Funeral Home Owners Accused of Storing Decomposing Bodies…

DENVER (AP) – Colorado funeral home owners accused of misspending nearly $900,000 In the COVID-19 pandemic relief funds and living lavishly, all while allegedly hiding 190 decomposing bodies in a building and sending grieving families fake ashes, is expected to plead guilty to federal charges Thursday.

Jon and Carie Hallford, owners of Return to Nature Funeral Home, about an hour’s drive south of Denver, were charged with 15 federal felonies related to defrauding the U.S. government and the funeral home’s customers. Additionally, more than 200 criminal charges are already pending against them in Colorado state court, including for corpse abuse and forgery.

The Hallfords used the pandemic aid and customer payments to buy a GMC Yukon and Infiniti worth more than $120,000 combined, laser body sculpting, trips to California, Florida and Las Vegas, $31,000 in cryptocurrencies and luxury items at stores such as Gucci and Tiffany & Co., according to court documents.

Federal charges could carry up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

Jon Hallford is represented by the federal public defender’s office, which does not comment on cases. Calls and emails to Carrie Hallford’s attorney in the federal case were not returned, and her attorney in the state case, Michael Stuzynski, declined to comment.

The federal indictment followed the discovery last year of the 190 bodies in a bug-infested building owned by Return to Nature in Penrose, a small town southwest of Colorado Springs. The Hallfords allegedly hid the bodies as far back as 2019, sometimes stacking them on top of each other and, in two cases, burying the wrong body, according to court documents.

A Associated Press investigation found that the Hallfords likely sent fake ashes and fabricated cremation records to families who did business with them. Court documents claim the dust inside some of the bags was dry concrete, not the cremated remains of lost loved ones.

The discovery devastated relatives of the deceased, who began to learn that the remains of their family members were not in the ashes they had ceremonially scattered or held tightly, but were still languishing in a building. The stories prompted Colorado lawmakers to tweak the state’s lax funeral home regulations in 2024, requiring routine inspections of facilities and licensing of funeral homes.

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Bedayn is a member of 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 undercover issues.