Colorado funeral home owners accused of allowing 190 bodies to decompose will plead guilty

DENVER (AP) — The husband-and-wife funeral home owners accused of piling 190 bodies in a room-temperature building in Colorado while donating fake ashes to grieving families were expected to plead guilty Friday and face hundreds of counts of corpse abuse .

The discovery last year rocked the families' grieving process. The milestones of grief – the “farewell” as the wind picked up the ashes, the relief that they had fulfilled the wishes of their loved ones, the moments of holding the urn and reflecting on memories – felt feels hollow now.

The couple, Jon and Carie Hallford, who own Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs, began storing bodies in a dilapidated building outside the city in 2019 and providing dry concrete to families in lieu of mortuary burials, according to the indictments.

While racking up debt, the Hallfords spent extravagantly, prosecutors say. According to court documents, they used their clients' money — and nearly $900,000 in pandemic relief money earmarked for their business — to buy fancy cars, laser body sculpting, trips to Las Vegas and Florida, $31,000 in cryptocurrency and others Luxury items.

Last month, the Hallfords pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges as part of a deal in which they admitted defrauding customers and the federal government. On Friday, the two were expected to plead guilty in state court to more than 200 charges including abuse of corpses, theft, forgery and money laundering.

Jon Hallford is represented by the Public Defender's Office, which does not comment on cases. Carie Hallford's attorney, Michael Stuzynski, declined to comment.

Over a period of four years, Return to Nature clients received the remains of their families. Some spread the ashes in meaningful places, sometimes just a flight away. Others brought urns with them on road trips across the country or kept them at home.

Some were drawn to the funeral home's offering of “green” burials, which the funeral home's website said eschewed embalming chemicals and metal coffins in favor of biodegradable caskets, shrouds or “nothing at all.”

The sickening discovery of the allegedly improperly disposed bodies came last year when neighbors reported a stench emanating from the Return to Nature building in the small town of Penrose, southwest of Colorado Springs. In some cases, bodies were found stacked on top of each other and swarmed by insects. Some were too dilapidated to be visually identified.

The site was so toxic that responders had to wear special hazmat equipment to enter the building and were only able to stay inside for a short time before exiting the building and undergoing rigorous decontamination.

The case was not unprecedented: Six years ago, the owners of another funeral home in Colorado were accused of selling body parts and similarly using dry concrete to imitate human corpses. The suspects in this case received long federal prison sentences for mail fraud.

But it wasn't until the bodies were found at Return to Nature that lawmakers finally tightened what had previously been the country's laxest funeral home regulations. Unlike most states, Colorado did not require routine inspections of funeral homes or credentials for those operating the businesses.

This year, lawmakers brought Colorado's regulations up to par with most other states, largely with support from funeral homes.

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Bedayn is a corps member for 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 undercovered issues.

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