Married owners of Colorado funeral home arrested after leaving 190 decaying bodies abandoned in shuttered facility
A grisly tale of negligence and non-caring is coming out of Penrose, Colorado, as we’re learning that 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 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 after neighbors reported smelling a foul odor coming from the building that had been closed and shuttered. ABC News reports 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 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, 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 have 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 left improperly stored at the funeral home 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.
Following their arrests in Oklahoma, the Hallfords were being held on a $2 million cash bond. They still need to be extradited to face charges in Colorado.
For more on the story, see the video accompanying this article.
–
(Booking photos of Jon and Carie Hallford, Image credit: Wagoner County Sheriff’s Office)
Posted by Richard Webster, Ace News Today
Follow Richard on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram
