And that's how he died.
But that was not the only death that people were talking about.
Also, there was Ron Jordan.
Back in '85,
Ron Jordan worked for Dave Sconce.
I knew Ron, I knew the whole family, his family.
He transported bodies to the crematory to be cremated.
He saw what Dave is doing.
Ron decided, "I don't wanna have anything to do with it.
I'm quitting. I'm done."
But he was scared of Dave Sconce.
So, he told Dave, "Listen, you have nothing to worry about it.
I know nothing, I saw nothing."
He was looking forward for the next phase of his life.
He was a handsome guy, he had a gorgeous girlfriend.
Young, educated. He wanted to be a fireman.
Two weeks later, we hear that Ron was found hanging.
He committed suicide.
Coroner came in, did an investigation.
Not enough evidence to blame anyone other than hearsay,
but we all had no doubts that he didn't do that to himself.
Everyone knew Ron, everyone knew Dave,
everyone knew the business, said that cannot happen.
There's no proof, of course, but a couple weeks before, Ron...
he mentioned it, not realizing that it's gonna come true.
You know, "If anything happens to me, just look for Dave."
Certain people said that I killed Ron Jordan, who, okay.
Somehow, I had done something to him.
I remember Ron was clean-cut.
He was a good employee, he was a hard worker.
I later heard he was a gay guy,
but I don't care if a guy's a gay guy. Big deal.
It means I don't tie my shoes in front of him.
Okay, that's fine.
I can't think of one bad thing I ever heard about Ron.
Why would I want to kill him?
Seriously? You know.
This man has no conscience.
He deserved to be locked up for life.
For life. That's where he belongs.
Good evening, I'm Ted Koppel, and this is Nightline.
I don't even know if I've got my husband's ashes.
Let alone, I know that they mutilated him
to get the corneas, but I don't even know that it's his ashes that I've got.
From California, a story
that sounds like a plot from a horror movie.
A ghastly tale of funeral attendants who allegedly dismembered bodies,
secretly sold human organs.
32-year-old David Sconce and his parents, Jerry and Laurieanne Lamb Sconce,
who own the mortuary, face trial beginning later this year on 68 counts.
All the stories about me and my parents,
that was sensationalized to the max.
There was a bad story about me every day in the news.
The cremation business
was a goldmine for the owners of Lamb's.
It was such a gut-churning, emotional kind of a case.
Maybe part of it was irrational. Maybe, just maybe.
What better way to vilify a guy than to compare him to Hitler?
Come on. The all-time bad guy.
I'm innocent of everything that I'm being accused of.
The guilt I focus on myself
might be for me not being on top of situations
as much as I should have been, simply because I was overwhelmed
with the number of things I had going.
The preliminary hearing in the Lamb Funeral Home case
was the longest preliminary hearing
in the history of Pasadena, encompassing six months--
a little more-- and 99 witnesses.
It was a number of counts, a litany of 'em.
Most were for the mortuary.
A couple of 'em in there dealt with robbery and assault.
Maybe 80% of 'em were misdemeanors.
You know, it just seemed like it would never end.
We're charging 26 counts of taking brains, hearts, and lungs
from cadavers without the permission from the next of kin.
Walt Lewis, the district attorney...
he kept bringing in witness after witness after witness.
So, I did it, but I didn't want to, 'cause I knew he was in a lot of trouble.
You know, he was getting ready to take the blunt
of whatever it was going on, it was gonna be his fault.
When they put Danny Galambos on the stand, this big, hulking, huge guy...
Walt Lewis, "Are you scared of David Sconce?"
And Daniel Galambos goes, "Oh, yeah. Oh, he used to be almost as big as me."
And I'm thinking, wow.
I couldn't laugh in the courtroom, but I wanted to. I wanted to.
All these former employees testified against me
because it was "Testify against David,
or you're going to jail." That's what it was.
So, none of those guys went to jail. None of 'em did.
I gave my testimony. I had to do it.
And it was partially to kinda clean my slate a little bit.
And I said, David Sconce was a dark, bad guy.
They would ask me questions.
David Sconce always sat by his dad, you know, and Laurieanne.
They're all three looking at me, you know. Every one of 'em.
