(KXRM) – A Colorado judge on Friday rejected a plea agreement for a funeral home owner who acknowledged abusing 191 corpses, many of which languished in a room-temperature building for years as the owner and his wife maintained a lavish lifestyle.

Jon Hallford, the co-owner of the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs, previously pled guilty to state charges of corpse abuse.

The plea agreement had called for a 20-year prison sentence that would run concurrently with his 20-year federal sentence, meaning he could have been freed many years earlier than if the sentences ran consecutively.

El Paso County District Court Judge Eric Bentley rejected the deal at a midday court session, taking a break before the verdict was read. Judge Bentley said he was moved by the statements made by the victim’s loved ones on Friday morning, saying in part, “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

Bentley asked the defense whether or not Jon Hallford would withdraw his guilty plea, and the defense asked for two weeks to make that determination. The judge accepted the timeline and set a date of Friday, Sept. 12, at 9 a.m. for when all parties will be back in court.

If Hallford withdraws his plea, the case will go to trial.

Carie Hallford is accused of the same crimes as her husband and also pleaded guilty. Her sentencing on the corpse abuse charges has not been scheduled.

The Hallfords got a license for their funeral home in 2017, and authorities said the bodies started piling up by 2019. Many languished for years in states of decay, some decomposed beyond recognition, some unclothed or on the floor in inches of fluid from the bodies.

In total, the couple was accused of letting 189 bodies decay. In two other instances, the wrong bodies were buried. Four remains were yet to be identified, the district attorney’s office said this week.

As the gruesome count grew, Jon and Carie Hallford were also defrauding the federal government out of nearly $900,000 in pandemic relief aid.

With the money from families and the federal government, the Hallfords bought ritzy items from stores like Tiffany & Co., a GMC Yukon and Infiniti worth $120,000 combined, laser body sculpting and $31,000 in cryptocurrency.

In 2023, a putrid smell poured from the building and the police turned up. Investigators swarmed the building, donning hazmat suits and painstakingly extracting the bodies. Hallford and his wife were arrested in Oklahoma, where Jon Hallford had family, more than a month later.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.