WEBVTT - Criminal Cremators 0:00:06.960 --> 0:00:15.600 Diversion audio. This episode contains mature content and quite graphic 0:00:15.680 --> 0:00:19.400 descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners. 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:29.280 Please take care in listening. Dave Edwards was an ex 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:34.239 football player and a driver for the Pasadena Crematorium. He 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:37.520 drove the truck that picked up cadavers and unloaded them 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:40.960 at the business for cremation. Dave was on the road 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:43.440 a lot, so he didn't spend much time at the 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:48.199 crematorium nor the Lamb Funeral Home. Not long after his 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:52.879 start date, Dave witnessed a money making scheme that he 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:57.120 would rank second in the most revolting side hustles he 0:00:57.280 --> 0:01:03.880 experienced working there. Sconce the manager of the crematorium, often 0:01:04.000 --> 0:01:11.280 talked about quote making the pliers sing, popping chops, and 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:16.720 going to the mine. David's side hustle was yanking gold 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:20.720 teeth from the jaws of the deceased and selling the 0:01:20.760 --> 0:01:26.399 gold at his buddy's pawn shop. The standard operating procedure 0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:33.040 at Pasadena Crematorium was to examine all incoming bodies. David 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:37.080 usually did it himself, but if he wasn't there, his 0:01:37.200 --> 0:01:41.839 employees did it. If they saw gold teeth, they marked 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:45.600 the body bag with a smiley face, along with the 0:01:45.720 --> 0:01:52.400 chemical element abbreviation AU. David Pride rigor mortis. Jaws open 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:57.000 with a screwdriver. Usually, if that didn't work, he'd grab 0:01:57.040 --> 0:02:02.320 a crowbar. Dave said he could hear a man's jaws 0:02:02.400 --> 0:02:06.240 crack from across the room. With a set of pliers, 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:12.160 David extracted the teeth. He dropped them into whatever receptacle 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:19.359 was nearby. Usually it was a used styrofoam cup, sometimes 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:24.800 a tin can. One day, David left the cold room 0:02:24.880 --> 0:02:28.160 whistling and walked into the office where his mother worked. 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:33.520 Lori Anne looked up from her paperwork, smiled, and asked, 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:39.080 how much AU did you get today, honey? David cheosed 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:41.880 like a proud child and shook a half cup of 0:02:41.919 --> 0:03:03.400 gold teeth in her face. Welcome to the greatest true 0:03:03.400 --> 0:03:09.560 crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer. Today's episode 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:14.000 we're calling the Criminal Cremators. It's the story of a 0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:19.400 family business, the Lamb Family Funeral Home, which wanted to 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:24.960 be a booming business so badly that they allegedly circumvented 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:29.720 a lot of laws and even more ethics for their profits. 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:32.640 I'll tell you all about it after this quick break, 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:55.440 let's talk about only children. I should preface this by 0:03:55.480 --> 0:03:59.160 saying I grew up an only child, so I'm allowed 0:03:59.160 --> 0:04:02.560 to say all of this. Yes, Typically we fall into 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:08.040 two categories. We're known as being either really weird and withdrawn, 0:04:08.840 --> 0:04:14.280 or we only children are unconscionably childishly selfish and in 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:18.520 desperate need of your full attention all the time. I 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:22.839 likely fall into that first category. I was one hundred 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:26.400 percent the kid who liked when recess was rained out 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:28.760 so I could read my book on the classroom floor. 