Crematory Operator Unexpectedly Pleads Guilty, Draws 5 Years

A Pasadena crematorium operator who had long maintained his innocence of grisly charges that he mutilated corpses, conducted mass cremations and stole dental gold from bodies unexpectedly pleaded guilty to 21 charges and was sentenced to five years in prison, prosecutors said Thursday.

David Sconce, 33, appearing before Pasadena Superior Court Judge Terry Smerling, also pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges of hiring thugs to beat up three competing morticians, failing to bury the remains of a baby girl and stealing a 1985 Chevrolet Corvette.

Prosecutors said Sconce, who already has been held two years in Los Angeles County Jail, will probably serve no more than 10 months in state prison.

Faced 11-Year Sentence

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office had opposed giving Sconce the chance to plea-bargain his case, maintaining that he should have been sentenced to the maxiumum 11 years in prison.

“We didn’t concur and we didn’t come up with the agreement,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Nancy D. Aronson, a co-prosecutor in the case. “I personally thought he should have been given the maximum.”

Despite the objections, Smerling approved the agreement with Sconce, ending a major portion of the 2 1/2-year-old case.

Sconce still faces seven felony counts, including charges that he bribed witnesses to lie in court and tried to hire someone last year to murder Deputy Dist. Atty. Walt Lewis, who was then handling the case.

But as part of the agreement Wednesday, Judge Smerling told Sconce that he could plead guilty to those charges and receive no additional prison time, Aronson said.

“We’re not totally unhappy with the outcome,” Aronson said. “Here’s a guy who has been pleading his innocence all this time and now he pleads guilty. It certainly saved the taxpayers and everyone a lot of time.”

Sconce’s attorney, Guy E. O’Brien, was unavailable for comment.

There is still a possibility, meanwhile, that the Ventura County district attorney’s office will file murder charges against Sconce in connection with the death of Burbank mortician Timothy Waters, who died in 1985.

At the time, the Ventura County coroner’s office believed his death was due to natural causes. During court hearings last year, however, witnesses testified that Sconce had bragged about poisoning Waters.

A new autopsy was performed and traces of deadly oleander poison were found in Waters’ blood and tissue samples. His death was reclassified as a murder and is under review by Ventura County prosecutors.

The labyrinthine case of Sconce and his cremation operation began in the high desert city of Hesperia on Jan. 20, 1987.

Sconce owned a small corrugated steel building that neighbors thought was being used to manufacture ceramic panels for NASA’s space station project. They were puzzled by the putrid odors that occasionally emanated from the site at night.

After receiving several complaints, Hesperia fire officials entered the building. They found barrels of human ashes and bone, along with several partially cremated bodies loaded “like cordwood” in kilns at the unlicensed crematorium, one fire official said.

Sconce and his father, Jerry Sconce, were arrested the next week. His mother, Laurieanne Lamb Sconce, was arrested later.

Pasadena Institution

The arrests were startling not only because of the nature of the discoveries, but also because the Sconces operated one of the oldest and most respected funeral homes in the area, the Lamb Funeral Home in Pasadena.

The Sconces were eventually charged with 68 felony and misdemeanor counts. The most grisly concerned removal of body parts for sale to a scientific supply company and theft of dental gold from bodies, a procedure that former employees said was called “popping chops.”

Other charges included embezzling funeral trust accounts, commingling cremated remains and falsifying death certificates.

Several of the charges were dismissed after the preliminary hearing last year and 27 more counts were dismissed by Smerling in June and July, although prosecutors are appealing those dismissals.

Laurieanne Lamb Sconce still faces 18 felony and misdemeanor counts and Jerry Sconce eight counts, Aronson said. Their trial is tentatively scheduled to begin in October.