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Price . During David Sconces trial for the mass cremations and corpse mutilations in 1989, one of his associates testified that Sconce had bragged about slipping something into Waters drink at a restaurant shortly before he died. Sconce operated the Lamb Funeral Home with his wife, Laurieanne Lamb Sconce. All the work of a ruthless mortician who would stop at nothing to corner the market on death in the City of Angels. Obituaries. 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. In court, it was revealed that over a three-month period, they had sold 136 brains (at about $80 each), 145 hearts ($95 each), and 100 lungs ($60 each) for use in medical schools. His business plan was simple enough: Sconce would obtain a license from the Department of Health to operate a crematorium. A single body goes into the oven. What did Disney actually lose from its Florida battle with DeSantis? Just the best television + film hand-picked from around the globe. 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. Cremations are now highly regulated affairs. 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. After stealing their stereo equipment, he coolly joined them in their pew at church. May 6, 2013, 3:27 PM. 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. Honestly, if it werent for one Holocaust survivors sense memory and a call to the Air Quality Control hotline, theres no telling how much longer and further David Sconce wouldve taken this scam. 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.. this is a true crime case that involves illegal body harvesting and the possible murder of timothy waters. But David lacked the compassion and the charisma necessary to work with bereaved people. . If somebody offers you a new Ford for $8,000 and Im paying $16,000 . They were burned, and the ashes placed in a barrel together. Depicted by friends of his parents as the mastermind behind the assembly-line cremations, David Sconce is being held without bail. Sconces main competitor was Timothy R. Waters, who owned the Alpha Society, a Burbank-based cremation service, and who had a reputation for stealing business from other morticians. Although he began his cremations in mid-1982, he didnt start his business on paper until 1984, doubling the number of bodies he cremated each year. But what really sets this story apart is the thousands of dead bodies involved. by Caleb Wilde in Aggregate Death. After David dropped out of college, worked as a casino dealer and a hockey stadium usher, and was unable to pass the police departments vision test, his parents convinced him to get his embalmers license and join the family business at age 26. 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. Somehow, gum made out of tree bark is still softer than Bazooka. even beating the immediate family to the funeral home door. 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. 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. Atty. But Sconce beat Waters to the punch, quite literally. He would attract business from area funeral homes with his half-priced cremations and make up for the low cost with high volume. No matter how weird you think a story about the funeral business could be, prepare to be surprised and pretty grossed out. 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. The society has 5,000 members, who pay the society to arrange their cremations. Sconce was involved in the. And as for the Lamb Funeral Home, the business built by Charles Lamb in 1929? In the slumber rooms, families were encouraged to make themselves as much at home as though they were in their own residence, according to an old company brochure. But under the then-current California regulations, their crimes weremisdemeanors. But then the man said, Dont tell me theyre not burning bodies. 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. 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. However, one substance that closely mimics the effects of digoxin is oleander, a poisonous tree commonly found in California. Due to various plea deals, Sconce would ultimately serve only two and a half years of his sentence. 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. Hast recalled that he and a friend were attacked by two men posing as policemen, who threw ammonia and jalapeno sauce in their eyes. I could see smoke from a mile and a half away.. The Ventura County coroners office re-examined tissues saved from the original autopsy of Waters and changed the cause of death to poisoning by oleander, a common plant in California. His great-grandfather, Lawrence Lamb, purchased the Pasadena Crematorium in Altadena, California a few years before starting Lamb Funeral Home in 1929 just two miles away. His employees called him Little Hitler because of the number of bodies he burned. For just $55 per body, he was now offering lower prices than every other crematorium in the region, if not the entire country. Eyes, brains and gold-filled teeth were sold without the knowledge of relatives, while workers competed to see who could stuff the most bodies into the ancient crematory ovens, according to witnesses. 