The Mortician's Chilling Story About Organ Harvesting, Cremation
Originally appeared on E! Online
When a family-run business is around for decades, people tend to assume the owners have been competently providing a valuable service.
The case of the Lamb Funeral Home on Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena, Calif., proved that looks can be deceiving.
While generations of families entrusted their loved ones' bodies to the mortuary established in 1929 by Charles F. Lamb, authorities discovered in 1986 that countless people who paid for cremation services were not getting what they expected in return.
And then there was the persistent rumor—addressed in HBO's new docuseries The Mortician—that the founder's great-grandson David Sconce had a hand in dispatching a business rival who was getting too close to the truth.
The Mortician has been unpacking the bizarre saga with the help of Sconce, who spent 10 years in prison for probation violation after a complicated legal journey. And—while he denies killing anybody—he remains unapologetic about what went on at the crematorium under his watch.
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"To me, commingling of ash is not a big deal," Sconce said in the series of his admitted regular practice of cremating as many bodies as possible at once, which basically ensured that families wouldn't be receiving only their loved one's ashes. "I don't put any value in anybody after they're gone and dead, as they shouldn't when I'm gone and dead. It's not a person anymore."
He did worry at the time about getting caught, he said, because the practice—which Sconce alleged is common in the cremation industry—was a crime under the state's Health and Safety Code.
Meanwhile, the National Funeral Directors Association said in response to The Mortician that, though "the actions chronicled in this documentary are both horrifying and real," they are not indicative of the business itself.
"It's important to remember that the subject of this documentary is not representative of the funeral profession as a whole," the organization said in a May 30 statement. "Every day, tens of thousands of funeral directors work around the clock to help families take the first steps toward healing following the death of a loved one. With care, compassion and integrity, they help families create meaningful funeral and memorial services that reflect their loved one's personal values, interests and experiences."
Sconce "stupidly justified" what he was up to, he explained in the series, thinking "nobody cares about these people anyway. Most of my cases were scatter-at-sea, no visitors, no viewing."
As for the remains returned to loved ones, Sconce maintained that it still didn't really matter what was in that urn. "People just got to be more in control of their emotions," he said, "because that's not your loved one anymore and it never has been. Love 'em when they're here, period."
But mixing up ashes was just the tip of the iceberg. Here is the jaw-dropping story of The Mortician:
Who Is The Mortician's David Sconce?What Happened at the Lamb Funeral Home?
What Was Happening to the Bodies at the Lambs' Pasadena Crematory?
How did authorities find out what The Mortician's David Sconce was doing with bodies and ashes?
What other criminal activity was going on at the Lamb Funeral Home?What Happened to Tim Waters?How did police connect David Sconce to the beating of Tim Waters?What Was David Sconce Eventually Charged With?Was David Sconce ever charged with Tim Waters' murder?What happened to Laurieanne Lamb and Jerry Sconce?What happened to The Mortician's David Sconce?What happened to the Lamb Funeral Home?Who were the victims of the Lamb Funeral Home?Where is David Sconce now?
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