DENVER (AP) — A funeral home owner in Colorado is set to face sentencing on Friday in federal court for concealing nearly 190 deceased bodies in a deteriorating facility and deceiving mourning families with counterfeit ashes. The owner has also been charged with defrauding the government of nearly $900,000 in COVID-19 relief funds.
Jon Hallford, who owns the Return to Nature Funeral Home, admitted guilt to conspiracy to commit wire fraud last year. He is now facing a potential 20-year prison term. Federal prosecutors are recommending a 15-year sentence, while Hallford’s lawyer is advocating for a 10-year term.
He’s pleaded guilty in a separate state case to 191 counts of corpse abuse.
Authorities allege that Jon Hallford and his co-owner Carie Hallford illegally stored the bodies between 2019 and 2023, misrepresenting fake ashes to the families of the deceased. In 2023, investigators uncovered bodies stacked upon one another inside a cramped, vermin-infested building located in Penrose, a small town roughly two hours 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 brought 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 over $120,000 combined, along with $31,000 in cryptocurrency, luxury items from stores like Gucci and Tiffany & Co., and even laser body sculpting.
Derrick Johnson told the judge that he travelled 3,000 miles to testify over how his 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 moms cremation money likely helped pay for a cocktail, a day at the spa, a first class flight.”
Hallford’s attorney, Laura H. Suelau, asked for a lower sentence of 10 years in the hearing Friday, saying that Hallford “knows he was wrong, he admitted he was wrong” and hasn’t offered an excuse. His sentencing in the state case is scheduled in August.
Asking for a 15 year sentence for Hallford, Assistant U.S. 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.
