A Family Business (40 page)

As expected, Diamond appealed. However, both the court of appeal and the state supreme court rejected the defense requests, presumably setting the stage for David’s trial on the conspiracy to murder charge before Superior Court Judge Paul Boland, who took Smerling’s place as trial judge after Smerling was disqualified. There also was a possibility that the charges still outstanding against David (solicitation of the murders of his grandparents and Prosecutor Walt Lewis, as well as four counts dealing with alleged bribery of a witness) would be heard before Boland at the same time as the conspiracy to murder charge. A decision in that regard was expected late in 1991 or early in 1992.

These developments buoyed the prosecution, and for the first time in many months raised hopes that David might finally be brought to trial on at least one of the charges still pending against him. But there was still a wild card. No one seemed to know what would happen if David, before he could be tried, demanded that he be allowed to plead guilty to the outstanding charges, as he had been promised he could do by Smerling. Even with Smerling removed, the fact that he had given his word to David and David had accepted it in good faith (in fact, he had already served his sentence) could complicate the issue tremendously.

As they have virtually since the news of the situation broke,
Lawrence
and
Lucille Lamb
remained in seclusion but maintained ties with, and apparently continued to support, their grandson David and their daughter Laurieanne. On the afternoon after the last court hearing, a family reunion—the first since David was released—was held at Lawrence’s and Lucille’s home on Orange Grove Boulevard opposite the starting point for the annual Rose Bowl parade. Although Lawrence was confined to his bed, reportedly with a terminal illness, the gathering proceeded with Lucille, Jerry and Laurieanne, David and Barbara, and their two children all in attendance.

Conspicuous by their absence were Laurieanne’s two brothers, Kirk and Bruce Lamb, who had long before agreed to repay the $100,000 that had been diverted from the mortuary’s preneed accounts. At the same time, they took over the business and renamed it the Pasadena Funeral Home. While meeting what they considered to be their familial obligations, they apparently harbored a resentment for their sister and her husband for putting them in such a position. Although the brothers have not publicly commented on the case in recent months, it was clear from statements made earlier to reporters that both Kirk and Bruce were unhappy with what had happened. From all indications, the Sconces and the Lamb brothers remained estranged.

In December 1990,
Daniel Galambos
was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to a charge of possession of cocaine. However, only ninety days of the sentence required incarceration, and that was only part-time. Under the terms of the sentence, he spent ninety days as a sleep-over resident in a drug rehabilitation center, which meant that he was allowed to leave the facility during the day to work, but was required to report back every evening. During the period, he received daily drug tests to make sure he was clean. The remainder of the sentence was probated. Galambos had been arrested on the drug charge two years previously, not long after he had pleaded guilty to assaulting Hast, Nimz, and Waters. He had been given five years probation on those charges.

Not long after David pleaded guilty to the initial series of charges in Judge Smerling’s court in August 1989,
David Edwards
pleaded guilty to charges of assaulting Hast and Nimz and was given a five-year probated sentence.

About the same time,
Andre Augustine
pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury and was sentenced to one year on probation.

John Pollerana
, who worked for David from December 1982 until January 1987 and was charged along with David with offenses in San Bernardino County in connection with the operation of the illegal crematorium at Oscar’s Ceramics, eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of performing cremations without a license and was sentenced to one year on probation. All San Bernardino charges against David, including the felony charge for discharging hazardous wastes, were dropped, a fact that did not sit very easy with Pollerana, who contended he was only doing what David had ordered him to do.

Ron Jordan
’s death in August 1985 remains classified as a suicide. His body was buried soon after his death, without toxicological tests being performed. Although specimens from his body were kept for a while, they had been routinely destroyed by the time prosecutors had charged David with Tim’s murder and began wondering about Jordan’s death as well. Giss said in the summer of 1991 that the prosecution was considering whether to ask for an exhumation order to take new samples from Jordan’s body, but the problems there would be the same as in Tim’s case: tests for possible poisons are time-consuming and exceedingly expensive.

As of the summer of 1991,
Mike Engwald
had yet to have his probable cause hearing on charges of receiving stolen property—that is, the gold taken from cadavers at Coastal Cremation, Pasadena Crematorium, and Lamb Funeral Home. He was reputed to be suffering from a terminal illness and it was unlikely that he would ever be tried.
Brad Sallard
, David’s brother-in-law, was also awaiting a preliminary hearing on felony charges of trying to bribe a witness. It was uncertain as well if he would ever be brought to trial.

Tim’s mother,
Mary Lou Waters
, died of cancer in the spring of 1991, not long after the dismissal of the charge that David had murdered her son.

Walt Lewis
continued as a prosecutor in Pasadena, but David’s threats continued to haunt him. He was so worried by the potential for retaliation against himself or his family that he encouraged his adult children to move to other states.

Not long after the incidents at Lamb Funeral Home/Pasadena Crematorium were made public, Walt Lewis received a telephone call from a state legislative leader. A relative of one of the legislator’s staffers had been cremated by David, and his ashes were believed to have been among those that were mixed. The legislator asked Lewis if he could make some suggestions for keeping such incidents from occurring in the future. Lewis replied with several recommendations, some of which subsequently were submitted as proposed legislation, were approved, and eventually signed into law.

