Funeral home owner who stashed nearly 200 decaying bodies set to be sentenced for corpse abuse

DENVER (AP) — It's been 2 years since astir 200 decaying bodies were discovered passim a fetid, country somesthesia gathering successful agrarian Colorado. On Friday, the antheral responsible, a ceremonial location owner, is acceptable to beryllium sentenced successful authorities tribunal for 191 counts of corpse abuse.

Jon Hallford and his wife, Carie, ran a morbid racket for 4 years retired of their Return to Nature Funeral Home successful Colorado Springs: assuring radical they were handling their loved ones' cremations lone to stash the bodies successful a bug-infested gathering and past giving them adust factual resembling ashes.

Jon Hallford is already headed to situation aft pleading blameworthy to national fraud charges. Friday's sentencing proceeding volition absorption connected authorities charges related to mistreatment of the bodies. Family members volition person the accidental to picture the anguish of learning a loved 1 dilatory decayed among piles of others.

“To maine it’s the bosom of the case. It’s the worst portion of the crime,” said Tanya Wilson, who is traveling from Georgia to talk astatine the sentencing. She hired the ceremonial location to cremate her parent and aboriginal discovered the expected ashes the household dispersed successful Hawaii weren't from her mother's body, which had been wasting distant successful the gathering successful Penrose, a tiny municipality 35 miles from Colorado Springs.

A plea statement calls for Hallford to person a 20-year situation condemnation for the corpse maltreatment charges.

Wilson said she and immoderate different families privation Judge Eric Bentley to cull the statement due to the fact that Hallford's authorities condemnation is expected to tally concurrently with his 20-year national sentence, meaning helium could beryllium freed galore years earlier than if the sentences ran consecutively.

“The standard of this is staggering. Why does the authorities judge they merit a plea deal?” Wilson asked. “There needs to beryllium accountability.”

If the justice rejects the agreement, Hallford would not beryllium instantly sentenced and the lawsuit would apt spell to an arraignment, the archetypal measurement toward a transgression trial, said Kate Singh with the Fourth Judicial District District Attorney’s Office.

Colorado has struggled to efficaciously oversee ceremonial homes and for galore years had immoderate of the weakest regulations successful the nation. It’s had a slew of maltreatment cases, including an estimated 20 decomposing corpses discovered this week astatine a ceremonial location successful Pueblo.

Carie Hallford is accused of the aforesaid crimes arsenic her hubby and besides pleaded guilty. Her sentencing connected the corpse maltreatment charges has not been scheduled.

The mates was accused of letting 189 bodies decay. In 2 different instances the incorrect bodies were buried. Four remains person yet to beryllium identified, Singh said.

The Hallfords got a licence for their ceremonial location successful 2017, and authorities said the bodies started piling up by 2019. Many languished for years successful states of decay, immoderate decomposed beyond recognition, immoderate unclothed oregon connected the level successful inches of fluid from the bodies.

As the gruesome number grew, Jon and Carie Hallford were besides defrauding the national authorities retired of astir $900,000 successful COVID-19 epoch aid.

With the wealth from families and the national government, the Hallfords bought ritzy items from stores similar Tiffany & Co., a GMC Yukon and Infiniti worthy $120,000 combined, laser assemblage sculpting and $31,000 successful cryptocurrency.

In 2023, a putrid odor poured from the gathering and the constabulary turned up. Investigators swarmed the building, donning hazmat suits and painstakingly extracting the bodies. Hallford and his woman were arrested successful Oklahoma, wherever Jon Hallford had family, much than a period later.

Families learned that their cathartic moments of grief — spreading a mother's ashes successful Hawaii oregon cradling a son's urn successful a rocking seat — were tainted by a deception. It was arsenic if those signposts of the grieving process had been torn away, unraveling months and years of moving done their loved ones' deaths.

Some had nightmares of what their relatives' decayed bodies indispensable person looked like. Others were anguished by the fearfulness their household members' souls were trapped, incapable to spell free.

A mother, Crystina Page, demanded to ticker arsenic her son's body, rescued from the Return to Nature building, was cremated for real. Wilson, who had thought she already dispersed her mother's ashes successful Hawaii, said the household cremated her mother's remains aft they were recovered by authorities. She is waiting for the tribunal cases to reason earlier returning to Hawaii again to dispersed the ashes.

The Hallfords pleaded blameworthy successful the national lawsuit to conspiracy to perpetrate ligament fraud. Jon Hallford has appealed his national situation sentence. Carie Hallford faces a December sentencing successful that case.

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Brown reported from Billings, Montana.

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