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:33.080 In my defense, I had a thousand cousins to help 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:36.279 break me of this habit and parents who would not 0:04:36.440 --> 0:04:42.640 tolerate bad behavior, so I was socialized to near normalcy. 0:04:42.720 --> 0:04:46.719 I'm no selfless saint, but I do generally know how 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:50.159 to interact with people and the world. I know it 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:54.320 doesn't always revolve around me, and I'm pretty good at sharing. 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:59.880 Don't get me wrong. I would have absolutely never let 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:03.200 anyone else ever play with my toys if they hadn't 0:05:03.200 --> 0:05:07.400 made me, if I hadn't been forced to share the stage, 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:10.000 I would wonder what the hell everyone was looking at 0:05:10.000 --> 0:05:14.080 when Hello, I'm over here, all of us? Would I 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:18.560 think resort to this kind of self aggrandizement without course correction. 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:22.839 So my relatively well adjusted nature is not really a 0:05:22.880 --> 0:05:27.320 credit to me so much as my parents. In this story, 0:05:27.800 --> 0:05:32.040 the angry only child is the main perpetrator. His name 0:05:32.160 --> 0:05:36.920 is David Scance. But because our show focuses on women 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:40.320 in true crime, though, there are a couple other key 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:45.080 characters at play. One is a key witness. She was 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:48.080 a former employee who was fired after asking too many 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:51.760 questions about the legitimacy and ethics of the company's practices. 0:05:52.880 --> 0:06:03.480 And the other is, of course, David's mother. Lori Anne Lamb, 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:08.599 was the second generation in the family business. She also 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:11.600 had three siblings in line to take over, but her 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:16.120 two brothers were not interested. Her sister died tragically in 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:18.680 a plane crash before she could say one way or 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:22.880 the other, and this is relevant later, I promise, so 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:25.880 her parents groomed Lorianne to take over. When they retired, 0:06:27.120 --> 0:06:30.000 she worked in the funeral home with her husband, Jerry Sconce. 0:06:31.120 --> 0:06:35.599 Lori Anne was the church organist, Jerry was the Bible 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:39.839 school football coach. Our sources say that they were the 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:45.479 types to cite scripture during typical conversations, but especially when 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:49.839 consoling the bereaved. The business itself was well known, as 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:53.760 funeral homes tend to be locals, use the same businesses 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:57.599 over and over. Almost all their business is customer retention 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:01.719 from families, and most new referrals come from word of mouth, 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:07.600 because it's kind of ghosh to advertise death. That's not 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:09.960 to say there were no other funeral homes in the 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:14.360 Pasadena area, of course there were. It's just like, well, 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:16.800 when your car breaks down on the side of the street, 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:19.480 what do you do? You call your insurance, They send 0:07:19.480 --> 0:07:22.840 a tow truck. The tow truck takes your car to 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:28.760 the nearest in network service shop. You, the driver, are distraught. 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:31.040 What are you going to do? Sit in the waiting 0:07:31.080 --> 0:07:33.680 room of one autobody shop while you get a few 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:37.960 more quotes, spend another day retoe in your car, and 0:07:38.000 --> 0:07:41.760 then hope the cheaper option services you just as well. No, 0:07:42.640 --> 0:07:46.720 you have other concerns. Where can I rent a replacement vehicle? 