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. He said the full message was, Lewis will die of AIDS.. Better run your business honestly, because you dont want the media to mention you alongside thatguy! When he was extradited back to California for his parole violations, David pleaded guilty to conspiring to hire a hit-man to execute yet another rival and in 2013 was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. The Lamb Funeral Home building in Pasadena was sold to another funeral home in the mid-1990s; when that venture failed the facility stood vacant for several years. 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. He had veered towards his fathers interests more than his mothers, and had played football. But it wasnt long until residents noticed the thick black smoke pouring night and day from the chimneys, the rancid oils that streamed from the building into a makeshift pit (the burning fat from the bodies), and the constant comings and goings. and passed on the business to his son, Lawrence, who became president of the Pasadena school board. What lay behind the screen was more contentious and corrupt. They pulled out eyeballs, plopping them unceremoniously into Coke cans and paper towels. On November 23, 1986, the nearly century-old facility burned to the ground after Davids employees somehow shoved 19 bodies into each of the ovens at once. In Sweden, they send you a thank-you text when they use your blood. 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. And hundreds of bodies. 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. 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. On occasion, families would request to see the corpse of their beloved grandparents and be denied. All Obituaries. 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. Accumulating the emblems of success as his business took off, David flashed wads of money and cruised around in a candy-apple-red Mercedes-Benz and a white Corvette with a personalized license plate that displayed his macabre sense of humor. A former Pasadena mortician is leaving Montana for California, where he was being sought for violating conditions of his lifetime parole, the Missoulian newspaper reported. 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. When Abraham Lincoln was shot, his embalmed corpse was beautified by Dr. Thomas Holmes, the father of embalming, and sent on tour across the nation. His tale of deception, greed, and complete disregard for tradition, decency, and even the law is disgraceful. Shed dropped out of college to marry Jerry Sconce, a charismatic and gregarious six-foot, 200-pound football player at the University of California, Santa Barbara, whom shed met at Sunday school. We would like to get out of the Lamb Funeral Home business, Bruce Lamb said. In 1986, David Sconce and his parents expanded the family enterprise with the creation of Coastal International Eye and Tissue Bank. Kathy Braidhill, then a crime reporter for the Pasadena Star-News, followed the story of David Sconces crimes, and wrote a 1993 book, Chop Shop, about his cremation scheme. He employed many of his old football buddies as muscle, not just to transport and handle the dead bodies, but also to intimidate funeral home directors into doing business with Coastal Cremations and scare/beat the crap out of anyone who could potentially expose their misdeeds. But with only two investigators covering 180 cemeteries and 45 crematories, they had a lot of other work. 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. In 2015, an LA-based paranormal investigation group suggested in a blog post that the building may be haunted, but it was eventually purchased by a light bulb distributor which in 2018 turned the second floor into a three-bedroom apartment available for rent for $4,700 per month. Built in 1895, the Pasadena Crematorium offered only two ovens, each of which David would stuff with five, six, and eventually as many as 18 bodies at a time. Laurieanne had always been her fathers golden child when it came to the care of the those who sought out the Lamb familys services. He was a nasty, horrible individual to have any interaction with.. Hallinan said he had to break the leg of one body to get it in and that it might have blocked up the chimney, starting the blaze. The LA smog also concealed the smoke that mortician David Sconce pumped from a makeshift crematoriumtwo ceramic kilns housed in a corrugated metal warehouseway out in San Bernardino County. Belgrade, Kragujevac) Enquiry type Country. But they had aimed at Nimzs glass eye, foiling the plot, and at least one of Sconces associates later pleaded guilty to assault. In 1989, defendant and appellant David Wayne Sconce pled guilty to multiple counts relating to the improper handling and disposition of human remains in Los Angeles Superior Court case No. Later, Davids cash-paid employees would tell horrific tales of Little Hitlers (as they called him) joy at popping chops, his term for extracting gold teeth, which hed sell to a local jeweler for an extra $6,000 each month. I said, I dont think so, its a ceramics shop, the chief later told the Los Angeles Times. Sensing an opportunity, David Sconce set out to command the market. 