When Hesperia, California assistant fire chief received a call in January 1987 from a man complaining about noxious smoke pouring from a neighboring industrial building, he scoffed at the mans accusation that the smoke smelled like burning flesh. 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. In July of 1986, David (along with his parents) created a new side business: Coastal International Eye and Tissue Bank. 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. 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. 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. 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. Later, when investigators from several agencies showed up in Hesperia, only one employee was around and he let them in. Soon, the two ovens at the family crematory in Altadena, the oldest cremation furnaces west of the Mississippi, were running 16 to 18 hours a day. His dad, Jerry, had played for the University of California, Santa Barbara, and later became the head coach at Azusa Pacific College, where David enrolled in 1974. Homes for rent: Nadezhda Sofia City - 0 listings. His daughter Laurieanne Lamb Sconce began assuming control in the mid-'70s. 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. An unsettling look at the Sconce family from the acclaimed true crime author of Deadly Lessons. The reason Sconce had escaped notice for so long were the lax laws surrounding the regulation of crematories and the lack of funding for enforcement of those same laws. 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 What difference does it make? a witness recalled David Sconce saying. 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. In fact, the family once appeared in magazine ads, flanking their old reliable Maytag washer while dads football team uniforms flapped in the breeze. Depicted by friends of his parents as the mastermind behind the assembly-line cremations, David Sconce is being held without bail. All good? It all began with the Lamb Family Funeral Home. Dubbed the Cremation King of California by a journalist, David equipped his new Corvette with vanity plates reading I BRN 4 U.. 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. 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. 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. 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. You're the first one to shed a tear and the last one to leave the post-funeral . She loved funeral work, especially the task of beautifying the dead: applying makeup to the waxen skin of the embalmed. 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 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. Prosecutors said the crematory was part. David Wayne Sconce was the accused, and it was alleged that back in 1985 he had killed a rival mortician, Timothy R. Waters, to stop him exposing some dark and illegal activities at the Lamb Funeral Home, the family business where Sconce worked. At the time Mitfords book was first published, the average bill from an undertaker was $750 ($6,300 today); by 1991, when the book was updated and revised, the cost had risen to $7,800 (now $14,500). 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. On the morning of Sunday, November 23, 1986, the Altadena crematorium burned down after employees tried cramming in a record 38 bodies at once. 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. This led the state to charge Sconce with poisoning Waters the following year, but those charges were dropped after multiple experts failed to agree on whether or not oleander was actually present in Waters system. In 1990, while Sconce was still in prison, new charges were brought against him for Waterss death, but the case was ultimately dismissed after three separate toxicologists, including Dr. Fredric Riederswho later testified in the O. J. Simpson casecould not agree if there was oleander poison in Waterss blood. He would attract business from area funeral homes with his half-priced cremations and make up for the low cost with high volume. What lay behind the screen was more contentious and corrupt. 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 even tried to enlist in the police academy, but failed to get in when the vision test showed him to be colorblind. And then her son, David, joined the family business. Because Grandpa had no eyes. 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. Two months after Waters was assaulted, he mysteriously died at his mothers home in Camarillo while he was visiting for Easter. Jerry Sconce oli toiminut aiemmin muun muassa jalkapallovalmentajana ja Laurianne Lamb Sconce oli toiminut kirkon urkurina. The sole purpose of the company was to facilitate Davids already-flourishing side gig trafficking organs hed removed from soon-to-be-cremated bodies. The $15.5 million suit in 1991 involved 20,000 relatives of people cremated at the funeral home. By the time of the Hesperia raid, the Sconces had built a business empire collecting human remains from San Diego to Santa Barbara. On so many levels, David Sconces story is one that deathcare professionals dont like to hear. 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. 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. Two months later, Waters was dead, presumably of a heart attack. Braidhill details the twisted greed and blind ambition that drove the founder's son, David Sconce, to mutilate corpses and illegally sell their body parts--including the gold in their teeth.. 