Coke was originally supposed to make you smarter or something. For just $55 per body, he was now offering lower prices than every other crematorium in the region, if not the entire country. Sconces thugs had also gone after Ron Hast and his partner Stephen Nimz the year before at their home in the Hollywood Hills. About Us Our Family Our Facility Why Choose Us Testimonials Property Type. 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. His tale of deception, greed, and complete disregard for tradition, decency, and even the law is disgraceful. 5-7 pounds of ashes for men, 3-4 pounds of ashes for women. 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. Just $4,700 a month, a little more than the average cost of a cremation nowadays. Belgrade, Kragujevac) Enquiry type Country. 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. For two months, Sconce cremated bodies with diesel fuel in industrial-size ceramic kilns. 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. How in the world did David Sconce manage to get away with this for so long? Ron Hast, editor of a newsletter called Mortuary Management, whose Los Angeles mortuary used the Sconces, asked Laurieanne Sconce to state in writing in 1984 that her cremations were done individually. And hundreds of bodies. 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. At 300 pounds, the 24-year-old was considered morbidly obese. 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. But he was denied entrance to the Altadena facility because he did not have a search warrant. I said, I dont think so, its a ceramics shop, the chief later told the Los Angeles Times. But David lacked the compassion and the charisma necessary to work with bereaved people. In 1985 Estephan and Cindy Strunk (Cindy) were separated. 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. Sconce operated the Lamb Funeral Home with his wife, Laurieanne Lamb Sconce. The remaining ashes are then marked and stored individually. This nightmare was finally over, right?!? 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. While serving his sentence, he narrowly escaped charges for the murder of the owner of a local crematorium, although David had openly bragged to his lackies that hed slipped deadly oleander into the mans drink the day he died. 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 1982, 32 percent of people who died in California were cremated, the highest rate in the nation. That body is burned. Kathy Braidhill, then a crime reporter for the Pasadena Star-News, followed the story of David Sconces crimes, and wrote a 1993 book, Chop Shop, about his cremation scheme. Oscar Ceramics was the latest in a string of shady money-making schemes for David Sconce, a failed college football player and fourth-generation crematory owner. 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 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. 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. Up to 100 bodies would lie in the mortuarys cold room awaiting transportation to the crematory, where David used a wood 2-by-4 to pack them into the ovens like cordwood, according to witnesses at the Sconces preliminary hearing, which ended earlier this year. 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. Los Angeles in the 1980s was a lush, neon, dusty city. Later, 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. Two months later, Waters was dead, presumably of a heart attack. The embalming business boomed. 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. Harvested hearts, eyes, and brains were then sold on the black market for up to $95 a pop. 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. 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. 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. He told his parents that he wanted to start his own cremation company, working as an affiliate to the family funeral home. Thats the way it was supposed to be done. In fact, the family once appeared in magazine ads,. On September 1, 1989, Sconce was sentenced to a five-year prison term after pleading guilty to 21 charges, including mutilating corpses, conducting mass cremations, and hiring hit men to attack the competing morticians Ron Hast, his partner Stephen Nimz, and Timothy Waters. 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. Anita is the beloved mother of William Masters II and David Masters, loving sister of Aletha (Cooki) Bernardi and sister-in-law Donna Tomassone. In addition to his effective salesmanship. Later, when investigators from several agencies showed up in Hesperia, only one employee was around and he let them in. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. In Davids first year in the operation, cremations went up nearly 1,000%, from 194 to 1,675. 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. A proliferation of people and cars had led to the citys signature smog, and gridlock gripped the streets. In 1994, he was found guilty of selling fake bus tickets in Arizona. 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 impact David Sconce left on the funeral business is still being felt today. But, for a time, the business continued as always. 7 years ago. At the time, brains could sold for about $80, hearts for $95, lungs for $60. 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. 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. 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. David's mother Laurieanne Lamb Sconce and her husband Jerry bought out the family business from her father in 1985. At the warehouse, the soles of their shoes stuck to floors slick with human fluids, and when they pried open one of the hinged doors of Sconces kilns, the remains of a human foot fell out, engulfed in flames. 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. This is a great book for funeral collectors. In 1982, encouraged by Jerry and Laurieanne, the 26-year-old decided to obtain his embalming license and join the family business. Below you, an entire other world operates. On occasion, families would request to see the corpse of their beloved grandparents and be denied. ADD LOCATION (eg. somethings not right, he said. 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. 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. Frustrated and bored, he and his friends egged houses and beat up homeless drunks for fun. 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. 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. What difference does it make? a witness recalled David Sconce saying. 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. Sconces employees were cremating anywhere from five to eighteen bodies at a time and thats perfurnace. 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 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. Davids mother Laurieanne Lamb Sconce and her husband Jerry bought out the family business from her father in 1985. 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. Twenty percent of them.. He simply shifted operations to a metal warehouse hed already purchased in Hesperia. Two books, entitled Chop Shop and A Family Business, have been written about David Sconces escapades. In the slumber rooms, families were encouraged to make themselves as much at home as though they were in their own residence, according to an old company brochure. 