Ex-Mortician Charged in Oleander Poisoning

In what is believed to be the first murder prosecution in American history for oleander poisoning, authorities filed charges Friday against a former Pasadena funeral home worker accused of using the lethal plant’s leaves to poison a rival mortician.

David Wayne Sconce, 33, was charged with poisoning Timothy R. Waters, 24, a rival Burbank mortician, in 1985. The motive, according to Los Angeles County Assistant Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Harvey Giss, was to keep Waters from exposing activities at the Lamb Funeral Home where Sconce worked.

Sconce is now serving a five-year prison term after pleading guilty last April to 21 criminal counts involving the mingling of human remains, the theft of body parts and the removal of gold teeth from cadavers at the funeral home. It was these activities that Giss alleges Sconce was trying to keep secret by poisoning Waters.

Sconce’s parents, Laurieanne Lamb Sconce and Jerry Sconce, are awaiting trial on charges of mingling remains and other charges connected with activities at the funeral home. The allegations amounted to the “worst scandal I’ve ever seen, or that I could ever imagine,” California Cemetery Board Executive Officer John W. Gill said in 1988.

Bruce Lamb, an uncle of David Sconce who is now running the family mortuary, said he believes in his nephew’s innocence. He said the murder charges, on top of the earlier accusations, have “devastated” the family.

According to Giss, the case began in the 1970s when Laurieanne Lamb Sconce took over the operation of the 67-year-old Lamb Funeral Home.

In 1982, according to Giss, David Sconce took control of the Pasadena Crematorium in Altadena, a part of the family operation. He started a business called Coastal Cremations Inc., taking in bodies for cremation on behalf of other mortuaries throughout Southern California for as little as $55 each.

“They tried to corner the market,” said Joe Estephan, the funeral director of the Cremation Society of California.

At the same time, Waters began operating the Alpha Society cremation service in Burbank, Giss said. In January, 1985, Giss said, Waters told a friend, Richard Gray, that the Lamb Funeral Home was doing multiple cremations--packing more than one body into the ovens, making it impossible to be sure whose remains were delivered to survivors.

Giss said Gray relayed the information about Waters to Sconce. Giss also said Waters was intending to turn Sconce in to state funeral regulators.

In February, 1985, Waters was beaten at his office, and Sconce was charged with assault. He pleaded guilty.

Then in April, 1985, Waters died at his parents’ home in Camarillo after becoming ill while baby-sitting for his sister in Malibu. The cause of death was originally listed as a heart attack.

But Dr. Fredrick Rieders, a Pennsylvania expert on oleander poisoning brought in by Los Angeles authorities, later said after an analysis of blood samples from Waters’ body that oleander poisoning was the true cause of death.

While one witness said that he saw Sconce slip an unknown substance into Waters’ drink at a restaurant, prosecutors said they were uncertain how the alleged poisoning occurred.

Deaths from oleander poisoning are rare, but a number have occurred over the years. Some cases are accidental, as in a California case several years ago when a woman died after brewing an oleander tea from what she thought were harmless leaves.

Giss said he believes that this is the first time anyone has been prosecuted for using oleander as a murder weapon in the United States, although there had been at least one prosecution involving the use of oleander as a folk medicine.