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Season 1, Episode 7 · 1 year ago
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Season 1, Episode 7 · 1 year ago
EP8 The Worst Funeral Director of All Time
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Hello and welcome back or welcome todestination death. I hope that you have been having every day ive been kind offeeling in a tunk as of late, and I kind of always feel this way when Ihave too much free time. So today, after I finish, recording this episode,I'm actually going to rearrange my living room and I'm probably going togo to Ikea, and I am very excited to go to Ikea,because I am obsessed with home improvements and organization, andtoday I am going to get some more pots for my house plants, because some ofthem have really outgrown their current homes. So that just means that I mustbe a really good plant mom. I also went to the gym two nights agowith one of my really good friends and I'm still ridiculously sore from it,and my boyfriend wants to go, try out a new gym tonight, so I am anticipatingbeing super miserable tomorrow. So that is why I'm recording this today anyway, today I'm going to tell a truecrime story, which is not something that I originally anticipated doing onthis podcast. But this story is super death related and very true crimy. So I hope that you enjoy, and this episode is about the lambfuneral home in Los Angeles, and for those of you that don't know the storywas huge when it first happened, and this story is kind of one of the bigreasons that funerals have such strict funeral homes have like superstrictrules regarding creamation and disposal of bodies and treatment of bodies and,like all the things that go with that- and it is one of the worst funeral homestories I have ever heard, and not that there are many, but I am so unsure ofhow they got away with as much stuff as they did so we're going to get into it. Butfirst we got to hit up my disclaimer. The information in this podcast, aswell as those that follow, is information readily available on theInternet. I have spent my own time researching these events and haveincluded only information I deem necessary in describing the events tomy audience. That being said, some information topics and opinionsexpressed from this point on could be considered explicit, grotesque and oroffpudding. Listen with your own discretion. I'm also not a medicaldirector doctor. Nor do I have medical training that is licensed yet enjoy. I think, eventually, I'm probably goingto memorize that and just be able to like read it off from memory, but fornow I've also gotten a couple of questionsregarding my disclaimer lately. Nothing...
...like bad, but just some generalquestions about it. So I thought that I would address them here really quicklywhen I decided to start this podcast. I already had a lot of ideas of what totalk about, and I kind of knew that a lot of my topics were things thatobviously don't bother me but could bother others. I am not bothered by much. It takes alot to actually gross me out or make me upset, but I know that I'm actuallyinterested in this stuff and I'm like into it, and I want to learn about itas much detail as possible. However, that being said, a lot of the topics Ihave covered and well covered our groupesome, and with that in mind, Ijust want everyone to kind of have an understanding of what they're gettinginto when they start. One of my episodes or start listeningto my show and whatnot so wit that out of the way, let's introduce the devil himself, theworst funeral director of all time, David Wane, sconse and I posted a photoof him to the PODCAST instagram page. If any of you knew who he was perhapsto you guys, but he sucks so much he's literally the worst and we're going toget into why? But let's first go over his like life. For a little bit, David leansconse was born into thefuneral industry. He originally wanted nothing to do with his family's funeralhome and Haw a dream of playing college sports after high school is when his anticsreally started. He ended up inrolling at Azusa Pacific, which is a ChristianCollege, and he wanted to play professional football for the seahawksin his freshman year. He robbed his ex girlfriend's house twice once onChristmas Eve. As payback for breaking up with him, he also decided he wasgoing to start egging, rich people's homes and beating up homeless peoplefor fun with his friends. So he sucks as like andeighteen twenty something year old.It's only going to get worse from here. He eventually ended up with a seriousinjury to his rotator cuff and was no longer able to play football at whichpoint he dropped out of school. He then tried to become a policeofficer, but was declined due to being colorblind in one thousand nine hundred and eightytwo at age, twenty six he decided to get his embalming license andultimately joined the family business. He ended up deciding that, while he wasin mortuary, school embalming wasn't wherethe money was, and he decided to open up his own creamatorium as an addjunctto the family's business. So his family's business was the lamb funeralhome. They did not have a creumatorium, so he opened up his own creamatoriumand he named it coastal cremations and basically, what he was doing is tryingto take over the cremation market and he would offer really low prices tofuneral homes that did not have their...
