Owners of funeral home where nearly 200 decaying bodies found face fraud charges; family members express heartbreak

DENVER (KKTV/Gray News) - Family members of the deceased said they have mixed feelings after the owners of a Colorado funeral home where nearly 200 bodies were found were charged on a federal warrant.

It comes a day before the building in Penrose, Colorado, where nearly 200 bodies were found improperly stored, is set to be torn down.

Jon and Carie Hallford were recently arrested by the FBI and taken back to the El Paso County Jail after they had both been released after posting bond.

The indictment revealed their arrests were related to alleged financial crimes.

The Associated Press reported the couple was indicted on federal charges that they misspent nearly $900,000 in pandemic relief funds on vacations, cosmetic surgery, jewelry and other personal expenses, according to court documents unsealed Monday.

The indictment reaffirms accusations from state prosecutors that Jon and Carie Hallford gave families dry concrete instead of cremated ashes and alleges the couple buried the wrong body on two occasions.

The couple also collected more than $130,000 from families for cremations and burial services they never provided, the indictment said.

The 15 federal charges are in addition to more than 200 state criminal counts already pending against the Hallfords for corpse abuse, money laundering, theft and forgery.

Some of the victims whose loved ones were found in the Penrose building had not known the nature of the crimes of which the two are being until speaking on a video call with a reporter Monday morning.

“You just broke my heart reading that indictment,” Crystina Page said after hearing the charges. She was trying to hold back tears as she heard the news. “I was really hoping it was related to the bodies. I was really hoping there was something that we didn’t know yet.”

Page’s son died in 2019, and his body was found in the Return to Nature funeral home in October when the investigation began. Despite what she’s gone through, though, she said she was one of the lucky ones.

She compared her case to that of Tina Dobson. Dobson’s mother died in December of 2022, and she said she had used Return to Nature to handle her mother’s remains.

Six months later, Dobson said she has not heard any news of where her mother’s body is. When the news broke of the Hallfords’ arrest on a federal warrant, she said she had been hoping it might have been related to her mother or to any other unidentified remains.

“You know, there’s all these bodies that have been identified, which is great,” Dobson said. “But there’s so many of us who are still sitting here on the wait line.”

She said she feels a sense of relief that the two suspects in the case are back behind bars, but she was still waiting for different news.

The news comes ahead of the planned demolition of the funeral home, which had been delayed for months. Family members, such as Mary Simons, whose husband was found inside the building, said before they were happy to see the building go, as it serves as a reminder of what happened.

But Dobson said she feels officials should take more time.

“It’s too soon,” Dobson said. “We’re not even through the whole investigation.”

Details were released in court about the state of the building and the bodies left inside, and with the gruesome nature of the storage and decomposition of the bodies, Dobson and Page both said they were worried there might still be evidence or even remains left inside.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation addressed these concerns, though.

“We are confident that anything we would need from that building has been collected,” said Rob Low with Colorado Bureau of Investigation. “With that being said, we have no involvement with the demolition of the building.”

As the federal and local cases against the Hallfords proceed and the demolition process continues, victims like Page and Dobson said they are anxiously waiting for more details pertaining to them and their loved ones and are hoping for a sense of closure for everyone involved, however impossible it might seem.

Copyright 2024 KKTV via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.