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:48.920 Can I get it in time to pick my kids 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:51.840 up from school? How do I get time off work 0:07:51.880 --> 0:07:56.520 to handle this? How do I get groceries? It's similar 0:07:56.800 --> 0:08:01.200 when a loved one dies, but more now you have 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:05.680 bigger issues to deal with, plus the basics. Not to 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:10.000 mention the obvious, you're probably devastated with grief in addition 0:08:10.120 --> 0:08:13.760 to all that stress. Where you send the business is 0:08:13.800 --> 0:08:16.680 a small concern in the bigger picture of your life. 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:20.120 You just want to honor your dead, and for that 0:08:20.800 --> 0:08:24.920 you go to a place you trust. Hopefully you're dearly 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:29.520 departed gave you a reference and removed the guesswork. All 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:33.560 that to say, the Scoance family's funeral home was well established, 0:08:34.240 --> 0:08:37.280 especially because they were three generations running and most of 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:41.319 their clientele was elderly. They were doing well, but they 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:45.000 weren't an empire by any stretch. And then Lori, Anne 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:50.080 and Jerry's only child, David Scoance, had an idea. David 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:53.600 had been a high school football player. He was apple pie, handsome, 0:08:54.000 --> 0:08:57.600 the homecoming king type who was generally lucky and things 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:00.760 generally went his way. After high school, he went to 0:09:00.800 --> 0:09:04.640 embalming school. But David wasn't great at that and he 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:08.199 didn't really like it. Things weren't falling into place for 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:13.160 him now, so he forced them. In my experience at athletes, 0:09:13.200 --> 0:09:15.800 they tend to do this. They want their way, so 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:18.600 they ask for it. If they get turned down, they 0:09:18.640 --> 0:09:22.480 ask again, and rather than regrouping and trying a different tack, 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:25.760 they just turn up the volume. They try the same 0:09:25.840 --> 0:09:29.560 thing over and over. In sports, that is a lot 0:09:29.559 --> 0:09:32.120 of how you train. Not fast enough, run it again, 0:09:32.520 --> 0:09:35.280 not strong enough, do it again, try it over and 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:38.280 over until you do it. And one of the things 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:41.319 about only children is that we don't hear no a lot, 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:45.640 or at least we take no as a try harder. 0:09:47.000 --> 0:09:49.680 So handsome David Scott's has an idea to take his 0:09:49.760 --> 0:10:02.080 family's funeral business to the next level. Up until nineteen 0:10:02.120 --> 0:10:06.199 sixty eight, about four point one percent of bodies were cremated, 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:11.640 But in California things were changing. By the mid nineteen eighties, 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:15.240 about thirty four percent of the bodies were cremated, and 0:10:15.240 --> 0:10:19.720 that's a huge upsling. David presented his idea in nineteen 0:10:19.800 --> 0:10:24.400 eighty two as the percentages were rising. He wanted to 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:28.840 start a cremation service. You might be thinking that actually 0:10:29.000 --> 0:10:33.160 sounds smart, and it was, but the details made no sense. 