David Sconce: Crimes, Convictions, and the Lamb Funeral Home Scandal

David Sconce is a former Pasadena crematory operator who, through the family-run Lamb Funeral Home in the 1980s, ran an illegal mass-cremation scheme, harvested gold fillings and organs from the dead, and hired men to beat rival morticians. He pleaded guilty in 1989 to 21 criminal counts, later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, and was returned to prison in 2013 for 25 years to life after a federal firearms conviction violated his lifetime probation. He was paroled in 2023 and became the central figure of the 2025 HBO documentary series The Mortician.

What Happened at the Lamb Funeral Home

The Lamb Funeral Home in Pasadena had operated for roughly sixty years before Sconce took over its cremation operations in the early 1980s, working alongside his parents, Jerry Sconce and Laurieanne Lamb Sconce.¹² Sconce undercut competitors by charging as little as $55 per body, then made the math work by packing multiple corpses into each cremation cycle. He later described his own logic bluntly: “I could cremate one guy in two hours, or you could put 10 of them in there and take two and a half hours.”³

To fit more bodies into the ovens, employees broke the arms, legs, and collarbones of the dead, and former workers described competitions over who could cram the most corpses into a single cycle.⁴ After the Pasadena crematorium burned down on November 23, 1986, operations shifted to Oscar Ceramics, a family-owned facility in Hesperia, California, where bodies were burned in ceramic kilns 150 to 200 at a time. When investigators raided the Hesperia site on January 20, 1987, they found two kilns holding partially burned corpses and a sludge of body fluids and diesel oil on the floor.⁵

Because the remains of dozens or hundreds of people burned together, the ashes returned to families were commingled, often containing strangers. Sconce brushed this off, insisting there is “no difference in anybody’s cremated ash.”⁴

The scheme extended further into the bodies themselves. Sconce directed employees to pull gold fillings from teeth before cremation; his ex-wife, Barbara Hunt, described seeing him crack teeth with a hammer in their garage and collect the gold in a styrofoam cup labeled “Au.”⁴ Workers stripped clothing and severed body parts to remove jewelry. The operation also harvested organs, including brains, hearts, lungs, and eyes, from roughly 1,000 of the bodies passing through the crematory.⁶ In at least one case, a family was blocked from viewing their loved one’s body because the eyes had already been removed.⁷ Authorities estimated the Sconce operation illegally handled as many as 16,000 bodies during 1985 and 1986 alone.²

Violence Against Competitors and the Death of Tim Waters

Sconce did not confine his conduct to the dead. He hired men to beat rival morticians he believed were talking about his practices or cutting into his business. Daniel Galambos, his primary enforcer, testified that Sconce paid him $900 to carry out a series of assaults.⁸ In one attack, Galambos and two accomplices posed as police officers to lure the mortician Ron Hast to a garage, where they assaulted him and his housemate Steven Nimz with fists and a chemical irritant.⁹

On February 12, 1985, Galambos and an accomplice beat Tim Waters, the 24-year-old operator of a low-cost cremation service called the Alpha Society, at his office. Galambos testified that Sconce told him “he wanted bones broken.”⁹ Waters died on April 8, 1985, less than two months later. An initial autopsy attributed the death to cardiac arrest from natural causes.¹⁰

Three years later, during the wider Lamb Funeral Home investigation, new toxicology tests on preserved tissue samples showed lethal levels of oleander, a plant-based poison capable of stopping the heart. Cellmates and former employees testified that Sconce had bragged about slipping oleander into Waters’ drink at a restaurant in March 1985, an idea he reportedly took from a book called The Poor Man’s James Bond.¹⁰ Sconce was charged with first-degree murder in April 1990.¹¹ By the time the case moved toward trial, Waters’ body had decomposed significantly, with a specialist describing the liver as resembling “chocolate pudding,” and additional testing on the exhumed remains in 1991 cast doubt on the oleander findings.¹² Prosecutors dropped the murder charge in April 1991, citing reasonable doubt.

