David Sconce Lamb: A Quick Start Guide to His Life and Crimes
The Shocking Truth Behind David Sconce Lamb's Criminal Empire
David Sconce Lamb transformed his family's respected funeral home into one of California's most notorious criminal enterprises. From 1981 to 1987, he turned the century-old Lamb Funeral Home into a mass cremation operation that violated the most basic trust between families and funeral directors.
Quick Facts About David Sconce Lamb:
- Born: 1956, great-grandson of Lamb Funeral Home founder
- Crimes: Mass cremations, organ harvesting, dental gold theft, conspiracy to assault rivals
- Cremation Volume: Increased from 194 to over 8,000 annually in 5 years
- Charges: Pleaded guilty to 21 felony counts in 1989
- Sentences: 5 years (1989), 25-to-life (2013 for probation violation)
- Current Status: Released on parole in 2023
David's operation involved cremating up to 200 bodies at once in pottery kilns, selling harvested organs for hundreds of dollars each, and hiring ex-football players to assault competing morticians. His license plate read "I BRN 4U" - a brazen display of his attitude toward the crimes.
The scandal led to a $15.4 million class action settlement and sweeping reforms in California's funeral industry regulations.
I'm Mortuary Cooler, a national mortuary cooler supplier with decades of experience serving funeral homes across America. Having worked with countless funeral directors who've had to rebuild trust after industry scandals like the David Sconce Lamb case, I understand how proper equipment and ethical practices form the foundation of dignified funeral service. This guide will walk you through the complete story of how one man's greed destroyed a family legacy and changed funeral regulations forever.
Basic David Sconce Lamb terms:
David Sconce Lamb: Family Legacy and Meteoric Rise
The story of David Sconce Lamb begins with a family business built on dignity and respect. In 1929, Charles F. Lamb founded the Lamb Funeral Home in Pasadena, California, establishing what would become a trusted name in the community for over five decades.
The Lamb family understood that funeral service meant everything to grieving families. For years, they provided the kind of compassionate care that helped people through their darkest moments. The business passed from Charles to his son Lawrence, who continued the family tradition of treating every family with genuine respect.
Then David Sconce entered the picture. He married Laurieanne Lamb, Lawrence's daughter, bringing his father Jerry Sconce into the family business. Jerry had coached football at Azusa Pacific College from 1972 to 1977, finishing with a 24-31 record. While Jerry seemed like a natural fit for the family operation, his son David had very different ideas about how to run a funeral home.
In 1981, David Sconce Lamb took control of the cremation side of the business. What happened next shocked everyone - including investigators who would later call it one of the worst funeral home scandals in American history.
The numbers tell the story better than words ever could. In 1981, the funeral home handled 194 cremations. Under David's management, that number exploded to 1,675 in 1982, then 3,487 in 1983, and 4,350 in 1984. By 1985, they were processing over 8,000 cremations annually - more than 40 times their original volume.
How did David achieve this incredible growth? He undercut every competitor by charging just $55 per cremation while others charged hundreds more. He drove around Pasadena in a white Corvette with the license plate "I BRN 4U" - a twisted joke that would later seem like a confession.
More info about Lamb services shows how dramatically the business changed under David's control.
Early Life & Education of David Sconce Lamb
David Sconce Lamb learned about death and bodies at an unusually young age. When he was just 12 years old, a funeral home employee taught him embalming techniques. Most kids that age are learning to ride bikes or play baseball - David was learning how to prepare dead bodies.
He attended Azusa Pacific University, where his father had coached football. This connection gave David access to former players, many of whom had fallen on hard times after their football careers ended. Some had criminal records and were willing to do questionable work for money.
Unlike traditional funeral directors who focused on embalming and burial services, David became obsessed with cremation. He saw it as the future of the funeral business - and more importantly, as a way to make serious money with minimal oversight.
Scaling the Business at All Costs
The dramatic jump from 194 to over 8,000 cremations wasn't achieved through better customer service or smart marketing. David Sconce Lamb had finded a way to process bodies that completely violated everything the funeral industry stood for.
His $55 cremation price was only possible because he wasn't actually cremating bodies properly. Instead of using traditional cremation equipment, David set up an illegal operation at a ceramics facility in Hesperia, California. He used pottery kilns - ovens designed for firing clay pots - to burn human bodies.