...own crematorium in which he would gopick up the corpses cremate them, and then he would return them to thefuneral home for delivery back to the family of the deceased. So this doesn'tsound too bad right off. The Bat right sounds like he's doing these funeralhomes a favor, but he was able to charge so little forthese cremations because of the amount of bodies that he would be burning. So scons ended up getting prettycarried away here and decided. He would leave the retort, the crimation retortsburning all day and he would just creammate up to six bodies at once, and I bet that at this point you'rewondering how he was able to separate everyone's ashes and the correct answerto that. Is He didn't separate them? He would cremate all six corpes at once.Sometimes he would try to do more and then based on the person's originalwait, he would scoop out about one to three pounds of ashes for the family, so the families ended up with ashesfrom up to six different corpses. This obviously, is against the law.However, it's only a misdemeanor in California at the time. I highly doubtthat many places were doing this, because that is just really awful, but for whatever reason it's just a mistemirror. So he was at this point dubbed thecremation King of California, and ended up buying a red corvette with a vanityplate that read, I burn for you. So not only does he suck he's anarcissist bet, one thouand, nine hundred andeighty five n one thousand nine hundred and eighty six coastal cremations grossincome from cremations would be over one million dollars and one milliondollars at that time was more than a million dollars is now eventually this wasn't enough forsconse and he wanted even more bodies to burn. He ended up gathering a groupof young men whom he referred to as his boys quote. UNQUOTE, I'm doing airquotes, but you can't see it and they would drive all overCalifornia collecting all these bodies to burn. They were also sent onmissions to beat up other Mortitians that skons considered his competition. His mortal enemy was a NA man namedTimothy R watters, who was also a successful crematory owner, and he was a pretty Chubby Dude. He was, he was very obese and he would basically justwear rings on all his fingers that were made of gold and diamonds and all theseexpensive, like gemstones and all thi stuff and basically would just wavearound all the money he had and this made sconse really upset. So waters was a pretty successful guy andhe ended up finding out what skons was doing at coastal cremations and he threatened on multiple occasionsto outsconce to the authorities, via...
...this mortuary magazine. That waspopular among the different funeral homes. So scont sent two of his boys toattack waters and they basically beat him to a pump at his home and he ended up surviving through theincident, but about three months later passed away under suspiciouscircumstances. Sconse never said that he did it, butsome of his quote unquote. Boys said that they remember him saying that hehad slipped something into water's drink at a bar. Whether or not that's true, nobody really knows so at this point. Skonse is basicallythe mob boss of the cramation industry and he was basically just disappearingpeople that were his competition and that he didn't like- or he was justsending his boys over there to beat them up, and if you thought that this was almostover, it's really not so. At this point, skonse's mom isrunning the regular funeral home sin, the lamb funeral home, and shebasically was the face of this funeral home. She was pretty empathetic or wasreally good at acting like it and would assist her son in his plots by having the grieving customers sign,really long agreements with really vague wording, and these agreementswould basically allow skons to harget harvest organs from the deceased andremove their gold teeth and would sell the organs and the gold on the blackmarket, and he wasn't doing this in like a niceway, he was using like screwdrivers to take the teeth out and he was usingcrow bars to break the ribs open to get to the heart and lungs. So in three months, Bete, one thousandnine hundred and Eigty Fie, one thousand nine hundred and eighty six.The lambs had sold a hundred and thirty six brains, a hundred and forty fivehearts and a hundred longs to a firm supplying organs for research tomedical schools. At the time brains were about. Eightydlars hearts were about ninety five and lungs worth sixty Ar. So, if you dothat, math, I'm not going to do it right now. But if you do it on your own,that's a lot of money that they're making off of these organs that they'reillegally harvesting from these corpses. So then they would take the corpsesthat he, like scooped, all the guts out of, and he didn't want to stop hiswhole massive cremation thing. So he would try to fit up to eighteen bodiesin a cremation retour. At one time these retorts were built at like the beginning of thninetee hundred, sotheyre meant for one body at a time.
