History: Brick By Brick

05/13/2026

🏛️✨ HISTORY LOVERS… YOU DID IT AGAIN! ✨🏛️
History Brick by Brick continues to grow because of *you* the readers, commenters, sharers, storytellers, and curious minds who keep these stories alive week after week.
This week’s engagement numbers reminded us that history still matters. Not just the famous moments… but the forgotten places, hidden architecture, local legends, and the stories quietly waiting behind old walls and weathered photographs.
Every click, comment, and shared memory helps preserve something important. ❤️
Thank you for walking these corridors of history with us, one story at a time. thank you to Rubel Castle for all their support!!!
And trust us… we have some fascinating things coming. 👀

05/12/2026

Created by Charles Spratley, this addition invites readers into a world where storytelling still lingers like candlelight on old paper and every page feels like a whispered secret carried on midnight wings.

Something curious is taking flight… The Raven’s Caw / May 2026 Issue ... An online publication woven from reflection, mystery, creativity, folklore, and the strange beauty found in the quiet corners of life.
Created by Charles Spratley, this edition invites readers into a world where storytelling still lingers like candlelight on old paper and every page feels like a whispered secret carried on midnight wings.
To join the publication list email: [email protected]

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Some stories are meant to be read. Others are meant to haunt you gently long after.

05/10/2026

05/08/2026

Part IV: The Story That Refused to Stay Buried
The legal aftermath was complex. Laurieanne and Jerry Sconce were convicted and served just over three years. David pled guilty, served time, and was released on probation. But after violating that probation, he was sentenced again in 2013, this time to 25 years to life. He was paroled in 2023.
And now… he speaks again. Decades after the Lamb Funeral Home scandal shocked Southern California, the story has returned—this time through The Mortician, directed by Joshua Rofé. The series revisits the mortuary that once symbolized trust and the man who dismantled it. “I don’t put any value on anybody after they’re gone and dead,” Sconce says. “Love ‘em when they’re here.” It is a statement that explains everything… and nothing.
The documentary does more than recount events. It forces a reckoning. Families speak. Headlines resurface. Questions linger. How did this go on for so long? Who knew? Who looked away? Because this was never just about one man. It was about what happens when oversight fails… when greed overrides humanity… and when the dead are reduced to profit.
And here, at History: Brick by Brick, we always return to the place. The original Lamb’s Mortuary still stands at 415 E. Orange Grove Blvd in Pasadena. Its exterior has changed, but its history remains. Today, the site has been transformed into an immersive experience, an echo of its past, reimagined for those willing to step inside.
A business once built on trust…now remembered for betrayal. Some buildings do more than stand. They remember …..

05/07/2026

Part III: Smoke in the Desert
By the mid-1980s, the operation had grown too large to stay hidden. One funeral director, Timothy Raymond Waters, got too close. In 1985, after dining with David Sconce, he died under suspicious circumstances. Though initially believed to be poisoning, the case later collapsed due to compromised evidence.
Still… the pressure was building. Looking to expand, the Sconces moved their operation east to Hesperia, purchasing an abandoned ceramics plant. There, away from the scrutiny of Pasadena and believed they could continue unchecked. They were wrong.
On January 20, 1987, everything began to unravel. An early-morning resident noticed thick black smoke rising from the plant accompanied by a sickeningly sweet odor. When authorities were contacted, Assistant Fire Chief Will Wentworth initially dismissed the concern, until the caller said something chilling: “Don’t tell me they’re not burning bodies. I was at the ovens at Auschwitz.”
Wentworth went to investigate. What he found would expose everything. When one of the massive kilns was opened, a charred human foot fell forward. Nearby were containers filled with ashes, prosthetics, and human remains.
Within days, the operation collapsed. By January 23, dozens of charges were filed; unlawful removal of body parts, multiple cremations, forgery, fraud. In court, Laurieanne and Jerry attempted to distance themselves, placing the blame on their son. But the damage had already been done. The truth was no longer hidden.
And the story… was just beginning.
To be continued…

Charles Spratley

05/06/2026

Part II: The Business of the Dead
The question wasn’t if something was wrong. It was how far it went. The answer, when it came, was as disturbing as it was calculated.
David Sconce had found a way to increase output, not by improving the system… but by breaking it. Instead of cremating one body at a time, he and his associates forced multiple remains into the chamber, sometimes as many as nine. Limbs were broken to make them fit. The process was rushed, overloaded, and pushed far beyond any legal or ethical boundary.
When it was over, the ashes were not separated. They were dumped into large containers, mixed together, and then portioned out based on estimated weight and gender. Families believed they were receiving their loved ones. They were not. They were taking home fragments of strangers. And this was not a mistake. It was a method.
To sustain the volume, bodies were brought in from across Southern California~ from Santa Barbara to San Diego ~ often transported in unrefrigerated trucks. The operation had evolved into something far beyond negligence. It had become industrialized desecration. But even that was not enough.
Under a shell company called “Coastal International Eye and Tissue Bank,” organs were harvested without consent- brains, corneas, bones -sold quietly to labs and institutions. Gold teeth were extracted and melted down. David would return home with a Styrofoam cup labeled “AU,” hammering gold from teeth in his garage.
Nothing was wasted. Not even the dead. And as profits rose… so did suspicion. Competitors began to notice. And some who looked too closely… paid for it.
To be continued…

