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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — A funeral home owner in Colorado is set to be sentenced on Friday after being found guilty of storing 189 decomposing bodies over a period of four years and deceiving families by providing them with fake ashes.
Jon Hallford, along with his then-wife Carie, operated the Return to Nature Funeral Home located in Colorado Springs. In December, both entered guilty pleas to nearly 200 charges of corpse abuse as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.
Jon Hallford could be sentenced to anywhere between 30 and 50 years in prison, while Carie Hallford is facing a sentence of 25 to 35 years, with her sentencing scheduled for April 24.
The grim discovery was made in the small town of Penrose, south of Colorado Springs, where the Hallfords had been storing the bodies in a building from 2019 to 2023. Investigators were alerted to the situation following complaints about a foul odor emanating from the premises.
Upon investigation, authorities found bodies scattered throughout the building, some piled atop one another, surrounded by swarms of insects and decomposition fluids on the floors. The remains included adults, infants, and fetuses, all kept at room temperature. It is believed that the Hallfords gave families a substance resembling ashes, likely dry concrete.
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.
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.