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The drawing room chapel of his Spanish mission-style building was filled with comfortable sofas and arm chairs. Edwards testified that Sconce told him he had dropped something into Waters drink at a restaurant--authorities later decided it was in Simi Valley--a month before the Burbank mortician died. Assistant Hesperia Fire Chief Will Wentworth listened incredulously as a caller complained that the noxious black smoke pouring from a nondescript building in the desert carried the sickeningly sweet smell of burning human flesh. He denounced his industry as the most in-fighting, back-biting, rumor-spreading, lecherous, treacherous people youd ever want to meet in your life. What did Disney actually lose from its Florida battle with DeSantis? Bear in mind that the inside of these furnaces were only slightly larger than a phone booth, and the world record for the number of livepeople stuffed into one of those is only fourteen. Finding embalming school boring, David decided to leverage the familys crematorium as an entrepreneurial opportunity. 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. But with only two investigators covering 180 cemeteries and 45 crematories, they had a lot of other work. Business started booming! I BRN 4U, it read. The insane true story of the 1980s mortician who turned his familys funeral home into a nightmare cremation factorypulling gold teeth, harvesting organs, and threatening anyone who got in his way. She gradually brought her husband Jerry into the business, and their son David, age 26, in 1982, when he became manager of a branch, the Pasadena Crematorium. I could see smoke from a mile and a half away.. His reputation was sterling, even among his bitter rivals in the rough-and-tumble world of mortuary services, and at one point he headed the funeral directors association for the state. Traditionally, Cemetery Board investigators have spent more time looking at audits than on enforcement, Gill said. 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 A city of movie magic and Hollywood weirdos, the 33,000-square-mile Greater Los Angeles area was a sprawling film set, where the silhouettes of palm trees lay flat against a gradient wash of wide-angle sunsets. 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. Another part of his cover story was that they were using the ovens to make heat shield tiles for the Space Shuttle. By all accounts, Charles F. Lamb had no such grand designs in 1929 when he built the Lamb Funeral Home on Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena. All good? David Sconce had not been raised in the funeral business. One of Davids boys, David Edwards, pleaded guilty to beating Hast, testifying that the younger Sconce had paid him $700 or $800 to do so. Cremation was once a niche business. For more than 60 years, Southern Californians entrusted the bodies of their loved ones to the Sconce family's Lamb Funeral Home. He had even tried to enlist in the police academy, but failed to get in when the vision test showed him to be colorblind. His wife and children helped in the business of burials, and over the years and decades that would follow from taking in that first corpse Charles became a big name in California funerals. David Wayne Sconce was a hothead and a creepa golden boy turned failed college football player, with sparkling blue eyes that led some to compare him to Paul Newman. And as for the Lamb Funeral Home, the business built by Charles Lamb in 1929? What the authorities found when they raided the warehouse in January 1987 was beyond imagination: outside, a sludge pit of liquid human waste, mingled with dirt; inside, gallon cans filled with human ash, bone, and partially cremated body parts. Well, for one, Sconce had no reason to fear any serious repercussions. He told his parents that he wanted to start his own cremation company, working as an affiliate to the family funeral home. 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. 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. A coroner attributed the official cause of death to buildup of fatty tissue in Waterss kidneys. He had veered towards his father's interests more than his mother's, and had played football. But the ovens were old, accidents happened, and no investigation began. 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. 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. Whilst cremation is definitely becoming more popular after people pass away, funerals still remain the traditional option for many people. Michael Bradbury with the recommendation that David Sconce be prosecuted, a spokesman said. 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. Every person should get the burial they want, so money can be raised online to help with this. 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. A crowbar cracked open sternums in order to access organs. 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. But under the then-current California regulations, their crimes weremisdemeanors. 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. Just $4,700 a month, a little more than the average cost of a cremation nowadays. Two months after Waters was assaulted, he mysteriously died at his mothers home in Camarillo while he was visiting for Easter. Ode to the Professional Mourner. 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. Prosecutors declined to discuss the evidence, but Estephan said that before he took over the business in 1986, Sconce had been negotiating for it with the intention of moving more aggressively into the retail end of the cremation business. even beating the immediate family to the funeral home door. They then attacked the man and threw jalapeno sauce and ammonia into his eyes. Depicted by friends of his parents as the mastermind behind the assembly-line cremations, David Sconce is being held without bail. Featured on ABC-TV's Nightline. No matter how weird you think a story about the funeral business could be, prepare to be surprised and pretty grossed out. Obsessed with fellow morticians, whom he regarded as business rivals, Sconce assembled a team of beefcake lackeys that he met at LA Kings hockey gamesa group of ex-football players he called his boys. They were tasked with traveling throughout Southern California, ferrying bodies to the crematorium, running errands, and roughing up other morticians to discourage them from competing with Sconces business. did david sconce the crematorium technician of the. Tim Waters was a 300-pound Burbank mortician who had a reputation for honesty but was unpopular among competitors in the cremation trade because he aggressively took business away from them. A double-oven structure built in 1895, it was known among funeral directors as the oldest crematorium west of the Mississippi. 