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 license was sacrificed in the 1990s, and the building in which such desecrations took place still stands empty in Pasadena, the furnaces forever silent. 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. For many, cremation was becoming a cheaper and more attractive option. In Davids first year in the operation, cremations went up nearly 1,000%, from 194 to 1,675. The mortuaries, in turn, would charge customers anywhere from $265 to $1,000 for cremation services. Frustrated and bored, he and his friends egged houses and beat up homeless drunks for fun. 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. The Lamb Funeral Home was founded by Lawrence Lamb. When the editor of a mortuary industry newsletter started asking too many questions about the companys business practices, Sconce sent two of his boys over to the mans house dressed as policemen. But he recalled that on the night the business was transferred to him, several people broke into the offices. Bodies were cremated there for two months until December 23, 1986 when a neighbor called in an air quality complaint over all of the horrible smoke the furnaces were belching out 24/7. Two months after Waters was assaulted, he mysteriously died at his mothers home in Camarillo while he was visiting for Easter. Then Charles retired, leaving the business to his son, Lawrence, who would then pass it on to his daughter Laurieanne and her husband. By 1985, Coastal Cremations was burning over 8,000 bodies a year, they only had two furnaces at their location in Altadena, and those ovens were running upwards of 18 hours a day. I dont think so, its a ceramics shop, Wentworth replied. by Caleb Wilde in Aggregate Death. They anointed their boss with a grandiose nickname: Little Hitler.. Literally flames and whatnot would be coming out of their chimney, says Jay Brown, whose familys mortuary was next to the Lamb crematory. And Sconce would charge the funeral homes the low, low price of $55 per body, half of what his competitors offered. The tissue harvesting itself was, unsurprisingly, not handled delicately. His business plan caught on, and business boomed. As the Sconces awaited arraignment, the police made another morbid discovery. Sunday, May 29 . At the time, brains could sold for about $80, hearts for $95, lungs for $60. Although the crematoriums ovens would eventually operate 24 hours a day, David Sconce continued to push the limits of maximum capacity. 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? Prosecutors said the crematory was part of the family-owned Lamb Funeral Home in nearby Pasadena. Just $4,700 a month, a little more than the average cost of a cremation nowadays. Every person should get the burial they want, so money can be raised online to help with this. 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. He had veered towards his father's interests more than his mother's, and had played football. Its important to go with the best option for you. 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. It blew over the mountains and nestled into the Los Angeles Basin, where it mingled with the air breathed in by kids smoking joints in Mustang convertibles in the parking lot of Hollywood High, and by linen-clad housewives watering their roses in the gardens of their San Fernando Valley mansions. 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. 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. Finding embalming school boring, David decided to leverage the familys crematorium as an entrepreneurial opportunity. Before we begin, lets get something serious out of the way. The history of funerary practices in America reflect a complex evolution of the relationship between death and money. 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. The only family member accused in the strong-arm tactics allegedly used against competitors, he is charged among other things with plotting to kill the prosecuting attorney, Walt Lewis. He simply shifted operations to a metal warehouse hed already purchased in Hesperia. Reasonable doubt can be a real dick punch sometimes. 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. On August 30, 1989, Sconce pled guilty to 21 counts in the Lamb Funeral Home case, which involved charges of mishandling of human remains. He was a little too slick in my opinion, but some people are attracted to that. The body would be burned, then wait for the oven to cool, collect the ashes, then the oven would have to be cleaned before moving on to the next one. Traditionally, Cemetery Board investigators have spent more time looking at audits than on enforcement, Gill said. At the Lamb Family Funeral Home, Laurieanne was the kindly, motherly face of Davids morbid scheme. Laurieanne, one of Lawrences two daughters, was bright and so pretty that a rival mortician would describe her as movie star beautiful. She carried herself with a touch of gentility befitting the familys position in the community, sprinkled her conversations liberally with Biblical quotations and wrote sacred songs for her own gospel group, The Chapelbelles. Her fathers favorite, she demonstrated a gift for consoling survivors at the mortuary, some of whom gave her money to save for their own funerals.