The house owners of a Colorado funeral dwelling accused of piling 190 our bodies inside a room-temperature constructing and giving the grieving family members pretend ashes pleaded responsible Friday to corpse abuse as aggrieved households appeared on in courtroom.
Jon and Carie Hallford, who personal the Return to Nature Funeral House, started storing our bodies in a decrepit constructing close to Colorado Springs way back to 2019 and gave households dry concrete rather than cremated stays, in keeping with the costs.
The grim discovery final 12 months upended households’ grieving processes.
Through the years, the Hallfords spent extravagantly, prosecutors say.
They used clients’ cash and practically $900,000 in pandemic reduction funds to purchase laser physique sculpting, fancy vehicles, journeys to Las Vegas and Florida, $31,000 in cryptocurrency, and different luxurious objects, in keeping with courtroom data.
Final month, the Hallfords pleaded responsible to federal fraud expenses in an settlement during which they acknowledged defrauding clients and the federal authorities.
The 2 have been charged with greater than 200 expenses of corpse abuse, theft, forgery, and cash laundering in state courtroom.
Jon Hallford is represented by the general public defender’s workplace, which doesn’t touch upon instances. Carie Hallford’s legal professional, Michael Stuzynski, declined to remark.
Over 4 years, clients of Return to Nature unfold what they thought had been their loves ones’ ashes in significant areas, typically a aircraft’s flight away.
Others carried their urns on cross-country street journeys or held them tight at dwelling.
The our bodies, which prosecutors say had been improperly saved, had been found final 12 months when neighbors reported a stench coming from a constructing within the small city of Penrose, southwest of Colorado Springs.
Authorities discovered our bodies stacked atop one another, some swarming with bugs. Amongst them had been stays too decayed for visible identification.
The constructing was so poisonous that responders needed to put on hazmat gear and will stay inside just for transient durations.
The invention of the our bodies at Return to Nature prompted state legislators to strengthen what had been among the many laxest funeral dwelling rules within the nation.
In contrast to most states, Colorado didn’t require routine inspections of funeral houses or credentials for the companies’ operators.
This 12 months, lawmakers introduced Colorado’s rules as much as par with most different states, largely with assist from the funeral dwelling business.
Supply hyperlink