Evil eyes and just, their eyes were right at you.
It was kinda scary.
I always wondered if they would do anything to hurt me
for testifying against them.
Shoot me on the freeway or something, you know.
Break into my home and stab me or something.
But I felt relieved in a way
that I'm gonna be able to tell the truth,
you know, 'cause this is not right, this is inhumane.
And when I went to court, I was thinking of the families,
'cause some of the family members were there at the courthouse.
When it came time to testify...
my lawyer, he said, "Now, are you ready, and are you calm?"
I said, "Oh, yes, I'm very calm."
What I want to do is jump over the table
and grab him by the throat and shake him till he's dead.
When I was testifying in court,
I was walking in the halls, and I saw David Sconce with his attorney.
Heard him say to his attorney,
"I didn't do it, my guys did it."
Well, I was livid. It was all I could do not to choke him right then and there.
In this particular case,
my client denies having engaged in either one of those two practices,
either multiple cremations or commingling of the ashes.
I mean, he's not saying he had permission. He's just saying that he never did it.
Right.
I only had one experience going to a courthouse, with my sister,
for, I believe it was a preliminary trial,
and the lawyers for the Lamb Funeral Home were really vicious with her.
"Well, you read the contract, and why are you saying this?"
And you know, really, really adversarial to her.
The body parts were removed, but with the consent of the next of kin.
We have forms that the next of kin signed.
They were very belligerent and battering,
and it was this head-butting kind of situation.
Are you kidding me? It was just unbelievable.
David was in jail.
And everybody kept telling me, "Don't worry about it.
Don't worry about it. He'll be out, he'll come out."
Things were getting worse-- his trial.
I was running out of money.
And I was a stay-at-home mom.
So, I asked my in-laws, Laurieanne and Jerry Sconce,
for a little help.
And they said, "Well, you need to go on welfare."
Nobody wanted to hear me.
It was all about David...
and getting money for attorneys and trying to get him out.
David was on the news every single night. I couldn't get away from it.
And I didn't know 90% of what was going on until I was hearing it on the news.
I was devastated.
It's hard because you fall in love with a family,
and you wanna support, you wanna believe.
Sitting through the trial is when I thought...
Who is this? Who did I marry?
David had so many felonies.
I kept thinking, this is not David. David couldn't do this.
Father of your kids, you want them to be innocent.
So, when they started talking about murder...
I didn't believe it. I didn't think that he was capable.
When David would say to someone, "I'm going to kill you,"
or he would say to somebody else, "I'm gonna kill this other person,"
people took him seriously, very seriously.
He always carried a gun, sometimes carried two guns.
The thing is, he was always threatening to kill people.
He almost routinely threatened to kill his employees.
Throw 'em up against the wall,
put his hands around their throats, you know,
"I'm gonna kill you. I'm gonna fuckin' kill you, man."
By all these accounts, he was a dangerous person.
And he made plans to kill his competitors.
The case that was going on in Pasadena...
all of a sudden, I got two detectives pulling in.
They said, "We have two men in our custody
that said Dave Sconce hired them to kill you."
I had bought the Cremation Society of California--
that was the name of the company.
Dave was pissed off at me because he wanted to buy the business.
I thank God how lucky I was.
Because, you know, I would sit and think, "I could have been dead."
Maybe not hanging from my neck...
or with poison.
But it came very close.
And all because of some criminal.
And nothing's gonna stand in his way.
There are many threats that have been made in this case,
and also actual assaults by people who are alleging
that were hired by Mr. Sconce.
Conspiracy of murder, there's some crap about that.
That was kind of an ongoing claim.
Walt Lewis, he just hated me.
You know, you feel that when you read people.
He would put his finger up to his lips and he would have his arms folded,
and he would just be doing this, looking at me.
Just...
Not even blinking looking at you.
I just kinda thought he was out of his mind
or he was obsessed with me.
I was the judge during the preliminary hearing.
And at some point, someone noticed
the writing on the wall in the sheriff's department
in Pasadena in the holding cell.
They figured out that it was more than likely
that David Sconce wrote it.
"Lewis will die," quote-unquote.
They found four inmates that had been approached
by David Sconce to kill Walt Lewis.
