigrants, Los Angeles is suddenly awash in waterfalls, Officials admit being unprepared for epic mountain blizzard, leaving many trapped and desperate, This is me, this is my face: Actress Mimi Rogers on aging naturally, without cosmetic surgery, The Week in Photos: California exits pandemic emergency amid a winter landscape. Homes for rent: Nadezhda Sofia City - 0 listings. A handwriting expert hired by the Los Angeles County district attorneys office said Laurieanne Sconce had signed the names of survivors on some of the forms permitting organ removal; it is a felony to take organs without permission. Last week, prosecutors filed two new charges against David Sconce, accusing him of soliciting the murder of Elie Estephan, owner of the Cremation Society of California. David Sconces 1989 trial resulted in a five-year prison term for mutilating corpses, conducting mass cremations, and having his employees rough up three rival morticians. That was a great step towards preventing another disaster like this from ever happening again, or at the very least ensuring it would be detected long before it could even remotely get this bad. Sconce would arrange to pick up a body, transfer it to the Lamb familys crematorium in Altadena, wait the two hours it took to cremate a single bodyone hour to burn, one hour to cool the ovenand bring the ashes back to the funeral home. David, however, was aware that there was a lucrative, and underserved, market for human organs for research and educational purposesand the form signed by family members would only need a little re-working to authorize their removal without explicitly informing a bereaved family that anything other than a pacemaker would be removed. The impact David Sconce left on the funeral business is still being felt today. A polite, articulate man with penetrating blue eyes, David Sconce complained in the jailhouse interview that the case against him and his family was trumped up by prosecutors and funeral industry bigwigs, people with big places, expensive caskets, who want to squash innovators. This Guy Might Be Up To Something). David ultimately served only two-and-a-half years of his sentence and was released in 1991. He also pleaded guilty to soliciting a hit man to murder another rival, and was given the bizarre sentence of lifetime probation, a legal ruling many scholars might refer to as a pretty valid argument for burning this goddamn place to the ground.. At the Lamb Family Funeral Home, Laurieanne was the kindly, motherly face of Davids morbid scheme. The embalming business boomed. In the 1960s only 10% of all bodies were cremated, but by the 1980s it had become a big business, with nearly half of all deceased relatives being barbecued and placed into an urn. In the outcome, Sconce and his parents were arrested and tried for their crimes. In February of 1985, Sconce sent another one of his thugs, this time an 245-pound ex-football player, to beat up a rival crematorium owner Timothy Waters, who had been threatening to spill allof the tea on Sconces operation. But what really sets this story apart is the thousands of dead bodies involved. About Us. At the time Mitfords book was first published, the average bill from an undertaker was $750 ($6,300 today); by 1991, when the book was updated and revised, the cost had risen to $7,800 (now $14,500). In 1994, he was found guilty of selling fake bus tickets in Arizona. In 1974, as a freshman planning to major in business, he robbed a former girlfriends house twicethe second time on Christmas Eve, while she was at church with her familyas revenge for breaking up with him. And Sconce would charge the funeral homes the low, low price of $55 per body, half of what his competitors offered. The case involves the Lamb Funeral Home, was founded in 1929 by Mrs. Sconce's grandfather; Coastal Cremations Inc., of which David Sconce was president, and Coastal International Eye and Tissue Bank. While family friends blame David Sconce for the scandal, employees at the preliminary hearing also implicated his parents--who are free pending trial on several dozen counts--in the operation of the tissue bank. In 1997, Sconce pleaded guilty to a 1989 charge of soliciting a hit man to murder a potential buyer of a rival funeral home, and was given the unusual sentence of lifetime probation in California. But, as if the organ theft and filling sales werent enough, there was yet another black mark to discuss. It was time for him to learn a trade, they believed, and what better business than that of the dead? When Hesperia, California assistant fire chief received a call in January 1987 from a man complaining about noxious smoke pouring from a neighboring industrial building, he scoffed at the mans accusation that the smoke smelled like burning flesh. There was no information about how much more money they had made selling parts on the black market, because people in those circles arent that keen on paper trails. What curse was placed on the O'Brien family that would give them a son with a webbed foot? After Sconce took what he wanted from cadavers, he overloaded the old Altadena crematorium, whose stone, single-body retorts had been built at the turn of the century. This is probably the worst scandal Ive ever seen, or that I could ever imagine, said John W. Gill, executive officer of Californias Cemetery Board. A crowbar cracked open sternums in order to access organs. Los Angeles in the 1980s was a lush, neon, dusty city. Featured on ABC-TV's Nightline. But he recalled that on the night the business was transferred to him, several people broke into the offices. But the heirs to the fourth-generation