0:10:34.080 --> 0:10:37.199 David's idea was to undercut the rates of their competitors, 0:10:37.280 --> 0:10:42.320 charging just fifty five dollars per cremated corpse. That included 0:10:42.520 --> 0:10:46.720 picking up bodies and returning the remains. The ovens in 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:51.480 which bodies are cremated are called retorts. The Lamb Funeral 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:56.520 Home only had two retorts, depending on the ovens efficiency, 0:10:57.080 --> 0:11:01.840 one body took two hours to cremate at best, that 0:11:01.960 --> 0:11:05.120 was twenty four bodies per day. If they had zero 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:08.880 down time, which is impossible, that was thirteen hundred and 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:12.840 twenty dollars. And if they ran their business round the clock, 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:15.800 they'd have to hire more help than that would pay for. 0:11:17.240 --> 0:11:22.440 So smart idea poor execution. But his parents didn't say no. 0:11:24.000 --> 0:11:26.840 They just pointed out those facts, thinking maybe he would 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:32.559 draw his own conclusion of no. And David came back with, yeah, 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:34.800 but who's saying we can only do one body at 0:11:34.800 --> 0:11:37.680 a time. What if he filled the oven to the 0:11:37.720 --> 0:11:42.040 max as many bodies as it would fit, Even if 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:44.720 he burned just five or six bodies at a time, 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:48.240 with both ovens running, that was six hundred and sixty 0:11:48.280 --> 0:11:52.440 dollars per burn. That's good money. Again, they didn't say no. 0:11:53.559 --> 0:11:57.760 Lorenne pointed out the very obvious problem if they were 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:00.560 all cremated at once, there would be no way to 0:12:00.640 --> 0:12:05.000 separate their remains, then they couldn't be sure their customers 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:10.199 received the remains of their loved ones. David said, quote, 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:14.680 how can you tell if the remains are mixed anyway? 0:12:14.760 --> 0:12:30.319 What difference does it make they're dead? I probably don't 0:12:30.360 --> 0:12:32.439 have to say this aloud, but this is when David 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:34.880 should have been grounded, or at least sent to time out, 0:12:35.520 --> 0:12:39.760 or at the very very least told no. What he 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:43.600 suggested was not only unethical, which should be obvious to 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:48.320 anyone at all, but also illegal, and yet they indulged. 0:12:49.559 --> 0:12:53.199 Many of the Lamb's competing funeral homes had embalming services 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:58.360 on site, but very few had cremation retorts. They essentially 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:02.800 had to outsource the business of cremations to other specialty providers. 0:13:03.480 --> 0:13:08.199 It still usually cost one thousand dollars, but if Lamb's 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:12.040 was only charging fifty five per body, that was a 0:13:12.160 --> 0:13:16.160 huge margin for the other funeral homes. It's grimm to 0:13:16.160 --> 0:13:19.320 think about, but it was business, and the families of 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:22.320 the deceased were notified of this change in location by law, 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:26.960 so those funeral homes were not doing anything wrong or illegal. 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:32.679 Just grizzly. David had to hire a bunch of unscrupulous 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:36.160 guys to carry out his dirty work. They were completely 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:39.920 separate from Lurianne's office crew because most of the work 0:13:39.960 --> 0:13:42.600 would be done at the crematorium a few miles away 0:13:42.720 --> 0:13:47.719 in Altadena. And when you hire unscrupulous people, things tend 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:51.679 to get sloppy. Let me tell you just how sloppy 0:13:51.720 --> 0:14:09.440 they got. Right after this break when we left off, 0:14:10.160 --> 0:14:13.440 David had just hired a new crew. They picked up 0:14:13.480 --> 0:14:17.440 bodies in trucks and hearses, which was normal, and then 0:14:17.480 --> 0:14:20.120 they'd store them in the cold room until they had 0:14:20.240 --> 0:14:25.400 enough to fill the retort. Yep, they'd fill the retort. 