So he really wanted to beat the recordof how many bodies could be cremated at once and on November, twenty, thethousand nine hundred and eighty six, the creamatarent cramatorium actuallyburned down after employees, were trying to put thirty eight bodies inone retort at one time, I'm just taking a pause, because I justdon't. I just can't- I just don't understand so anyway, after the loss of his originalcremitorium, he purchased a warehouse and filled it with pottery kilns and for a while people just thought.Maybe he's getting himself out of the cremation business. Maybe he's donewith it. Maybe he'll just be good from now on and we'll just kind of chill out incorrect. He purchased a warehouse and filled itwith pottery kilnes under the guise that the building would be used formaking tiles for spaceships in a partnership with NASA. This man has a criminal record. His blast crematorium burned down fromputting almost forty bodies in one retort at one time, if NASA's partnering with Him, I'm really questioning Nassa's morals, all right, they, he ended up, naming the workshopOscar Ceramics and for months he would cremate the bodies using diesel fuel inthe ceramic kilns that are normally used for making pottery. I'm sure thatyou guys have seen some of these kilns before these were like not the normal round ones that youwould see in. Like a fifth grade art class. They were like wall kilns, sothey were kind of like walk in things that you can stick a bunch of stuff inat one time and Mann did he stick a bunch of stuff in there at one time in January, on Ne Thosand, nine hundredand eighty seven, a world war, two veteran that lived near Oscar ceramics,called the Air Quality Department of San Bernadino air pollution control,saying that he could smell burning bodies and the man said this because he wasactually at the ovens at alshwitz and he was one hundred percent sure that heknew what burning Bodi smell like so. I guess SCON's just picked the wrong guyto move in next to and the fire department and members ofthe funeral board in California went out here to investigate and at thewarehouse once they stepped inside the stols of their shoes actually stuck tothe floors, because there was so much human fluid on the floor and when theyopened up one of the kilns, a human foot flew out ingulfed in flames whose foot no one knows,...
...did you imagine being that firefighterand just like thinking like I'm just going to open IIS, just Goin to b abunch of pottery like this old man doesn't know what he's talking aboutand then you open it and a bout flies out at you, a flaming foot, no less hnall right. So in May one housand, nine hundred andeighty eight David, his father, Jerry and Lorian. His mother were convictedof sixty seven misdemeanor and felony charges. SCONSE was ultimately charged withquote illegally harvesting eyes, hearts, lungs and brains for sale to ascientific supply company conducting mass cremations falsifying deathcertificates. An embezzling funeral trust account funds. He was also separately charged. Withquote assaulting three Mortitians who voice suspicions about the family'scremation operation, it's quite a list of things there wiw. He was awaiting trial underneath his formal former home thathe was renting. The new owner found a pile of charred bones, teeth andprosthetic devices in the crawl space, so the authorities came and they spentthey had to spend two days filling large boxes, full of bones: densurs,bridges, skull pieces, pasemakers and a soda can packed full of molers. So I guess this kind of reminds me ofhow serial killers will keep little mementos of theyr people that they have murdered. I don't think that he was murdering people tocremate them. I think that he just kind of enjoyed causing destruction to human bodies, which I guess is kind of like serialkillerish he's also got the narcissism to go with it, so I'm assuming that these were probablytrophies or he could have been holding on to them for like later to sell, not sure what you're going to do withsomeone's Pacemaker, but Ora soda can pact full of molers. Idon't I don't know about that in September. One thousand. Ninehundred and eighty nine sconse was ultimately charged with thirty years in prison. I'm just kidding. He was only chargedwith five and he ultimately only served two point five years of that sentenceand then was released back into the public in one thousand nine hundred andninety one. I was really shocked. READING THAT NOT GOINNA lie S Onethousand, nine hundred and ninetyone he's back at it and then in one...
