Funeral home owner who stashed nearly 190 decomposing bodies sentenced to 20 years prison

Warning: Graphic content

Denver: A Colorado funeral home owner who stashed nearly 190 dead bodies in a decrepit building and sent grieving families fake ashes has received the maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison, for cheating customers and defrauding the federal government out of nearly $US900,000 ($1.4 million) in COVID-19 aid.

Jon Hallford, owner of Return to Nature Funeral Home, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud last year. Prosecutors sought a 15-year sentence and Hallford’s lawyer asked for 10 years.

Jon Hallford and co-owner Carie Hallford were accused of storing the bodies between 2019 and 2023.Credit: AP

On Friday (Saturday AEST), Judge Nina Wang said that although the case focused on a single fraud charge, the circumstances and scale of Hallford’s crime and the emotional damage to families warranted the longer sentence.

“This is not an ordinary fraud case,” she said.

In court before the sentencing, Hallford told the judge that he opened Return to Nature to make a positive impact in people’s lives, “then everything got completely out of control, especially me”.

“I am so deeply sorry for my actions,” he said. “I still hate myself for what I’ve done.”

Hallford will be sentenced in August in a separate state case in which he pleaded guilty to 191 counts of corpse abuse.

Hallford and co-owner Carie Hallford were accused of storing the bodies between 2019 and 2023 and sending families fake ashes. Investigators described finding the bodies in 2023 stacked atop each other throughout a squat, bug-infested building in Penrose, a small town about a two-hour drive south of Denver.

The morbid discovery revealed to many families that their loved ones weren’t cremated and that the ashes they had spread or cherished were fake. In two cases, the wrong body was buried, according to court documents.

Many families said it undid their grieving processes. Some relatives had nightmares, others have struggled with guilt, and at least one wondered about their loved one’s soul.

Among the victims who spoke during Friday’s sentencing was a boy named Colton Sperry. With his head poking just above the lectern, he told the judge about his grandmother, who Sperry said was a second mother to him and died in 2019.

Her body languished inside the Return to Nature building for four years until the discovery, which plunged Sperry into depression. He said he told his parents at the time, “If I die too, I could meet my grandma in heaven and talk to her again.”

His parents took him to the hospital for a mental health check, which led to therapy and an emotional support dog.

“I miss my grandma so much,” he told the judge through tears.

Federal prosecutors accused both Hallfords of pandemic aid fraud, siphoning the aid and spending it and customer’s payments on a GMC Yukon and Infiniti worth more than $US120,000 combined, along with $US31,000 in cryptocurrency, luxury items from stores like Gucci and Tiffany & Co, and even laser body sculpting.

Derrick Johnson told the judge that he travelled 4800 kilometres to testify over how his mother was “thrown into a festering sea of death”.

“I lie awake wondering, was she naked? Was she stacked on top of others like lumber?” said Johnson.

“While the bodies rotted in secret, [the Hallfords] lived, they laughed and they dined,” he added. “My mum’s cremation money likely helped pay for a cocktail, a day at the spa, a first-class flight.”

Hallford’s lawyear, Laura H. Suelau, asked for a lower sentence of 10 years in the hearing, saying that Hallford “knows he was wrong, he admitted he was wrong” and hasn’t offered an excuse.

Asking for a 15-year sentence for Hallford, Assistant US Attorney Tim Neff described the scene inside the building. Investigators couldn’t move into some rooms because the bodies were piled so high and in various states of decay. FBI agents had to put boards down so they could walk above the fluid, which was later pumped out.

Carie Hallford is scheduled to go to trial in the federal case in September, the same month as her next hearing in the state case in which she’s also charged with 191 counts of corpse abuse.

AP

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.