But the heirs to the fourth-generation funeral empire betrayed that trust with a series of gruesome crimes against the dead. A single body goes into the oven. 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. Another part of his cover story was that they were using the ovens to make heat shield tiles for the Space Shuttle. . . And Sconce would charge the funeral homes the low, low price of $55 per body, half of what his competitors offered. In California at the time, and elsewhere, it was illegal to remove things from corpses. By the time of the Hesperia raid, the Sconces had built a business empire collecting human remains from San Diego to Santa Barbara. Literally flames and whatnot would be coming out of their chimney, says Jay Brown, whose familys mortuary was next to the Lamb crematory. 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. The Internet Is Real Life: How A Lawyer Will Track You Down. On the morning of Sunday, November 23, 1986, the Altadena crematorium burned down after employees tried cramming in a record 38 bodies at once. It was done without their permission or knowledge. The floors were laid with new wood and a kitchen was added, with white granite countertops, a subzero fridge, and a wine cooler. Cremation was once a niche business. Like A Lamb to Slaughter Are you being placed on the altar. On February 12, 1985, Sconce sent a 265-pound ex-football player who carried a business card that read Big Men Unlimited to rob Waters and beat him to a pulp. (A brochure described the funeral home as home in every sense of the word.) Lamb had also had the foresight to purchase the Pasadena Crematorium a few years earlier; it was located a few miles away, in the Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena. 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 sole purpose of the company was to facilitate Davids already-flourishing side gig trafficking organs hed removed from soon-to-be-cremated bodies. 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. In addition, there was no extra charge for picking up a body and returning the ashes. Should authorities have uncovered the familys activities sooner than they did? In 1994, he was found guilty of selling fake bus tickets in Arizona. His business plan caught on, and business boomed. 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. 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. 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. This was an indelicate, bone-shattering operation that David allegedly referred to as making the pliers sing.. As for David Sconce, he would return again and again to court, with new charges and new parole violations. They ran for two months before authorities became suspicious that the business was not what it seemed. As profits grew, so did Davids sick ego. 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. To make the company seem official, he and his cronies rigged up a telephone line that they attached directly to a nearby phone pole, stretching a long wire to a receiver on the dashboard of a car, from which they took calls. by Caleb Wilde in Aggregate Death. 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. Sconce himself served 5 years before being released. 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. Somehow, gum made out of tree bark is still softer than Bazooka. And then her son, David, joined the family business. The impact David Sconce left on the funeral business is still being felt today. 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. 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. Other funeral homes bear some blame for not being more wary of the low-cost, high-volume operation, according to representatives of the families who were shocked to learn what happened to their deceased relatives. 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. 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. According to state law, standard procedure for cremating a dead body was that only one body could be burned at a time, a process that took several hours per body. 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. All the work of a ruthless mortician who would stop at nothing to corner the market on death in the City of Angels. That body is burned. An unsettling look at the Sconce family from the acclaimed true crime author of Deadly Lessons. Furniture salesman Ed Shain, who rented the house after Sconces departure, discovered the remains while replacing the screen on the crawl space and called the authorities, who then spent two days filling two large boxes full of bones, dentures, bridges, bits of skull, pacemaker wires, and a soda can packed with molars. 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. I could see smoke from a mile and a half away.. David Sconce, former operator with his parents of Lamb Funeral Home in Pasadena, pleaded guilty Wednesday in an Arizona courtroom to fraudulently selling phony bus coupons. But the ovens were old, accidents happened, and no investigation began. The Lamb Funeral Home (the funeral home owned by Sconce) case led to a massive lawsuit that also involved 100 mortuaries that contracted with the funeral home for cremations. 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. Harvested hearts, eyes, and brains were then sold on the black market for up to $95 a pop. 