A Colorado judge has rejected a plea deal for a funeral home owner accused of storing nearly 190 decomposing bodies in a bug-infested building, ruling that the proposed 15 to 20-year prison sentence was too lenient given the gravity of the crimes.
State district judge Eric Bentley stated that the agreement did not adequately reflect the harm caused by the offences, taking the rare step of dismissing a plea deal that had been jointly agreed upon by prosecutors and the defence.
Carie Hallford and her husband, Jon Hallford, operated the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, Colorado, about 103 miles south of Denver. The couple is accused of abandoning bodies to rot between 2019 and 2023 while deceiving grieving families by giving them fake ashes instead of their loved ones’ remains.
During a tense court session, several relatives of the deceased passionately opposed the plea deal. They described the unimaginable pain of learning that the remains of their family members had been left to decompose rather than cremated as promised. Tanya Wilson said her mother’s body had been left on a maggot-infested floor, leaving “a permanent mark on my soul.” Another relative, Samantha Naranjo, said she could no longer enjoy Halloween decorations because all she could think of was her grandmother’s body decaying in the building.
Both Carie and Jon Hallford had previously pleaded guilty to 191 counts of corpse abuse. While Carie’s attorney argued that the plea deal was fair and offered closure, many family members demanded a harsher sentence — as much as 200 years in prison, symbolizing one year for each body found.
Authorities first discovered 24 decomposing bodies hidden behind a secret door in the Penrose facility in August last year. The ongoing investigation has been slow due to the challenges of identifying the remains, some of which had been left unattended for over a decade.
In addition to the corpse abuse charges, the Hallfords admitted to defrauding the US Small Business Administration of nearly $900,000 in pandemic relief funds. They were also accused of accepting payments for cremations that were never performed and using the money for personal luxuries, including jewelry, vacations, a GMC Yukon, and cryptocurrency. Jon Hallford has already received a 20-year federal prison sentence, while Carie’s sentencing is set for December.
