Latest news with #DavidSconce
The Guardian
19 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Mortician review – so queasy it will stay with you for ever
The smart thing about comparing something to The Jinx is that you're essentially daring viewers to stick with you until the very end. After all, as good as The Jinx was, it didn't reach legendary status until its final few moments, when notorious murder suspect Robert Durst paused an interview with his microphone still on, and muttered a confession while using the toilet. The Mortician, it has to be said, is pound for pound more staggering than The Jinx. Joshua Rofé's three-part documentary about California cremator David Sconce is a feat of construction, patiently doling out larger and larger transgressions until the whole thing becomes swamped in unimaginable horror. It's the kind of documentary where, when the credits roll, you realise that you haven't drawn breath for several minutes. As with most true crime documentaries, Sconce's case is a known one. Perhaps you watched it unfold at the time, or perhaps you like to spend your time trawling the darker corners of Wikipedia. This is the downfall of many products of this ilk; they're flashy retellings that add very little of value. The Mortician is not that. The Lamb Funeral Home scandal made enough of a splash to have inspired more than one novel, and yet The Mortician deserves to go down as the definitive version. On some level, it's the story of a very efficient businessman. As the figure in charge of Pasadena crematorium Lamb Funeral Home, David Sconce was determined to undercut his rivals. He would perform long round-trips around mortuaries in his rundown van, collecting bodies, burning them and returning them for the low, low price of $55. But cremations are slow. It takes from two to three hours to burn a body and let the remains cool enough to safely gather them. So Sconce started burning a few at a time. And then more and more, breaking bones to cram as many as he could into his incinerator. In barely any time at all the business went from performing 194 cremations a year to 8,173, handing bereaved relatives urns scooped from bins brimming with the mixed ashes of countless different people. Incredibly, it only gets worse from there. To reveal too much would be to spoil the cascade of monstrosities that follow, but it makes for extremely queasy viewing. The thefts, the desecration, the complete detachment between the human life that ended and the wholesale scavenging that followed. It is unbelievably dark. At the centre of it all is Sconce himself. Met by the documentary crew outside jail, where he had just finished serving a 10-year sentence, Sconce is a weirdly charismatic presence. Described by one talking head as 'Richie Cunningham' from Happy Days, he has a big, open, all-American face, and golly-gees his way through much of his interviews despite the atrocities laid at his feet. At best, he defends his actions with a cold logic – 'People have got to be more in control of their emotions,' he says at one point of the appalled bereaved; 'That's not your loved one any more' – but at worst there's a showboating bravado, as if he can't get enough of his own performance. And this is ultimately what gets him. The Mortician has received so many comparisons to The Jinx because of how it ends. During an unguarded moment when he believes the camera is no longer running, Sconce appears to admit to something awful. It's left vague, since there's nothing as concrete as Durst muttering that he 'killed them all', but it's still enough for Rofé to publicly encourage renewed investigation. However, while the climax will grab all the headlines, the journey is just as important. The Mortician isn't only about one grim individual who did horrendous things to thousands of corpses; it's about the dehumanising effects of unfettered capitalism and our own relationship to death. In the cold light of day, how should we treat the people we love once they are gone? Is the dignity we afford their bodies purely ceremonial? Do they simply become matter to be disposed of by whatever means necessary? It is a harrowing journey to get to the end of the programme – the faint of heart should be warned that the series includes talk of concentration camps, infants, organ harvesting and something nefariously referred to as 'popping chops' – but it's worth it. The Mortician is so much more than a gussied-up Wikipedia page. It's something that is unlikely to ever leave you. The Mortician is on Sky and Now in the UK. In the US, it airs on HBO and Max. In Australia, it airs on Max
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
The Mortician: What Happened to David Sconce & Lamb Funeral Home?
