Body
A Colorado judge sentenced funeral home owner Jon Hallford to 40 years in state prison after prosecutors said he and his wife, Carie Hallford, abused nearly 200 corpses by keeping decomposing bodies in a building for years and providing some families with fake ashes, the Associated Press reported. At Friday’s sentencing hearing in Colorado Springs, family members described lingering nightmares after learning what happened to their loved ones.
Judge Eric Bentley addressed Hallford directly during the hearing, saying he caused “unspeakable and incomprehensible” harm. In court, family members called Hallford a “monster” and urged the judge to impose the maximum 50-year sentence.
Hallford apologized before sentencing and told the court he would regret his actions for the rest of his life. He said, “I had so many chances to put a stop to everything and walk away, but I did not,” adding, “My mistakes will echo for a generation. Everything I did was wrong.”
Prosecutors said the case involved more than the handling of bodies. Prosecutor Shelby Crow argued the wrongdoing was “motivated by greed,” and described how the Hallfords charged more than $1,200 per customer. Crow also said money spent on luxury items and other purchases could have covered the costs to cremate the bodies many times over.
Hallford’s attorney had sought a 30-year sentence, arguing that the conduct was not a crime of violence and that Hallford had no prior criminal record. The agreement in the corpse-abuse case called for the state prison term to run concurrently with a federal sentence that Hallford received after he pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges.
Carie Hallford co-owned the Return to Nature Funeral Home with Jon Hallford and is scheduled to be sentenced April 24. The AP report said Carie Hallford faces 25 to 35 years in prison, after both pleaded guilty in December to nearly 200 counts of corpse abuse under an agreement with prosecutors. The report also said Jon Hallford was sentenced to 20 years in prison in the federal fraud case.
As several family members described the emotional impact at the hearing, Kelly Mackeen—whose mother’s remains were handled by Return to Nature—spoke about how she learned that what she had received was not her mother’s remains. Mackeen said, “I’m a daughter whose mother was treated like yesterday’s trash and dumped in a site left to rot with hundreds of others,” and told the court she was “heartbroken” and asked God for “grace.”
Investigators said the bodies were stored in Penrose, south of Colorado Springs, from 2019 until 2023, when they responded to reports of a stench from the building. The AP report said bodies were found throughout the structure—including adults, infants and fetuses—along with swarms of bugs and decomposition fluid covering floors, and that investigators identified remains over months using fingerprints, DNA and other methods.
Investigators also said some families were told they received ashes when, in fact, they were given dry concrete that resembled ashes. After families learned what they received and then spread or kept at home were not their loved ones’ remains, the AP reported that many said it disrupted their grieving process and that some struggled with guilt and nightmares.
FBI agent Andrew Cohen told the court about a recovered body that had been tied to a former Army sergeant first class. Cohen said that after investigators exhumed a wooden casket at a veterans’ cemetery, they found remains of a different gender inside; the veteran, whose name was not identified in court, was later given a funeral with full military honors at Pikes Peak National Cemetery.
The AP report said the corpse abuse case contributed to changes to Colorado’s funeral-home regulations. It also noted that earlier AP reporting described problems such as missed tax payments, eviction from a property and lawsuits over unpaid bills, and that in a rare decision last year Judge Bentley rejected prior plea agreements between the Hallfords and prosecutors that would have capped their prison time at up to 20 years.