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. The autopsy also discovered digoxin, a common heart medication, in Waterss bloodthough Waters didnt take heart medication. But he recalled that on the night the business was transferred to him, several people broke into the offices. 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. About Us. In the 1980s, cremations were just coming into vogue as an inexpensive option for the funeral of a loved one. The Internet Is Real Life: How A Lawyer Will Track You Down. 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. An unsettling look at the Sconce family from the acclaimed true crime author of Deadly Lessons. 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. At the peak of his business in 1986, according to state cemetery board reports, Sconce burned 8,000 bodies a year. 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. I dont think so, its a ceramics shop, Wentworth replied. 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. 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. 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. Today, Laurieanne Sconces two brothers, Kirk and Bruce Lamb, are attempting to restore the business to its original purpose as a quiet family funeral home. He was sentenced to five years in prison and released in 1991 after serving two and a half years. It was horrific, says Jay Brown. This was especially true in Southern California, he said, where price competitiveness in low-cost cremation was fierce.. Price . Best coffee city in the world? Between 1985 and 1986, Coastal Cremations gross income from cremations would top over $1 million. 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. A burning foot fell out. David Sconce had hundred of bodies, though. The cost? A double-oven structure built in 1895, it was known among funeral directors as the oldest crematorium west of the Mississippi. 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. 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. How in the world did David Sconce manage to get away with this for so long? They were burned, and the ashes placed in a barrel together. On August 30, 1989, Sconce pled guilty to 21 counts in the Lamb Funeral Home case, which involved charges of mishandling of human remains. 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. Then Charles retired, leaving the business to his son, Lawrence, who would then pass it on to his daughter Laurieanne and her husband. A573819 (the funeral home case). 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. 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 all accounts a beefy man with a love for money, when other options ran dry for him his parents decided to bring him into the family business. 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. By all accounts a beefy man with a love for money, when other options ran dry for him his parents decided to bring him into the family business. 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. 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. Finding embalming school boring, David decided to leverage the familys crematorium as an entrepreneurial opportunity. 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. Obituaries. Meant to fit one body at a time, Sconce and his associates often filled the retorts with up to 18 bodies. **In an effort to do our part regarding public safety and provide families with our services, we at David Funeral Home will abide by all local, state, federal, and public health mandates. 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. The ashes are then removed and strained to remove large pieces of bone, medical pins, etc. . Lamb Funeral Home | 3911 Lafayette Rd | Hopkinsville, KY 42240 | Tel: 1-270-889-9393 | | Lamb Funeral Home | 3911 Lafayette Rd | Hopkinsville, KY 42240 | Tel: 1-270-889-9393 | Fax: 1-270-886-5262 | Home. Criteria 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 then the man said, Dont tell me theyre not burning bodies. It was designed to be elegant but comfortable, filled with sofas and armchairs. But the ovens were old, accidents happened, and no investigation began. The three bedrooms available for rent in the former funeral home were given walk-in closets, and the master bedroom outfitted with a freestanding soaking tub. Property Type. For sixty years, families in Southern California trusted the Sconce-owned Lamb Funeral Home with their loved ones' remains. Under the state Health and Safety Code, it is a misdemeanor to cremate more than one body at a time. 364 pages,paperback. Laurieannes personal life was less charmed than her professional one. Compromise is the language of the devil, Bruce Lamb said. 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. 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. He found embalming school to be boring, and that wasnt where the money was anyway. 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. Desperate for a job after leaving school, David found work as a dealer in a casino and as an usher at a hockey stadium. Two books, entitled Chop Shop and A Family Business, have been written about David Sconces escapades. Sconce, 56, is to be sentenced Monday for a case that could keep him behind bars . 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. I said, I dont think so, its a ceramics shop, the chief later told the Los Angeles Times. Business started booming! somethings not right, he said. If somebody offers you a new Ford for $8,000 and Im paying $16,000 . 