D.A. Drops Murder Charge Against Sconce : Courts: Tests fail to find oleander in dead man’s remains. Prosecutors vow to continue testing for other poisons.

A former crematorium operator who had been charged with poisoning a business rival with oleander walked out of Ventura County Jail a free man Thursday, declaring: “I’m innocent.”

But although prosecutors dismissed the murder charge against David W. Sconce after failing to find oleander in the dead man’s remains, they vowed to continue testing for other poisons.

Calling the 35-year-old Sconce “a cold-blooded murderer,” Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury said Ventura and Los Angeles counties will share the cost of more tests on the remains of Timothy Waters, who died in 1985. The lab work, which costs about $20,000 per test, will take six months, Bradbury said.

And the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office intends to prosecute Sconce for conspiracy to commit murder in an unrelated case, a spokeswoman said. That case is now tied up in appeals.

Bradbury’s remarks came a few minutes after he told a packed courtroom that he was dropping the murder charge because a New York scientist found no trace of oleander in Waters’ remains. When Ventura County Superior Court Judge Frederick A. Jones granted the dismissal, Sconce turned to his attorney, Roger Jon Diamond of Santa Monica, and shook hands.

Behind him in the front row of spectators, his parents, Laurieanne and Jerry Sconce, embraced one another and then hugged Diamond’s mother, daughter and secretary. Laurieanne Sconce clutched a legal pad with the heading: “Dismissal Day, April 4, 1991, for our son David.”

Sconce was led back to jail to complete paperwork, then emerged into the lobby, smiling broadly. He hugged his mother, who was in tears, then his father.

“This is the best example of why there should be no death penalty anywhere,” Diamond said. “They wanted this man to be executed . . . for a crime that was nonexistent.”

Sconce said: “I always knew I would walk out. I’m innocent.

“I should say I’m going to Disneyland, but I’m going to lunch.”

Wearing a blue T-shirt, faded jeans and new tennis shoes that his mother had brought to court, Sconce and his parents drove off in a white Ford station wagon.

Until his arrest four years ago, Sconce drove a candy-apple-red Mercedes-Benz and a white Corvette, the latter sporting the gruesome license tag “I BRN 4U.” That was when his Coastal Cremations Inc. was one of the largest crematoriums in Southern California, handling more than 8,000 bodies in 1985.

There were so many bodies that Sconce sometimes used a 2-by-4 board to shove them into his ovens, according to testimony at a preliminary hearing. State law prohibits cremating more than one body at a time. Sconce also was accused of stealing gold from the teeth of corpses.

When several rival operators threatened to expose illegalities at the crematorium, Sconce hired thugs to beat them up, investigators said. One of the targets was Waters, who was attacked by two men in his Burbank office in February, 1985, two months before he died.

At a preliminary hearing last October, Daniel Galambos testified that Sconce hired him to beat Waters.

“He said that if we accidentally killed him, he could always get rid of the body--he could burn it,” Galambos said.

Sconce eventually pleaded guilty to 21 charges, including the assault on Waters and violations involving the handling of bodies. He was sentenced to five years in prison. With time off for good behavior and time previously served, that term expired last October.

Although he admitted the assault, Sconce denied having anything to do with Waters’ mysterious death, which occurred six years ago this month.

On April 6, 1985, Waters became ill at his sister’s home in Malibu and said he was “the sickest he had ever felt,” according to the sister’s court testimony. The next day--Easter Sunday--he went to his parents’ home in Camarillo for dinner. On Monday he died.

The medical examiner’s office said Waters, who weighed more than 300 pounds, died of a faulty heart, swollen lungs and a malfunctioning liver.

But in 1988, one of the men who attacked Waters in his office told police that Sconce had later boasted about poisoning the mortician with a spiked drink.

Another informant told police that Sconce had borrowed a book describing, among other things, how oleander could be used as a hard-to-detect poison.

A Pennsylvania toxicologist, Frederick Rieders, examined Waters’ remains and declared that they contained traces of oleander. Sconce was charged with murder in February, 1990, although prosecutors admitted that they did not know how or when Sconce could have administered poison to Waters.

Early this year, however, prosecutors began to have doubts about Rieders’ results. They agreed to join in Diamond’s plan to have another test by a Cornell University professor, Jack Henion.

Late Wednesday, Henion reported finding no trace of oleander.

Bradbury said Thursday that “the circumstantial evidence . . . was and still is compelling,” that Waters was poisoned, and that Sconce did it. He cited Waters’ mysterious death, Sconce’s admitted ill will toward the dead man, his interest in poisons and his alleged boast about killing Waters.

Thursday night, Diamond said he planned to take Sconce to the Los Angeles Kings’ first playoff game. Sconce is an avid hockey fan.

As for the district attorney’s comments, Diamond said: “Mr. Bradbury can make whatever statements he wants. We’re not in a mood to be retaliatory or vindictive.”

Times staff writer Carol Watson contributed to this story.