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. His tale of deception, greed, and complete disregard for tradition, decency, and even the law is disgraceful. In Davids first year in the operation, cremations went up nearly 1,000%, from 194 to 1,675. Twenty years ago, only 10% of the dead were cremated. Instead, David quietly installed crematory ovens in a suburb, licensing the facility as a ceramics shop. Prosecutors said the crematory was part. Death Facts: Part 72. Get the best of Cracked sent directly to your inbox! Yet, somehow Sconce continues to make news 22 years after authorities discovered burning body parts in a ceramics kiln Sconce was using as a makeshift crematory. However, some people do prefer to be cremated. 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. As if David Sconces special place in hell wasnt already bought and paid for, he found other sick ways to squeeze every nickel out of the corpses. In late 1982, he used the industry contacts andthe two crematory furnaces from his familys funeral home business to start his own company, Coastal Cremations Inc., even though he didnt officially file the paperwork on the business until two years later. Online condolences may be left to the family at www.lambfuneralhomes.com. Better run your business honestly, because you dont want the media to mention you alongside thatguy! The $15.5 million suit in 1991 involved 20,000 relatives of people cremated at the funeral home. As the Sconces awaited arraignment, the police made another morbid discovery. The Lamb Funeral Home in Fontanelle is assisting the family. But they had aimed at Nimzs glass eye, foiling the plot, and at least one of Sconces associates later pleaded guilty to assault. Before we begin, lets get something serious out of the way. 364 pages,paperback. Families were invited to rest as needed as he and his staff moved throughout the home clad in black, passing condolences and caring for both the bereaved and the bereft of life with compassion and dignity. You would think that any handling of human remains being offered at Burlington Coat Factory-level discounts would be an immediate red flag, but sadly no. Laurieanne was a bright, cheerful, God-fearing woman once described as movie-star beautiful by a rival mortician, and who played the church organ and wrote gospel songs with her choral group, the Chapelbelles. The families of the deceased that had been cremated by Sconce would bring a class-action lawsuit against 100 funeral homes that had used his services for cremations, and would settle for approximately $16,000,000. The dead body became an incorruptible image of a peaceful afterlife. But he recalled that on the night the business was transferred to him, several people broke into the offices. He found embalming school to be boring, and that wasnt where the money was anyway. 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. At the time, the charges wouldnt stick because three toxicologists couldnt agree that oleander was the cause of death. David Sconce originally wanted to follow in his fathers footsteps and become a football player. 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. These acts were done by their son, David, began Laurieannes defense attorney in his opening statement, describing the mass cremations and stealing of gold teeth. Harvested hearts, eyes, and brains were then sold on the black market for up to $95 a pop. Ex-mortician who committed bizarre Calif. crimes decades ago could get life sentence Associated Press LOS ANGELES - David Wayne Sconce's past life as a mortician has come back to haunt him. Another reason: The low, low prices weren't all that was helping Sconce corner the SoCal cremation market. 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. Sunday, May 29 . The ashes are then removed and strained to remove large pieces of bone, medical pins, etc. Fantastic. But thats maybe not that surprising for a team that used nepotism as a recruitment tool. 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. Should authorities have uncovered the familys activities sooner than they did? 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. Because Grandpa had no eyes. A573819 (the funeral home case). But then the man said, Dont tell me theyre not burning bodies. - David Wayne Sconce, the former Pasadena mortician who went to prison for stealing and selling body parts and dental gold and performing mass cremations, has waived extradition. It was designed to be elegant but comfortable, filled with sofas and armchairs. But, thanks in part to the success of Mitfords book, the number of people cremated in the United States in the decade after its publication rose by nearly 80 percent. 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. Obituaries. Hast recalled that he and a friend were attacked by two men posing as policemen, who threw ammonia and jalapeno sauce in their eyes. In the outcome, Sconce and his parents were arrested and tried for their crimes. 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. The first crematorium in the United States was built in 1876 in Pennsylvania. Welcome to Lamb Funeral Homes, with facilities in Greenfield, Fontanelle and Massena, Iowa. There have been three books published on the Lamb Funeral Home scandal and I have all of them. He had to operate the new business under the license of a ceramics factory, because thats what the massive diesel fueled kilns he was using were designed for. I was at the ovens at Auschwitz!. With the help of her husband, a glad-handing former football coach at Azusa-Pacific College, Laurieanne began taking control of the business from her parents about a decade ago, just as the publics interest in cremation blossomed. Yet authorities were stymiedattempts at inspections were rebuffed by the lack of a warrant when the funeral board came out to visit. Lamb served as president of the state Funeral Directors Assn. David Sconce pleaded guilty to 21 charges of conducting mass cremations, mutilating corpses, and the aforementioned assaults-for-hire. Coastal Cremations Inc., of which David Sconce was president, dealt mainly as a wholesaler to other mortuaries, charging only $55 for each cremation, about half what competitors charged. 