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. But with only two investigators covering 180 cemeteries and 45 crematories, they had a lot of other work. Another reason: The low, low prices weren't all that was helping Sconce corner the SoCal cremation market. You can toss money at this site and its author on Ko-Fi, Patreon, or just through PayPal. Theyre dead.. Lamb Funeral Home ptyi liikekaupan seurauksena Davidin vanhemmille Laurieannelle ja Jerrylle sen jlkeen, kun pariskunta osti hautaustoimiston Lauriannen islt, Lawrencelta. He was released in 1991. Greg Risling, Associated Press. 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. At the time, the charges wouldnt stick because three toxicologists couldnt agree that oleander was the cause of death. Skilled in consoling the grief-stricken, she had customers sign complicated and sometimes forged documents which enabled her son to mine the bodies of their recently deceased for organs, which could then be sold to medical schools and research centers. 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. After graduating from high school in Glendora, he enrolled in Azusa Pacific, the Christian college where his father worked, with the hopes of becoming a football star and playing for the Seattle Seahawks. They were, for lack of a better term, working in bulk. Several funeral directors named in the lawsuit said they were reassured by the sterling Lamb name. He had veered towards his fathers interests more than his mothers, and had played football. As the director of the funeral home, Laurieanne was the first person to greet guests with a box of tissues and a comforting lilt. They anointed their boss with a grandiose nickname: Little Hitler.. Sconces employees were cremating anywhere from five to eighteen bodies at a time and thats perfurnace. I could see smoke from a mile and a half away.. David Sconce had not been raised in the funeral business. Its important to go with the best option for you. 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. Cue dramatic organ music. It was done without their permission or knowledge. But thats maybe not that surprising for a team that used nepotism as a recruitment tool. 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. Laurieanne had always been her fathers golden child when it came to the care of the those who sought out the Lamb familys services. 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. Thats the way it was supposed to be done. I was at the ovens at Auschwitz!. 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. When the neighbor was told it was just a ceramics factory, he shouted, Dont tell me I dont know what burning bodies smell like! Twenty years ago, only 10% of the dead were cremated. 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. They then attacked the man and threw jalapeno sauce and ammonia into his eyes. 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. 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. 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 proliferation of people and cars had led to the citys signature smog, and gridlock gripped the streets. They wanted the Laurieanne Lamb to make sure they were laid to rest peacefully. He knew, he said, the smell of burning bodies. But they had aimed at Nimzs glass eye, foiling the plot, and at least one of Sconces associates later pleaded guilty to assault. At the Lamb Family Funeral Home, Laurieanne was the kindly, motherly face of Davids morbid scheme. MISSOULA, Mont. 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. That body is burned. 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. Its not like Sconce knew where or even howto draw the line on depravity at this point. David Sconce was notorious for multiple cremations, organ harvesting and crimes against persons. 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. 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. Only much later did police begin looking into the death after David Sconce was heard bragging about poisoning him. The grisly discoveries on Jan. 20, 1987, have touched off one of the most bizarre scandals in the history of the California funeral industry. He was a nasty, horrible individual to have any interaction with.. Sconces thugs had also gone after Ron Hast and his partner Stephen Nimz the year before at their home in the Hollywood Hills. He also pleaded guilty to soliciting a hit man to murder another rival, and was given the bizarre sentence of lifetime probation, a legal ruling many scholars might refer to as a pretty valid argument for burning this goddamn place to the ground.. They said David would lift and carry cardboard-enclosed corpses around the facility for exercise, use a crowbar to crack open sternums, and store eyeballs in used cola cans. 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. However, some people do prefer to be cremated. 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. 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. 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. 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. He is currently incarcerated at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California, and is eligible for parole in 2022. 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. 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. 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. 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.. In one case, according to prosecutors, survivors were prevented from viewing their loved ones body because the eyes had already been taken.