Depicted by friends of his parents as the mastermind behind the assembly-line cremations, David Sconce is being held without bail. 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. For years, thousands of bereaved family members dealing with funeral plans for their loved ones had no idea that a Scorsese movie was taking place behind the scenes. A burning foot fell out. 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 described as brash and blunt, difficult to get along with, and sometimes more than a little intimidating. 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. Jerry Sconce told him to put in 3 1/2 to 5 pounds of ash if the deceased was a female and 5 to 7 pounds for a male, Dame said. 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 drawing room chapel of his Spanish mission-style building was filled with comfortable sofas and arm chairs. All Obituaries. 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. 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. David Sconce used to test his strength, according to one former employee, by heaving bodies in their cardboard boxes around the mortuary like bags of grain. 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. In fact, the family once appeared in magazine ads, flanking their old reliable Maytag washer while dads football team uniforms flapped in the breeze. Somehow, gum made out of tree bark is still softer than Bazooka. ADD LOCATION (eg. Coke was originally supposed to make you smarter or something. I was at the ovens at Auschwitz! Wentworth, Wales, and investigators from Californias Cemetery and Funeral Boards drove over to Oscar Ceramics to investigate. Anyone who would look at Sconce at that time saw a blond-haired, blue-eyed, a kind of athletic physique, a very handsome, outgoing, kind of smarmy, and charming guy, says Braidhill. 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. 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. Desperate for a job after leaving school, David found work as a dealer in a casino and as an usher at a hockey stadium. 7 years ago. Welcome To David Funeral Homes. 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. This was especially true in Southern California, he said, where price competitiveness in low-cost cremation was fierce.. 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. The grisly discoveries on Jan. 20, 1987, have touched off one of the most bizarre scandals in the history of the California funeral industry. I was at the ovens at Auschwitz.. 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. By 1982, 32 percent of people who died in California were cremated, the highest rate in the nation. Charged with four felonies, he was extradited to California, and sentenced to 25 years to life. I was at the ovens at Auschwitz, the man said chillingly, Wentworth recalled. 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. But the heirs to the fourth-generation funeral empire betrayed that trust with a series of gruesome crimes against the dead. You can toss money at this site and its author on Ko-Fi, Patreon, or just through PayPal. In case you were curious, the reader wrote, in a class action suit, the mishandling of your loved ones remains is worth about $1200 a body.. He even used such colorful terms for this act as popping chops and making the pliers sing. Hed then sell the gold to a jeweler buddy of his, which reportedly netted him an additional $6,000 a month. In Davids first year in the operation, cremations went up nearly 1,000%, from 194 to 1,675. In addition, there was no extra charge for picking up a body and returning the ashes. While he would be placed on lifetime probation for plotting to kill a rival funeral director, it seemed like small justice for the despair he had caused mourners. Ode to the Professional Mourner. In July of 1986, David (along with his parents) created a new side business: Coastal International Eye and Tissue Bank. Harvested hearts, eyes, and brains were then sold on the black market for up to $95 a pop. 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. David Sconce originally wanted to follow in his fathers footsteps and become a football player. 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. The floors were laid with new wood and a kitchen was added, with white granite countertops, a subzero fridge, and a wine cooler. 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. That body is burned. On November 23, 1986, the crematorium caught fire after two employees tried to break the company record by putting nineteenbodies in each furnace. The mortuaries, in turn, would charge customers anywhere from $265 to $1,000 for cremation services. 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. Business started booming! But what really sets this story apart is the thousands of dead bodies involved. 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. 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. 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. Sconces thugs had also gone after Ron Hast and his partner Stephen Nimz the year before at their home in the Hollywood Hills. The society has 5,000 members, who pay the society to arrange their cremations. And then her son, David, joined the family business. The remaining ashes are then marked and stored individually. He knew, he said, the smell of burning bodies. After being extradited back to California, he was sentenced to 25 to life and will be eligible for parole in 2022, just in time to appear on a new show were pitching called Where Are They Now? 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. The autopsy report found traces of the heart medication digoxin in his bloodstream, only Waters was not on any heart medication. 