0:14:26.680 --> 0:14:29.360 Not only was it not the single cremation that the 0:14:29.400 --> 0:14:33.240 families had been promised, but the workers made a game 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:37.600 of how many bodies they could wedge into the oven. Naturally, 0:14:37.960 --> 0:14:42.040 the bodies sometimes got stuck, so the guys would shove 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:45.560 them further in with the two by four, or on 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:48.600 the other side, they'd stick a hook into the bodies 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:52.280 and pull them into place. Sometimes the hook went under 0:14:52.280 --> 0:14:57.200 the shoulder, sometimes threw the neck out a cheek. Retorts 0:14:57.200 --> 0:15:00.480 were three and a half feet tall, four feet wide, 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:03.880 and eight feet long. One source compares it to the 0:15:03.920 --> 0:15:08.160 interior of an American sedan. If you're wondering how many 0:15:08.200 --> 0:15:12.640 bodies was enough to fill the retort, their record was fifteen. 0:15:13.960 --> 0:15:18.480 Of course, there were mistakes, like the time they accidentally 0:15:18.520 --> 0:15:21.960 cremated a body that was supposed to be embalmed, but 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:25.320 it was a closed casket, so they just subbed in 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:29.240 a random body, and no one knew the wiser. Before 0:15:29.360 --> 0:15:34.400 David's idea in nineteen eighty one, the Lamb Funeral Home 0:15:34.480 --> 0:15:39.040 had cremated one hundred and ninety four bodies. By nineteen 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:44.760 eighty six, the cremation business was processing eight thousand bodies 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:59.920 a year, many more than any other such business in California. 0:16:00.520 --> 0:16:04.760 If that's not grotesque enough, David was also mining the 0:16:04.800 --> 0:16:09.840 bodies for sellable products before they were cremated. It started 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:14.920 with the gold fillings. The Scots Home did require signing 0:16:14.920 --> 0:16:19.520 a permission form, but they kept their phrasing intentionally vague, 0:16:20.040 --> 0:16:25.720 using varied phrases like tissue removal. Every crematorium had to 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:30.240 remove pacemakers and other artificial devices so they didn't explode 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:35.040 in the retorts, but the forms didn't include selling those 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:39.840 removed items. The ethical thing to do was dispose of 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:44.080 anything that didn't disintegrate in the burn, but to David, 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:49.040 it was a business opportunity. Before any bodies went to 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:52.760 be incinerated, he checked their mouths for gold fillings, and 0:16:52.840 --> 0:16:55.440 if he found them, he would yank them out, put 0:16:55.440 --> 0:16:58.320 them in a styrofoam cup or whatever receptacle was around, 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:03.640 and sold them to a friend at the Burbank Gold Exchange. Later, 0:17:04.200 --> 0:17:07.480 David would try to claim that gold fillings aren't valuable 0:17:07.960 --> 0:17:12.720 because they contained so many other medals, but that's exactly wrong. 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:17.199 Their higher quality. Most gold jewelry in the US is 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:22.960 fourteen caret gold. Dentists usually use eighteen caret gold. One 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:26.200 filling was probably worth thirty five dollars at the time. 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:30.280 With the kind of volume David was handling, it could 0:17:30.320 --> 0:17:34.560 add up pretty quickly. In nineteen eighty five and eighty six, 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:38.479 David bragged that he was making five or six thousand 0:17:38.560 --> 0:17:43.560 dollars per month with gold fillings. Investigators were never able 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:47.280 to determine the exact volume, but it did probably amount 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:51.399 to tens of thousands of dollars, and from there it 0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:59.720 gets worse. After David started making money off the gold 0:17:59.720 --> 0:18:03.720 fill he looked at the rest at the body David 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:07.640 sweet talked two tissue bank specialists into coming to work 0:18:07.680 --> 0:18:11.120 for the crematorium. One of them was a Japanese exchange 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:14.960 student who went by George. He said the tissues were 0:18:14.960 --> 0:18:18.240 not fresh enough for a transplant, but they could be 0:18:18.359 --> 0:18:25.080 used by medical students, so David started harvesting and donating organs. 