05/05/2026

BRN 4 U / Part I: A Trusted Beginning ... Sometimes history does not rest quietly. Sometimes it lingers… and in rare cases, it festers.
When you hear of resurrectionists, those so-called “night doctors” who robbed graves for profit, you imagine fog-drenched alleys of Victorian London. You do not expect to find them in modern-day Pasadena. And yet… that is precisely where this story begins.
In 1929, a mortuary opened its doors in Pasadena, quickly becoming a trusted pillar of the community. Its owner, Charles F. Lamb, was known for his compassion, fair pricing, and dedication to grieving families. For decades, the Lamb family business served Pasadena and Altadena with dignity and professionalism.
It was a place people turned to in their most vulnerable moments. A place built on trust. But by the 1970s… something shifted.
When Laurieanne Lamb-Sconce and her husband Jerry took over operations, the business expanded rapidly. Growth brought opportunity. Opportunity brought change. And then came their son.
David Sconce stepped into the family business not as a caretaker—but as something else entirely. He took control of the crematorium, and almost immediately, the numbers began to rise.
In his first year, he processed 194 bodies. The next year… more than 1,600. Soon after, records would show over 8,000 cremations annually. For a single furnace, operating under standard conditions… that was impossible. And yet, somehow—it was happening.
The question wasn’t if something was wrong. It was how far it went.
To be continued…

05/02/2026

History Brick by Brick at Half-O-Ween 🎃
This weekend, Charles Spratley brings his sleight of hand and Victorian flair to Street Food Cinema’s 'Boo-ze, Bites & Frights: Half-O-Ween' at the historic Heritage Square Museum in Los Angeles.
Set among beautifully preserved Victorian homes, this 21+ event blends history, mystery, and a little bit of magick with outdoor screenings of Sinners on May 1 and Carrie on May 2.
Come for the cocktails, food trucks, tarot, oddities, and ghostly atmosphere. Slip into the Spookeasy, wander the historic grounds, visit Charles at the Shaw House and stay for the frightening film.
At HB3, we love seeing history come alive in places where the past still lingers.

Charles Spratley

05/01/2026

🕯️ COMING SOON: A NEW HB3 SERIES 🕯️
Some stories are uncovered. Others… refuse to stay buried.
This week, History: Brick by Brick begins a haunting four-part series drawn from one of Southern California’s most unsettling chapters, a story of trust, betrayal, and a family business that crossed a line few could imagine.
What began as a respected Pasadena mortuary…became something far darker. Over four parts, we’ll follow the rise, the unraveling, and the lasting echoes of a scandal that still lingers today inside the building, inside the history… and now, once again, in the public eye.
This is not just a story about the past. It’s about what happens when oversight fails… and humanity is replaced by profit.

📖 Part I drops soon. Because at HB3, we don’t just tell stories, we return to the places where they happened. And some places never forget.

Charles Spratley

04/27/2026

There are performances… and then there are evenings that feel like you’ve stepped just slightly outside of reality. Last week at Ophelias Jump, Ashcroft (Charles Spratley) didn’t simply perform, he invited the room into something quieter, more curious… something that lingered.
With the ease of a storyteller and the precision of a seasoned magician, he moved between illusion and history, wit and wonder ~ blurring the line just enough to make you question where the trick ended and the truth began. Tables leaned in. Conversations hushed. And for a little while, time itself seemed to cooperate with the illusion.
This is not just magic for the stage, it’s an experience. One that follows you home. Welcome to Ashcroft: Magician. Mentalist. Historian. Author. Where stories are told through illusion… and the impossible actually feels believable.

Follow him at www.dreamswithinadream

✨ Stage | Close-Up | Strolling Magic

04/25/2026

The Raven’s Caw / April 2026 Issue Has Arrived … There are stories that sit quietly in the margins of history… and then there are those that refuse to stay buried.
The April 2026 issue of The Raven’s Caw has taken flight with a collection of curious echoes, forgotten corners, and whispers that still linger.
This month’s feature drifts toward the deep… Marking the anniversary of the Titanic, we revisit the great vessel not just as history, but as memory and lingering questions. What remains when something so grand slips beneath the surface? Steel? Silence? Or something that still calls to us across time?
📜 If you feel the pull…To subscribe, simply send an email to: [email protected] with the message: “I want to subscribe!”
Because some stories aren’t found, they find you.