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. Another reason: The low, low prices weren't all that was helping Sconce corner the SoCal cremation market. Depicted by friends of his parents as the mastermind behind the assembly-line cremations, David Sconce is being held without bail. This Guy Might Be Up To Something). Tissue donations required the consent of the next of kin, so Davids mother Laurieanne was in charge of getting the deceaseds family members to sign the proper paperwork or sometimes trick them into signing the paperwork and if they refused, hell, theyd just forge the signatures anyway. Before the fire that forced the Lamb Funeral Home to move its crematory services off-site, the record was 18 bodies in the oven at once. No matter how weird you think a story about the funeral business could be, prepare to be surprised and pretty grossed out. 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. 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. But cremation alone wasnt enough to float the business, and other funeral homes began to wonder how David could undercut the competition by so much and not lose moneyand the answer is simple. 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. 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. 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. He was described as brash and blunt, difficult to get along with, and sometimes more than a little intimidating. Just $4,700 a month, a little more than the average cost of a cremation nowadays. Before the Civil War, most Americans died at home and were buried nearby, often in the local churchyard. The Lamb Funeral Home was founded by Lawrence Lamb. Welcome to Lamb Funeral Homes, with facilities in Greenfield, Fontanelle and Massena, Iowa. Laurieanne Lamb Sconce and her husband, Jerry, former operators of the Lamb Funeral Home in Pasadena, were arrested in 1987, with their son, David, after investigators alleged that they. I was at the ovens at Auschwitz, the man said chillingly, Wentworth recalled. After burning, cremains were sifted together according to weight in what was called the ash palace, a dusty room that was also filled with trash cans full of human fat and spare dental parts such as bridges or dentures. 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. In the winter of 2018, the owners saw an opportunity for the second floor of the building. Prosecutors said the crematory was part of the family-owned Lamb Funeral Home in nearby Pasadena. Cindy testified she worked for her father, Frank Strunk, at his business, the Cremation Society of California (CSC). Davids big idea for generating business for Coastal Cremations Inc. was to offer the service for less than half what was considered the industry standard for the time. I was at the ovens at Auschwitz.. Things that are acceptable to remove are medical devices, such as pacemakers, that may explode in the heat of the flames, and a form existed authorizing the crematory to remove exactly those items. Under the state Health and Safety Code, it is a misdemeanor to cremate more than one body at a time. What could have been (and should have been) a career-ending calamity was no problem for David Sconce. So, the fire meant they were out of business, right? Better run your business honestly, because you dont want the media to mention you alongside thatguy! (And lest you think stuff like this was confined to the barbaric past, uh, we have bad news. Several funeral directors named in the lawsuit said they were reassured by the sterling Lamb name. 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. 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. 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? The ovens are cleaned, and the process can begin again. 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. 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. Two books, entitled Chop Shop and A Family Business, have been written about David Sconces escapades. The society has 5,000 members, who pay the society to arrange their cremations. and passed on the business to his son, Lawrence, who became president of the Pasadena school board. But they had aimed at Nimzs glass eye, foiling the plot, and at least one of Sconces associates later pleaded guilty to assault. did david sconce the crematorium technician of the. A Family Business: A Chilling Tale of Greed as One Family Commits Unspeakable Crimes Against the Dead Ken Englade 3.53 244 ratings17 reviews They were the owners of funeral homeand organ harvesters. 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. In 1986, David Sconce and his parents expanded the family enterprise with the creation of Coastal International Eye and Tissue Bank. 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 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. A very aggressive market came about, said the Cemetery Boards Gill. Price . What they did is, they tried to corner the market, said Joe Estephan, funeral director of the Cremation Society of California. 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. The drawing room chapel of his Spanish mission-style building was filled with comfortable sofas and arm chairs. How in the world did David Sconce manage to get away with this for so long? The Lamb Funeral Home in Fontanelle is assisting the family. They pulled out eyeballs, plopping them unceremoniously into Coke cans and paper towels. 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. Before we begin, lets get something serious out of the way. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Laurieannes personal life was less charmed than her professional one. 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. But in recent years, as people searched for less expensive funeral arrangements, the figure has risen to nearly 40%, setting off a scramble for customers. 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. But possibly, just possibly, watched over by those denied a final rest. 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. Ode to the Professional Mourner. In the rear of the funeral home was the so-called Ash Palace, where employee Jim Dame testified that he sifted ashes trucked in from the crematory in big barrels. 