Former funeral home owner arrested after a corpse lay in a hearse for 2 years

DENVER — A former funeral home owner accused of keeping a woman’s corpse in the back of a hearse for two years and hoarding the cremated remains of 35 people has been arrested, authorities said.

The arrest of 33-year-old Miles Harford on Thursday evening is the latest allegation of misconduct by funeral home owners in Colorado, including the discovery of nearly 200 decomposing bodies in an insect-infested funeral home last year. The gruesome finds have underscored the laxity of state regulations for funeral homes and have put pressure on lawmakers to try to strengthen the laws.

A grisly scene of urns stashed around Harford’s property, from the crawl space to the hearse where the 63-year-old woman’s body lay, was discovered in early February during a court-ordered eviction of his home, police said . While searching the premises, police opened the hearse door due to a “foul odor,” noticing the outline of the human body apparently strapped to the gurney and covered with blankets, according to the arrest affidavit.

Harford owned Apollo Funeral & Cremation services in the Denver suburb of Littleton, police said, and the hoarded cremains appear to be from people who died between 2012 and 2021. The funeral home has been closed since September 2022.

An arrest warrant lists possible charges of abuse of a corpse, forgery of the death certificate and theft of money paid for the woman’s cremation, although Denver District Attorney Beth McCann previously said other charges are possible.

Police interviewed an apparently cooperative Harford the day after the Feb. 6 discovery, according to the arrest affidavit. Denver Police Chief. Matt Clark previously said Harford acknowledged to police that he owed money to several crematoria in the area and none would cremate the woman’s body, so he decided to store it in the hearse. The deceased woman’s family told investigators they had received the woman’s ashes which they believed had been turned over to a medical examiner’s office.

Other funeral homes in Colorado have reportedly sent fake ashes to grieving families.

However, when an arrest warrant was issued for Harford on February 12, the suspect did not turn himself in. On Thursday, police still couldn’t find him and offered a $2,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.

According to the arrest affidavit, authorities could “potentially determine” the identities of 18 individual cremains. Police also discovered online reviews of the funeral home with a number of complaints. The families cited poor communication from the company in returning the remains of their loved ones. One family said they received ashes in an urn labeled with the wrong name, the document shows.

Available court documents did not yet list an attorney who could comment on Harford’s behalf. No voicemail was set on a phone listing for Harford, and he did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Harford’s arrest follows the discovery of 190 rotting bodies in a Return to Nature Funeral Home building in Penrose, Colorado, about two hours south of Denver.

A couple who own Return to Nature are awaiting trial in Colorado Springs after their arrest last year on charges that they abused corpses and gave fake ashes to relatives of the deceased. The operators of another funeral home in the western Colorado town of Montrose received federal prison sentences last year for mail fraud after being accused of selling body parts and distributing fake ashes.

More than two dozen additional criminal cases and complaints involving Colorado funeral homes since 2007 were detailed in a January report to state regulators’ lawmakers. The cases include mishandled bodies, mislabeled remains, ashes never returned to families and improper embalming of bodies.

During the Colorado House committee hearing, the executive director of the state agency that oversees funeral homes, Patty Salazar, said current laws and regulations have failed the people of Colorado, and that there is a general understanding that the state must do better. Other states conduct annual inspections of funeral homes and require those who operate them to pass a test or earn a degree in mortuary sciences. No such rules exist in Colorado.

After hearing recommendations on strengthening regulations, the bipartisan group of lawmakers voted unanimously to introduce a bill that would bring Colorado’s regulations more in line with those of nearly all other states.

The bill will be formally introduced in the coming weeks and would require routine inspections of funeral homes, even after a home’s registration has expired. It would also give the body that oversees the sector more enforcement power. An expected second proposal would require stricter qualification requirements for those who run funeral homes.

The Colorado Funeral Directors Association has generally expressed support for these two proposals.

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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.

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