Owners of Colorado funeral home each plead guilty to 191 counts of corpse abuse
The married owners of the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs, Colorado, fled the state to Oklahoma, leaving behind hundreds of decomposing corpses piled one upon the other in a dilapidated building. Before fleeing the state, they tried passing off fake ashes to the loved ones of the deceased left in their care. Jon and Carie Hallford were chased down, arrested, and extradited back to Colorado where yesterday they both pled guilty to 191 counts of corpse abuse for the bodies they left to fdecay, plus two instances where the wrong bodies were buried.
“The bodies were [lying] on the ground, stacked on shelves, left on gurneys, stacked on top of each other or just piled in rooms,” prosecutor Rachael Powell said in court. Their loved ones are “intensely and forever outraged,” she added. Some of the families were in the courtroom when they pleaded guilty. ~ Fox News
The Hallfords’ grisly tale of negligence and non-caring originated in Penrose, Colorado, when the owners of the Return to Nature Funeral Home were arrested after it came to light that “190 improperly stored bodies were discovered inside their facility.” According to CBS News in Colorado, the owners of that funeral home, married couple Jon and Carie Hallford, were arrested in Wagoner, Oklahoma, on the morning of November 8, 2023, on felony charges of suspicion of committing the crimes of abuse of a corpse, theft, money laundering and forgery.
Law enforcement officials first visited the “green” funeral home back in October 2023 after neighbors reported smelling a foul odor coming from the building that had been closed and shuttered. ABC News reported that that the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office gained access to the funeral home where they made the gruesome discovery of all those bodies, stored in an improper manner with some of the decaying corpses piled on top of each other. The scene was so bad that the governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, declared a local natural emergency and sought help from the FBI.
Investigators entered the Return to Nature Funeral Home building in the Rocky Mountain town of Penrose in early October 2023 to find “abhorrent” conditions with dozens of stacked bodies, according to a federal affidavit that’s under seal in Colorado but available in Oklahoma. Some bodies had 2019 death dates, according to the document. ~ Associated Press
By October 13, 2023, all the abandoned human remains had been transported from the funeral home to the El Paso County Coroner’s Office. Randy Keller, the Fremont County Coroner, shared that 110 individuals had been positively identified and work is ongoing to identify 80 more. “Individuals are being identified through fingerprints, dental records, and medical hardware. Once we have exhausted these methods, we will move on to DNA testing, if necessary,” said Keller.
Families of the decedents who were scammed by the Hallfords said that instead of being provided with the cremated ashes of their beloved family members, they don’t know what the funeral home gave them.
“We will never know what our families are actually carrying. Some of them may be concrete dust, some of them may be other things… we won’t ever know so I can’t even describe the emotions our families are going through,” said Chrystina Page whose son was among those found inside the funeral home last month.
At trial, prosecutors stated that the Hallfords lived extravagantly from their funeral home earnings, plus nearly $900,000 in fraudulently received pandemic relief funds. According to court records, they bought laser body sculpting, fancy cars, trips to Las Vegas and Florida, $31,000 in cryptocurrency and other luxury items,
Plea deals reached between the defendants and prosecutors call for Jon Hallford to receive a 20-year prison sentence and Carie Hallford to receive 15 to 20 years in prison. They also agreed to pay restitution, with the amount yet to be determined. Additional charges of theft, forgery and money laundering would be dismissed under the agreements, according to The Associated Press.
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(Cover photos of Carie and Jon Hallford: Image credots Twitter)
Posted by Richard Webster, Ace News Today
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