Funeral home owner who stashed decaying bodies sentenced to 20 years : NPR

A hearse and a van are sitting outside the Return to Nature Funeral Fair in Penrose, Colorado, October 6, 2023.

David Zalubowski / AP

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David Zalubowski / AP

DENVER – A owner of the Colorado funeral home which hid near 190 corpses in a decrepit building and sent the ashes in mourning in foodstuffs on Friday, ash ashes of 20 years in prison, for having cheated customers and fraud the federal government on nearly $ 900,000 in COVVI -19 aid.

Jon Hallford, owner of Return to Nature Funeral Home, pleaded guilty of conspiracy in order to commit wired fraud before the Federal Court last year. In addition, Hallford pleaded guilty to 191 charges of corpse abuse before the State Court and was sentenced in August.

At the hearing on Friday, the federal prosecutors asked for a 15 -year sentence and the lawyer of Hallford asked for 10 years. Justice Nina Wang said that although the case focuses on a single fraud accusation, the circumstances and scale of hallford crime and emotional damage to families have justified the longest.

“It’s not an ordinary fraud case,” she said.

Before the court before the conviction, Hallford told the judge that he had opened the return to nature to have a positive impact in people’s lives, “then everything was completely uncontrollable, especially me.”

“I’m so sorry for my actions,” he said. “I always hate myself for what I did.”

Hallford and his wife, Carie Hallford, were accused of having stored the bodies between 2019 and 2023 and sent fake ashes of families. Investigators have described that they had found the bodies in 2023 stacked to each other in a squat building and infested with Penrose Bogues, a small town about two hours behind the south of Denver.

The morbid discovery revealed to many families that their loved ones were not cremated and that the ashes they had spread or darling were false. In two cases, the bad bodies were buried, according to court documents.

Many families have said that it had defeated their mourning processes. Some relatives have made nightmares, others fought with guilt and at least we have asked questions about the soul of their loved one.

Among the victims who spoke during the conviction on Friday, he was a boy named Colton Sperry. The head that pushed just above the desk, he spoke to the judge of his grandmother, who, according to Sperry, was a second mother and died in 2019.

His body langu in the building back to nature for four years until discovery, which plunged Sperry into depression. He said he said to his parents at the time: “If I die too, I could meet my grandmother in paradise and speak to her again.”

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

“I miss my grandmother so much,” he said to the judge through tears.

Federal prosecutors accused the two fraud hallfords using the pandemic, siphoning money and spending it and customer payments on a GMC Yukon and Infiniti worth more than $ 120,000 combined, as well as $ 31,000 in cryptocurrency, luxury articles from Gucci and Tiffany & Co., and even the sculpting laser.

Derrick Johnson told the judge that he had traveled 3,000 miles to testify about how his mother had been “thrown into a sea of ​​death among”.

“I woke up wondering, was she naked? Was she stacked on others like wood?” said Johnson.

“While the bodies rot in secret (the hallfords) lived, they laughed and they dinner,” he added. “My mother’s cremation money probably helped pay a cocktail, a day at the SPA, a first class flight.”

Jon Hallford’s lawyer Laura H. Suelau asked for a 10 -year sentence at the hearing on Friday, saying that Hallford “knows that he was wrong, he admitted that he was wrong” and did not offer an excuse. His conviction in the case of the State is scheduled for August.

Asking for a 15 -year sentence for Hallford, American lawyer Tim Neff described the scene inside the building. Investigators could not move into certain parts because the bodies were stacked so high and in various decomposition states. The FBI agents had to lay boards to be able to walk above the liquid, which was then pumped.

Carie Hallford is expected to be tried in the federal case in September, the same month as her next hearing in the state case in which she was also accused of 191 chiefs of mistreatment of the corpse.