Colorado funeral home owners plead guilty to state charges in case involving 190 decaying bodies

The owners of a Penrose funeral home accused of improperly storing 190 decaying bodies inside their business while promising families their loved ones were cremated or buried, pleaded guilty to state charges Friday.

In separate plea agreements, Jon and Carie Hallford each admitted guilt to 190 counts of abuse of a corpse during a joint hearing in El Paso County District Court. Jon Halford, 44, agreed to serve 20 years in prison under the deal. Carie Halford, 48, faces 15-20 years in prison, to be determined by El Paso County District Court Judge Eric Bentley. 

Sentencing is scheduled for April 18.

The couple originally faced more than 200 felony charges for abusing corpses, theft, money laundering and forgery, court records show. Under a plea agreement, all other charges against the owners were dismissed. 

In court Friday, Jon Hallford said he “knowingly treated the bodies or remains of 190 individuals in a way that would outrage normal family sensibility,” by not properly cremating or storing the bodies he received from families. 

Carie Hallford said she had not been inside the building for “well over a year,” explaining that her husband wanted to protect her from being exposed to the conditions inside the building. 

“That being said, I did know of the conditions… I knew enough that I knew how bad it was and chose to do nothing about it or prevent it and just allowed it to continue,” Carie Hallford said.  

Inside the funeral home, bodies were found in various states of decomposition, some wrapped in duct tape and others partially wrapped in sheets, prosecutors said Friday. Some bodies were exposed without any covering. Bodies were found on the ground, stacked on shelves, left on gurneys stacked on top of each other. 

There were two refrigeration units inside, but neither were working. The temperature of the building was 70 degrees and insects covered the floor and many of the bodies.

When investigators entered the funeral home building in October 2023, they found “abhorrent” conditions, some with 2019 death dates. 

Instead of cremating or burying the bodies, the owners of Return to Nature funeral home, which operated in Colorado Springs and about an hour south in Penrose, let the bodies to rot at room temperature, court documents said. 

The Hallfords sent fake ashes and fabricated cremation records to families, investigators said. Some families received urns filled with dry concrete mix, not the cremated remains of their loved ones. 

The FBI also exhumed an Army veteran’s grave in the Pikes Peak National Cemetery and found that the Hallfords buried the wrong body there, court documents said. Inside the wood casket, a corpse of a woman was found wrapped in duct tape and plastic sheets. Written on the plastic was a name different from the veteran, court documents said. 

Records showed that the Hallfords took more than $2,000 for the burial before leaving the veteran’s body to decompose alongside nearly 200 other bodies at their Penrose funeral home. 

An investigation also revealed that the owners took the payments from families that were meant for cremations and burials, and instead bought vehicles, cryptocurrency, a $1,500 dinner in Las Vegas and other personal items. 

Last month, the Hallfords accepted a plea deal and pleaded guilty to one federal count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. They had faced 15 federal counts for defrauding the federal government and the funeral home’s customers. They face up to 20 years in federal prison, but prosecutors said they will not seek more than 15 years under the plea agreement, The Associated Press reported. 

Their sentences for the state charges will be served at the same time as their federal sentences, Bentley said Friday.