On Friday, the owners of a Colorado funeral company pleaded guilty to state crimes that included leaving 190 bodies to decay on their grounds and providing grieving relatives with false ashes.
According to the accusations, Jon and Carie Hallford, the operators of Return to Nature Funeral Home, began storing bodies in a dilapidated property near Colorado Springs in 2019 and providing families with dry concrete instead of cremated ashes. The heartbreaking revelation last year upended families’ grief processes.
According to authorities, the Hallfords overspent their money over the years. According to court documents, they spent customers’ money and nearly $900,000 in pandemic relief funding on laser body sculpting, luxurious cars, trips to Las Vegas and Florida, $31,000 in cryptocurrencies, and other luxury stuff.
Last month, the Hallfords pled guilty to federal fraud charges in an accord that admitted they defrauded customers and the government. The two have been charged in state court with over 200 counts of corpse abuse, theft, forgeries, and money laundering.
Jon Hallford is represented by the public defender’s office, which does not comment on individual cases. Carie Hallford’s attorney, Michael Stuzynski, declined to comment.
Over four years, Return to Nature clients scattered what they thought were their loved ones’ ashes in meaningful locales, often a plane journey away. Others took their urns on cross-country road vacations or kept them safe at home.
The dead, which authorities said were improperly preserved, were discovered last year when neighbors reported a stench emanating from a building in Penrose, a tiny town southwest of Colorado Springs.
Authorities discovered bodies heaped on top of each other, some teeming with insects. Among them were deteriorated remains that could not be identified visually. The structure was so hazardous that rescuers were forced to don hazmat suits and could only stay inside for short periods of time.
The discovery of the dead at Return to Nature spurred state legislators to tighten what had previously been among the most permissive funeral home laws in the country. Unlike most states, Colorado did not mandate routine inspections of funeral establishments or qualifications for their operators.
This year, lawmakers brought Colorado’s regulations up to par with the majority of other states, thanks in large part to the funeral home sector.