In college, there was a young woman in my freshman orientation class who joked she took a test to determine what career she should be in and she said it was to be a mortician/undertaker. The instructor then said, “Well, that’s a proven constant industry.”
My brother and I paid about $10,000 to bury my mother earlier this year, may she rest in peace. She was buried next to her late husband, my stepfather, in a plot near a church where his parents were buried. My father, stepmother and I had a discussion about what we want when we go and I also spoke with my brother telling him that I want to be cremated. I don’t really like being put in an expensive casket that is just going to be buried in the ground.
But some people are cautious about that. Back in 2002, there was the infamous Tri-State Crematory scandal in Noble, Ga. where they were taking people’s money and then just burying people’s bodies in the ground behind their business. The ashes they gave the family and friends weren’t of the departed, but charcoal ashes or wood chip ashes. Authorities found about 340 bodies that hadn’t been cremated.
What’s odd, this wasn’t an isolated incident. I’ve even heard they have regulations about deceased female bodies so they aren’t sexually violated. I know it’s just sick. But it happens. In there horror movie Whispers, a mortician pays a prostitute to act like she’s a dead body on the slab. It’s the only good moment of a mediocre movie.
There was also the Return to Nature Funeral Home when Jon and Carrie Hallford scammed people out of money as they left bodies to rot and also gave the bereaved fake ashes. You can see about that on HBO Max’s The Curious Case Of… series. The Mortician also is available for streaming on the same service and was reportedly the most viewed program in years. It takes a more in-depth look at the horrible practices of a funeral home in southern California.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver did an episode focusing on how bodies donated to science are also exploited. So, something like The Mortician will make you wish people went back to the old-fashioned way of burying someone. You wrapped their body in a shroud and just put them in the ground. If you wanted, you put the body in a pinewood box. Back to nature the old-fashioned way.
For centuries, people did this. There are religions and cultures such as Orthodox Judaism that believes the body of the departed should go in the ground with no autopsy or embalming. In fact, unless you’re transporting a body across state lines, it doesn’t need to be embalmed. And if there’s no sign of foul play, an autopsy isn’t necessary.
Yet, health codes and regulations prohibit the old-fashioned way of burying a body on a piece of family land. Sadly, the industry of funeral homes have exploited families and friends when they are going through difficult times. Cremation is cheaper than burial. And Lamb Funeral Home in Pasadena, Calif. exploited that.
David Sconce might just be one of the biggest scumbags that’s ever walked the Earth. And he doesn’t care if you think he is a horrible person. It’s revealed in the documentary that Sconce and other workers for the funeral home were harvesting human organs off the deceased. Yet, Sconce mentions this in a nonchalant way as he feels dead bodies can still serve a purpose.
Yes, that’s true. But it’s usually left up to the deceased as well as their loved ones to make that decision. If I remember correctly, there was a Law and Order episode in which a doctor was doing the same thing. This is nothing new. In Gangs of New York, they sell a recently killed body to med students. And believe or not, that’s how some medical students had to get their cadavers.
Yet, Sconce and presumably the administration at Lamb were just doing it for the money. And why burn one body in the crematory when you can burn a lot more. Wrapped in a triangular style of cardboard wrapping, Sconce and his workers, most of whom had questionable backgrounds, would pile the bodies in the oven and let them all burn at once to save on costs and increase their profits.
I mean, to some people, it’s just ashes that are usually spread somewhere. But some people keep their loved ones’ ashes in urns as a reminder. Myself, I want my ashes spread here and there. Even as a joke, I’ve thought of being used in a coffee mix for the patrons at my memorial service who I know are going to put on a show. However, regardless of what one decides to do with the ashes, both the deceased and the bereaved need to be treated fairly with some respect.
Some people might wonder why filmmaker Joshua Rofe gives so much screen time to Sconce who talks about his misdeeds as if he’s proud of them or denying that they happened as he was the victim. Sconce is a sociopath who doesn’t care about anyone else but himself. It’s possible he may have some mental disorder causing him to lack compassion. As a former newspaper reporter myself, I’ve learned the best way to make people look bad is just to let them talk and record all I can.
I actually think Sconce likes the attention he’s getting. There wouldn’t be a documentary if he had said no. He relishes on taking gold fillings out of dead bodies. Anyone who’s ever run a business knows that you’re always going to have a person who will still because it’s all there in front of them. The funeral home itself was embezzling at the same time as we see archived footage of Sconce’s mother Laurieane who might look like your average church-going small-town wife and mother. But it’s obvious she was in on a lot more illegal activities.
Sadly, there weren’t many regulations at the time to prevent these things. Probably one of the most disturbing things about this is how they used a regular ceramics kiln, Hesperia Ceramics, to burn the bodies. The fire chief of the fire department in Hesperia, Calif. said he recognized the putrid smell the people nearby were smell as burning bodies. He had served in World War II and had been at Auschwitz when they discovered the burning bodies. That was in January of 1987. It’s horrifying how a smell still lingers in your memory and senses more than 40 years later.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 