A Family Business (41 page)

In the July 15, 1987, interview with Detective Dennis Diaz, long before he was charged with murdering Tim, David tried to make a deal: his freedom for fingering Tim’s murderer. Earlier in the interview David had hinted that Dan Galambos was involved.

“Basically,” Diaz said, “I guess maybe the bottom line would be to say that if we would get you out, then obviously you would give up whoever the person is that actually hired Danny and them to kill Waters.”

“Yeah,” replied David. “And I’ll prove it. And I’ll give you two witnesses besides that heard him arrange it on the telephone. And then I’ll sit there and I’ll cooperate with you.”

A few minutes later, when Diaz did not respond enthusiastically to his suggestion, David added: “Okay, here’s what we could do. Just lower my bail to a hundred thousand dollars or something so that I can bail myself out, and then immediately upon bailing out I’ll go with you and give you a deposition…And then I’ll tell you about Waters.”

Almost a year later, in an interview with Detective Robert Hopkins, also before he had been charged with Tim’s murder, David claimed several times that Tim had died a natural death, that he had not been poisoned. But the persistent Hopkins kept coming back to the subject.

“Would you be willing to cooperate with us and give us information regarding that person [who knew about Waters’s death]?” Hopkins asked.

“I could give you everything you want on Tim Waters,” David replied, “and why this guy wanted to kill him, and why he talked about killing him, and how he talked about killing him.”

Hopkins asked David why he would not divulge that information.

“Because then it will get right back to the cops,” David responded. “This is very relevant to my defense. It’s very important, and if I knew for a fact that you guys were not going to talk to the Pasadena police, I would tell you this right now. I’ll give you the person who had the motive, why he had the motive, what he talked about, and four other people [the number had doubled since his interview with Diaz] who heard him talking about why he wanted to have Tim Waters whacked.”

A few minutes later David again promised to reveal what he knew.

“I’ll help you guys and you can pound the guy who had this done because I even went with this guy to the Holiday Inn to talk to Tim Waters but he wasn’t there.”

The more Hopkins pressed, the more David kept promising crucial revelations.

“You get me a workable bail, I’ll give you the guy and the motive, and four other people who heard him talking about it with Tim Waters, and it ties Galambos into it too…I’ll give you the guy. I’ll even testify for you as to what the guy told me. I’ll testify for you and put this guy away so fucking deep—and I want to put this guy away because this guy lied to me…I could have done this a long time ago, but I’ll tell you this: he’s my source of information on everything to do with Tim Waters.”

Maybe David was playing a game with the investigators in an attempt to get bail. Maybe he was serious. No one knows but David.

After the murder charge was dismissed, I asked Roger Diamond about David’s statements. What did David know about Tim’s death? Was Tim murdered? Would David go to investigators and disclose what he had promised to reveal years before?

Diamond did not answer the questions directly. “Our contention,” he said, “is that Tim was not murdered,” Presumably, that is David’s position as well. If that is true, David was either lying then or he is lying now. Or maybe he was lying both times. With David there is no way of telling.

In the end, it seems as if Jerry and Laurieanne will get off with little more than slaps on the wrists. Many of the more serious charges against them were dismissed by Smerling; the rest remained only to be settled via a long-delayed negotiated sentence. Although the dismissals have been appealed, hardly anyone who has been watching the case feels there is much hope that they are ever going to be called to fully account for their actions, much less be required to do any serious jail time. At this writing, it appears that the very most they might have to do is a few weeks in a minimum-security county institution. And even that is very doubtful.

As far as David goes, the worst may already be behind him: the prison sentence mandated by Smerling, plus the additional six months he served while he was held pending trial on charges of murdering Tim. That is not exactly a stiff sentence considering the severity, the grotesqueness, and the number of crimes with which he was charged.

Giss bitterly took note of these peculiar developments in a document filed in support of his motion to have Smerling disqualified. The prosecutor was addressing the conspiracy charge against David specifically, but his comments could apply to the case as a whole, “judge Smerling…handled the matter in such a manner as to deprive the state of its day in court,” Giss wrote.

He is right. What Smerling did, in effect, was indefinitely delay, if not permanently negate, the possibility of a final resolution in the Sconce case, particularly as far as David is concerned.

Disregarding for the moment a debate about the judge’s questionable judgment and his propensity toward lenient sentences, that still leaves in question one of the most important tenets of this country’s judicial system, namely that every criminal charge be resolved in some fashion. It is important to the system that an accused be either convicted or acquitted, but in David’s case this may never happen. Smerling, as Giss put it, “emasculated the adversarial aspect” of the system. In short, he may have made it impossible for David or his parents ever to be called totally accountable.

Despite the severity of the accusations against him, David to date has never been brought to trial; has never been required to explain his actions to a jury. Instead his punishment, or lack thereof, has been determined by a single, overly compassionate jurist. The possibility that he may one day be tried on the conspiracy to murder charge is enticing to prosecutors, but it may be more illusion than reality. Smerling may have botched things up so badly that a trial may indeed be impossible.

Considering that Jerry and Laurieanne may get the same generous treatment from Smerling as their son, there is not much left for prosecutors to cheer about. Dave Edwards, Danny Galambos, and Andre Augustine escaped without ever serving a day behind bars for their roles in accepting money to attack three people. Christopher Long, who allegedly helped Galambos beat Tim Waters, was never charged. Brad Sallard and Mike Engwald have never been called to account for the parts they played in the complicated series of developments. Odds are they never will. Does this depressing chronicle represent an aberration? Or is it a clear sign that the California criminal justice system is strangling on itself?

Even if the latter is true, there is no indication that California is alone in this regard. Similar situations, although maybe not of the same magnitude, could undoubtedly be found in every state. What makes the Sconce case so unusual is the nature and grotesqueness of the incidents and the broad impact they had upon a large number of innocent, trusting people.