funeral empire betrayed that trust with a series of gruesome crimes against the dead. On Feb. 12, 1985, Waters was bloodied by Danny Galambos, a 245-pound ex-football player who carried business cards reading Big Men Unlimited. Galambos, who eventually pleaded guilty to assault, testified that David Sconce told him to make it look like a robbery, so he also stole Waters jewelry. For sixty years, families in Southern California trusted the Sconce-owned Lamb Funeral Home with their loved ones' remains. Dont tell me theyre not burning bodies. It was designed to be elegant but comfortable, filled with sofas and armchairs. The Lamb Funeral Home was the essence of an old-style mortuary, operated by a family that was the All-American stuff of advertising copy. The license was sacrificed in the 1990s, and the building in which such desecrations took place still stands empty in Pasadena, the furnaces forever silent. I could see smoke from a mile and a half away.. But thats maybe not that surprising for a team that used nepotism as a recruitment tool. An unsettling look at the Sconce family from the acclaimed true crime author of Deadly Lessons. David would keep a large jar in the preparation room and, with a pair of pliers, yank gold fillings from the teeth of the deceased, dropping them in the jar and, once it was full, taking it to a jeweller he knew who was willing to overlook the situation in return for a steady supply of gold at a discount. But two years later, 34 of the original charges were reinstated by a state appellate court, and in 1995 the Sconces convicted with ten counts between them of unlawfully authorizing the removal of eyes, hearts, lungs, and brains from bodies prior to cremation, reported the Los Angeles Times. All the work of a ruthless mortician who would stop at nothing to corner the market on death in the City of Angels. But with only two investigators covering 180 cemeteries and 45 crematories, they had a lot of other work. Prosecutors said the crematory was part. So, the fire meant they were out of business, right? Sconce told locals he ran a ceramics studio, and claimed he was making tiles for space shuttles for NASA under a company he called Oscar Ceramics. They were the owners of funeral homeand organ harvesters. Scattered around the interior, caked black with the accumulated bodily grime from the brick ovens, were trash cans brimming with human ashes and prosthetic devices. You can find him being mistaken on Google Search for a hockey player whose name is one letter off from his, or you can find him on Twitter. and passed on the business to his son, Lawrence, who became president of the Pasadena school board. About Us Our Family Our Facility Why Choose Us Testimonials However, some people do prefer to be cremated. Not yet. More scrutiny is being given to the handling of bodies, however, in the wake of the Sconce revelations and two other scandals in recent years, including a Northern California case involving a firm hired to drop ashes over the Sierra. It was purchased by another funeral home, and then sat abandoned for years, and is today a showroom and storage space for a light bulb distributor. In the aftermath of Sconces capture and conviction, laws were proposed and passed that strengthened the ability of the state to watch over the businesses and inspect the premises. Davids parents, Jerry and Laurieanne Lamb Sconce, were convicted in 1995 on ten counts each of unlawfully authorizing the removal of eyes, hearts, lungs, and brains from bodies prior to cremation. They were each sentenced to three years and eight months in prison, and were left penniless after settling a $15.4 million lawsuit from the victims families. Below you, an entire other world operates. Ron Hast, editor of a newsletter called Mortuary Management, whose Los Angeles mortuary used the Sconces, asked Laurieanne Sconce to state in writing in 1984 that her cremations were done individually. Two months after Waters was assaulted, he mysteriously died at his mothers home in Camarillo while he was visiting for Easter. Up until the night an Auschwitz survivor had enough. In fact, the family once appeared in magazine ads,. And hundreds of bodies. The bank, run out of the Pasadena funeral home, in a three-month period sold 136 brains, 145 hearts and 100 lungs to a North Carolina firm supplying organs for research to medical schools, according to records presented at the preliminary hearing. When the Coen Brothers needed someone to show The Dude how to really roll, they could turn to only one man: Hall of Fame professional bowler Barry Asher. Thirty-six charges had already been dismissed before the trial, and the couple was acquitted of three charges and a mistrial was declared for the other six. They ran for two months before authorities became suspicious that the business was not what it seemed. After looking into similar poisonings, the Ventura County coroner drafted an official report for the prosecution: If an individual were poisoned with an oleander leaf [or an alcoholic beverage in which an oleander leaf had been soaked], he could die from this, and the findings in the blood of digoxin would be about that of the blood level of Mr. Waters.. He spread rumors that the Sconces were cremating more than one body at a time, according to Richard Gray, who runs Aftercare Funeral Service in Van Nuys. In 1929, Charles F. Lamb opened a funeral home in Pasadena, California in a building that resembled a cross between a Spanish mission and a fortress. In fact, the family once appeared in magazine ads, flanking their old reliable Maytag washer while dads football team uniforms flapped in the breeze. In