Man Testifies Mortician Bragged About Fatally Poisoning a Rival

A key prosecution witness testified Wednesday that David Wayne Sconce paid him to beat up a rival mortician and bragged about fatally poisoning the man two months later.

Sconce commissioned the attack on Timothy Waters and “said he wanted bones broken,” testified Daniel Galambos, 31, a muscular 220-pound, 6-foot, 3-inch former Pierce College football player.

“We were supposed to make it look like a robbery . . . He said if we accidentally killed him, he could always get rid of the body, he could burn it.”

Galambos testified that Sconce later admitted that he killed Waters by slipping poison into his drink at a restaurant.

Sconce is accused of poisoning Waters, 24, with oleander, but prosecutors admit that they cannot prove the two met before Waters died on April 8, 1985, after becoming ill at his mother’s home in Camarillo.

During two hours of testimony in Sconce’s preliminary hearing in Ventura County Municipal Court, Galambos said the Pasadena mortician offered him $1,000 at a Los Angeles Kings hockey game to beat Waters. Sconce, 34, already is serving a five-year sentence for ordering the beating.

Galambos said he has agreed to testify against Sconce partly to receive a lighter sentence in the beating--he is serving five years probation--and in the Oct. 12 sentencing for a 1988 cocaine-possession case in the San Fernando Valley.

Galambos testified that he and Christopher Long, a weightlifting partner, parked in front of Waters’ Alpha Society crematory in Burbank on Feb. 12, 1985.

After waiting a few hours, the two walked in and Long punched Waters in the face, Galambos testified. Bleeding profusely, Waters fell to the floor and the two dragged him into a back room where Galambos punched him again, hard, he testified.

The two took some of Waters’ jewelry, which they later sold for $400 and left, Galambos testified.

Later, at another Kings game, Galambos said Sconce demanded a report on the beating: “He asked us if I broke some bones. I said, ‘Yes, definitely,’ ” Galambos said.

A few months later, Sconce asked him, “You remember that guy you ‘did’ a few months ago?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ ” Galambos testified. “He said, ‘He died of a heart attack. . . .’ He said that he poisoned him.”

Galambos testified he was hired to beat Waters several months after an assault in which Sconce paid him to help beat up another rival mortician for threatening Sconce’s mother, Laurieanne Sconce.

Galambos said he drove to the Hollywood Hills with two well-built former Pierce College teammates, Andre Augustine and David Edwards, who picked him for the job.

Galambos said he used a fake badge and posed as a police officer to lure the mortician, Ron Hast, and his housemate, Steven Nims, down to the garage, claiming that their car was damaged in a hit-and-run accident.

There, the three attacked Hast with their fists and Edwards used a hand-held device that shot a chemical irritant into Hast’s eyes, Galambos testified.

Galambos said Edwards later paid him $400, his share of the fee for the attack. He said Sconce later complimented him on his work and hired him to beat Waters. Sconce told him that he wanted him to work without Edwards, who along with Augustine had taken money but failed to carry out an earlier planned beating of Waters, Galambos testified.

Galambos said Sconce hired him and Edwards to beat up another rival mortuary owner named Frederick Strunk, but they never carried it out because the location was too visible.

Sconce said he wanted to put poison into his grandfather’s water cooler in Lake Mojave because his mother and grandparents were not getting along, Galambos testified.

Later, the attorneys and Judge John J. Hunter listened to tapes of a 1987 interview with Pasadena Police Detective Dennis Diaz, in which Sconce denied any role in the beating of Waters.

“I never met Tim Waters, I never spoke to Tim Waters, I never saw Tim Waters until that photograph was shown to me,” Sconce told Diaz. “He was not an account of mine.”

Also in that interview, Sconce is heard saying that he and his workers discarded dental gold that they took from bodies instead of selling it for the $3,000-a-month profit which Galambos testified Wednesday that Sconce bragged about.

In addition to his five-year sentence for ordering the beating of Waters, Sconce is serving another five-year sentence for pleading guilty to taking dental gold and conducting mass cremations, in violation of state funeral home laws.