By JESSE BEDAYN and MATTHEW BROWN
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — A Colorado funeral home owner who stashed 189 decomposing bodies in a building over four years and gave grieving families fake ashes will be sentenced Friday on corpse abuse charges.
Jon Hallford owned Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs with his then-wife Carie. They pleaded guilty in December to nearly 200 counts of corpse abuse under an agreement with prosecutors.
Jon Hallford faces between 30 and 50 years in prison. Carie Hallford faces 25 to 35 years in prison at sentencing on April 24.
The Hallfords stored the bodies in a building in the small town of Penrose, south of Colorado Springs, from 2019 until 2023, when investigators responding to reports of a stench from the building discovered the corpses.
Bodies were found throughout the building, some stacked on top of each other, with swarms of bugs and decomposition fluid covering the floors, investigators said. The remains — including adults, infants and fetuses — were stored at room temperature. Investigators believe the Hallfords gave families dry concrete that mimicked ashes.
The bodies were identified over months with fingerprints, DNA and other methods.
Families learned the ashes they had been given, and then spread or kept at home, weren’t actually their loved ones’ remains. Many said it undid their grieving process, others had nightmares and struggled with guilt that they let their relatives down.
The funeral home owners also pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges after prosecutors said they cheated the government out of nearly $900,000 in pandemic-era small business aid.
Jon Hallford was sentenced to 20 years in prison in that case. He told the judge he opened Return to Nature to make a positive impact in people’s lives, “then everything got completely out of control, especially me.”
“I still hate myself for what I’ve done,” he said at his sentencing last June.
Carie Hallford’s federal sentencing is set for March 16.
Attorneys for the Hallfords did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.
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FILE – This combination of booking photos provided by the Muskogee County, Okla., Sheriff’s Office shows Jon Hallford, left, and Carie Hallford, owners of Return to Nature Funeral Home. (Muskogee County Sheriff’s Office via AP, File)
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FILE – This combination of booking photos provided by the Muskogee County, Okla., Sheriff’s Office shows Jon Hallford, left, and Carie Hallford, owners of Return to Nature Funeral Home. (Muskogee County Sheriff’s Office via AP, File)
During the years they were stashing bodies, the Hallfords spent lavishly, according to court documents. That included purchasing a GMC Yukon and an Infiniti worth over $120,000 combined, along with $31,000 in cryptocurrency, luxury items from stores like Gucci and Tiffany & Co., and laser body sculpting.
One of the recovered bodies was that of a former Army sergeant first class who was thought to have been buried at a veterans’ cemetery, said FBI agent Andrew Cohen.
When investigators exhumed the wooden casket at the cemetery, they found the remains of a person of a different gender inside, he said. The veteran, who was not identified in court, was later given a funeral with full military honors at Pikes Peak National Cemetery, he said.
The corpse abuse revelations spurred changes to Colorado’s lax funeral home regulations.
The AP previously reported that the Hallfords missed tax payments, were evicted from one of their properties and were sued for unpaid bills, according to public records and interviews with people who worked with them.
In a rare decision, state District Judge Eric Bentley last year rejected previous plea agreements between the Hallfords and prosecutors that called for up to 20 years in prison. Family members of the deceased said the agreements were too lenient.