Curious about the shocking true story behind The Mortician? With mass cremations, illegal organ harvesting, and a trusted family business at the center of it all, HBO's latest docuseries unpacks one of California's most disturbing criminal scandals. As new interviews, court records, and eyewitness accounts surface, the dark truth behind David Sconce and the Lamb Funeral Home comes into full view. Here's what to know about David Sconce's current whereabouts and what happened to Lamb Funeral Home. Authorities released David Sconce on parole in 2023 after he served part of a 25-year-to-life sentence imposed in 2013. The court issued that sentence after he violated a lifetime probation order stemming from his 1989 conviction. In that case, prosecutors charged him with mutilating corpses, conducting mass cremations, and hiring men to assault rival morticians. He had served a couple of years in prison before violating probation, which led to a harsher sentence. In HBO's The Mortician, Sconce, now 68, appears on camera and states, 'I don't put any value in anybody after they're gone and dead.' His actions and perspective form the core of the three-part documentary (via People.) A Pasadena police detective quoted in the Los Angeles Times reported that Sconce denied knowing one of his alleged victims, saying, 'I never met Tim Waters, I never spoke to Tim Waters… He was not an account of mine.' Former employee Danny Galambos testified that Sconce had hired him and two others to attack Waters and other competitors, for which Galambos received five years' probation. Lamb Funeral Home, previously operated by the Sconce family in Pasadena, California, no longer exists. The business lost its license and ceased operations following the scandal. According to The Mortician and archived Los Angeles Times coverage, regulatory agencies shut down the funeral home after investigations uncovered illegal cremations and desecration of bodies. A fire destroyed the Pasadena Crematory in 1986 after an employee reportedly left the ovens running while getting high. Authorities later found bodies being cremated in bulk at Oscar Ceramics, a pottery facility using kilns designed for ceramics instead of human remains. The discovery triggered the final collapse of the Lamb family's funeral business. The post The Mortician: What Happened to David Sconce & Lamb Funeral Home? appeared first on - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Subject of The Mortician hints at unsolved ‘serious' criminal misdeeds linked to mortuary scandal
The subject of HBO's critically acclaimed show The Mortician admits on screen that there are 'three [things] altogether' which 'can't come back' and that he can't talk about publicly – after the docuseries mentions deaths for which he was suspected of being responsible, among them one at the center of a failed attempt to prosecute him on charges that he murdered a rival mortuary owner. David Sconce's haunting statements on the show's third and final episode late on Sunday are 'clearly implying some very serious crimes have been committed', The Mortician's director, Joshua Rofé, told the Guardian. But it wasn't immediately clear what, if any, consequences there may be. 'If there is a [prosecutor] out there who deems it fit, who thinks there is enough to even go by, then great,' Rofé said. 'They should do it.' The sequence is bound to draw comparisons to the conclusion of the 2015 season of the HBO documentary The Jinx, in which the late Robert Durst is overheard confessing that he 'killed them all' – an evident reference to three people he was thought to have murdered in prior years. That admission from Durst, who died in January 2022, was costly. In September 2021, he was found guilty of murdering a friend who helped him cover up the killing of his first wife. Sconce – whose family's Lamb funeral home in Pasadena, California, became synonymous with illegal mass cremations and achieved national notoriety in the 1980s – delivers the comments in question shortly before an acquaintance of his is asked how many murders he thinks the series's subject may have had a hand in. The acquaintance, who is granted anonymity, replies: 'I figure three.' Rofé's film largely revisits funeral industry reforms spurred by a tortuous criminal case brought against Sconce and the Lamb mortuary involving charges of mass cremations at a ceramics kiln; stealing and selling corpses' gold jewelry and dental fillings; stealing and selling corpses' organs; delivering fake ashes to people mourning dead loved ones; and plotting violence against competitors. One of those competitors was the Burbank, California, mortician Timothy Waters, who prosecutors maintained had died in 1985 after ingesting oleander that Sconce furtively used to poison a meal that the two men shared. Investigators later used a special tool to analyze Waters' liver and kidney tissue for derivatives of oleander. None were found, and, in 1991, the charges that Sconce had murdered Waters were dismissed. 