A Colorado funeral home co-owner was sentenced to 30 years in prison for her role in a scheme that involved hiding nearly 200 decomposing bodies, prosecutors announced.
On April 24, local prosecutors said a state district court judge sentenced Carie Hallford, 49, months after she and her then-husband, Jon Hallford, separately pleaded guilty to state charges for the scheme involving corpse abuse and fraud. The two also have federal prison sentences for defrauding families and a COVID-19 relief program.
The two owned Return to Nature Funeral Home, based in Colorado Springs. Prosecutors said the Hallfords improperly stored at least 189 decomposing bodies between 2019 and 2023. They ran a scheme — collecting more than $130,000 in fees — in which they marketed burial services that included purportedly natural decomposition as well as cremation and traditional burials.
Instead, some families received urns with concrete to replace dead people's ashes, and the Hallfords gave families the wrong body at least twice. At the facility, officials found several bodies in hazardous conditions inside the building that was later condemned and demolished by federal environmental regulators as a toxic waste site.
