Colorado funeral home owners who let nearly 190 bodies decay plead guilty to corpse abuse
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The owners of a Colorado funeral home left nearly 190 bodies to decay in a room-temperature building, giving grieving families false ash pleaded guilty Friday to corpse abuse.
Jon and Carie Hallford, owners of Return to Nature Funeral Home, began storing bodies in a dilapidated building near Colorado Springs as early as 2019, giving families dry concrete instead of cremated remains, according to the charges. Last year’s grim discovery turned families’ grieving processes upside down.
The plea agreements between the defendants and prosecutors call for Jon Hallford to receive a 20-year prison sentence and Carie Hallford to serve 15 to 20 years in prison.
Over the years, the Hallfords spent excessivelyprosecutors say. They used customers’ money and nearly $900,000 in pandemic relief funds to buy laser body sculpting, fancy cars, trips to Las Vegas and Florida, $31,000 in cryptocurrency and other luxury items, according to court documents.
Last month, the Hallfords pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges in an agreement in which they acknowledged defrauding customers and the federal government. Under the agreement, prosecutors can seek sentences of up to 15 years in prison for the couple.
Even as the couple lived large, prosecutors said the bodies were decomposing in their funeral home.
“The bodies were on the floor, stacked on shelves, left on stretchers, stacked on top of each other or just piled up in rooms,” said prosecutor Rachael Powell. She said the relatives of the discovered bodies have been “intensely and forever outraged.”
The Hallfords each pleaded guilty to 191 counts of corpse abuse for the bodies found to decay and two counts of burying the wrong bodies.
They also agreed to pay restitution, the amount of which has yet to be determined. Additional charges of theft, forgery and money laundering would be dismissed under the agreements.
Crystina Page’s son, David, died in 2019 and his body languished in the funeral home building until last year.
“He lay in the corner of an inoperable refrigerator, dumped from his body bag as rats and maggots ate his face for four years,” Page said outside the courtroom after the hearing. “Every moment I think about my son, I think about Jon and Carie, and that doesn’t go away.”
The verdict was set for April 18.
Six people with objections to the plea deals had asked to address the court ahead of Friday’s hearing. They found the length of the sentences under the plea agreement insufficient given the Hallfords’ behavior, prosecutors said.
Judge Eric Bentley said they would be given a chance to speak before sentencing. If the judge rejects the plea deal, the Hallfords could withdraw their guilty pleas and go to trial.
Carie Hallford told the judge that although she did not visit the building as often as Jon, “I knew how bad it was and chose not to do anything about it.”
At the end of Friday’s hearing, Bentley revoked a bond that had allowed Carie Hallford to remain free while the case was pending. She was handcuffed in the courtroom as relatives of the deceased applauded.
Jon Hallford was already in custody and was wearing an orange jumpsuit and handcuffed for the hearing.
Last month, the Hallfords pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges in an agreement in which they acknowledged defrauding customers and the federal government.
Jon Hallford is represented by the Attorney General’s Office, which does not comment on cases. Carie Hallford’s attorney, Michael Stuzynski, declined to comment.
Over the course of four years, Return to Nature clients sometimes scattered the ashes of their loved ones in what they believed were meaningful locations a plane flight away. Others carried their urns cross-country trail trips or held they are home tight.
The bodies, which prosecutors say had been improperly stored, were discovered last year when neighbors reported a stench coming from a building in the small town of Penrose, southwest of Colorado Springs.
Authorities found bodies too rotten for visual identification. The building was so toxic that emergency workers had to wear dangerous clothing and could only stay inside for a short time.
The discovery of the bodies at Return to Nature prompted state lawmakers to tighten the nation’s most lax regulations for funeral homes. Unlike most states, Colorado did not require routine inspections of funeral homes or identification of the businesses’ operators.
This year, lawmakers brought Colorado’s regulations in line with most other states, largely with support from the funeral industry.
___
Bedayn is a staff member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.