Convictions and Sentences

Sconce and his parents were arrested in 1987 and ultimately faced 67 felony and misdemeanor counts related to their operations, from mutilation of corpses to illegal multiple cremations to the sale of body parts. David’s bail was set at $500,000, and he separately faced charges of soliciting the murders of his grandparents and of the prosecutor handling his case.¹¹¹⁰

In September 1989 he pleaded guilty to 21 criminal counts, including mutilating corpses, conducting mass cremations, mining dental gold, and hiring men to assault three rival morticians. He was sentenced to five years in state prison and released in 1991 after serving roughly two and a half years.¹¹³

Separately, Sconce faced charges in Pasadena Superior Court for conspiring in 1986 to hire a hitman to kill Elie Estephan, a potential buyer of a rival crematory.¹³ In 1997 he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and was sentenced to lifetime probation.¹¹

That probation eventually caught up with him. In 2010, while living near Missoula, Montana, Sconce pawned a neighbor’s Remington 22-250 rifle that had been loaned to him. He admitted to ATF agents that he had pawned the rifle without permission and sold it, and in October 2012 he pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Missoula to possession of a stolen firearm, drawing five years of federal probation.¹⁴ Because possessing a firearm violated his 1997 lifetime probation, a California court resentenced him in 2013 to 25 years to life in state prison. He was held at Mule Creek State Prison until his parole in 2023.¹¹

The Christensen Case and Industry Reforms

The scandal generated massive civil litigation. Six law firms, including the firm of Melvin Belli, filed a class action on behalf of relatives of up to 16,000 people whose remains had passed through the Sconce operation, and more than 100 Southern California mortuaries that had contracted with the Pasadena Crematorium were named as co-defendants.⁷¹⁵

In Christensen v. Pasadena Crematorium of Altadena, the California Supreme Court held that mortuaries and crematories owe a duty of care not only to whoever signed the contract but also to close family members who are aware the services are being performed on their behalf. Because funeral services exist to spare bereaved relatives from handling remains, the court reasoned, it is foreseeable that secret misconduct will cause them severe emotional harm. The ruling expanded who could sue for the mishandling of a loved one’s remains.¹⁶

On February 19, 1992, the class action settled for $15.4 million, covering roughly 20,000 cremations performed between 1980 and 1987. A total of 5,237 claims were filed. About $5.3 million came from the crematory owners, with the rest paid by the mortuaries that had used the Sconce operation, and attorney fees consumed $4.6 million of the total.¹⁵

California also tightened its funeral rules in response. New regulations required unannounced inspections of crematories and made the harvesting of dental gold or silver from corpses a felony.⁴

Where He Is Now

Sconce was paroled in 2023 and, as of 2025, remains on parole while serving lifetime probation.¹¹¹⁷ In June 2025, HBO premiered The Mortician, a multi-part documentary directed by Joshua Rofé featuring extensive on-camera interviews with Sconce, who was 68 at the time of filming. He showed little remorse, telling the camera, “I don’t put any value in anybody after they’re gone and dead.”⁴

In the final episode, Sconce appears to hint at responsibility for three killings, referring to three “things I can’t talk about” and offering to discuss them only off-camera. The documentary suggests the possible victims include Tim Waters, a former employee who was found hanged after threatening to quit, and an unnamed man who allegedly tried to rob Sconce and his wife at gunpoint.¹² Rofé told The Guardian that Sconce was “clearly implying serious crimes have been committed.”¹⁷ The documentary also notes that Sconce is a habitual liar, leaving the implied confession uncertain.

1
Open Road Media. A Family Business
2
TIME. Sconce Family Criminal Charges
3
People. Convicted Mortician David Sconce Defends Criminal Mass Cremations
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TIME. The Mortician HBO Documentary True Story
5
Los Angeles Times. Sconces Arrested on Suspicion of Stealing Gold From Corpses
6
FindLaw. Christensen v. Pasadena Crematorium of Altadene
7
Los Angeles Times. Class Action Filed on Behalf of 16,000 Decedents’ Relatives
8
Los Angeles Times. Galambos Testifies at Preliminary Hearing
9
Los Angeles Times. Galambos Testifies in Sconce Murder Case
10
Los Angeles Times. Lethal Levels of Oleander Found in Waters’ Blood
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E! Online. The Mortician True Story: David Sconce and Lamb Funeral Home
12
Slate. The Mortician HBO Documentary
13
Los Angeles Times. Sconce Pleads Guilty in Bus Coupon Fraud
14
U.S. Department of Justice. David Wayne Sconce Sentenced for Possession of Stolen Firearm
15
Los Angeles Times. $15.4 Million Settlement Approved in Crematory Case
16
Justia. Christensen v. Superior Court
17
The Guardian. HBO The Mortician: David Sconce