April 1992, five years after their arrest, Laurieanne and Jerry Sconce, now 55 and 58, retired and living penniless in Arizona, walked through the doors of the Pasadena Superior Court to stand trial for their part in the conspiracyin particular, the forging of authorization forms to remove organs from the dead. Six law firms, including Melvin Bellis in San Francisco, have filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of relatives of 16,000 decedents, accusing 100 mortuaries of sending bodies to the Sconces despite indications that something was wrong. Cremation was once a niche business. Property Type. Welcome to Lamb Funeral Homes, with facilities in Greenfield, Fontanelle and Massena, Iowa. Slumber chambers were available for families to rest in, if they so chose. Over the next century, the American funeral industry would upsell grieving families with services such as embalming and makeup, mahogany caskets, expensive headstones, and elaborate funeralsa practice later exposed by journalist and activist Jessica Mitford in her groundbreaking 1963 book, The American Way of Death. The final chapter in the story opened Nov. 23, 1986, when a fire destroyed the crematory in Altadena. Wentworth was still skeptical when he drove out to Oscar Ceramics and opened one of the massive brick furnaces. Its resulted in a great tragedy for them, for a third-generation business and for the families of the deceased. During the questioning, the couple threw their son under the bus, blaming him for the cremation conspiracy. The remaining ashes are then marked and stored individually. You're the first one to shed a tear and the last one to leave the post-funeral . Coastal Cremations charged other mortuaries only $55 per cremation and sought business widely as the use of cremation boomed in California. Next Freaky Friday: Silence of the Lamb Funeral Home This wider lens gives you a glimpse of a dark place where sociopathy meets capitalism and legal dysfunction. Im your host, the BOOzy Barrister, here to guide you through the dark world of human, and not-so-human, nature as we explore the paranormal, the macabre, the spooky, and the downright sickening aspects of the law. He was described as brash and blunt, difficult to get along with, and sometimes more than a little intimidating. Meant to fit one body at a time, Sconce and his associates often filled the retorts with up to 18 bodies. What could have been (and should have been) a career-ending calamity was no problem for David Sconce. I said, I dont think so, its a ceramics shop, the chief later told the Los Angeles Times. For the following year we had about 1,500 to 2,000 people calling us to find out if Mountain View or the Lamb Family had cremated their loved ones. The investigators findings at both Oscar Ceramics and Sconces former Glendora home, about a 30-minute drive east from Pasadena, led to a class-action lawsuit filed by the relatives of 5,000 deceased people against the Lamb Family Funeral Home and other funeral homes that used its services; the lawsuit was settled out of court in 1992 for $15.4 million. In 1985, David, Laurieanne, and Jerry set up Coastal International Eye and Tissue Bank, in order to help their son traffic organs; later, in court, former employees revealed that, over a three-month period between 1985 and 1986, the Lambs had sold 136 brains, 145 hearts, and 100 lungs to a firm supplying organs for research to medical schools. And, with everything wrapped up in a semi-legal bow, David embarked on his next venture: scooping out eyes, hearts, and brains from the deceased and selling them to researchers throughout the country, having his mom forge the signatures of the next of kin on declaration forms, and making a tidy sum on the side. All Obituaries. Another part of his cover story was that they were using the ovens to make heat shield tiles for the Space Shuttle. Sure, the inspectors had their suspicions that something wasnt right, but every time they tried to inspect the facility, they were turned away and told to come back with a warrant, which was hard to acquire because all of Coastal Cremations (forged) paperwork made everything appear legit. As the business grew, rumors spread through the industry. The mortuaries, in turn, would charge customers anywhere from $265 to $1,000 for cremation services. The revelations have also prompted a new state law making it easier to police crematories and lawsuits against scores of other mortuaries that sent bodies to the Lamb Funeral Home in Pasadena, attracted by its bargain-basement prices. He had veered towards his father's interests more than his mother's, and had played football. They had initially faced 67 charges total, including charges relating to the mass cremations, but they escaped most of those counts after throwing David completely under the bus and then throwing thatbus under a bigger bus. did david sconce the crematorium technician of the. With the help of a lawyer friend, David altered the form to add the word tissues before the word pacemaker in the authorization form, letting families believe they were only authorizing him to remove any tissue necessary to remove the pacemaker. Sconces employees were cremating anywhere from five to eighteen bodies at a time and thats perfurnace. by Caleb Wilde in Aggregate Death. He is currently incarcerated at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California, and is eligible for parole in 2022. After graduating from high school in Glendora, he enrolled in Azusa Pacific, the Christian college where his father worked, with the hopes of becoming a football star and playing for the Seattle Seahawks.