Funeral home owners where 190 decaying bodies were found are set to appear in court over charges they abused corpses, laundered money and forged documents

A couple who promised grieving families a “natural burial” for loved ones will go on trial today on charges of leaving bodies piled up for years in their unrefrigerated complex outside Denver.

Jon and Carie Hallford are facing 250 charges of forgery, theft, money laundering and abuse of a corpse after nearly 200 rotting bodies were discovered at their Return to Nature funeral home in Colorado Springs.

Investigators discovered “horrendous conditions” when they raided the property in October after repeated complaints from neighbors about the “odor of dead animals” hanging over the area.

Horrified police discovered 190 dead bodies left in rooms where “human decomposition fluids and insects lined the floors.”

Family members who paid $1,290 for an eco-friendly cremation and the promise of tree planting in the Colorado National Forest were reportedly given “concrete dust” instead of ashes, while their loved ones were shelved and forgotten.

“For four years I marched with this urn across the country, believing it was my son,” said Crystina Page, whose 20-year-old son, David, was shot and killed by police in 2019.

'My son has been rotting there for four years. It's the worst feeling I've ever had in my life.'

County coroners worked around the clock for a week to identify the bodies after the property was raided on October 4.

Many had to undergo DNA testing due to the condition of the bodies before they were returned to their families.

“To say my family is shocked and outraged is an understatement,” Lindsay Maher said of discovering her grandmother Yong Anderson was among the dead.

'My grandmother's dying wish was to be cremated and have her ashes spread in the ocean.

'It turns out that the ash we got from Return To Nature was actually just concrete dust and that my grandmother's body had been in the abandoned building all this time.

“They forged my grandmother's death certificate and gave my grieving family concrete dust.”

The company opened in 2017 and offers “a natural way to care for your loved one with minimal impact on the environment.”

But by the time of the raid, it owed more than $120,000 in unpaid bills and had been sued repeatedly over unpaid wages and disputes with local medical centers.

The company's operating license expired last November, but the state has little regulation of funeral homes without routine inspections or qualification requirements for operators.

Family members said they raised their suspicions with the couple but were repeatedly fobbed off.

When the family of retired army officer Tanya Wilson received her ashes, her brother Elliot found the ashes unusually heavy and confronted Carie Hallford.

“Jesse, of course, this is your mother,” Elliott remembered Hallford saying.

When he took them to a nearby funeral home, he was told, “I've never seen anything that looks like this in the range of what cremated remains would normally look like.”

Two families were so suspicious that they mixed the 'ashes' with water and noticed that it solidified.

Samantha Naranjo discovered that mother Dorothy's body had been stored in the dilapidated building for more than a year.

“We were hurt, we were frustrated, now we're angry,” she said KRDO.

'We want justice. Not just for us, but for all those victims. Each of them.

“Their family deserves peace, the community deserves justice.”

The couple fled to Wagoner, Oklahoma, where they were arrested on November 8 and jailed on $2 million bond each.

Grieving relatives and outraged locals have stormed the property 100 miles south of Denver, demanding justice for the victims.

Joyce Pavetti, 73, can see the funeral home from the stoop of her home and said she noticed a putrid odor in recent weeks. “We just assumed it was a dead animal,” she said.

Neighbor Ron Alexander thought the smell was coming from a septic tank, adding that the haze of police lights during the police raid “resembled the Fourth of July.”

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday that the building must be demolished next month to “safely remove found biological and hazardous materials.”

Court records show Jon Hallford is represented by the public defender's office, which does not comment on cases to the media. Carie Hallford is represented by attorney Michael Stuzynski, who declined to comment on the case.