Ex-Mortuary Owners Sentenced for Removing, Selling Organs

Ending a ghoulish scandal that rocked the state’s funeral home business, the former owners of a Pasadena mortuary were each sentenced Tuesday to three years and eight months in prison for removing body parts from corpses without consent and selling them to an organ donor bank.

Jerry W. Sconce, 60, and his wife, Laurieanne Lamb Sconce, 57, were taken into custody after the hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court more than eight years after the grisly affair was uncovered.

“They did it literally to steal the hearts of the dead, and break the hearts of the living,” Judge John Ouderkirk said. “They were conning the bereaved to make money.”

In April, after two weeks of deliberation, a jury convicted the Sconces of mishandling remains and taking $100,000 of their clients’ trust fund money at the Lamb Funeral Home. Jerry Sconce was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to remove parts and one count of misappropriation of trust account money. His wife was convicted of nine charges, including forging donor consent forms, misappropriating trust account money, conspiracy to remove body parts and unlawful authorization of the removal of eyes, hearts, lungs and brains from corpses. They have appealed their convictions.

Their son, David Sconce, served a prison sentence after pleading guilty to similar charges. He is now serving five years in an Arizona prison for an unrelated crime and is scheduled to stand trial for conspiring to murder a mortuary rival.