No! No.
No, I wrote "Lewis will die of AIDS" on the wall,
because he's so emaciated.
And I thought, why, you know, why has he got this out for me?
But it didn't say "Lewis will die." It said "Lewis will die of AIDS."
The ends justify the means, as far as David was concerned.
Didn't matter what it was, who it was, or how much it cost, "Just do it."
And so, then it went to Superior Court
where his mother and his father would be tried separately.
I'll always remember that when they walked out of my courtroom,
Laurieanne turned and very loudly said,
"We haven't gotten justice here. We'll get justice somewhere else."
When our trial started,
I had never heard of the Lamb Funeral Home or the Sconces.
So, upon hearing the details of what the trial was gonna be,
I was like, "Oh, my God."
Do people really do this?
The father, Jerry, I didn't trust him.
He just had the appearance of being shady.
But the mom, Laurieanne, was different.
She always looked so innocent.
She just reminds you of a librarian.
I testified to my findings, and they were irrefutable.
We knew that Laurieanne had embezzled a lot of money.
She was sitting up at the table with the attorney.
She's got this aura. I mean, I don't know.
It's like somebody standing behind her with a flashlight.
I mean, it's just the glow.
And once again, "I didn't do anything wrong.
"All I wanted to do was just help these families and...
I'm so sorry, I'm just--"
you know, just-- I don't know.
She would have given Meryl Streep a run for her money.
The defense for Jerry and Laurieanne was that the son had incorporated them
without their will into these illegal activities.
David had made them do it,
that they were essentially victimized by their son.
My parents were part of everything
that was going on there at the funeral home.
But you know what?
They were never anything but good to me, ever.
So, I did essentially lie about that
and say they didn't know anything about it.
I tried to fall on my spear
because I was trying to protect 'em.
That's important to me.
They really tried to make us believe it was all about David.
But the evidence was overwhelming that they were completely involved.
The way I recall it, they would have a document
that the family would have to sign
to release the body to the funeral home to be cremated.
There was a point where they had changed some of the language on the document.
There was a line that was added.
It was like in the middle of the paragraph
that would pretty much give permission for them
to remove organs without the families knowing that that's what they were doing.
It was horrible.
And then, it came to light that sometimes Laurieanne
was actually forging the signatures.
During the trial, expert witnesses
determined that it was the handwriting of Laurieanne
on many of the release forms.
And at one point, she even misspelled the relative's name.
I mean, how does a relative spell his own name incorrectly?
When Laurieanne got in trouble for forgery...
she said she didn't know what she was doing.
She was controlling, told everybody what to do,
all the time.
I think Laurieanne was the mastermind of the whole family.
It's so sad that there are folks out there
who would take advantage of people who are grieving.
I remember one of the families
whose loved one's heart was removed without her knowing.
And she lost it.
She lost it on the stand 'cause it was--
and I'm getting emotional too, but it was devastating.
I have to admit to you, when we were deliberating...
my thought was,
I hope these people get life.
They only got, like, three years.
You see, I'm speechless, because it's like, really?
Sorry, sweetie.
After cheating families for years, dishonoring them.
20,000 families that this happened to,
and all they got was three years?
No. No justice.
...when I heard that Laurieanne and Jerry both went to the county jail.
I couldn't believe it.
I know that must have been hell.
I know, 'cause I've been in the county jail enough.
And his dad lost all his hair. Jerry lost all his hair!
You know what I mean? This experience just killed them.
It took all the good out of them.
Man, people can say whatever they want to say,
but to me they didn't deserve to go there.
Especially Laurieanne, she's such a nice lady.
As this case wound its way through the courts, it was just a bizarre
and sort of nightmarish kind of story.
But it was easy to forget
that the people at the center of this case...
David Sconce's mother and father,
even though they were convicted of all these crimes...
they were well-known in Pasadena.
The Lamb family were exactly part of old Pasadena.
It was a community with a long history...
filled with old families
and mansions that exude a sense of wealth.
And I think David grew up with that mentality.
When David's trial came up in court...
my impression of him was that he was blonde, he was big.
He looked like the ex-football player that he was.
And he'd carried himself with a sense of entitlement,
that he was not a criminal,
but an upstanding citizen of old-line Pasadena.
