A Family Business

They were the owners of funeral home—and organ harvesters. An unsettling look at the Sconce family from the acclaimed true crime author of Deadly Lessons.

For sixty years, families in Southern California trusted the Sconce-owned Lamb Funeral Home with their loved ones’ remains. That trust was betrayed in an extraordinary, horrifying fashion, as it was discovered that the family, seeing an opportunity, had been stealing gold fillings and harvesting the organs of the newly deceased, hiding the evidence by burning the bodies in their crematorium.

When the shocking acts came to light, a trial brought every gruesome detail to the forefront, and Ken Englade has—with even-handed, clear-eyed reporting—chronicled every chilling detail.