Colorado funeral home owners who allowed nearly 190 bodies to rot pleaded guilty to abuse of corpses

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The owners of a Colorado funeral home who allowed nearly 190 bodies to decompose in a room-temperature building and gave fake ashes to grieving families pleaded guilty Friday to corpse abuse.

Allegedly, Jon and Carie Hallford, owners of Back to Nature Funeral Home, began storing bodies in a decrepit building near Colorado Springs starting in 2019, giving families dry concrete instead of cremated remains. The horrific discovery last year turned the family’s mourning process upside down.

Plea agreements reached between the defendants and prosecutors call for Jon Hallford to receive 20 years in prison and Carie Hallford to receive 15 to 20 years.

Prosecutors say the Hallfords spent lavishly over the years. They used clients’ money and nearly $900,000 in pandemic relief funds to buy laser body contouring, luxury cars, trips to Las Vegas and Florida, $31,000 worth of cryptocurrency and other luxury items, according to court records.

Last month, the Hallfords pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges in a deal in which they admitted defrauding customers and the federal government. According to the agreement, prosecutors can request up to 15 years in prison for the couple.

Although the couple lived long, prosecutors said the bodies in the funeral home were decomposing.

“Bodies were lying on the floor, piled on shelves, left on stretchers, piled on top of each other or piled in rooms,” prosecutor Rachael Powell said. He said family members were ”intensely and endlessly outraged” by the discovery of the bodies.

The Hallfords each pleaded guilty to 191 counts of abuse of corpses due to decomposing bodies and two instances where the wrong bodies were buried.