I was surprised to hear what happened in this case.
David's judge dismissed many of the charges
that I had ordered him to be held to answer on...
including charges of murder conspiracy.
I got lucky and I got a better judge.
And he dismissed half of the counts.
I had to say "guilty" in court to what was left.
And he gave me five years.
The District Attorney's sitting down, just kinda going like...
Hand over his face.
The judge had a lot of discretion.
He used it, and David benefited by it. It's unfortunate.
More than the deal of the century, I think.
What people were talking about was, "Oh, he got away with almost everything."
A lot of people were very disillusioned with the whole proceeding.
But it wasn't the end.
Prosecutors were still trying to charge David
with Tim Waters' murder.
But the Waters thing seemed pretty clear-cut.
More and more witnesses at the jail
said David told them he poisoned him with oleander.
Poison had been found in Waters' system.
While I'm in prison...
I get a letter from Roger Diamond, my attorney,
about the ridiculous Waters case.
He says, "Well, they filed a death penalty case on you."
And I go, "Oh, wait a minute, what?"
Toxicology is the study of poisons in living systems.
Every modern hospital in the world,
if you will, has screening techniques
for measuring the drugs or metabolites in a person,
whether they're at the proper therapeutic levels
or whether at toxic levels.
In 1991, I learned through a colleague
that there was a court case going on in the California area
over a poisoning by oleander.
Mr. Waters was the first one I had heard of
or knew of to have poisoning by oleander.
A few years earlier, a toxicologist
had concluded that the tissue samples from Mr. Waters had oleander in it.
Both the defense and the prosecution had reason to believe
that they needed more definitive results.
And so, it was at that point that they contact me.
During the Tim Waters death penalty case that I was charged with...
their theory was that I poisoned Tim Waters with oleander.
They'd said it was a derivative as if it had been distilled oleandrin.
I said, this is absolutely impossible.
I told Roger Diamond, my attorney, I said "Roger," I said, "dig him up."
He goes, "What?" Roger balked at it.
And Roger said, "Oh, David, what if it's a false positive?
"What if they find something that might not be that,
but they claim that's it?"
I said, "Roger, they're claiming I killed a guy
"that I've never seen, and they don't have evidence
that I've ever even been around this guy, ever."
I said, "Dig him up!"
The deceased, we learned was buried
in an above-ground casket at room temperature.
When you do an autopsy, you remove the organs from the body.
And his organs, I was told were stored in plastic bags.
I don't know whether they were Ziploc bags or what,
but plastic bags beside his body in the casket,
and that that's where the samples came from
that we received at Cornell.
Mr. Waters' liver was best described by-- I would say by, as chocolate pudding.
It was a mush. It was badly decayed.
So, we rolled up our sleeves and used some technology
we were in the process of developing at the time.
A tandem mass spectrometer...
to look for oleandrin as well as oleandrigenin.
Those chemicals analyzed in that way have their own fingerprint.
You better have that fingerprint from the mass spectrometer
to be sure you're right.
Ex-mortician David Sconce, the man who is said to have bragged
about poisoning and killing his arch-rival,
mortician Timothy Waters,
walked into court to hear two words:
"Case dismissed."
No oleander. Nothing. Zero. Zippo. The man died of a heart attack.
After all the work that we did...
our findings were negative.
We did not find any oleander or oleandrigenin
in Mr. Waters' tissue.
One possible explanation is that this badly decayed sample
was so chemically complex, that it didn't work very well.
I gotta tell you, we tried hard,
but we did not see it.
The motion and application to dismiss the action is granted,
and the defendant is just-- is discharged.
I don't care to shake the hand of a man I believe is a cold-blooded murderer.
I'm elated that they have finally seen the light.
- I'm an innocent man. - Did you ever think
you would see this day that you would walk out?
I always knew I would walk out. I'm innocent.
It's my unofficial opinion that David Sconce is guilty.
The symptoms that Mr. Waters displayed...
all the other details-- the book that was found--
all is circumstantial evidence, granted.
But knowing the poor nature of his character, if you will,
it seems entirely possible or likely that he did this.
It's a shame he got away with it.