Former employees later testified that David's workers would compete to see who could cram the most bodies into a single kiln. Sometimes they would stuff 150 to 200 corpses into ovens meant for pottery, burning them all together in massive batches.
This industrial approach to human cremation allowed David to maximize profits while cutting costs to the bone. He later told investigators, "I don't put any value on anybody after they're gone and dead." To David Sconce Lamb, dead bodies were just raw material for his profit-driven operation.
The families who trusted him with their loved ones had no idea their relatives were being burned in pottery kilns alongside dozens of strangers. They received urns filled with mixed ashes from multiple bodies, never knowing the truth about what had happened to their family members.
Crimes Unveiled: Mass Cremations, Organ Harvesting, Violence
When investigators finally uncovered the truth about David Sconce Lamb's operation, the scope of his crimes shocked even seasoned law enforcement officers. What families thought was dignified cremation was actually an industrial horror show that violated every principle of funeral service.
The mass cremation violations were staggering. David was cramming 150 to 200 bodies at once into pottery kilns never designed for human remains. These ceramic ovens, meant for firing pottery, became the centerpiece of his illegal operation. He mixed ashes from dozens of different people and randomly distributed these combinations to grieving families who believed they were receiving their loved one's remains.
But the cremation violations were just the beginning. David Sconce Lamb had turned body parts into profit centers through systematic organ harvesting without consent. He sold hearts for $750 each, brains for $500 each, and lungs for $100 each to research facilities. Before cremation, his workers carefully extracted gold dental fillings and sold the precious metal for additional profit.
The violence and intimidation tactics revealed David's willingness to eliminate competition through fear. He hired ex-football players with criminal records - many connected through his father Jerry's coaching network - to assault rival morticians. The conspiracy to physically intimidate competitors showed how far David would go to protect his illegal empire.
The most troubling case involved Tim Waters, a rival mortician who died under suspicious circumstances. Investigators suspected David's involvement, but the evidence remained inconclusive.
In 1989, the full weight of justice caught up with David when Sconce pleaded guilty to 21 felony counts. These charges included mutilating corpses, conducting illegal mass cremations, theft of dental gold, embezzlement of funeral trust funds, conspiracy to commit assault, forgery of donor consent forms, and illegal sale of human organs and tissue.
Everything You Need to Know About David Sconce provides additional details about how his criminal enterprise operated behind the scenes.
How the Scheme Operated, According to David Sconce Lamb
Even decades later, David Sconce Lamb showed no remorse for his actions. In HBO's documentary "The Mortician," he coldly rationalized his crimes by claiming that dead bodies have no personal value. His twisted logic suggested that families who scatter ashes at sea wouldn't notice if those ashes came from multiple people mixed together.
His illegal operation followed a systematic process that maximized profits while minimizing respect for human dignity. Bodies arrived at the legitimate Pasadena funeral home, where families said their goodbyes believing their loved ones would receive proper cremation. Instead, David transported these bodies to the illegal ceramics facility in Hesperia, where the real horror began.
At the pottery facility, David's workers loaded multiple bodies into kilns simultaneously, treating human remains like industrial waste. The team actually competed to see who could fit the most bodies into a single oven, turning tragedy into a sick game. After the mass cremation, workers packaged random mixtures of ash and returned them to unsuspecting families.
David boasted that he could cremate a single body in 2 hours using proper equipment, but could process 10 bodies in just 2.5 hours using his mass cremation method. The efficiency came at the cost of basic human dignity and legal compliance.
Former employees revealed that drug use was common at the illegal facility, creating additional safety hazards. One worker actually started a fire after leaving ovens running while high, showing how David's cost-cutting approach endangered even his own operation.
Alleged Murders and Dropped Charges
The most serious allegations against David Sconce Lamb involved suspected murders that could have made him one of California's most prolific killers. Prosecutors believed he may have been responsible for three deaths, including rival mortician Tim Waters who died under mysterious circumstances.
The prosecution's theory centered on oleander poisoning, a method that would be nearly impossible to detect in standard autopsies. Oleander contains cardiac glycosides that can cause heart failure, making deaths appear natural unless investigators specifically test for the plant's toxins.
However, these murder charges were dropped in 1991 when Ventura County prosecutors determined they lacked sufficient evidence for conviction beyond reasonable doubt. The challenge of proving oleander poisoning years after the deaths, combined with the difficulty of establishing David's direct involvement, made prosecution nearly impossible.