0:18:26.320 --> 0:18:30.200 Lisa Carlin was David's other tissue bank higher and her 0:18:30.240 --> 0:18:34.800 time there was very short lived. Lisa pushed back against 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:39.160 David's ideas pretty often. She asked questions. She didn't think 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:42.000 the wording in the permission forms should be so vague, 0:18:42.840 --> 0:18:48.200 and unlike David's parents, she didn't cave. Their disagreements often 0:18:48.359 --> 0:18:52.080 escalated into arguments, which ended in them screaming at each other, 0:18:52.840 --> 0:18:55.480 and they'd have these fights in front of all the 0:18:55.520 --> 0:19:01.520 other workers. They were not discreet at all. Lisa couldn't 0:19:01.560 --> 0:19:05.520 imagine that families thought any of David's operations were all right, 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:09.520 and she told him so. After one of their fights, 0:19:09.760 --> 0:19:12.960 David told another employee that girl has gone too far. 0:19:13.520 --> 0:19:15.320 One of these days she's going to wind up dead. 0:19:16.640 --> 0:19:20.720 Their arguments didn't end when she quit. She still had 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:24.080 to call and fight with him about money. That's when 0:19:24.119 --> 0:19:28.520 George overheard him say over the phone, quote for five 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:31.720 hundred dollars, I can have you shot. For a thousand, 0:19:31.800 --> 0:19:34.040 I can have you killed, and then I'll burn up 0:19:34.080 --> 0:19:36.199 the parts so no one will know what happened to you. 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:41.119 George also heard David say multiple times how much he 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:45.600 hated his grandparents, his own grandparents, the ones who started 0:19:45.600 --> 0:19:48.760 the business that he was now running wild with, and 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:53.320 he asked George for an untraceable poison to quote use 0:19:53.520 --> 0:19:58.879 on his grandparents. George circumnavigated the topic, telling his explosive 0:19:58.920 --> 0:20:12.440 employer to to an assistant LA coroner, you might be thinking, wait, 0:20:12.520 --> 0:20:17.280 it's illegal to sell organs. It's always been illegal, and 0:20:17.320 --> 0:20:21.600 you'd be right. The receiving universities were not buying the 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:26.480 organs from tissue banks. They paid a transportation fee for 0:20:26.600 --> 0:20:34.000 each eye cornea lung, heart, kidney, even other parts like 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:37.000 the three tiny bones of the ear or a knee joint. 0:20:38.080 --> 0:20:42.680 A serious harvester could accumulate twenty five thousand dollars per 0:20:42.800 --> 0:20:49.479 body somehow, and this part remains mysterious to me. David 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:55.440 set up his own tissue bank to start sourcing the universities. Meanwhile, 0:20:55.520 --> 0:20:58.080 other funeral homes in the area were suspicious of the 0:20:58.160 --> 0:21:02.080 volume David was cremating. They knew the laws, and they 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:07.159 knew that David's crematorium only had two retorts. The only 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:11.080 way they could be burning at that rate was by 0:21:11.080 --> 0:21:15.800 burning multiple bodies. At the same time, two other funeral 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:21.320 home directors said as much. One, Ron Hast, published an 0:21:21.400 --> 0:21:26.119 open threat of exposure in an industry newsletter. He also 0:21:26.440 --> 0:21:30.080 had telephone Lareenne and told her straight up that he 0:21:30.119 --> 0:21:34.000 was going to expose them to you or me. That 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:36.960 sounds like a pretty stand up move telling someone to 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:41.840 their face, but David thought the phone call was worse 0:21:41.880 --> 0:21:47.719 than the threat itself because it upset his mama. So 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:53.200 David paid two of his employees, giant former football players, 0:21:53.760 --> 0:21:56.840 eight hundred dollars to go beat up Ron Hast and 0:21:56.920 --> 0:22:00.520 his buddy to get Ron to keep his mouth shut. 0:22:00.920 --> 0:22:05.480 The other whistleblower was Tim Waters. Tim didn't even own 0:22:05.480 --> 0:22:09.879 a funeral home. He owned a limbousine rental place, and 0:22:09.960 --> 0:22:14.760 he had a middleman service that connected funeral homes to crematoriums. 