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. 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. The cost? A double-oven structure built in 1895, it was known among funeral directors as the oldest crematorium west of the Mississippi. David Sconce secretly set up a new crematorium about 70 miles away in a warehouse in Hesperia, California. 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. (No, Seriously. Laurieannes personal life was less charmed than her professional one. By the time of the Hesperia raid, the Sconces had built a business empire collecting human remains from San Diego to Santa Barbara. It all began with the Lamb Family Funeral Home. Homes for rent: Nadezhda Sofia City - 0 listings. Lamb served as president of the state Funeral Directors Assn. Sconce had bulldozed the front- and backyards of the house before leaving town, but he hadnt completely covered his tracks. 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. In July of 1986, David (along with his parents) created a new side business: 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. 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. They ran for two months before authorities became suspicious that the business was not what it seemed. 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. 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. 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. . 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. What they did is, they tried to corner the market, said Joe Estephan, funeral director of the Cremation Society of California. What curse was placed on the O'Brien family that would give them a son with a webbed foot? Although he was caught, he avoided jail after leading police to the stolen equipment. The society has 5,000 members, who pay the society to arrange their cremations. The autopsy also discovered digoxin, a common heart medication, in Waterss bloodthough Waters didnt take heart medication. 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. Twenty years ago, only 10% of the dead were cremated. David Sconce preferring to burn things into oblivion rather than preserve them would turn out to be an odd bit of foreshadowing for both the company and his family legacy. 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. 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. - 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. 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. Sconce said his words were misinterpreted. On the morning of Sunday, November 23, 1986, the Altadena crematorium burned down after employees tried cramming in a record 38 bodies at once. But then the man said, Dont tell me theyre not burning bodies. 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. Its a true shame that his name has to be connected to the funeral industry at all. The first crematorium in the United States was built in 1876 in Pennsylvania. We would like to get out of the Lamb Funeral Home business, Bruce Lamb said. Its important to go with the best option for you. by Caleb Wilde in Aggregate Death. The Lamb Funeral Home building in Pasadena was sold to another funeral home in the mid-1990s; when that venture failed the facility stood vacant for several years. 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 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? 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. 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. Well, for one, Sconce had no reason to fear any serious repercussions. But under the then-current California regulations, their crimes weremisdemeanors. 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. 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 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. 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. It is used, but in great shape. 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. A573819 (the funeral home case). And Sconce would charge the funeral homes the low, low price of $55 per body, half of what his competitors offered. 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. 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. Their conclusion so far is that large transgressions begin with small concessions. He would attract business from area funeral homes with his half-priced cremations and make up for the low cost with high volume. Sconce, 56, is to be sentenced Monday for a case that could keep him behind bars . Just in case the universe hadnt made it obvious enough what was reallyhappening in that warehouse, when Wentworth opened one of the kilns, a human foot fell out still burning. But, as if the organ theft and filling sales werent enough, there was yet another black mark to discuss. In one case, according to prosecutors, survivors were prevented from viewing their loved ones body because the eyes had already been taken. He liked to attend hockey games with a bunch of beefy, ex-football players that he called his boys. Sconces boys testified that they listened to his boasts, ran his errands and roughed up his enemies. Then Charles retired, leaving the business to his son, Lawrence, who would then pass it on to his daughter Laurieanne and her husband. 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. David Sconce secretly set up a new crematorium about 70 miles away in a warehouse in Hesperia, California. 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. The Internet Is Real Life: How A Lawyer Will Track You Down. Because Grandpa had no eyes. 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 history of funerary practices in America reflect a complex evolution of the relationship between death and money. When Dan Fritschie isnt reminding everyone that monsters still exist in this world, he can occasionally be seen performing stand-up comedy somewhere. As the Sconces awaited arraignment, the police made another morbid discovery. 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. Death Facts: Part 72. In the winter of 2018, the owners saw an opportunity for the second floor of the building. 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. 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. However, theres something else that can mimic digoxin in the bloodstream: oleander, one of the most common and most poisonous trees in Southern California. 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. The floors were laid with new wood and a kitchen was added, with white granite countertops, a subzero fridge, and a wine cooler. He decorated the interior with couches, chairs, and various other accoutrements to make mourners feel comfortable. 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. The final chapter in the story opened Nov. 23, 1986, when a fire destroyed the crematory in Altadena. She loved funeral work, especially the task of beautifying the dead: applying makeup to the waxen skin of the embalmed. They pulled out eyeballs, plopping them unceremoniously into Coke cans and paper towels.