The Mortician had HBO’s most Jinx-like ending since, well, The Jinx.
Joshua Rofé’s three-part documentary series concluded on Sunday night, in HBO’s primo 9 p.m. time slot. The final few minutes of the third (and final) episode of The Mortician help explain the prestige-TV brand’s giant vote of confidence; recent hit shows in the same slot include The White Lotus and The Last of Us.
The moment, in which the documentary’s subject, crematorium operator and convicted felon David Sconce, seemingly admits to murder(s) is incredibly morbid — even for a mortician.
The Hollywood Reporter has transcribed the documentary’s final exchanges below.
Joshua Rofé, Director: Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you want to cover or say?
David Sconce: Maybe. (Long pause) Alright, so there was one night I had to go to the cemetery with Barbara. I get out and I go to unlock the gate. Some kid jumps out of the weeds and he’s got a nickel-plated [gun] right at my head. And he says, “Gimme your wallet, gimme your watch.” And Barbara’s in the passenger seat watching this. And so I said, “Look man, I only got like 60 bucks.” And I gave him my cheesy Casio watch. Barbara, God bless her, she’s reaching over to my door because I always kept my 9 millimeter in there. Because she’s gonna come out and cap this guy. But the gun wasn’t there because I had problems at the range with the Luger shells, the casings, because there’s too big. So it was out getting a ramp and throat done on it. I learned all of this when I went through the stupid sheriffs—
Ronan Killeen, Director of Photography (to Rofé): I’m sorry, but we need to reload (the camera).
Rofé (to Killeen): Let’s reload. (To Sconce) Hang on one second. This is a great story.
Sconce: A true story. I thought I was gonna die. I really did. I can tell you more of this, but I can’t tell you on camera. I can’t tell you. (Pause) All I can I say is, do you think I found that guy? (Longer pause) It’s one of the things I can’t talk about (on camera). The other thing I’ll tell you about too, but can’t talk about that either. Really, there’s three of them altogether.
The episode then briefly flashes back to the previous episode’s cliffhanger, in which a former Sconce employee whose face has been shadowed out for anonymity says he believes Sconce has committed three murders in total. The interview with the former Sconce employee took place three months after the final Sconce interview, Rofé told THR; Rofé says he did not lead the former Sconce employee toward the number that he believes “corroborates” Sconce’s allusion to there being “three of them altogether.”
Sconce: You gotta promise not to tell on me.
Rofé: I, I don’t want to know then.
Sconce: Ha. What, the promise?
Rofé: No, no— if there’s something—
Sconce: Oh yeah.
Rofé: then, then, I’m not interested in having that information.
Sconce. OK. (Pause) Ah, it’s never gonna come back. Never gonna come back. Can’t come back (laughs).
Darlynn Branton Stoa in The Mortician.
Courtesy of HBO
It’s hard to come back to our interview from that one, but we must.
Rofé told The Hollywood Reporter that the moment “was so chilling.”
“I could not have imagined that a moment like that would occur.” Rofé said. “In the moment as it’s occurring, I’m not even thinking about anything other than, “Oh, wow. This guy really wants to get me alone, away from the cameras, and he wants to tell me something that is clearly extremely nefarious.”
Rofé did not want to outright interpret Sconce’s comments for THR.
“I feel like I don’t want to comment on the allegation of what it seems he’s implying,” he said. “That’s clear — that’s very clear to the audience, right? I just like, ‘Holy fuck, this guy really thinks that I’m then gonna just walk with this secret alongside him.’ It was so chilling.”
C’mon, bro. Don’t leave us in the cold like that.
“Maybe this will be helpful to you,” Rofé said. “When I first told the execs at HBO what happened, the way I categorized it was, and I think this is really accurate: ‘With a wink and a nod, he’s making these admissions.’”
