COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (CN) - A Colorado Springs judge on Friday sentenced a former funeral home owner who left 189 bodies to rot to 40 years in prison.
"Every time I look at this case I am bowed over by the enormity of it," said Fourth Judicial District Judge Eric Bentley. "There is nothing the court can look to to measure against the sentence in this case. One of the remarks by one of you today, that stated it well when you said to 'restore balance and acknowledge harm.' Restoring balance here is obviously a titanic task."
In October 2023, the Fremont County Sheriff's Office discovered nearly 200 decomposing bodies while investigating a foul odor coming from the funeral home's facility in Penrose, a town of 3,000 about two hours south of Denver.
Jon and Carie Hallford, who owned Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, Colorado, were arrested the following month on suspicion of abuse of a corpse, theft, money laundering and forgery.
From September 2019 through October 2023, the couple left nearly 200 bodies to rot in a warehouse instead of burying and cremating them as promised to the families of the deceased, who received fake ashes.
Prosecutors said Carie Hallford ran the front of the business, interacting with customers and keeping the books, while Jon was responsible for transporting and preparing bodies for cremation or cemetery burial. Charging between $900 and $1,400 for cremations and more for burials, investigators say the Hallfords collected $130,000 over four years.
A federal judge sentenced Jon Hallford to 20 years in prison last June after he pleaded guilty to a single charge of wire fraud. State prosecutors initially offered Hallford an equal concurrent sentence for a guilty plea. In response to the outcry of victims' families, however Bentley rejected the deal and told parties to prepare for trial.
Instead, they went back to the drawing board and returned with an offer of 30 to 50 years, which several families still opposed, having hoped to see Hallford serve at least one year per body found.
"I'm really struggling today," Chrystina Paige addressed the court. Paige brought two urns to the court: the one that now holds the remains of her son David, and one given to her by another victim who didn't know what else to do with it. At home, Paige said she keeps the urn holding "Grandma Fido," the name she gave to the unknown remains Carie Hallford initially presented to her in September 2019.
"I have nightmares of body soup and wake up wondering if my son was floating in it," Paige said. "We are told to accept the number 30 to 50 years, but that amounts to about 90 days per body."
Hallford's defense attorney, Jonathan Stafford, said the range was unheard of for someone with no criminal history who had not committed murder.
"Here today he doesn't make excuses for his actions and he never has," Stafford said. "I ask the court to sentence him on the law and not emotions."
Upon hearing the sentence, however, Hallford nodded his head, as if accepting the number.
In addressing the court, he apologized for his actions.
"There are no words to express the amount of wrong I have done and I am deeply sorry," Hallford said. "I had so many chances to put a stop to everything and walk away but I did not. I will regret my actions for the rest of my life."
Source: Courthouse News Service