Oh, the test results prove that this was never in his body,
never could have been there, and what the hell are you talking about?
Year of my life sitting in the county jail to hear all that.
I was just really relieved.
But I just found out that night before that I'd lost my dad's dad.
He died.
So, I called, and
I talked to my grandmother, Mommy Thais, and...
You know, he's gone, that's it.
You know, he's gone, and I told her, I said, "It's okay," you know.
"I'm coming home." And, you know,
that's all she kept saying, was, "He's gone."
And...
You know, I left it alone.
Friday goes by, and then she died on Satur--
Excuse me. She died on Saturday.
Yeah. Nothing wrong with her.
Nothing.
And, you know, she was a big part of my life.
You know, it was just, there wasn't anything wrong with her.
She married for like 61 years, and she just died.
Gave up.
And, you know.
Sorry, that was sad. I was just really sad.
Both of 'em were just-- two caskets right there.
Can't say I'm over it. Don't think I'll ever be over it.
After the Tim Waters trial...
it was all over.
A lot of people wanted to see this family in jail
paying for all of the things that they did.
But at the end of the day, they were free.
I don't know how they could live with themselves.
After he had gotten out...
we lived at the vacation house in Lake Mohave.
I just wanted a clean start.
I didn't want to think about anything that happened in California.
We can start living a normal life.
Laurieanne and Jerry were out of jail.
They were living right next door.
And David had gotten a job working for LTI.
It was Laughlin Transit, and he was driving buses.
You cross over the bridge and you go down,
and you pick up people that wanted to come to Laughlin to gamble.
Well, they gave him a stack of bus tickets and said,
"You can sell these tickets for $20 apiece."
Well, he decided to make his own tickets...
...and sell his own tickets so he could make and keep the money.
Well, he got caught.
Why?
Why would you think that that is gonna help you in any way?
His mother said...
"He got caught."
So, they were aware of it too.
Whose idea was it? Was it David's? Was it Laurieanne's?
Was it Jerry?
It's so...
David went to jail again.
You just really start thinking about your choices in life
and who you pick.
Barbara and I just kinda grew apart.
You know, the only reason I divorced her
was because when I was in prison in Arizona,
she got herself a boyfriend.
You know, that's the only reason. I couldn't trust her.
You break my trust, that's it.
There's anger, but...
you gotta put that stuff away.
Say a prayer and move on.
Still hurts sometimes.
After he did some time in Arizona,
David was supposed to keep his nose super clean.
So, he walked away from that, but he didn't walk very far.
He just kinda kept having legal issues...
with his probation.
Eventually, he was convicted of stealing a gun
from somebody up in Montana, and selling the gun.
He was a felon, he wasn't allowed to have a gun.
In 2012, they gave me a federal firearms charge
a year after I get rid of a gun that I never fired,
that was given to me.
'Cause I'm not a gun guy. I'm really not, never have been.
California said that was a violation of my California probation.
So, that's what got me here.
Gave me 25-to-life.
How does that happen? Who's calling the shots with that one? Hm?
Really.
And finally, they found me parole-suitable.
So, here we are.
I have theories
on why the things happened the way they did to me.
David and I used to literally spend hours talking in jail.
And he had excuses for absolutely everything.
Everything that he ever did in life
that he failed at was always someone else's fault.
He's just the consummate victim.
Had he been left alone, he would have been
the mortician of the world.
There's kind of a domino effect of events that led up to this, see?
If my parents didn't tell me about the mortuary school,
had they not thrown it out there,
I would have gone to the Navy. That's what my plans were.
It's fallback plans, 'cause I always wanted to teach.
You know, I wanted to be a teacher.
And everything would have been different if I would've just got that second year
of, you know, eligibility playing football.
But then I got injured, and so I didn't get it,
so everything started.
Nonexistent.
Nonexistent. I've been abandoned.
My grandfather, Lawrence Lamb, died of a brain tumor.
In fact, my dad and I took care of Grandpa for like the last week of his life.
My grandmother, Lucile, died a little while later.
I was told about my dad's death by a friend of mine in prison.
I wish I could have seen my dad.
I wish I could have been there, you know, as he passed away.
But I wasn't.
My mother was always a good support system for me
through the years of me being incarcerated.