0:22:15.359 --> 0:22:18.480 That meant he couldn't come close to David's fifty five 0:22:18.520 --> 0:22:22.520 dollars per body fee. His only way to push back 0:22:22.600 --> 0:22:27.000 against the prices was to convince his prospects that David 0:22:27.119 --> 0:22:31.280 was cremating illegally. He might not have had physical proofs, 0:22:31.880 --> 0:22:35.560 but he was shrewd enough to deduce that multiple cremations 0:22:35.760 --> 0:22:42.120 were the only way David's costs were that low. David's 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:45.959 football employees were paid to beat up Tim too, and 0:22:46.000 --> 0:22:48.639 they later went on the record saying that David also 0:22:48.760 --> 0:22:52.679 offered to pay them to kill Tim. Tim died on 0:22:52.760 --> 0:22:57.600 Easter Weekend nineteen eighty five. He was very obese, according 0:22:57.600 --> 0:23:02.119 to the coroner's reports. Although the first autopsy showed his 0:23:02.240 --> 0:23:07.880 cause of death as undetermined, that autopsy showed conclusive evidence 0:23:08.000 --> 0:23:11.760 that it was heart failure. It wasn't until David was 0:23:11.800 --> 0:23:15.120 on the line for his first crimes, the crematorium crimes, 0:23:15.520 --> 0:23:25.520 that they would look further into the death of Tim Waters. 0:23:29.040 --> 0:23:31.600 It was a summer of nineteen eighty six when the 0:23:31.600 --> 0:23:37.119 town of Hesperia smelled weird, bad, awful smells coming from 0:23:37.200 --> 0:23:40.840 the ceramics factory on the hill. They were talking about 0:23:40.960 --> 0:23:46.200 Oscar Ceramics, a manufacturer of heat resistant tiles for space 0:23:46.240 --> 0:23:52.800 shuttles run by David Scots. Many people reported the terrible smell. 0:23:54.080 --> 0:23:58.120 One citizen who had fought in the Second World War said, quote, 0:23:58.720 --> 0:24:01.919 I was at the oven at Auschwitz, and I know 0:24:02.040 --> 0:24:05.879 that smell. But the police couldn't raid the factory without 0:24:05.920 --> 0:24:09.880 a warrant. Still, the police chief knew something was up, 0:24:10.400 --> 0:24:13.359 so he called the fire Marshal, who could enter any 0:24:13.359 --> 0:24:17.560 building at any time if there was a fire. There 0:24:17.880 --> 0:24:22.520 was most definitely a fire, and it was most definitely 0:24:22.720 --> 0:24:27.280 a code violation. The original retorts had been made for 0:24:27.359 --> 0:24:32.200 the purpose of incinerating bodies. These ovens had been made 0:24:32.200 --> 0:24:36.800 for firing ceramics, and there was a big difference. A 0:24:36.800 --> 0:24:42.320 crematorium necessitated a large smoke stacked chimney to control emissions. 0:24:43.440 --> 0:24:48.640 The ceramics place only had an exhaust, and one fateful 0:24:48.720 --> 0:24:54.120 day a citizen called in flames leaping from that exhaust. 0:24:54.359 --> 0:24:56.760 So the fire Marshal pulled up with the police chief, 0:24:57.440 --> 0:25:01.040 and despite the lone employee's efforts to prevent them, they 0:25:01.080 --> 0:25:05.480 went inside. On the floor there was a big pool 0:25:05.680 --> 0:25:12.320 of quote, dark smelly liquid the analysis later determined was 0:25:12.359 --> 0:25:16.680 a mixture of diesel fuel and amino acids, which a 0:25:16.720 --> 0:25:21.760 body emits when it is incinerated, and beyond that, flames 0:25:21.800 --> 0:25:24.480 were flying out from behind the metal doors of the kilns. 0:25:25.600 --> 0:25:30.320 The officials ordered the fires to be extinguished aside from 0:25:30.320 --> 0:25:33.840 the chimney in the doors, the flames were dangerously close 0:25:33.920 --> 0:25:37.159 to the puddle of fuel on the floor. While they 0:25:37.240 --> 0:25:40.960 waited for the oven doors to cool, they found barrels 0:25:41.000 --> 0:25:45.560 of ashes and bones in an ice chest. They saw 0:25:45.600 --> 0:25:49.879 the remains of human prostheses, and when they were able 0:25:49.920 --> 0:25:52.919 to open the doors of the kilns, out fell the 0:25:53.000 --> 0:25:57.680 remains of a human foot. David Sconce and his parents 0:25:58.240 --> 0:26:02.320 were arrested in nineteen eighty Sive, I'll tell you all 0:26:02.359 --> 0:26:06.600 about the trial and the sixty eight criminal counts they 0:26:06.600 --> 0:26:26.120 were charged with after the break. The most important thing 0:26:26.200 --> 0:26:30.000 to establish in this criminal case was the fraud of 0:26:30.080 --> 0:26:35.560 the forms themselves. The preliminary hearing would decide whether the 0:26:35.600 --> 0:26:41.639 case merited a courtroom trial. Judge Elvirah Mitchell ruled that 0:26:41.720 --> 0:26:46.520 it should, and she set David's bail incredibly high because 0:26:46.520 --> 0:26:52.880 she agreed with the prosecution that David was a flight risk. Naturally, 0:26:52.920 --> 0:26:57.480 the whole family denied culpability, but Laurie Anne's denial is 0:26:57.800 --> 0:27:02.879 kind of astounding. The case hinged on the paperwork so much, 0:27:04.080 --> 0:27:08.439 and Lori Anne was the one issuing forms and taking signatures. 