HBO’s The Mortician, debuting on June 1st, delves into the shocking true account of a cremator imprisoned for the improper handling of human remains.
David Sconce operated a cremation business in the 1980s that intentionally mixed up remains and stole valuables from grieving families. Sconce, who faced multiple prison terms after admitting his guilt in 1989, even participates in the three-part documentary series.
The weekly episodes expose the unethical methods David Sconce employed to expand the cremation services at his family’s Lamb Funeral Home in Pasadena, California. Former employees recount the disturbing incidents they witnessed while working for him, and clients share their trauma of receiving the wrong ashes. Current morticians also provide insights on the proper handling of remains.
Director Joshua Rofé suggests viewers may find parallels between this cremation scandal and other news stories about companies prioritizing profit over ethical practices. However, he emphasizes that in this case, “it’s pretty damn gruesome.”
Here’s a glimpse into the most unsettling aspects of The Mortician.
How David Sconce got caught
Other funeral directors in the Pasadena area grew suspicious when Sconce’s cremation volume exceeded theirs, despite his lower prices. This was because, as former employees reveal, Sconce’s team cremated multiple bodies simultaneously, sometimes breaking bones to fit more bodies into the cremation chamber.
As operations expanded to the California desert, they cremated 150-200 bodies at a time. A Holocaust survivor living nearby reported the smell of burning flesh to 911, triggering the investigation that exposed Sconce’s activities.
In 1989, Sconce pleaded guilty to mishandling remains and stealing gold fillings from corpses at Lamb Funeral Home. After serving time, he was re-imprisoned in 2013 for violating his probation by possessing a firearm and was paroled in 2023.
Funeral directors in the series emphasize that Sconce’s actions were an anomaly. The scandal led to stricter regulations on cremations, including unannounced inspections of crematories, and made the theft of dental gold or silver a felony.
How David Sconce carried out the illegal cremation business
Those who performed cremations for Sconce recall the troubling signs they observed during their employment.
Former employees described stripping clothes from bodies for resale and removing body parts to obtain jewelry. Employees engaged in competitions to see who could fit the most bodies into the oven. Andre Augustine, a former employee, stated that they didn’t know which ashes belonged to which person, resulting in clients receiving mixed remains.
Sconce’s ex-wife, Barbara Hunt, stated that her husband kept the cremation business secret, and she only found out about it through news coverage. However, she recalls witnessing Sconce cracking teeth with a hammer to extract gold, which he then stored in a cup labeled “Au,” the chemical symbol for gold.
“He sold the gold,” Hunt said. “I just sat there thinking, what world am I in?”
Why David Sconce has no regrets
Sconce freely admits to cremating multiple bodies at once in the series and shows no remorse. He even drove a Corvette with the license plate “I BRN 4U.”
He defends his actions by arguing that crematories can never fully clean ovens between cremations, making the mixing of ashes unavoidable. “Comingling of ash is not a big deal. I don’t put any value in anybody after they’re gone and dead. They shouldn’t when I’m gone and dead. That’s not a person anymore.”
He noted that most families chose to have Sconce scatter their relatives’ ashes at sea without attending, so he saw no issue with mixing ashes from different bodies.
When asked about giving families the mixed ashes of multiple people, he responded, “There’s no difference in anybody’s cremated ash…people just got to be more in control of their emotions. That’s not your loved one anymore, and it never has been. Love them when they’re here. Period.”
Rofé believes Sconce was motivated by greed, telling TIME, “It was about money.” He recounts a moment during filming when Sconce offered him a large sum of money to create a documentary that portrayed Sconce positively. “There was a look in his eye unlike any that I’d seen before,” he says. “It was just scary.”
Rofé felt that including Sconce’s perspective was important, emphasizing the need to confront stories about criminals. “If we were to all walk around pretending that everything in this world is hunky dory, we would be doing a great disservice to humanity,” he says. “But taking a good, hard look at people like this is vital.”
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