Beginning on January 1, 1989, Cemetery Board agents were allowed to inspect, upon demand and without prior notification, a crematorium’s books or premises, including its retorts and cold room. Failure to submit to an inspection request could lead to suspension or revocation of the organization’s license. If this or a similar law had been in effect in 1986, the Sconces’ activity might have been discovered months earlier.

As of the same date it also became a felony in California to remove tissue or organs from a cadaver awaiting cremation or burial without specific written permission, and/or to remove or possess dental gold or silver that came from a cadaver.

A lingering mystery has been what happened to all of David’s money. By conservative reckoning, at the time of the search of Oscar’s Ceramics, David was bringing in at least $500,000 a year from cremations alone. Since his overhead was low and his lifestyle was not extravagant, it is uncertain what happened to those funds. His legal representation almost exclusively has been at state expense, and he has claimed that his family is living in virtual poverty. So where is the money? It could be squirreled away someplace. He could have spent it, since he was, in essence, supporting two families—his own and the Sallards. Or he could have given it away. But unless some powerful agency with the interest and the ability to conduct an extensive investigation, such as the Internal Revenue Service, gets involved, it is likely that the puzzle will remain unsolved.

If the situation involving the criminal charges against the Sconces seemed puzzling, it was a model of clarity compared to the hodgepodge that existed in the civil courts as a result of the incidents at the funeral home/crematorium. Four and a half years after Melvin Belli’s San Francisco firm initiated litigation as a result of the Sconces’ operation, the situation was even further from a resolution than was the criminal case. In fact, in the summer of 1991, California courts were still trying to determine who would be allowed to participate in the class-action claim, an issue that could easily take years longer to determine. And that would be only the beginning.

Afterword

Looking at the situation realistically, there seems little chance that David will be back behind bars anytime soon, if ever.

It is true that there is no statute of limitations on murder. David could be recharged with Tim Waters’s death next week, next month, or thirty years from now. Indeed, there was a case in California not long ago in which a man was tried and convicted of murdering a young girl twenty years previously. He was only brought to trial after his daughter came forward and said she had, as a child, witnessed the killing. She had not mentioned it before because the facts were brought out only after she began receiving psychiatric treatment for some unrecognizable event that had been haunting her dreams; she did not know what that something was until she began receiving professional help. Someone
could
come forward and say they saw David and Tim together that Good Friday evening in 1985 and that they saw David slip something into Tim’s food or drink. That
might
happen, but it is not very likely. A more probable scenario would involve development of new evidence along scientific lines. If there is proof to be found that David dispatched Tim, or even that Tim actually was murdered, it probably will be uncovered in a laboratory rather than on a psychiatrist’s couch. But how much time and money will prosecutors in Ventura and Los Angeles counties be willing to spend on toxicological tests? I doubt if David is staying awake nights worrying about it.

Still, the ramifications of the Sconce case—and I’m speaking of the Sconces plural, parents and son—have already proved to be extremely far-reaching:

• If it had not been for the Sconces, new and more efficient laws governing crematoriums in the state might never have been written.
  
• Testimony at the Pasadena preliminary hearing helped lead to an in-depth examination of jailhouse informant practices and attendant reforms.
  
• Precedent was set when Diamond won his fight to represent David against the murder charge in Ventura.
  
• The civil cases resulting from the revelations of what was occurring at Lamb Funeral Home/crematorium promise to lead to new guidelines regarding who can be considered an injured party in cases involving burial and cremation.
  
• And then there is Judge Robert Altman’s ruling against Smerling. If nothing else, it may make judges more careful about letting their
  personal
  opinions influence their
  professional
  opinions. Considering that he was speaking about a brother judge and that his opinion was couched in legalese, Altman pulled few punches. Smerling had no authority to promise David probation on the conspiracy charge, Altman said, because the case was not even before him at the time he made the promise. By doing that—in essence grouping the conspiracy charge in with the other charges on which he was making a plea bargain offer—Smerling denied the state any opportunity to argue against the appropriateness of the sentence. Furthermore, Altman added, Smerling exhibited his bias when he said on the record that he did not agree with the law governing such situations. As Altman put it: “While it is appropriate to consider the seriousness of a crime in determining the appropriateness of probation…Judge Smerling’s indicated sentence appears to be based on his personal disagreement (whether correct or not) with the severity of the penalty fixed by the legislature…and again gives the appearance that the People could not hope to convince him of the inappropriateness of probation.” Translation: Smerling seemed to have his mind made up and refused to listen to any argument, no matter how valid.
  

• When he was preparing his motion to disqualify Smerling, Giss spent an entire week trying to find an example of how another judge may have handled such a situation in the past. He was unable to find one. Not one.
  

  Why do you think that was? I asked.
  

  Giss, always ready with a quip, replied: “Because no judge has ever been stupid enough to do something like that before.”
  

  While Giss was trying to be funny, his remark apparently hit very close to home, as evidenced by the Altman ruling. The troubling questions are: Was Smerling’s decision the result of stupidity? Was it failure of logic? Was it a lack of legal knowledge? Was Smerling testing the system and his authority? Or was he simply extremely sympathetic to a young defendant who he did not want to send to prison for any additional time? Altman seems to think it was the latter.
  

Regrettably, one thing the world may never know in this case is if Tim Waters was poisoned. Barring the discovery of new scientific evidence, there is only one real hope, and it is a slim one. The only probable thing other than new tests which could resurrect the prosecution’s case would be for David to volunteer to tell what he knows, if anything.