0:27:09.760 --> 0:27:14.919 She said that every single person underwent a consultation in 0:27:15.000 --> 0:27:18.000 which they agreed to all the terms that were vaguely 0:27:18.040 --> 0:27:23.159 detailed in the heavily revised forms. Several testimonies of the 0:27:23.200 --> 0:27:29.560 bereaved were revealed otherwise and revealed that their signatures were forged. 0:27:30.760 --> 0:27:35.000 Some of their names were even misspelled. Lorianne denied it all, 0:27:35.720 --> 0:27:39.640 including their revisions to the forms themselves that better disguise 0:27:39.760 --> 0:27:44.680 the very vague terms used for harvesting organs. She even 0:27:44.760 --> 0:27:49.800 said the tissue bank existed because of her sister's untimely 0:27:49.880 --> 0:27:55.920 death in the airplane crash. That is some bad juju. 0:28:05.520 --> 0:28:09.840 The next judge victor person had to rule on the 0:28:09.880 --> 0:28:13.320 probability that they had committed the crimes they'd been charged for. 0:28:14.560 --> 0:28:18.800 He had no doubts. From there, the case transferred to 0:28:18.880 --> 0:28:25.560 Superior Court. The third judge, Terry Smirling, was extremely sympathetic 0:28:25.640 --> 0:28:30.480 to defendants, and he was notorious for it. He threw 0:28:30.520 --> 0:28:35.080 out ten of the charges against the ssconces. He said, 0:28:35.560 --> 0:28:38.600 the motives of the defendants are despicable, but that's not 0:28:38.720 --> 0:28:42.520 the issue. The issue is whether a crime has been committed. 0:28:43.520 --> 0:28:47.480 He determined that by signing the contract, relatives were bound 0:28:47.480 --> 0:28:50.800 to its terms, so he threw out all the most 0:28:50.920 --> 0:28:56.120 grotesque charges. It was in direct contrast to what judge 0:28:56.160 --> 0:29:01.360 person had ruled that there was no contract. In September 0:29:01.480 --> 0:29:05.640 nineteen eighty nine, David Scots pled guilty to twenty one 0:29:05.800 --> 0:29:10.240 charges of mishandling remains and was sentenced to five years 0:29:10.240 --> 0:29:16.080 in prison. Terry sentenced David to run sixteen felony charges concurrently, 0:29:16.880 --> 0:29:21.480 and he served only five years because he'd already been 0:29:21.480 --> 0:29:25.880 imprisoned while awaiting trial. That finish line was just over 0:29:25.920 --> 0:29:30.680 a year away. There was, meanwhile, a huge deal investigating 0:29:30.720 --> 0:29:34.320 the death of Tim Waters. He was the one who 0:29:34.360 --> 0:29:39.160 had owned the company that transported the bodies, one of 0:29:39.240 --> 0:29:42.600 the two whom David had paid his employees to beat. 0:29:43.720 --> 0:29:48.040 According to protocol, the coroners had saved samples of Tim's 0:29:48.080 --> 0:29:52.240 tissues for five years. At this point they were only 0:29:52.320 --> 0:29:56.920 three years in. One coroner said there was no toxicology 0:29:56.960 --> 0:30:01.840 report in the original autopsy, so they ran one. Because 0:30:01.920 --> 0:30:06.920 bureaucracy is notoriously slow, the prosecuting lawyer went over the 0:30:06.920 --> 0:30:11.239 coroner's head straight to the source at the lab. The 0:30:11.280 --> 0:30:16.160 only thing they found in Tim's system was dijoxon. He 0:30:16.200 --> 0:30:21.360 called to apologize afterward, but the coroner wasn't mad. He 0:30:21.480 --> 0:30:26.920 was intrigued. Yes, dijoxon was typically found in medication that 0:30:27.360 --> 0:30:31.120 someone with Tim's health might have taken, but Tim didn't 0:30:31.160 --> 0:30:35.320 take any medication. The other thing that could have put 0:30:35.400 --> 0:30:40.920 dijoxon in Tim's bloodstream was oleander. The coroner was willing 0:30:40.960 --> 0:30:45.200 to testify, and he did. He did qualify that oleander 0:30:45.320 --> 0:30:48.160 typically kills in the first few hours if it's going 0:30:48.240 --> 0:30:52.880 to kill, but because of Tim's obesity, he thought the 0:30:52.960 --> 0:30:57.320 fat stores might have delayed the outcome. A conviction started 0:30:57.360 --> 0:31:01.800 to look possible, so the defense brought in another expert 0:31:02.360 --> 0:31:08.240 who said the conclusion was inconclusive. The prosecution was devastated. 0:31:08.720 --> 0:31:11.320 They had to drop the charge of Tim's murder or 0:31:11.440 --> 0:31:16.280 risk David's exoneration on all accounts. The case for Tim's 0:31:16.360 --> 0:31:20.800 murder was in court for months, even after Lisa's testimony 0:31:20.840 --> 0:31:24.720 that she was fired and threatened for asking questions, Even 0:31:24.800 --> 0:31:29.120 after multiple victims those related to the bodies illegally cremated, 0:31:29.640 --> 0:31:33.400 came forward testifying they had no idea that the form 0:31:33.480 --> 0:31:38.280 allowed for organ harvesting, even after the guys who beat 0:31:38.400 --> 0:31:41.440