The funeral home was run by couple Jon and Carie Hallford and offered affordable, eco-friendly services for the community.
Local officials started to receive complaints of an “abhorrent” smell coming from a building that belonged to the Return to Nature funeral home in October 2023. It was run by couple Jon and Carie Hallford in Penrose, Colorado, and offered affordable, eco-friendly services for the community.
It specialised in “green burials”, as well as standard cremations and burials, which skipped the embalming stage and avoided the use of harsh chemicals. It was a modern, ethical option – and, as reported by the Mirror, the funeral home became a trusted choice for bereaved families.
Carie was the face of the business and guided clients through the emotional process and did the paperwork, with clients recalling her compassion and warmth as she promised dignified care. Jon, who was more behind the scenes and managed the technical side of the business, described himself as a “third generation funeral home director” with 19 years of experience.
Cremations started at $1,200 and were “outsourced” to a local crematory. The couple would then provide loved ones with the ashes. It appeared that running a funeral business was lucrative as the Hallfords drove luxury cars, went on expensive holidays and shopped in designer stores.
Return to Nature had an office where the Hallfords met with families, and a 2,500sqft building nearby that was run down and appeared to be used for storage.
Officers went to that building on October 3, 2023, after the reports of a terrible smell were made. At the time there were no legal requirements in Colorado for funeral directors to be licensed or even trained, so there had never been a routine inspection.
Police noticed the smell instantly, but they couldn’t see inside because the windows were blacked out. They spoke with Jon about the stench and he said it was connected to his taxidermy hobby. Officers were suspicious of liquid that appeared to be seeping under the door. They got a search warrant and returned the next day.
Jon and Carie were nowhere to be seen. Dressed in protective suits, gloves, boots and respirators, the police entered the building. The scene inside was horrific. There were bodies stacked up on top of each other in nearly a dozen rooms.
The piles were so high they blocked doorways. Some had been there a few months, while others had been there since 2019. There were 189 bodies, with many in body bags while others were just wrapped in sheets.
Adults, children and foetuses were in the advanced stages of decomposition due to the lack of refrigeration. The floor was covered in bodily fluids, and the building was infested with insects and maggots. Buckets were scattered around to catch leaking fluids.
The Hallfords had been assuring families that they had given their dead loved ones a dignified cremation, but they had just taken the money and thrown the bodies on a pile to rot. They must have known that they would be caught eventually.
Officers discovered the crematory that Return to Nature told families they used had stopped working with the business the year before due to unpaid bills. The couple had also missed tax payments and had been evicted from one of their properties.
Inside the building was a sack of concrete mix. That was what Carie and Jon had given families in urns, pretending it was the ashes of their cremated loved ones. Some had scattered it in meaningful places while others had carried it with them for years – unaware it was concrete mix.
Some families had thought the ashes felt heavier than they should or were a strange texture before the discovery. Some even contained foreign objects like bolts. News quickly spread about the horrific discovery and the Hallfords went on the run. Jon turned his phone off so he couldn’t be tracked but the FBI tracked Carie’s phone and they were found hiding with Jon’s parents in Oklahoma. The pair were arrested.
Identifying the bodies was a huge task. Investigators used fingerprints, dental records and even hospital bracelets that were still on the wrist of some victims. The building was condemned and demolished. The police also exhumed two bodies that the Hallfords had overseen the burials for and found the wrong people in the graves. One was supposed to be a male former army sergeant but inside the coffin was a female. The number of victims rose to 191.
The evidence got worse, with surveillance footage capturing Jon entering the building at night and heartlessly flipping a body off a gurney to the floor so he could use it to bring more bodies in from a van. That night he sent a text to Carie saying, “While I was making the transfer, I got people juice on me.” There was footage of Carie entering the building too – they both knew.
They had taken more than $130,000 from families for cremations that didn’t happen and nearly $900,000 in federal pandemic relief funds, which was supposed to be for struggling businesses. Text messages between the pair showed that Jon was trying to come up with ways to get rid of the bodies. In October 2020, he discussed four options. “Build a new machine ASAP [likely a crematory]. Dig a big hole and use lye. Dig a small hole and build a large fire. I go to prison, which is probably what’s going to happen.”
The Hallfords got divorced behind bars. They both made plea deals. Jon pleaded guilty to wire fraud and abuse of 191 corpses. He said, “I had so many chances to put a stop to everything and walk away, but I did not. My mistakes will echo for a generation. Everything I did was wrong.”
Family members told the court about recurring nightmares about decomposing flesh and maggots. They called Jon “a monster”. The judge said he had caused “unspeakable and incomprehensible” harm. “It is my personal belief that every one of us, every human being, is basically good at the core, but we live in a world that tests that belief every day, and, Mr Hallford, your crimes are testing that belief,” he said.
Jon, 46, received 40 years for abuse of corpses and 20 years for wire fraud. Carie, 49, pleaded guilty to wire fraud and abuse of corpses. She asked for leniency, claiming that she was a “scared and desperate mother” who was manipulated by her husband. Carie was sentenced to 18 years for wire fraud and awaits further sentencing for the abuse of corpses.
Families of the victims have spoken out about the guilt they felt for trusting that the couple were looking after their loved ones. A new law was introduced in Colorado in May 2024 to overhaul the funeral business industry and add strict legislation.
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