It’s something you don’t really want to think about, but when the time comes, a decision must be made regarding what to do withthe body that we leave behind after death. People typically choose one of two options: they want to be buried in a grave, or they want to be cremated and returned to ash. The new HBO docuseriesThe Morticianmight have you rethinking your choice.David Sconceis a name that has become notorious in recent weeks as the show uncovers and detailshis sordid and seedy experience working as a funeral home director and crematorin the 1980s. Directed and produced byJoshua Rofé, this three-episode, deeply disturbing tale of an all-American high school quarterback from California who was born into the death businessis most macabre and chilling in the way it portrays Sconce and the sociopathic choices he made while running the Lamb Funeral Homein Los Angeles.
What Is ‘The Mortician’ About?
Rofé manages to get Sconce, who eventuallypleaded guilty to a litany of hideous crimes in 1989, to sit down and be completely candid about the unscrupulous and illegal methods he used as a fourth-generation owner of his family’s funeral home business. He also tracked down a handful of Sconce’s former employees, some of whom, by their admission, were gang members and crack addicts while they worked in Pasadena at Lamb Funeral Home in the early to mid-80s.At one time, Sconce drove a Corvette with the license plate “I BRN 4U.”This is a man who isn’t remorseful and likely lacks the ability to feel compassion or empathy.
In the sit-down interviews,Sconce admits to co-mingling human remains. He is glib, almost bragging, about how he used to burn ten bodies at a time to run his business more efficiently and make more money. His employees talk openly about breaking and dislocating the bones of the bodies in their care to make them fit more easily in the cremation chamber. Sconce and his employees, who were high on crack during most of their time there, also broke out the teeth of the corpses with a hammerto retrieve any gold that could be sold.Sconce purportedly made an extra $20-30 thousand a month doing this,but claimed he only did it upon request from the families. Sconce and his employees also stole jewelry and clothing from the bodies to turn a profit.
The Most Disturbing Part of ‘The Mortician’ Isn’t the Way David Sconce Treated the Corpses
The first episode of the documentary dropped on June 1, but even after just one episode, the audience quickly finds out that the most terrifying aspect of The Mortician is not necessarily what Sconce and his band of criminals did with the corpses. Instead, it’s the flippant and joking manner in which he tells his grisly tales. He smiles and jokes with the documentarians about what he did for the better part of a decade.Seeing him speak so nonchalantly about the lack of value he places on these bodies and what they mean to the surviving family members and friends is utterly appalling. He says in the first episode, “I don’t put any value on anybody after they’re gone and dead… As they shouldn’t when I’m gone and dead. Love ‘em when they’re here.”
Sconce speaks about co-mingling ashes and giving them to family members as something that shouldn’t matter, saying “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.” He cracks jokes about it and tells Rofé and his camera people that he will tell them anything they want to know about what he did as long as they “promise not to tell on him.” Among the myriad of charges levied against him isthe murder of a competitor who blew the whistle on what he was doing to maintain such a robust business.
David Sconce Got Careless and Got Caught
In the first episode, Jofé begins to expose how Sconce would eventually be caught and ends up going to prison. Lamb Funeral Home was located in a hybrid neighborhood populated by both industrial and residential buildings. By 1984, the residents began to notice how there would be smoke (and ash) coming from the chimney of the business almost 24 hours a day, and well beyond the regular 9–5 hours. That was the first red flag that Sconce was burning upwards of 200 bodies a day sometimes, which gave the locals cause for concern.
But it wasn’t until after Sconce relocated the home closer to the desert that he was ultimately caught.It was an American soldier who freed the Jewish people in Auschwitz at the end of World War II who dropped the hammer. He happened to live close to Lamb Funeral Home and called 911 because he smelled burning flesh. The WWII vet said it was a smell he said he’d never forget after the liberation of the prison camp.
David Sconce Was Sent To Prison in 1989
Sconce would eventually plead guilty to 21 criminal counts that included mutilating corpses, carrying out mass cremations, and hiring hit men associated with the death of his competitor, who was making his life too difficult, and was sentenced to just five years in prison in 1989. He was released in 1991 after serving over two years, then sentenced to 25 years to life in 2013 for violating the terms of his probation.Strangely, he was released yet again on parole in 2023, after serving just 10 years of that sentence.
The Morticianis an odd marriage of two ofHBO’s most successful shows. Sconce’s story has the real-life sociopathy ofThe Jinx’s real estate heir, Robert Durst, and the backdrop ofAlan Ball’sSix Feet Under, which featured the dysfunctional Fisher family that inherited a funeral home. Sometimes, art imitates life, and at other times, life imitates art.Either way, you should be watching how this soulless human being turned the death business into a McDonald’s drive-thru.
The Morticianis currently available to stream on HBO Max in the U.S.
The Mortician