In a chilling moment during HBO's documentary finale, David appeared to confess to murders off-camera, but the specific details remained hidden from viewers. This apparent admission only deepened the mystery surrounding the dropped charges and left families wondering about the true extent of his crimes.
While David Sconce Lamb was never convicted of murder, the lingering allegations continue to fuel speculation about whether his criminal empire included taking lives as well as desecrating them. The dropped charges remain one of the most haunting aspects of a case already filled with unthinkable violations of trust.
From Investigation to Sentencing: Legal Fallout & Industry Reform
The investigation that brought down David Sconce Lamb started with a phone call that authorities initially found hard to believe. A resident living near the Hesperia pottery facility had been complaining about a horrible smell - the unmistakable odor of burning human flesh. What made this tip particularly credible was the caller's background: he was a World War II veteran who had helped liberate Auschwitz and recognized the smell from his wartime experience.
This complaint, combined with growing suspicions from rival funeral directors about David's impossibly low prices, prompted authorities to take a closer look. Competitors couldn't understand how anyone could charge just $55 for cremations when they were charging several hundred dollars. The math simply didn't add up.
When investigators raided the facilities in 1987, they finded evidence that shocked even seasoned law enforcement officers. Pottery kilns were stuffed with human remains, harvested organs sat in improper storage, and containers filled with gold dental fillings were scattered throughout the facility. Forged consent forms for organ donations and financial records documenting illegal organ sales completed the picture of systematic criminal enterprise.
The legal consequences came in waves. In 1989, David Sconce Lamb pleaded guilty to 21 felony counts and received a five-year prison sentence. He served approximately two and a half years before being released on lifetime probation. His parents, Jerry and Laurieanne Sconce, were initially acquitted on some charges but later convicted on additional counts including forgery and organ trafficking. They received sentences of three years and eight months in prison.
But David's legal troubles weren't over. In 2013, he violated his probation and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. He remained incarcerated until his parole release in 2023. The 467 U.S. 504 plea-bargain ruling became relevant during his appeals process, establishing important precedents about enforcing plea agreements.
The civil consequences proved equally devastating. A class action lawsuit on behalf of 5,000 families resulted in a $15.4 million settlement in 1992. The Lamb Funeral Home lost its license and ceased operations entirely, ending nearly six decades of family business.
Perhaps most importantly, the scandal triggered sweeping reforms in California's funeral industry. The state implemented mandatory unannounced inspections of crematories and established stricter equipment standards for cremation facilities. Extracting valuables from human remains became a felony offense, and oversight of funeral trust funds was dramatically improved. Requirements for individual cremation documentation ensured that what happened at Lamb Funeral Home could never happen again.
The National Funeral Directors Association responded by emphasizing that David was a "bad apple" whose actions prompted these stricter industry regulations. They stated that every day, tens of thousands of funeral directors work with care, compassion and integrity - values that David Sconce Lamb had completely abandoned.
Where Are They Now? Family and Funeral Home
The Sconce family scattered in different directions after their convictions, each trying to rebuild their lives away from the scandal that destroyed their family business.
Jerry Sconce served his sentence and lived quietly until his death in 2019. The former football coach spent his final years trying to distance himself from the crimes that had defined his family's legacy.
Laurieanne Lamb Sconce chose to live a quiet life in California, avoiding public attention and leaving the past behind. She has successfully stayed out of the spotlight, preferring privacy over any attempt to explain or defend what happened at the family funeral home.
David Sconce Lamb was released on parole in 2023 at age 67. He maintains a low profile in California but did participate in HBO's documentary "The Mortician," where he showed little remorse for his actions. His appearance in the documentary revealed that decades in prison hadn't changed his fundamental attitude toward the crimes he committed.
The original Pasadena location where the Lamb Funeral Home operated for decades has taken on a darkly ironic new purpose. The building now serves as an entertainment venue, hosting tours and escape room experiences. It's a strange twist of fate that a place once dedicated to honoring the dead now serves as a tourist attraction, though most visitors probably don't know the full history of what happened there.
The change from respected funeral home to criminal enterprise to tourist attraction tells the complete story of how one man's greed destroyed not just a family business, but the trust of thousands of families who believed they were giving their loved ones a dignified farewell.
Frequently Asked Questions about David Sconce Lamb
What triggered the investigation?
