A funeral home owner from Colorado who gave families fake ashes while stashing 189 decomposing bodies has been sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Associated Press reports that Jon Hallford, co-owner of the Return to Nature Funeral Home, was found guilty of nearly 200 counts of corpse abuse, along with his then-wife Carie, who also co-owned the location.
On Oct. 4, 2023, 189 decaying bodies were discovered in a Colorado building where they’d been stashed since 2019. Evidence was discovered that Hallford and his wife had given fake ashes to grieving families, and the pair later admitted to defrauding the federal government out of almost $900,000 in pandemic assistance for small businesses.
The pair were arrested in November and eventually charged. Authorities discovered that they pocketed nearly $130,000 that the business’ clients paid for cremations, while spending lavishly on luxury cars, laser-body sculpting, and jewelry from Tiffany’s.
Halford was caught on surveillance footage in September of 2023 flipping a man’s body from a gurney to the floor. He later texted his wife that “while I was making the transfer, I got people juice on me.”
The abuse of corpses was so severe that Colorado’s historically lax funeral home regulations were changed.
During Hallford’s sentencing, family members called him a “monster” and urged for the judge to sentence him to the maximum of 50 years. The judge previously rejected a plea deal that would have given him 20 years.
In a statement at sentencing, Hallford apologized for his actions and revealed that he’ll regret what he did 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.”
Hallford’s former wife, Carie, is set to be sentenced on Apr. 24. She’s facing 25 to 35 years in prison.