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. The grisly discoveries on Jan. 20, 1987, have touched off one of the most bizarre scandals in the history of the California funeral industry. 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. I was driving home from church and the fire department was there, explains Brown. They ran for two months before authorities became suspicious that the business was not what it seemed. And if that wasnt enough to supplement Davids lifestyle, there was always the gold jar. 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. 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. 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. Instead, the ashes were scattered in a vacant lot in the foothills. They doubled and redoubled, reaching 8,173 in 1985, as a fleet of vans, station wagons and trucks fanned out, picking up cadavers throughout Southern California. The risk of getting busted was low on account that California only had two state inspectors overseeing the funeral and cremation industry at the time. LOS ANGELES (AP) -- David Wayne Sconce's past life as a mortician has come back to haunt him decades after he gained notoriety for stealing body parts from corpses and plotting to kill a funeral business rival. 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. Coke was originally supposed to make you smarter or something. Sconces employees were cremating anywhere from five to eighteen bodies at a time and thats perfurnace. The history of funerary practices in America reflect a complex evolution of the relationship between death and money. 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. Can there be a better endorsement? 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. But Dr. Thomas Weber, owner of the Telephase Society, a pioneer in the field of low-cost burial, said the deal was too good to be true. But the heirs to the fourth-generation funeral empire betrayed that trust with a series of gruesome crimes against the dead. His business plan was simple enough: Sconce would obtain a license from the Department of Health to operate a crematorium. 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. 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. Sconce had bulldozed the front- and backyards of the house before leaving town, but he hadnt completely covered his tracks. By the time of the Hesperia raid, the Sconces had built a business empire collecting human remains from San Diego to Santa Barbara. 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. You're the first one to shed a tear and the last one to leave the post-funeral . 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 brothers, who have not been accused of any wrongdoing, are left to wrestle with a conundrum: How could the ingredients for an American success story, ambition, hard work and a professed respect for family and God, be twisted into a tragedy of such perverse dimensions? Dont tell me theyre not burning bodies. 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. His employees called him Little Hitler because of the number of bodies he burned. When it came time to collect the ashes for the families, employees were instructed to collect 3.5 to 5 pounds for female remains and 5 to 7 pounds for male. The tissue harvesting itself was, unsurprisingly, not handled delicately. This is a great book for funeral collectors. If consent for the removals was not offered, Davids mother would forge the signature of a family member. . Laurieannes personal life was less charmed than her professional one. 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. Laurieanne had always been her fathers golden child when it came to the care of the those who sought out the Lamb familys services. Jerry Sconce oli toiminut aiemmin muun muassa jalkapallovalmentajana ja Laurianne Lamb Sconce oli toiminut kirkon urkurina. Its a true shame that his name has to be connected to the funeral industry at all. Well spare you from doing the math. As for David Sconce, he would return again and again to court, with new charges and new parole violations. 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. Its important to go with the best option for you. Several funeral directors named in the lawsuit said they were reassured by the sterling Lamb name. All the work of a ruthless mortician who would stop at nothing to corner the market on death in the City of Angels. The songs maudlin sax solo wailed through the tinny speakers of corner liquor stores and poured from car stereos. somethings not right, he said. And with this new surge in interest came an opportunity for money, an opportunity that David Sconce sniffed out and latched on todespite the fact the Lamb Funeral Home had only two crematory ovens, and both of them were old and, until now, rarely used. (No, Seriously. Welcome To David Funeral Homes. Laurieannes husband was considered a loser, a cheat, a layabout, and a hustler by her father, Lawrence; though Jerry had been gainfully employed as a football coach for a local Christian college, he quit the job in 1977 to run a sporting goods store, even though he had no previous experience in business. He knew, he said, the smell of burning bodies. In addition, there was no extra charge for picking up a body and returning the ashes. He decorated the interior with couches, chairs, and various other accoutrements to make mourners feel comfortable. 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. Show Filters Close Filters Close Map. However, funerals do tend to cost a lot of money, which is why people tend to opt for a cheaper option. 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. In 2006, Sconce violated his probation by selling forged bus tickets in Arizona, moving to Montana without permission, and stealing/pawning a neighbors rifle. He was a nasty, horrible individual to have any interaction with.. They were the owners of funeral homeand organ harvesters. They anointed their boss with a grandiose nickname: Little Hitler..