What makes it so frustrating for those who have been involved in the proceedings is the seemingly inescapable conclusion that the punishment has not fit the crime. After closely watching the progress of this case for more than a year, I have to take that pessimistic view. I don’t think the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office is ever going to get its day in court against David Sconce. And I think that is truly sad.

K. E.

An Abbreviated Chronology of Events

Mid 1970s

Laurieanne Sconce begins assuming control of Lamb Funeral Home as her father, Lawrence Lamb, moves closer to retirement. She gradually brings her husband Jerry into the operation.

1982

David Sconce, then twenty-six, begins managing, under his parents’ supervision, Pasadena Crematorium, a branch of the Lamb Funeral Home.

1984

July 1—David formally leases Pasadena Crematorium from his mother, an act that gives him the independence to operate the business on his own.

August 23—David Edwards, Daniel Galambos, and Andre Augustine, hired by David, beat up Ron Hast, co-owner of a Los Angeles area mortuary, and his housemate, Stephen Nimz, because Hast is perceived as a threat to David’s business.

October 8—David applies to open a crematorium in the community of Shatter in the San Joaquin Valley. His request is refused by Kern County supervisors.

Autumn—David allegedly tells Andre Augustine that he plans to kill his grandfather, Lawrence Lamb, by poisoning him.

1985

February 12—Daniel Galambos and another ex-football player, hired by David for $1000, beat up Tim Waters, owner of a rival crematorium service. Soon afterward, David asks Galambos and Augustine to watch Frank Strunk, owner of another mortuary, the Cremation Society of California, preparatory to having him beaten up. At the time, David wanted Strunk to sell the business to him but Frank had refused.

April 8—The day after Easter. Tim Waters dies in Ventura County.

April 9—Waters is autopsied by Dr. John Holloway, deputy medical examiner. Cause of death listed as “pending.”

May 20—Dr. Holloway signs an amended death certificate listing the principal cause of Waters’s death as “acute myocardial insufficiency with pulmonary edema due to massive fatty metamorphis of [the] liver.” Listed as a contributing cause was “exogenous obesity.”

June—Joyji “George” Bristol is recruited by David to start an eye and tissue bank.

August 1—Ron Jordan, one of David’s former employees, is found hanged in his apartment in Newport Beach a month after leaving Lamb Funeral Home. His death subsequently is ruled a suicide.

Late summer—With Bristol’s help, David opens the Coastal International Eye and Tissue Bank.

September 30—Laurieanne Sconce formally purchases Lamb Funeral Home from her father.

October—Lisa Karlan joins the CIE&TB.

1986

January—Lisa Karlan, after a brief, stormy period as David’s employee, quits the CIE&TB.

June 9—Bristol, operating on David’s behalf, applies for permit to operate CIE&TB. On the same day, Leigh Dusatko, an examiner with the state Department of Health Services, wrote his boss, Roderick D. Hamblin, chief of laboratory field services, detailing an interview he had with Karlan in which she reported improper activities at Lamb Funeral Home, Pasadena Crematorium, and the CIE&TB. Dusatko’s recommendation that the department get more information before issuing a permit to the CIE&TB is apparently lost in the bureaucratic shuffle.

June 17—The California Department of Health Services approves the application for a permit for the CIE&TB, certifying it as a nonprofit organization authorized to harvest human eyes and distribute tissue for transplants and research.

October—David begins cremating bodies in Hesperia at Oscar’s Ceramics, telling officials that he is making tiles for the space shuttle.

November 23—Fire destroys the Pasadena Crematorium. That morning workers loaded thirty-eight bodies into the two furnaces, each of which is only three and a half feet high, four feet wide, and eight feet long. David shifts his entire crematorium operation to Oscar’s Ceramics.

December—David stops Bristol in the carport behind Lamb Funeral Home and allegedly tells him he needs a poison to kill his grandparents.

1987

January 20—Fire department raids Oscar’s Ceramics.

January 21—Authorities link operation to David. Soon afterward, David moves to Bullhead City, Arizona, and he takes a job at a gambling casino.

January 27—Six law firms file a class-action lawsuit against David and the Pasadena Crematorium, claiming they mishandled bodies.

January 29—David and his father Jerry are arrested in Pasadena by San Bernardino County deputies in connection with the removal of gold teeth from cadavers. They are soon released on $1500 bail each.

February 11—Thirty-three investigators from sheriff’s offices in three different counties and two county coroner’s offices pounce on the Lamb Funeral Home looking for evidence of illegal activity.

February 18—Auditors going through the books at Lamb Funeral Home discover that Laurieanne has apparently been skimming money out of the preneed accounts.

March 9—David is arraigned on the charges stemming from the January raid on Oscar’s Ceramics. He pleads not guilty.

March 29—The state attorney general’s office, in a civil action, sues Lamb Funeral Home for siphoning $100,000 from interest in prepaid funeral accounts.

April—The Pasadena Police Department and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office begin investigating Lamb Funeral Home.

April 23—Felony charge against David in San Bernardino County for discharging hazardous waste is dismissed.

June 5—David’s attorney learns that David and his parents are about to be charged in Pasadena with forty-one counts, most of them felonies. The charges against David and/or his parents include accusations of mutilation of bodies, theft of body parts, theft of dental gold, falsification of death certificates, forgery and embezzlement, multiple cremations and commingling of remains.

June 8—David, Laurieanne, and Jerry surrender to authorities in Pasadena. Municipal Court Judge Elvira Mitchell releases Jerry and Laurieanne on $5000 bond each, but, much to David’s surprise, sets his bail at $500,000.