CAMARILLO : Sconce Was Willing to Kill, Man Testifies

A former mortuary worker testified Tuesday that David Wayne Sconce once told him “he wouldn’t stop at killing anybody if they deterred him from making a living or hurt his family.”

James Dame testified that Sconce made the remark when asked how he would handle another employee talking about illegal acts at the Sconce family’s Lamb Funeral Home in Pasadena.

Dame testified that he helped Sconce transport bodies to Lamb Funeral Home in Pasadena. There, Sconce pulled gold teeth out of cadavers’ mouths, melted them down and resold it, Dame testified. The funeral home also conducted multiple cremations, stacking bodies atop one another in ovens, then dividing the mass of ash into individual urns, Dame testified.

The testimony came as Sconce, 34, entered the second week of a preliminary hearing on a murder charge in Ventura County Municipal Court. He is accused of using oleander to poison Timothy Waters, a rival mortician. Waters died April 8, 1985, in Camarillo.

This week marks the end of a jail term that Sconce served for pleading guilty to funeral home law violations, and to paying two men to beat Waters two months before his death. However, Sconce remains in custody without bond on the murder charge.