- 1980s Los Angeles was a
place of wealth and excess. Full of big dreams, big
stars, and a lot of big hair, LA was the epitome of the late
20th century American dream. With beautiful weather and
even more beautiful people, LA was where you didn't just make it, you looked good while doing it. On the surface, David
Sconce was no exception. Described as having sparkling blue eyes like a young Paul Newman,
David was a charming, handsome, somewhat sleazy ex-college
football player, who was dubbed the Cremation
King of California. Completing the picture, he
drove around in a white Corvette with the license plate, "I BRN 4U". But it was not all retorts and roses. (chimes) Behind the golden boy good looks and the wholesome facade of
the family owned funeral home that David controlled,
there was corruption, fraud, and piles of corpses. Piles upon piles of corpses. Oh, yeah, and there was a
murder somewhere in there too. Allegedly. Welcome, deathlings, to
episode two of Cadaver Crimes. (dramatic music) The Lamb Funeral Home was an elegant family owned
funeral home in Pasadena, an affluent city in Los Angeles County next to downtown LA. Founded in 1929 by Charles
Lamb, David's great-grandfather, Lamb Funeral Home's goal
was to exude comfort and hospitality at every turn. From its lavish but cozy furniture to the iconic Americana
the family portrayed, David's family once posed
for an advertisement with their Maytag washer, complete with David's
movie star beautiful mother and football coach father, Lamb Funeral Home wanted to put the home back in funeral home. "Home in every sense of the
word," as their brochure stated. But looks can be deceiving. After Charles's granddaughter,
Laurieanne Lamb Sconce, bought out the family
business from her father, Lawrence Lamb, she encouraged son David, her son with Jerry Sconce, to
get into the family business, specifically embalming. David was a golden child, whose dreams of becoming a football star had been dashed in college. Side note, isn't that what happened in the Tristate Crematory case too? The son's college football
dreams were taken away, so he turns to crematory malfeasance? Something to think about. David Sconce begrudgingly
went to embalming school but found it "boring." That's fair, David, I
went to embalming school and found it boring too. I just wanted to be a football player! (crowd cheering) Instead, it was cremation
that excited David. With California having the
highest rate of cremation in America at the time, David believed he could
take over the market. Starting Coastal Cremations Inc. in 1982, well, officially in 1984, when he actually filed the paperwork, David aimed to dominate the
California cremation world by out-cremating the competition. Not only did he charge
funeral homes only $55 instead of the usual $100
to cremate corpses for them, he kept the retorts at
his family's crematory, Pasadena Crematorium, the oldest crematory
west of the Mississippi, running around the clock. But that wasn't enough. In the crematory's two retorts, he'd cremate five or six bodies at a time, always trying to beat the record for how many bodies he could
literally cram into a retort. A witness claimed that at
one point the record was 13 bodies piled in at once. Another witness claims 18. I don't think I need to tell you that cremating two bodies
at once let alone 18 is highly illegal. Cremating more than one body
in one retort is a misdemeanor in the state of California. Oh, and how did he separate
out all the cremated remains of all of those bodies to give them back to their loved ones? Uh, he didn't, obviously. The co-mingled remains
would arrive in big barrels to the Lamb Funeral Home where, in an area dubbed the "Ash Palace," an employee would sift the remains, doling out 3 1/2 to five
pounds of cremated remains for a woman, and five
to seven pounds for men. "Home in every sense
of the word," remember? By 1986, Coastal
Cremations' gross earnings were over $1,000,000. His team of ex-football
players, called his boys, would drive all over California
picking up as many bodies to cremate as possible and
intimidating his competition. And by intimidating, I mean beating up. One of David's main rivals
was a crematory owner by the name of Timothy R. Waters. Waters was also something of a character, known for the jeweled rings
he wore on his fingers, as well as poaching other
morticians' business. Waters also threatened to out David Sconce's illegal activities. So David set his sights
on silencing Waters. In February of 1985, one of
David's boys was allegedly sent to beat the crap out of Waters. The boy carried a business card that said "Big Men Unlimited." (dramatic music) Waters survived that incident, but two months later he died
under mysterious circumstances. The autopsy revealed fatty
buildup around his kidneys, but also the presence
of a heart medication called digoxin in his blood. Waters didn't take heart medication. It was revealed that oleander leaf, a poisonous southern California tree, could mimic that heart
medication in the blood. Later in 1990, when David was on trial, one of the boys would testify
that David had bragged about slipping something
into Waters' drink while at a restaurant. David was charged with poisoning Waters but not convicted on that charge because it couldn't be confirmed that the oleander was actually
present in Waters' blood. The legal stuff would come later but by the mid 80s, David's
cremation business was on fire. Due to the huge number of bodies that he was able to cremate, David's boys gave him the
nickname Little Hitler. Cool story, bro. With the retorts burning countless bodies at all hours of the day, Pasadena Crematorium was
