Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Worst Funeral Director of All Time - The David Sconce Story

Episode Date: December 31, 2025

David Sconce built what became the largest cremation business in the United States by turning his family’s mortuary operation into a factory of exploitation and deception, routinely cremating multiple bodies at once, mixing remains, returning fake ashes to grieving families, and harvesting organs and tissue without consent.

So this might be one of the worst people we've talked about? So the person I'm referring to is this guy, David. And David is 26 when this story starts, and he's living in Pasadena, California. But here's the thing about David. He really, really wants to make a lot of money. And he doesn't care who he has to hurt to do it. And then one day in 1982, he discovers a way to make some. Because he happens to work in his family's funeral home business,

and he notices that there's an increasing demand for cremations. But his parents' funeral home doesn't appear to offer that service. So he's like, cool, I'll just fill in that gap. And he sets up a crematorium in one of his parents' facilities in Altadena, which is like 10 minutes away. Now, these cremation services aren't for individual people. He's selling the services wholesale to other mortuaries. So other mortuaries will, like, bring him bodies of deceased persons,

and they will pay him to cremate them. But see, David, he's a clever guy. He offers a cheaper price than any of his competition, so his business plan works. And before long, other mortuaries are bringing David lots of bodies to cremate every single day. Oh, but then, despite the fact that business is going well, David starts to get shady.

As the volume of bodies keeps increasing, he begins to feel like this cremation process is way too, slow. Like normally cremating a single body takes about two hours and David's like nah I can do better than that and he decides to shove multiple bodies in the oven at the same time. So instead of burning one body in two hours he's burning three bodies or five bodies sometimes he'll burn up to 15 bodies at once in just a few hours and because he's doing it this way his whole operation is moving faster And now he's processing over a hundred bodies in a single day.

But, as you could probably guess, there's a huge problem with all this. First of all, it's illegal. Second of all, it's wrong. Like if you're cremating 15 bodies together, that means families aren't getting their loved ones ashes. The ashes they're getting are actually a mix of 15 random people. Imagine thinking you got an urn with your grandma's ashes in it, but it's actually 15 different people in there. And as despicable as that is,

that's not the only awful thing David is doing. The way he treats the bodies as he's handling them is brutal. He'll often force them into the oven by any means necessary. Like he'll break bones, he'll snap off limbs, he'll do anything just to make them fit. But whatever I guess, David doesn't seem to care. Because he's making a lot of money now. The thing is,

Somehow, all this money he's making doesn't seem to be enough for him. He wants more. So he decides to start stealing from the bodies as well before they're cremated. Like he'll steal clothes off of them and shoes off of them, he'll steal watches and jewelry, and then he'll go pawn it or resell it. Sometimes he'll cut people's fingers off just to get their rings and stuff. Not only that, but if a body has gold teeth or dental fillings, he'll rip those out and then sell the gold to jewelers.

According to him, from selling the gold alone, he's allegedly pulling in an extra $20,000 to $30,000 a month. And yet, even with all that going on, somehow that isn't the worst part of what he's doing. See, David, he has access to hundreds of fresh corpses every single month. But once they're cremated, all the valuable body parts, parts are just destroyed. So he starts thinking, what if I harvest their organs and sell them? And that's exactly what he does. He starts harvesting organs and body parts from the corpses

without any consent from the families, and he sells them to a biological supply company, and they pay him $500 for every brain he gives them, $750 for every heart, and $150 for every lung. And he does this for years. And of course, massive amounts of money just start pouring in for him. And he's like buying stuff with it. He's buying stuff for his employees. He's taking trips to Vegas. And he buys himself multiple houses and luxury cars and boats and jet skis and shit.

He even buys himself a new corvette with a personalized license plate that says, I burn for you. Because, you know, he burns bodies. Get it? Now, David doesn't have the only crematorium in town. There are other mortuaries and funeral homes and stuff there. But at some point, some of those funeral home directors, they start noticing David's lifestyle. I mean, sure, his crematorium handles a lot of bodies, but how is he able to afford the cars and boats and stuff?

To them, the math just doesn't add up. So they start to get suspicious, and they start talking, and rumors start circulating about how David must be doing something illegal. And pretty quickly, some of these rumors get back to David, and he gets super pissed off. And, you know, he's kind of a thug himself, and he'll sometimes send his go beat these gossiping people up. Now, one of those people spreading rumors is this guy, Tim. Tim is a mortician himself. He also owns a cremation service. And one night, David's goons show up to Tim's office while he's there, and they beat the shit out of him.

Like really badly. Lucky for Tim, he survives this attack. And so, of course, he continues to talk about this, and he continues to express his opinions. He talks to other funeral directors. He even plans on writing an article which would expose David and his business. And eventually, all this gets back to David. And so David feels like he's got to stop Tim. In fact, he feels like he needs to get rid of him for good.

So, allegedly, one night, he invites to him. Tim out to a dinner meeting and they meet up and when Tim's not looking, he puts oleander poison in his food. And that, unfortunately, later unalives him. And the terrible thing is no one suspects David of this murder. And so now with Tim out of the way, it seems like he's feeling unstoppable. I mean, he's been doing all this stuff for years now and he still hasn't been caught. But then in 1986, something terrible happens. One day, one of David's workers forgets to turn off the oven. And, boom, the whole crematorium catches fire and it goes up in flames, and ultimately the whole building is destroyed.

So now, David has nowhere to continue his cremation business. But the body still keep coming in. I mean, funeral homes are still sending him corpses every single day. So he needs a bigger place, somewhere remote, somewhere where no one will notice what he's doing. And eventually, he finds a place like that. A warehouse way out in the Mojave Desert, far away from any residential areas. And inside this warehouse, he installs much bigger industrial ovens and he starts his whole cremation business up again. And at this place, David and his workers are now burning up to 200 bodies at once.

200, when he's only supposed to be cremating one body at a time. And so now that he's out there in the middle of the desert, away from everyone, it looks like he's going to get away with all this because no one is ever going to notice what he's doing. Until. Here's the thing. This new warehouse actually does have neighbors. There's at least one local businessman living near there, and this businessman just happens to be a World War II veteran. And he also just happens to have been around concentration camps in the war. And he immediately recognizes the smell of burning human bodies coming from David's place. So he reports this to the assistant fire chief. And pretty quickly, boom, county sheriffs bust into David's warehouse and they raid the building. And that is when they discover that it's an illegal crematorium with massive ovens

and where multiple bodies are being burned together. And so, bam, they arrest David. Here's a real-life photo of him. And not only that, but once they start investigating, police discover that David's parents were also involved in harvesting the body parts, because remember, they're in the funeral business too. And so, bam, they arrest them as well.

And in 1989, David pleads guilty to mutilating corpses, conducting mass cremations, and hiring people to beat up rival morticians, And after violating his parole, he ends up getting sentenced to 25 years in prison. And his parents were also found guilty, and they were both sentenced to three years, eight months in prison.