EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. — In a rare move, an El Paso County judge on Friday rejected a plea agreement for Jon Hallford, who, with his wife, allegedly let roughly 190 bodies rot inside the Return to Nature funeral home in the Colorado Springs area and sent fake ashes to grieving families.
Hallford was set to spend 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to corpse abuse. Judge Eric Bentley, though, decided he “could not accept” the agreement after hearing from more than a dozen victims in court Friday calling for a harsher punishment.
“I was stunned by the articulate nature and the heartbreaking nature of what I heard this morning,” he said. “It's hard to find words to describe the conduct of the defendant that violated every norm of a civilized society and victimized grieving people at their moment of greatest vulnerability in a way that victims cannot readily recover from when trust is betrayed like that in that moment of vulnerability.”
- Denver7's Colette Bordelon has covered this case extensively and has the latest in the video player below:
Rejecting a plea agreement, Bentley said, is “reserved for the most extreme cases.” He said he’d never granted a request to reject a plea across his nine years as a judge and hundreds of cases – but that he was convinced to do so in this case when he heard from victims who said they hadn’t been heard.
“I heard an overwhelming perception that the justice that had been worked out between the attorneys was justice that didn't accurately reflect the truth of the victim's experience,” he said.
Hallford’s next hearing in the case is set for Sept. 12. If the defense withdraws his plea, the case would go to trial.
Hallford is already serving 20 years for fraud after misspending nearly $900,000 in COVID-19 pandemic relief funds.
His wife, Carie Hallford, changed her plea in the fraud case for a second time to guilty earlier this month and is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 3. Her sentencing in the corpse abuse case has not been scheduled.
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