Pasadena : Mortician Pleads Innocent
A Pasadena mortician has pleaded innocent to a murder charge in the 1985 oleander poisoning of a business rival.
David Sconce, 33, entered the plea Monday in Ventura County Municipal Court. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.
Sconce is charged with killing Timothy Waters, 24, of Simi Valley in what is believed to be the nation’s first murder-by-oleander-poisoning case, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Harvey Giss.
Municipal Judge Barry Klopfer ordered a July 23 preliminary hearing, then revoked $250,000 bail for the former operator of Pasadena Crematorium, part of the Sconce family-owned Lamb Funeral Home.
Sconce is serving a five-year prison term after being convicted of mutilating corpses, conducting mass cremations and stealing organs and dental gold from bodies. He could have been released in October.
His parents, Jerry and Laurieanne Lamb Sconce, are to be tried on similar charges in Pasadena Superior Court.
Waters, who owned Alpha Society Cremation Service in Burbank, died after eating Easter dinner at his mother’s Ventura County home in April, 1985. His death originally was attributed to natural causes.
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