Funeral home stored bodies for 4 years, deceived families about loved ones’ ashes, prosecutors say
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The owners of a Colorado funeral home were arrested Wednesday in Oklahoma on charges linked to the discovery of 190 sets of decaying remains at one of their facilities, including some that apparently had been languishing there for four years.
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.
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Some bodies had 2019 death dates, according to the document.
“Law enforcement now knows the cremains each family was given could not have been their loved one,” reads the documents alleging funeral home owners Jon and Carie Hallford had fled Colorado to avoid prosecution.
The Hallfords were jailed on $2 million bond on a Colorado arrest warrant alleging approximately 190 counts of abuse of a corpse, five counts of theft, four counts of money laundering and over 50 counts of forgery — after their arrest in Wagoner, east of Tulsa. They’re set for an initial appearance on a federal fleeing charge on Nov. 9 in Muskogee.
They couldn’t be reached for comment and didn’t have attorneys listed in jail records. Neither has a listed personal phone number, and the funeral home’s number no longer works.
During a news conference in Colorado Springs announcing the charges Wednesday, District Attorney Michael Allen said authorities wouldn’t be releasing many details in order to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation. He said the charging documents contain information that is “absolutely shocking.”
Several families have told The Associated Press that the FBI told them privately that their loved ones were among the decaying bodies, meaning the ashes they were given weren’t their family members’. Those families were asked to give samples of the ashes they received to investigators to analyze.