But after my dad died, everything stopped.
I've never heard from her since. Not a word.
Not a letter, nothing.
Wow.
Really? You want me to go there, huh? Well, you know what?
I didn't think I was doing anything wrong, but everybody else knew I was.
And, you know, I had drug use and stuff like that,
and that didn't help.
It was a part of my life that was a long time ago.
And I would nev-- you couldn't pay me enough
to do it again.
Nobody got away scot-free.
Everybody got something happening to them because of working there.
We all paid the price for it.
I'm the last guy standing from the Big Men Unlimited.
Dave Edwards got hurt.
He was getting blood transfusions
and he acquired AIDS from those blood transfusions.
And Danny died jumping out of a plane.
You know what? I'm 64 years old, okay?
I'm in the fourth quarter now, you know?
It's not overtime yet, but you know, hey.
I've had a good life, you know, I got my kids.
You know, I'm okay.
You can look back and say you would've done
something different, but at this point, nah.
For the history of mankind...
treating the dead with some respect, you know,
has been the way human beings have lived in all cultures.
You could say that the David Sconce case was the ultimate incendiary point
for which we now have massive regulations in funeral service practice,
incredible rules regarding cremation...
and more statutes than probably any other industry.
So, there's more transparency, more clarity
in the decision-making process for consumers.
This case served a purpose because they got it
on the record all of the things that they did,
and as a result, there were laws that were passed.
Laws that allow 'em to go in and inspect the crematories.
And certain things became felonies.
That's important.
I would love to shout at the top of my lungs
that it was one person, and this one person
does not reflect all of us.
The unfortunate reality is across the United States,
we still see scandals involving cremation.
David Sconce devastated the industry with what he did.
And...
families still don't trust.
This is the Lamb Funeral Home everlasting legacy in my family.
When my mother died,
my husband went and watched her.
They lifted the pine box, saw it was her, and he watched her being put into an oven.
I mean, imagine physically watching that,
you know, because he just was so traumatized,
what had happened.
And I felt terribly guilty.
I was supposed to protect him. I was the oldest daughter.
I took care of him.
And it wasn't just my dad.
There were 20,000 other people involved in this, and their families,
and their children, and their grandchildren.
And their loss.
And their feelings of grief and...
not having closure.
You know, I was guilty of a lot of things.
But when does the antipathy end?
When is enough enough? How long do I have to be punished?
You know, I went to prison.
Everything happened to me bad. I lost pretty much everything.
So, after that, I mean, what else are you looking for?
Leave me alone.
I can't change what happened, see?
So, I move on.
Sun comes up tomorrow irregardless, so that's it.
Maybe.
David is the type of person who believes that he's smarter
than every other person in the room.
When you get to jail, you're taught, you don't talk to anybody about your case,
you know, you don't admit to shit.
But David always felt a need to brag about his accomplishments.
And he never figured out when to shut the fuck up.
Alright.
So, there was one night...
I had to go to the cemetery with Barbara.
I get out and I go to unlock the gate.
And some kid jumps out of the weeds,
and he's got a nickel-plated thing right at my head.
He says, "Give me your wallet, give me your watch."
And Barbara's in the passenger seat watching this.
And so, I said, "Look, man, I only got, like, 60 bucks,"
and I gave him my cheesy Casio watch.
Barbara, God bless her, she's reaching over to my door
because I always kept my nine-millimeter in there,
'cause she's gonna come out and cap this guy.
But the gun wasn't there because I had problems
at the range with the Luger shells, the casings, 'cause they're too big.
And so, it was out getting a ramp-and-throat done on it.
I learned all this when I went through the stupid sheriffs.
Mm.
True story. I thought I was-- I was gonna die.
I really did.
I can tell you more of this, but I can't tell you on camera.
Can't tell you.
All I can say is, "You think I found that guy?"
It's one of the things I can't talk about.
The other thing I'll tell you about too, but can't talk about that either.
Really, there's three of 'em altogether.
Gotta promise not to tell on me.
- Ah. - Yeah.
What, the promise?
Oh, yeah.
- Okay. - Yeah.
Nah, that's never gonna come back. Never gonna come back.
Can't come back.