DENVER (AP) — A Colorado funeral home owner accused of stashing nearly 200 decomposing bodies in a room-temperature building admitted in a plea agreement Monday that she cheated customers and defrauded the federal government out of nearly $900,000.
Carie Hallford, who ran Return to Nature Funeral Home with her husband, Jon Hallford, pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Carie Hallford faces a maximum of 20 years in prison, though federal prosecutors agreed to ask for 15 years.
The federal case brought against both Hallfords focused on two schemes: falsifying documents to trick the U.S. Small Business Administration into giving them pandemic-era financial aid and deceiving customers who paid for cremations the Hallfords never did.
Instead of cremating nearly 200 bodies between 2019 and 2023, the Hallfords are accused of storing them in a decrepit building sending customers dry concrete instead of ashes. The Hallfords pocketed around $130,000 of their customers' payments meant for cremations or burial services.
In a separate case in state court, both Hallfords have been charged with 191 counts of corpse abuse, including for burying the wrong body in two instances and leaving others to decompose. Jon Hallford has already pleaded guilty to those 191 counts, as well as a fraud charge in the federal case.
The building packed with bodies was discovered in 2023 in Penrose, Colorado, about a two-hour drive south of Denver. It shook already grieving families. Many learned that their loved ones' remains weren't in the ashes they spread or held tight, but were instead decaying in a building — some for four years.
Investigators found bodies stacked atop each other, swarms of bugs and maggots, and so much liquid on the ground it had to be pumped out.
Crystina Page’s son David died in 2019 and his body was left in an inoperable refrigerator for four years. Page, who attended the hearing, is disappointed neither Hallford will stand trial, something she hoped would have brought answers about what happened to her son and all the other people entrusted to their care.
“We still don’t know the truth of what they’ve done to us,” she said.
Carie Hallford had already pleaded guilty in federal court last year, but a judge had rejected that agreement. Carie Hallford is scheduled to be sentenced in December.
