It was the early 1980s when residents of a Pasadena neighborhood noticed something amiss at the nearby crematorium. The facility was suddenly operating round the clock, smoke billowing from its chimney well after business hours.
Fellow morticians were also alarmed at the uptick in the number of bodies cremated by the Lamb Funeral Home, a respected, family-run establishment and pillar of the Southern California mortuary business for generations. It wasn’t long before allegations of organ harvesting, mass incineration of bodies and murder made the local and national news. A new L.A. crime noir story was born.
Premiering Sunday and airing weekly, HBO’s three-part docuseries “The Mortician” chronicles the ghoulish offenses of David Sconce, great-grandson of the mortuary‘s founder and son of owners Jerry W. Sconce and Laurieanne Lamb Sconce. He was the picture of Southern California affluence and privilege: a blond-haired, blue-eyed high school quarterback with professional football aspirations until his hopes were dashed by a torn ligament.
Sconce found his calling running the family’s crematorium, where he maximized profits by incinerating multiple bodies in the same chamber. Unsuspecting survivors of the deceased were none the wiser when they scattered the ashes of a loved one at sea, but in fact the cremains were of several different people.
And that’s just the tip of the macabre in this docuseries from director and producer Joshua Rofé (“Lorena”).
Sconce also harvested organs and body parts for profit, pulled teeth to extract the gold from fillings, and was investigated for allegedly contracting a hit on a rival and poisoning another competitor who was trying to expose the crimes at the Lamb funeral home.
Sconce eventually pleaded guilty to 21 criminal counts — including for mutilating corpses, holding mass cremations and hiring hit men — and was sentenced in 1989 to five years in prison. However, he was released in 1991 after serving two and a half years, then sentenced to 25 years to life in 2013 after violating probation. He was released on parole in 2023.
“The Mortician” reveals fresh angles into the decades-old case via a bevy of interviews with those who were there. But it’s Sconce himself who provides the most insight into his crimes when he alternately denies and then brags about his transgressions (he appears proud of his ability to stuff as many bodies as possible into a crematory chamber, sometimes by breaking bones or cutting off limbs). Now 68, he’s speaks at length in the documentary about the events that landed him in jail, appearing more aggrieved than remorseful.
“I don’t put any value on anybody after they’re gone and dead,” he said of mixing remains. “As they shouldn’t when I’m gone and dead. Love ‘em when they’re here.” He then justifies his actions as a practical business decision: “I could cremate one guy in two hours, or you could put 10 of them in there and take two and a half hours. So what would be the difference? There is none.”
Also interviewed are former funeral home employees, former L.A. Times journalist Ashley Dunn and former Pasadena Star-News reporter David Geary. Several victims who were duped by Sconce also offer testimonials about the deception. Former law enforcement officials who busted Sconce’s second crematory facility in Hesperia — an old ceramics factory replete with kilns — recall the canals installed below the repurposed kiln doors that were used to catch the human fat drippings coming from the packed chambers.
“The Mortician” is not the cable network’s first series about a family of undertakers operating a Pasadena funeral home. The dark dramedy “Six Feet Under” also revolved around a dysfunctional family generations in the embalming business. But all similarities stop there. There is nothing remotely funny about the twisted world of the Lambs, but in “The Jinx” fashion, Sconce’s own words at the end of this docuseries may come back to burn him.