The downfall of David Sconce Lamb began with something as simple as a terrible smell. Residents living near the Hesperia ceramics facility started complaining about the overwhelming odor of burning flesh drifting from the property.
The most important witness turned out to be an Auschwitz liberator who immediately recognized that distinctive smell from his wartime experience. His credibility gave investigators the push they needed to take the complaints seriously.
At the same time, rival funeral directors were asking hard questions about David's business model. How could he charge just $55 per cremation when everyone else charged much more? How was he processing over 25,000 cremations annually from a single facility? The numbers simply didn't make sense for any legitimate operation.
These two factors - the physical evidence of the smell and the financial impossibility of his pricing - created enough suspicion to launch the 1987 raids that exposed the full scope of his crimes.
Was David Sconce Lamb ever convicted of murder?
No, David Sconce Lamb was never convicted of murder, despite being suspected in at least three deaths. Prosecutors believed he may have poisoned rivals using oleander, a toxic plant that would be difficult to detect in standard autopsies. The most notable suspected victim was Tim Waters, a rival mortician who died under suspicious circumstances.
However, these murder charges were dropped in 1991 when Ventura County prosecutors determined they lacked sufficient evidence for a conviction. Without clear proof, they couldn't move forward with the most serious allegations.
The mystery deepened during HBO's documentary "The Mortician," where David appeared to confess to murders in the finale. But the cameras stopped rolling before he provided specific details, leaving viewers and investigators with more questions than answers. The allegations remain unresolved to this day.
Where is he now?
David Sconce Lamb was released on parole in 2023 after serving part of his 25-year-to-life sentence for violating his original probation. At 67 years old, he now lives quietly somewhere in California, keeping a low profile.
He participated in HBO's documentary series, which gave the public its first real look at the man behind the crimes. Even decades later, David showed no remorse for his actions. He continues to argue that mixing ashes from different bodies "is not a big deal" because dead people have no value.
His release on parole has been controversial, given the severity of his crimes and his apparent lack of remorse. Many families affected by his actions feel that justice was never fully served, especially considering the murder charges that were dropped due to insufficient evidence.
Conclusion
The David Sconce Lamb case remains one of the darkest chapters in American funeral history. What started as a respected family business in Pasadena became a criminal empire that betrayed the trust of thousands of families during their most vulnerable moments.
David's change of the century-old Lamb Funeral Home into a mass cremation operation processing over 25,000 bodies annually shows what happens when greed replaces compassion in the funeral industry. His pottery kiln operation, organ harvesting scheme, and complete disregard for human dignity violated every principle that funeral service stands for.
At American Mortuary Coolers, we've worked with funeral homes across the country for decades. We've seen how proper equipment and ethical practices create the foundation that families depend on during their darkest hours. Our experience serving funeral directors in Tennessee, Georgia, Illinois, South Carolina, Texas, California, New York, Pennsylvania, and throughout the Midwest, Northeast, Rocky Mountain, Southeast, Southwest, and Pacific regions has taught us that trust is everything in this industry.
The lessons from David's crimes are clear and lasting. Proper mortuary coolers and equipment ensure that every person who enters a funeral home is treated with dignity. Transparency in operations protects both families and funeral directors from the kind of scandal that destroyed the Lamb family legacy. Industry oversight prevents bad actors from exploiting grieving families.
For families choosing funeral services today, the David Sconce scandal highlights why asking questions matters. Understanding cremation procedures, verifying facility inspections, and knowing your rights helps ensure your loved one receives individual, respectful treatment.
The funeral industry learned hard lessons from David Sconce Lamb's crimes. Today's crematories operate under strict regulations, use approved equipment, and undergo regular inspections. The reforms that followed his conviction protect families and honest funeral directors alike.
We're proud that our custom mortuary coolers help funeral homes maintain the highest standards of care. Our durable, custom solutions ensure that from the moment someone enters a funeral home, they're treated with the respect and dignity that David's victims were denied.
Every family deserves to know their loved one was handled with care. The David Sconce Lamb story reminds us why proper equipment, ethical practices, and industry accountability matter so much. His victims' families never got the closure they deserved, but their tragedy led to reforms that protect others.
For more info about mortuary solutions that help funeral directors maintain trust and dignity, we're here to serve those who understand that funeral service is about honoring lives, not maximizing profits.
