Free A Family Business by Ken Englade Page B

customers would be necessary, and the Sconces shrewdly judged that many of these clients would be unwilling to take on the added responsibility— if they knew about it . They wanted to make sure they did not. Possible reaction from their clients was presumably another major reason that the ATC form was written in vague terms, that and the obvious reason that the Sconces figured they could harvest more body parts if no one outside the operation knew exactly what was going on.
    While the Sconces felt that a certain amount of concealment was paramount, they also realized they could not keep their plans entirely under wraps. They had to raise enough money to get CIE&TB started, and to do that they had to reveal a minimum number of details. Actually, the Sconces were in a precarious position, one that required some very delicate handling. Realizing this, it was no surprise that Laurieanne was selected to make the initial fund-raising contacts, since she had such a winning way with people. No doubt about it, her demure, soft-sell approach was more useful in this context than Jerry’s hard-sell or David’s flippant attitude. Additionally, there was one other advantage in having her as the front person: She was a Lamb, and the moneyed people of Pasadena respected the Lambs.
    In the end, raising the money did not prove to be an extremely difficult task. While the exact amount of cash Laurieanne brought in is unclear, it is known that her fund-raising efforts were so successful that she actually turned down some people who wanted to invest, telling them they had already raised all that was needed. What would prove significant about Laurieanne’s efforts, especially in light of later developments, was the personal role she took in the fundraising for the tissue bank. In an attempt to make a criminal case against all three Sconces, prosecutors later would point to Laurieanne’s alleged complicity in setting up the tissue bank as one of the major indicators that she was indeed involved in its operation.
    Sometimes, when talking with friends or potential investors, Laurieanne referred to the tissue bank as something the family had been thinking about for years, ever since her sister Linda had died in the plane crash in the Canary Islands. Many of those aboard the two planes had been burned, and when doctors tried to help survivors, they discovered there was a shortage of skin tissue that could be used for grafting. That brought the issue home to her, Laurieanne said, explaining that her desire to open a tissue bank was one way of memorializing her sister.
    And then there was the letter. In making his case for Laurieanne’s complicity, one prosecutor would refer specifically to a letter from Laurieanne to a woman who eventually invested $15,000 in the tissue bank project. On October 1, 1985, Laurieanne wrote the woman telling her how wise her investment decision had been. In the letter, Laurieanne claimed that the tissue bank’s operating room already had a long list of physicians anxious to use the facility, and that the prep room was going to be functional within two weeks. What was notable about the letter, in the prosecutor’s opinion, was Laurieanne’s frequent use of the plural possessive: She liberally laced the document with references to “we” and “our.”

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    Laurieanne’s possessiveness was not lost on George Bristol. While he had agreed to go into the operation believing that he would be a fifty-percent partner, David soon disabused him of that notion. Even before Bristol could get settled in, David explained that there had been a change in the way the proceeds would be split. Instead of getting half of the profit, as had been promised, Bristol would get only one-third. David would get another third, and the remaining third would go to Jerry and Laurieanne.
    In addition, Bristol also was supposed to draw a weekly salary of $200. But that turned out to be an illusion as well. Often the checks were for less, and