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. But still he set out to corner the market, offering cremations for $55 to other funeral homes and undercutting the prices to the public, sending a fleet of trucks all throughout Southern California to pick up bodies and bring them back to the two creaking, ancient cremation ovens in the back of the family funeral home. His employees called him Little Hitler because of the number of bodies he burned. A businessman recalled that David looked him up and down one day and declared him a one-hander. That meant David wouldnt even need two hands to sling his small body into the oven. But with only two investigators covering 180 cemeteries and 45 crematories, they had a lot of other work. At 300 pounds, the 24-year-old was considered morbidly obese. (Before Mitford died in 1996, she requested to be cremated, and had the bill for $475 sent to the corporate headquarters of a funeral home chain.). Not yet. They were burned, and the ashes placed in a barrel together. David Sconce had not been raised 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. 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. The dead body became an incorruptible image of a peaceful afterlife. Sunday, May 29 . It would pass to his two grandsons, who gamely kept it afloat for a year before deciding, as they had years before, that the funeral business was not for them. Dubbed the Cremation King of California by a journalist, 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. Belgrade, Kragujevac) Enquiry type Country. His tale of deception, greed, and complete disregard for tradition, decency, and even the law is disgraceful. On February 19, 2019, a reader of the paranormal website commented on the blog about Lamb Funeral Home that his or her mother-in-laws body was one of those mistreated by David Sconce. Dont tell me theyre not burning bodies. He was released in 1991. I BRN 4U, it read. He violated this probation by moving to Montana without permission in 2006, and again by stealing a neighbors rifle in 2012. . 7 years ago. After families signed paperwork with Laurieanne, the bodies of their loved ones were sent to the Altadena crematorium and housed in an elaborate refrigeration facility that Sconce called the cold room, where he and his cash-paid teamincluding a medical student he recruited from a tissue bankslipped rings off fingers and harvested organs to sell on the black market. Its not like Sconce knew where or even howto draw the line on depravity at this point. And two aged ovens. having his employees rough up three rival morticians. It was designed to be elegant but comfortable, filled with sofas and armchairs. 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. David ultimately served only two-and-a-half years of his sentence and was released in 1991. Presumably, their concerts were strictly dance-free, Many interesting behind-the-scenes bits have happened during the 20 years of telling tales about our favorite trailer-park residents, The assailant couldnt steal her good mood. Lamb served as president of the state Funeral Directors Assn. 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. Twenty years ago, only 10% of the dead were cremated. Michael Bradbury with the recommendation that David Sconce be prosecuted, a spokesman said. 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. 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. The ovens went from barely used to running for upwards of 18 hours a day to handle the load of up to a hundred bodies in storage, awaiting their final disposition in David Sconces flames. David Wayne Sconce. 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. David Wayne Sconce, 56, made headlines in the late 1980s when he pleaded guilty to the gruesome charges of commingling bodies and taking gold from the dead. A double-oven structure built in 1895, it was known among funeral directors as the oldest crematorium west of the Mississippi. The autopsy also discovered digoxin, a common heart medication, in Waterss bloodthough Waters didnt take heart medication. A crowbar cracked open sternums in order to access organs. He said the full message was, Lewis will die of AIDS.. attempting to pawn a stolen rifle in Montana, in 2013 was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison, an LA-based paranormal investigation group suggested in a blog post, a reader of the paranormal website commented on the blog about Lamb Funeral Home that his or her mother-in-laws body, Keeper Memorials Unveils Obituary Writing Assistant Powered by ChatGPT AI, For Ben Wasserman and his Surprising Audiences, Comedy is a Natural Way to Grieve. Sconce had bulldozed the front- and backyards of the house before leaving town, but he hadnt completely covered his tracks. When the neighbor was told it was just a ceramics factory, he shouted, Dont tell me I dont know what burning bodies smell like! They wanted the Laurieanne Lamb to make sure they were laid to rest peacefully. 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. 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. The Lamb Funeral Home had only two cremation ovens. 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. After stealing their stereo equipment, he coolly joined them in their pew at church. In 1985 Estephan and Cindy Strunk (Cindy) were separated. In 2006, Sconce violated his probation by selling forged bus tickets in Arizona, moving to Montana without permission, and stealing/pawning a neighbors rifle. May 6, 2013, 3:27 PM. 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. 2022 kawasaki ninja 650 exhaust,