And two aged ovens. Laurieanne had given birth to her first child, a son, when she was just a few days shy of her 20th birthday, and it was this son, David, who would go on to both inherit Jerrys charm and take his talent for scheming to an entirely new level. 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. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. As profits grew, so did Davids sick ego. Making sure your will and testament is in place before you pass away gives you the choice of where youll go after you pass away, and the horrific events that are detailed in this story no longer come to pass thanks to a change in the law. When Dan Fritschie isnt reminding everyone that monsters still exist in this world, he can occasionally be seen performing stand-up comedy somewhere. They ran for two months before authorities became suspicious that the business was not what it seemed. If consent for the removals was not offered, Davids mother would forge the signature of a family member. Under the state Health and Safety Code, it is a misdemeanor to cremate more than one body at a time. 5-7 pounds of ashes for men, 3-4 pounds of ashes for women. 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. 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. 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. No matter how weird you think a story about the funeral business could be, prepare to be surprised and pretty grossed out. 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. . . And then her son, David, joined the family business. 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. A573819 (the funeral home case). 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. The autopsy report found traces of the heart medication digoxin in his bloodstream, only Waters was not on any heart medication. Coastal Cremations charged other mortuaries only $55 per cremation and sought business widely as the use of cremation boomed in California. 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. But wait, it somehow gets worse! 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. And that was enough to spur the fire department into action, stopping by for an administrative inspection of the premises and, upon opening the oven, being greeted with the sight of a wall of bodiesand a partially burned foot falling to the floor in front of the chief. 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. He had veered towards his fathers interests more than his mothers, and had played football. At the time, the charges wouldnt stick because three toxicologists couldnt agree that oleander was the cause of death. 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. And as for the Lamb Funeral Home, the business built by Charles Lamb in 1929? Luckily, Sconce had already scouted a second crematory location, and he quickly reassembled his operation in a corrugated metal warehouse in Hesperia, a way-out desert town populated mostly by veterans and retirees, located in San Bernardino County, some 70 miles northeast of Los Angeles. (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. A very aggressive market came about, said the Cemetery Boards Gill. In addition, there was no extra charge for picking up a body and returning the ashes. 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. Hissentence also carried the caveat of lifetime probation, which he violated often in multiple ways, including selling forged bus tickets in Arizona and attempting to pawn a stolen rifle in Montana (he and his parents were penniless after settling a $15.4 million dollar lawsuit out of court in 1992). In the 1980s, cremations were just coming into vogue as an inexpensive option for the funeral of a loved one. 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. 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 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. In 1986, David Sconce and his parents expanded the family enterprise with the creation of Coastal International Eye and Tissue Bank. 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. 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. David Sconce was a bully, says mortician Jay Brown, who started working at his own familys business, Mountain View Mortuary in Altadena, in 1971, when he was 12. Atty. 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 As a result of the case, the Legislature passed a bill authorizing inspection of crematories on demand, and it was signed by Gov. this is a true crime case that involves illegal body harvesting and the possible murder of timothy waters. His tale of deception, greed, and complete disregard for tradition, decency, and even the law is disgraceful. A Family Business by Ken Englade - Goodreads They were burned, and the ashes placed in a barrel together. Trial Nears In Scandal Over Mass Cremations And Body Part Thefts 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. Lawyers & Liquor is run out of my pocket, so every bit helps me do shit. A Family Business: A Chilling Tale of Greed as One Family Commits 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. Lamb Funeral Home ptyi liikekaupan seurauksena Davidin vanhemmille Laurieannelle ja Jerrylle sen jlkeen, kun pariskunta osti hautaustoimiston Lauriannen islt, Lawrencelta. About Us Our Family Our Facility Why Choose Us Testimonials Former Pasadena mortician convicted of mass cremations, stealing gold As the director of the funeral home, Laurieanne was the first person to greet guests with a box of tissues and a comforting lilt. For more than 60 years, Southern Californians entrusted the bodies of their loved ones to the Sconce family's Lamb Funeral Home. David Sconce had hundred of bodies, though. 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. 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. And if that wasnt enough to supplement Davids lifestyle, there was always the gold jar. and passed on the business to his son, Lawrence, who became president of the Pasadena school board. 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. 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. By the time of the Hesperia raid, the Sconces had built a business empire collecting human remains from San Diego to Santa Barbara. 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. 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. 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. I BRN 4U, it read. 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. But Sconce beat Waters to the punch, quite literally. Dorothy Stegeman, a former bookkeeper, testified that David Sconce told her that he made $5,000 to $6,000 a month pulling gold teeth and selling them to a Glendora jeweler. 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. Now, they are facing trial Jan. 23 on 69 criminal counts--including unlawful removal of body parts from human remains, multiple cremation of human remains and assault on rival morticians--that depict their family business as a cut-rate body factory in which the dead were mined like ore deposits. However, funerals can be funded by asking friends and family to donate to an online GoFundMe page that could start raising money to help families cover the funeral costs. 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 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. Cindy testified she worked for her father, Frank Strunk, at his business, the Cremation Society of California (CSC). This nightmare was finally over, right?!? 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. Chop Shop - Kathy Braidhill - Google Books They say they do not believe all of the accusations, but they admit that there is too much evidence to deny something went very wrong at the funeral home. I was at the ovens at Auschwitz, the man said chillingly, Wentworth recalled. This was especially true in Southern California, he said, where price competitiveness in low-cost cremation was fierce.. MISSOULA, Mont. But the heirs to the fourth-generation funeral empire betrayed that trust with a series of gruesome crimes against the dead. A Family Business (True Crime Library) - amazon.com 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. That infamous title belongs to David Wayne Sconce. 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. 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. But he had been in some trouble, notably when he admitted to police that he had broken into the house of a girlfriends parents when she refused to go out with him anymore. 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. 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. But with only two investigators covering 180 cemeteries and 45 crematories, they had a lot of other work. 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. 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. They would then dump all of the ashes together in huge barrels. He simply shifted operations to a metal warehouse hed already purchased in Hesperia. He even took the test to become a police officer, but was rejected when a vision test determined he was colorblind. Estephan said he never had any run-ins with David Sconce. A burning foot fell out. If somebody offers you a new Ford for $8,000 and Im paying $16,000 . Sconce, 56, is to be sentenced Monday for a case that could keep him behind bars . He was sentenced to five years in prison and released in 1991 after serving two and a half years. However, one substance that closely mimics the effects of digoxin is oleander, a poisonous tree commonly found in California. 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. 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.