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. 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. 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. Without further adieu, lets fire up the crematory ovens as we step back in time thirty years to sunny Pasadena, California and the Lamb Funeral Home, where in the depths of the ovens something sinister has begun. This was an indelicate, bone-shattering operation that David allegedly referred to as making the pliers sing.. He entered the plea pursuant to an agreement offered by California Superior Court Judge Terry Smerling. David Sconce had not been raised in the funeral business. With the family reputation tarnished, the Lamb brothers have agreed to surrender the funeral homes current license, and they have applied for another one to operate under a new name, the Pasadena Funeral Home. Obituaries. But wait, it somehow gets worse! 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. There was jovial Jerry Sconce, 55, the Bible college football coach, his church organist wife, Laurieanne Lamb Sconce, 52, and their son David, 32, a charming ex-football player who had plans to grab a big piece of Californias booming cremation industry. Sconces employees were cremating anywhere from five to eighteen bodies at a time and thats perfurnace. It is a home in every sense of the word.. A crowbar cracked open sternums in order to access organs. 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. 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. 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. Sconce himself served 5 years before being released. 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 were the owners of funeral homeand organ harvesters. You're the first one to shed a tear and the last one to leave the post-funeral . When family members came to pick up the remains of their loved ones, they were handed a box with the ashes of hundreds of people, scooped from the drum and measured out by weight according to the gender of the deceased. 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. The first crematorium in the United States was built in 1876 in Pennsylvania. Up until the night an Auschwitz survivor had enough. We consider it an honor to serve the families of these communities and the communities that surround them and promise to do our very best to guide families through every step of the funeral process, from preplanning a funeral, to celebration of life services, to choosing a monument. They were burned, and the ashes placed in a barrel together. But with only two investigators covering 180 cemeteries and 45 crematories, they had a lot of other work. Welcome to Lamb Funeral Homes, with facilities in Greenfield, Fontanelle and Massena, Iowa. 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. What difference does it make? a witness recalled David Sconce saying. 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. He even took the test to become a police officer, but was rejected when a vision test determined he was colorblind. 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. It all began with the Lamb Family Funeral Home. 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. even beating the immediate family to the funeral home door. Literally flames and whatnot would be coming out of their chimney, says Jay Brown, whose familys mortuary was next to the Lamb crematory. Ever protective of his mother, David Sconce became angry and said he was going to have his boys pay the editor a visit, Dame said. 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. On occasion, families would request to see the corpse of their beloved grandparents and be denied. 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. Prosecutors said the crematory was part. But Sconce beat Waters to the punch, quite literally. 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.. 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. 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. But under the then-current California regulations, their crimes weremisdemeanors. Among these things were any body parts not necessary for removal prior to cremation. His business plan was simple enough: Sconce would obtain a license from the Department of Health to operate a crematorium. and passed on the business to his son, Lawrence, who became president of the Pasadena school board. 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 1985, Charles Lambs granddaughter Laurieanne Lamb Sconce, 49, scraped together $65,000 as a down payment and bought out the family business from her father, Lawrence, who had succeeded Charles. In the course of her duties at CSC, she met Sconce whose family owned the Lamb Funeral Home (LFH) and the Pasadena Crematorium. Operating under a license for a ceramics factory, David cremated bodies in the facilitys massive brick kilns until the fire chiefs gruesome discovery in January 1987. Sconce burned bodies 24 hours a day, churning out so much black smoke that neighbors routinely called the fire department, thinking the mortuary was on fire. 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. That morning, employee John Hallinan said, he and another worker loaded 38 bodies into the two furnaces, each measuring 3.5 feet high by 4 feet wide by 8 feet long. She had a rapport with mourners, a way of comforting them, and indeed was so effective at the work that some mourners would return shortly after the funeral of a friend or loved one to start making arrangements for their own. David Wayne Sconce. Hast recalled that he and a friend were attacked by two men posing as policemen, who threw ammonia and jalapeno sauce in their eyes. It was horrific, says Jay Brown. 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.