always spewing black smoke. The fire department was regularly called because people thought
the crematory was on fire. Until one day, in November of 1986, it actually did burn down. How? Because employees had put
38 corpses into the retorts, a new record, and a leg had
clogged the ventilation system. But instead of failure,
David saw an opportunity. He set up a secret crematory
70 miles outside of LA in San Bernardino, which
he called Oscar Ceramics. There, cremating bodies using diesel fuel and industrial ceramic
kilns, David claimed to be making ceramic tiles
for NASA space shuttles. You can't make this stuff up. Well, unless you're David Sconce. David was back in business! At its peak, Oscar Ceramics
cremated 8,000 bodies a year. But there was more to David and company than shady cremations. David and his parents
were also, allegedly, illegally selling organs
to medical schools and research centers, as
well as the black market. Establishing Coastal
International Eye and Tissue Bank in 1985, the Sconces would
either purposely mislead clients into signing complicated documents allowing David to remove organs and teeth from their loved ones' bodies, or they would straight
up forge the documents. In only three months,
they sold 136 brains, 145 hearts, and 100 lungs. David would then hack at
the bodies using a crowbar, a screwdriver, pliers, whatever, to get at the organs, eyeballs, and teeth. Eyeballs were collected in Coke cans and gold teeth were
wrenched from the mouths and sold to his friend's gold company, creatively titled Gold Gold Gold. After the bodies were
pilfered of organs and teeth, to the crematory they would go. The beginning of the end
came for Little Hitler when in early 1987, an
air quality engineer with the San Bernardino Air
Pollution Control District, Richard Wales, received a complaint from a local World War II veteran that Oscar Ceramics
was not what it seemed. Quote, "Don't tell me I don't know "what burning bodies smell like! "I was at the ovens at
Auschwitz!" he yelled. So Wales and the fire
marshal investigated. Upon entering the premise,
the warehouse was filthy, covered in black sludge from the kilns. There were garbage cans brimming with cremated remains and prosthetics. And the floor was sticky
with human fluids. When they opened the
door to one of the kilns, a flaming human foot fell out. By May of 1988, David and his
parents Jerry and Laurieanne were charged with 67 counts
of felonies and misdemeanors including, according to
the Los Angeles Times, "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." But wait, there's more. Also in May of 1988,
countless prosthetic devices, teeth, dentures, bones, pacemaker wires, and skull fragments were
found in the crawlspace under David's former
rental home in Glendora. David was sentenced to only
five years in prison in 1989, and he would only serve 2 1/2 years, getting released in 1991. However, because of various
other run ins with the law including but not limited
to selling fake bus tickets, soliciting a hitman, and breaking probation
by moving to Montana, he is currently in prison and won't be up for parole until 2022. No one send him this video, okay? Jerry and Laurieanne
were convicted in 1995 and were sentenced to three years and eight months in prison. Okay, after all that
you're probably wondering, how on earth did that all
happen right under the nose of the California funeral
industry community? That I myself am so proud to be a part of. My sense is that things are much better, inspection wise, now. Our funeral home gets
inspected on everything down to how our license number
is positioned on our website. And they don't let you open a funeral home until they've also inspected
the crematory you'll be using. There are still shady dealings, people cutting corners for money reasons, but nothing even close to this. I don't know that anything
has ever been close to this. So that's the story of
the Lamb Funeral Home. "Home in every sense of the word." Speaking of morticians in Los Angeles. This is a really bad transition but I have to announce
this today so here it goes. Just pretend you're
watching another video. The bad story's over. It's me, I'm nice, right? You may have already heard that my book, "Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?"
is coming out September 10th. It's questions from kids about death, but answered for everyone, chock full of death facts
and strange stories. No judgment if you pick
up the book from Amazon or your library, but I have
always been a rabid fan of independent bookstores,
who work tirelessly to keep reading alive and
well in your community. So, starting today, July
13, until August 12th, if you preorder the book from one of your favorite independent bookstores, you'll not only get a signed book, signed by me, not a random person, I probably don't have to say that. But you'll also get a free, one-of-a-kind, envy-of-all-your-friends,
enamel pin of my face, designed by Veronica Pozzi. Is it weird to be hawking my own likeness? Am I becoming David Sconce? LA does strange things to people. Whatever. Let's get weird, deathlings. All info is linked below on my website. See you next week for
another cadaver crime. (bubbling) this video was made
with generous donations from death enthusiasts just like you. I'm back! Woo! Where's my goddamn hat? Jessica, excuse me. There's no Jessica, I
don't know who that is. 1980s Los Angeles was a place of, blah, starting all great. Oh yeah, and there was a
murder somewhere in there too. Allegedly. Goddamn it. Including but not limited
to selling fake books. (babbles) There was corruption,
fraud, and piles of corpses. Piles and piles of corpses. This does not blow bubbles, I checked. (crowd cheering)
