COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A Colorado funeral home owner who stashed 189 decomposing bodies in a building over four years and gave grieving families fake ashes was sentenced to 40 years in state prison Friday.
During the sentencing hearing, family members told Judge Eric Bentley they have had recurring nightmares about decomposing flesh and maggots since learning what happened to their loved ones.
They called defendant Jon Hallford a “monster” and urged the judge to give him the maximum sentence of 50 years.
Bentley told Hallford 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,” Bentley said.
Hallford apologized before his sentencing and said he would regret his actions for the rest of his life.
“I had so many chances to put a stop to everything and walk away, but I did not,” he said. “My mistakes will echo for a generation. Everything I did was wrong.”
‘Motivated by greed’
Hallford’s attorney sought a 30-year sentence, arguing that it was not a crime of violence and his client had no prior criminal record.
Hallford’s former wife, Carie Hallford, who co-owned the Return to Nature Funeral Home, is due to be sentenced April 24. She faces 25 to 35 years in prison.
Both pleaded guilty in December to nearly 200 counts of corpse abuse under an agreement with prosecutors.
During the years they were stashing bodies, the Hallfords spent lavishly, according to court documents. That included purchasing a GMC Yukon and an Infiniti worth more $120,000 combined, along with $31,000 in cryptocurrency, pricey goods from stores like Gucci and Tiffany & Co. and laser body sculpting.
“Clearly this is a crime motivated by greed,” prosecutor Shelby Crow said. The Hallfords charged more than $1,200 per customer, and the money the couple spent on luxury items would have covered the cost to cremate all of the bodies many times over, Crow said.
The Hallfords also pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges after prosecutors said they cheated the government out of nearly $900,000 in pandemic-era small business aid. Jon Hallford was sentenced to 20 years in prison in that case, and Carie Hallford’s sentencing is pending.
A plea agreement in the corpse abuse case calls for the state prison sentence to be served concurrently with the federal sentence.
Heartbroken families
One of the family members who spoke at the hearing was Kelly Mackeen, whose mother’s remains were handled by Return to Nature.
“I’m a daughter whose mother was treated like yesterday’s trash and dumped in a site left to rot with hundreds of others,” Mackeen said. “I’m heartbroken, and I ask God every day for grace.”
As she and others spoke of their grief, Hallford sat at a table to their right, wearing orange jail attire and looking directly ahead. The courtroom’s wooden benches were full of relatives of the deceased, along with journalists.
The Hallfords stored the bodies in a building in the small town of Penrose, south of Colorado Springs, from 2019 until 2023, when investigators responded to reports of a stench from the building.
Bodies were found throughout the building, some stacked on top of one another, with swarms of bugs and decomposition fluid covering the floors, investigators said. The remains — including adults, infants and fetuses — were stored at room temperature.
The bodies were identified over months with fingerprints, DNA and other methods.
Investigators believe the Hallfords gave families dry concrete that resembled ashes.
After families learned that what they received and then spread or kept at home were not actually their loved ones’ remains, many said it undid their grieving process, while others had nightmares and struggled with guilt.
Lax regulations
One of the recovered bodies was that of a former Army sergeant first class who was thought to have been buried at a veterans cemetery, FBI agent Andrew Cohen said.
When investigators exhumed the wooden casket at the cemetery, they found the remains of a person of a different gender inside, he said. The veteran, who was not identified in court, was later given a funeral with full military honors at Pikes Peak National Cemetery.
The corpse abuse revelations spurred changes to Colorado’s lax funeral home regulations.
The AP previously reported that the Hallfords missed tax payments, were evicted from one of their properties and were sued for unpaid bills, according to public records and interviews with people who worked with them.
In a rare decision last year, Bentley rejected previous plea agreements between the Hallfords and prosecutors that called for up to 20 years in prison. Family members of the deceased said the agreements were too lenient.
Bedayn and Brown write for the Associated Press and reported from Colorado Springs and Billings, Mont., respectively.
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