'No oleander – nothing, zero, zippo,' Sconce's attorney, Roger Diamond, says of Waters' death in archival footage shown in The Mortician. 'The man died of a heart attack.' Sconce, meanwhile, says in archival footage: 'I always knew I'd walk out. I'm innocent.' He had been facing the possibility of execution. Yet, in stunning commentary on The Mortician, Cornell University toxicology professor Jack Henion – who served as a court expert on the Waters murder case – says the absence of an oleander derivative in the studied tissue does not mean it 'was never present'. Such a substance 'is unstable and may have broken down to undetectable levels over the past five years', Henion says on The Mortician. Henion adds that in his unofficial opinion Sconce 'likely' was guilty of killing Waters but 'got away with it'. One piece of circumstantial evidence which Henion cites is Sconce's possession of a book that details how difficult it is to detect oleander poisoning, along with an accompanying illustration of someone dining with a knife and a fork. What Sconce ultimately did plead guilty to included mutilating bodies, conducting mass cremations at just $55 a body and various other crimes. That led to a series of incarcerations – the most recent of which he was paroled from in 2023 – as well as lifetime probation. Walters isn't the only death in Sconce's orbit that thrust him under suspicion, as The Mortician notes. The docuseries also recounts how an employee of Sconce named Ron Jordan was found hanged and dead after indicating that he wanted to quit his job while promising he would keep quiet about all the illicit things he had seen. Investigators deemed Jordan's death a suicide, though in the series Sconce acknowledges that some surmised he was responsible – to which he says: 'Why would I want to kill him? Seriously?' Additionally, as The Mortician winds down, Sconce shares an anecdote about a man who robbed him at gunpoint in front of his now ex-wife during a trip to the cemetery. 'All I can say is – do you think I found that guy [later]?' Sconce asks Rofé. 'It's one of the things I can't talk about. The other thing I'll tell you about, too, but you can't talk about that either.' Sconce continues: 'Really, there's three of them altogether … OK – promise not to tell on me.' Rofé then tells him he is not interested in having any information that he would not be allowed to air, prompting Sconce to retort: 'Ah, it's never going to come back. It's never going to come back – can't come back.' Following that exchange is an excerpt from an interview Rofé said he filmed about two months later. The excerpt depicts the anonymous Sconce acquaintance discussing his belief that The Mortician's subject was a part of three murders. Whatever the case, with respect to the conclusion Sconce gave him, Rofé remarked: 'I could not believe what he said.' The director added: 'In one moment, when his guard drops, he shows you exactly who he really is. And I think that if you are to walk away with a feeling about what you want to happen, you would like justice or a fair shake for anybody who was a victim of a person who, in that moment, revealed who they really are.'
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Yahoo
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. More from E! Online Real Housewives Executive Lauren Miller Dies During Childbirth Arie Luyendyk Jr. Reveals How Daughter Senna, 4, Convinced Him to Have Another Baby After His Vasectomy Emma Watson Competes on Oxford Rowing Team "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? For the latest breaking news updates, click here to download the E! News App
Tom's Guide
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Tom's Guide
How to watch 'The Mortician' online – stream true crime from anywhere
"I don't put any value in anybody after they're dead and gone," says David Sconce. Everybody's entitled to their own opinion, the only problem here is that Sconce was the man running the Lamb Funeral Home in Pasadena, California before he was busted and is now the focus of three part docuseries "The Mortician"... Here's how you can watch "The Mortician" online around the world and from anywhere with a VPN. "The Mortician" premieres in the U.S. on Monday, June 2 on HBO at 9.00 p.m. ET/ 6.00 p.m. PT. and is available on Max at the same time.