Former Pasadena mortician convicted of mass cremations, stealing gold waives extradition to California

Gallery: David Wayne Sconce

MISSOULA, Mont. - David Wayne Sconce, the former Pasadena mortician who went to prison for stealing and selling body parts and dental gold and performing mass cremations, has waived extradition to California, where he is being sought for violating conditions of his life-time parole.

In 2012, Sconce, 56, was sentenced to five years' probation on a federal charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm for stealing a gun from a neighbor and pawning it, apparently triggering the arrest warrant.

In the late 1980s, Sconce and his parents Jerry Sconce and Laurieanne Lamb Sconce, owners of the Lamb Funeral Home in Pasadena, were sentenced to state prison for plundering body parts, conducting mass cremations and forging organ-donor consent forms. David Sconce served 2 1/2 years after pleading guilty to 21 charges.

He was then sentenced to life on probation in 1989 for soliciting the murder of a former L.A. County deputy district attorney assigned to his case.

Sconce later spent time in Nevada, Arizona and Montana, reporting to his probation officer by mail.

At an August 2006 hearing he was taken into custody for a probation violation - relocating to Montana without permission from the county. After six weeks in custody, he was released on his own recognizance in early October 2006.

In January, 2007, after Sconce moved to Madera County, he was allowed to be supervised by probation officials there under the terms of his lifetime probation - including that he avoid the funeral industry.

The Lamb Funeral Home case led to a massive lawsuit that also involved 100 mortuaries that contracted with the funeral home for cremations. The $15.5 million suit in 1991 involved 20,000 relatives of people cremated at the funeral home.

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