...thousand nine hundred and ninety fourhe was found guilty of selling fake bus tickets inninety seven. He plad guiltyto a one thousand nine hundred and eighty nine charge of soliciting a Hitman to murder a rival funeral homeowner, not waters. So then they gave him lifetimeprobation for hiring a hipman. I really don't understand whatCalifornia was doing at this point, because this man for cremating hundreds of bodies atonce, I would have charged him with like thirty years in president, like Ioriginally said, but now they're just giving him lifetime probation. I don't know so. He ended up moving toMontana without permission in two thousand and six and ultimately violated that probation. He stole enableneighbor's rifle in two thousand and twelve and tried to pown it violating his probation again and then after he was charged with four feloniesof violating probation hebras brought back to California and sentence finallyto twenty five years to life. He is currently at the Mule Creek StatePrison in California and is eligible for parole in two thousand and twentytwo. I bet you're wondering about thebuilding. The lamb funeral home still exists, although it was renamed to adifferent funeral home, it was used for a little bit and then it was abandonedfor a really long time. Then a light bulb show room, bought itand they sold light bulbs out of it for a little while, and it has since beentransformed into luxury apartments, with walkin closets and brand newappliances at the hefty cost of forty seven hundred dollars per month for a one bedroom. This building is also believed to behaunted, and so this is the funeral home, not the Cremitory, the crematoryI couldn't get any information on, but the lamb funeral home the place thatwas run mostly by his mom, is considered to be haunted it's on like a a Web page for haunted places inCalifornia. As far as I know, there's been noactual, I mean. Is there really any actual evidence of anyone being really like in contact with ghosts? I'mnot sure, but there's no actual. Like concrete anyonesaying Oh yeah, I was there. I live there and I have had paranormalexperiences or whatever. So nobody...
...knows if hit's actually haunted, butit's on a webpage for haunted places, probably just because of what hashappened there and yeah. That is pretty much David's.Wayn Sconse, he sucks a lot. I really I struggle with these people getting solittle prison time. His parents also didn't serve any timein prison, so there's that his mom coned grieving people out of theyre loved ones, organs and she they her and her husband, Ibelieve, ar still alive. I didn't do too much research on them. I mostlywanted to do research on David, but they at onepoint we're living in Arizona and they were really poor and at one point hadbeen homeless. So I don't know, there's also no evidencethat he ever apologized for any of this, so for a while after the news of thisbroke, because he was doing this for yearsright. So a while after the news of this broke a lot of the families that had lost aloved one and then had them, cremated were calling the funeral board askingif their loved one had been cremated by sconse and a lot of them. I guess foundout that they had and now there's all these people out there with theknowledge that the ashes that they have could be from. You know thirtydifferent people and not actually from their loved ones. So I think this is just a good reminder that you should know what you'regetting into in the funeral industry. I don't know. I thought this would be areally interesting story to tell you guys. Some people have been asking me to dosome more true crime stuff on here, but I want to. I want to keep a deathrelated, so I mean obviously most true gram stories. There's death involved,but this is specifically about a funeral home, cremitory and whatnot. So this also does not have a wikipediapage. So I thought that it might be something that a lot of people don'tknow super like a lot about so anyway, I will stop droning on andhopefully I will be back on Monday with a new episode. I'm not sure what thetopic of that one will be, but I hope you guys enjoyed learningabout David' conts and if you have any questions or you want to suggest another topic for me,you can submit it on my instagram page on the instagram page for the show atDestination Death podcast. As always,...
...you can follow me there and I will try to start posting morehints of episodes. I know I said I was going to do that in the beginning, butI will catch you guys. Next time have a great day.
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