• U.S. — HBO/Max• CAN — Crave• AUS — Max • Watch anywhere — try NordVPN risk-free If you've recently lost a loved one you might be best advised to skip this show because, although he is by no means a typical mortician, Sconce does much to destroy the element of trust the bereaved need to take for granted in those they expect to take care of their dead. The details of his malpractice would not be out of place in a horror film. He mutilated bodies, stole fillings from the corpses, sold organs, returned fake ashes and intimidated (even plotted to kill) rivals in the industry. By enacting the most rapacious elements of capitalism and undertaking multiple cremations simultaneously he took a family business from 195 cremations in 1981 to more than 25,280 five years later – an increase in volume of almost 13,000%. Ironically, it was this incredible turnover and the suspicions of neighbors complianing of the smell that prompted a low enforcement investigation that uncovered the brutal, illegal shortcuts at work and, ultimately, his incarceration and downfall. Director Joshua Rofe was in the right place at the right time to interview Sconce after his release on parole. You can judge whether he has reflected upon his crimes and repented for yourself. Read on and discover how you can watch "The Mortician" online with all the streaming details you need below. "The Mortician" premieres in the U.S. on Monday, June 2 on HBO at 9.00 p.m. ET/ 6.00 p.m. PT. and is available on Max at the same time. Max prices start at $9.99/month if you don't mind ads, going to $16.99/month for ad-free and $20.99/month if you want the option to watch content on up to four devices and in 4K. For even better value, you can pay for a whole year upfront and effectively get 12 months for the price of 10 on any of its tiers. HBO can also be added to OTT streaming services such as Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and Disney Plus. Traveling outside the States? You'll need to use a VPN to unblock Max when abroad. Max is no. 1 on our best streaming services list for its vast, high-quality library, including all of HBO's prestige series like "Game of Thrones", "The Last of Us" and "Succession", plus recent offerings among the best Max shows such as "House of the Dragon", "True Detective: Night Country" and "The White Lotus". If you're traveling overseas and "The Mortician" isn't airing where you're currently located, that doesn't mean you have to miss the show while you're away from home. With the right VPN (virtual private network), you can stream the show from wherever you are. We've evaluated many options, and the best VPN you can get right now is NordVPN. It meets the VPN needs of the vast majority of users, offering outstanding compatibility with most devices and impressive connection speeds. You can try it risk-free for 30 days if you take advantage of NordVPN's no-quibble money-back guarantee. There's a good reason you've heard of NordVPN. We specialize in testing and reviewing VPN services and NordVPN is the one we rate best. It's outstanding at unblocking streaming services, it's fast and it has top-level security features too. With over 6,000 servers across 110+ countries, and at a great price too, it's easy to recommend. Get over 70% off NordVPN with this deal Using a VPN is incredibly simple. 1. Install the VPN of your choice. As we've said, NordVPN is our favorite. 2. Choose the location you wish to connect to in the VPN app. For instance, if you're visiting the U.K. and want to view a U.S. service, you'd select a U.S. server from the location list. 3. Sit back and enjoy the show. Head to your streaming service app — so Max, for example — and watch "The Mortician" online from wherever you are in the world. "The Mortician" premiered in Canada on Crave on Sunday, June 1. Crave subscriptions start at $9.99/month for its Basic plan (720p video, includes ads) all the way up to $22/month for Premium (ad-free, 4K, downloadable shows). Those on vacation away from Canada will need one of the best VPNs to log in back home to use Crave. We recommend NordVPN. Unfortunately, there is no release date in the U.K. for "The Mortician". When that changes you'll read about that here first. Americans and Canadians on vacation in the U.K. who just can't wait will need a good streaming VPN to log in back home. We recommend NordVPN. "The Mortician" premieres in Oz on Max (now available Down Under) on Monday, June 2. New episodes will drop weekly, every Friday at the same time. Plans start at AU$11.99/month and run up to a premium version of AU$21.99. Not at home? Don't panic. You can still watch the show from your usual domestic streaming platform with a VPN. We recommend NordVPN. Here is the full episode schedule for "The Mortician": Season 01 Episode 01: "TBA" - Sunday, June 1 S01 E02: "TBA" - Sunday, June 8 S01 E03: "TBA" - Sunday, June 15 Sconce was sentenced to five years in prison for mutilating corpses, holding mass cremations at $55 a body and hiring strongmen to assault rival morticians in 1989. He was released after serving two and a half years but sentenced to 25 years to life in 2013 after violating the lifetime probation a judge had imposed on him - following a guilty plea to murder conspiracy in 1997 - by being found in possession of a stolen firearm. He was released on parole in 2023. We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad. We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.
