DENVER (AP) — It has been two years sincenearly 200 decaying bodieswere found in a smelly, temperature-controlled building in rural Colorado. On Friday, the man involved, a funeral director, is scheduled to be sentenced in state court for191 instances of body desecration.
Jon Hallford and his wife, Carie, operated a sinister scheme for four years from their Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs: convincing people they were taking care of their loved ones' cremations while secretly storing the bodies in a pest-ridden structure and then providing them with...dry concrete resembling ashes.
Jon Hallford is already headed to prisonAfter pleading guilty to federal fraud charges, the sentencing hearing on Friday will address state charges concerning the improper treatment of bodies. Family members will be given the opportunity to share the pain of discovering a loved one's slow deterioration among other deceased individuals.
"To me, this is the core of the case. It's the most disturbing aspect of the crime," said Tanya Wilson, who is traveling from Georgia to address the sentencing. She hired a funeral home to cremate her mother, only to later find out that the ashes the family scattered in Hawaii were not from her mother's body, which had been decomposing in the building in Penrose, a small town located 35 miles from Colorado Springs.
A deal has been reached requiring Hallford to serve a 20-year jail term for the charges related to the misuse of a body.
Wilson stated that she and other families hope Judge Eric Bentley will turn down the agreement because Hallford's state sentence is set to be served at the same time as his 20-year federal sentence, which could lead to his release many years sooner compared to if the sentences were served one after the other.
The magnitude of this is incredible. Why does the state think they are entitled to a plea bargain?" Wilson questioned. "There must be responsibility.
If the judge refuses to accept the agreement, Hallford would not be sentenced right away, and the case would probably proceed to an arraignment, which is the initial stage of a criminal trial, according to Kate Singh from the Fourth Judicial District District Attorney’s Office.
Colorado has had difficulty in properly regulating funeral homes and for many years had some of theweakest regulationsin the country. It has experienced a number of abuse cases, including an estimated20 dead bodies found this weekat a funeral home located in Pueblo.
Carie Hallford is facing the same charges as her husband and has also entered a guilty plea. The court has not yet set a date for her sentencing on the corpse abuse allegations.
The couple faced allegations of allowing 189 bodies to decompose. In two additional cases, incorrect remains were interred. Four sets of remains are still unidentified, according to Singh.
The Hallfords obtained a permit for their funeral home in 2017, with officials noting that the accumulation of bodies began by 2019. Numerous remains remained for years in various stages of decomposition, some so deteriorated that they were unidentifiable, others without clothing or lying on the floor amidst layers of fluid from the decomposing bodies.
As the number of victims increased, Jon and Carie Hallford were also swindling the federal government out of almost $900,000 in assistance funds during the COVID-19 period.
Using funds from families and the federal government, the Hallfords purchased luxury items from retailers such as Tiffany & Co., including a GMC Yukon and Infiniti totaling $120,000, laser body contouring, and $31,000 worth of cryptocurrency.
In 2023, a foul odor emanated from the structure, prompting police to arrive. Experts entered the building wearing protective gear, carefully removing the remains. Hallford and his spouse were taken into custody in Oklahoma, where Jon Hallford had relatives, over a month later.
Families discovered that their emotional moments of sorrow—scattering a mother's ashes in Hawaii or holding a son's urn in a rocking chair—were affected by a betrayal. It was as though the milestones of mourning had been taken away, disrupting months and years spent dealing with the loss of their loved ones.
Some experienced nightmares about how their relatives' decomposed bodies might have appeared. Others were tormented by the worry that their family members' souls were stuck, unable to find release.
A mother, Crystina Page, insisted on witnessing the actual cremation of her son's body, which was recovered from the Return to Nature building. Wilson, who believed she had already scattered her mother's ashes in Hawaii, mentioned that the family cremated her mother's remains after they were retrieved by officials. She is waiting for the legal proceedings to finish before returning to Hawaii to scatter the ashes.
The Hallfords admitted guilt in the federal case regarding conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Jon Hallford has filed an appeal against his federal prison sentence. Carie Hallford is scheduled for a sentencing in December in this matter.
___
Brown covered events from Billings, Montana.