COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — A former Colorado funeral home owner who helped her ex-husband hide nearly 200 decomposing bodies was sentenced to 30 years in prison Friday in a case that forced the state to clamp down on an industry plagued by repeated scandal and notoriously lax oversight.
Carie Hallford faced between 25 to 35 years in prison under a plea agreement in state court. Last month, she received an 18-year sentence in a related federal fraud case, where she said she was a victim of abuse and manipulation in her marriage.
Her ex-husband was sentenced to 40 years on corpse abuse charges at a February hearing in which he was called a “monster” by relatives of those whose bodies were left to rot.
Carie Hallford was the public face of Return to Nature, dealing with bereaved customers at the couple’s funeral home in Colorado Springs. Jon Hallford performed much of the physical work, including at a second location south of Colorado Springs in Penrose.
That's where authorities found bodies piled throughout a bug-infested building after neighbors in 2023 complained about a foul odor.
Among the remains was the mother of Tanya Wilson, who told District Judge Eric Bentley on Friday that the family released what they thought were her ashes from a boat in Hawaii. It turned out her body was lying in toxic fluids on the floor of the Hallfords’ makeshift mortuary. Like other Return to Nature customers, the family received fake ashes instead of the cremated remains they were promised.
They had prepared her mother's body for meeting her Korean ancestors in the afterlife, Wilson said. To preserve her dignity, they brushed her hair, applied her favorite moisturizer and dressed her in special clothes to preserve the dignity she had in life.
“Carie Hallford annihilated that dignity,” said Wilson.
Carie Hallford apologized prior to being sentenced Friday, saying she was raised to know right from wrong but had lost who she once was.
She fought back tears as she said her marriage had been “a convoluted web of lies, deceit and abuse.” She said “he was not a monster but deserved punishment.
Discovery of corpses spurred first routine inspections
Prosecutors have alleged the Hallfords were motivated by greed. They charged more than $1,200 per customer, and authorities said the amount they spent on luxury items would have covered the cremation costs many times over.
The case became the most egregious in a string of allegations involving Colorado funeral homes as details emerged about the their lavish spending and their pattern of defrauding customers.
Colorado had been the only state that did not regulate funeral homes before lawmakers adopted recent changes. The Hallfords' case prompted laws mandating routine inspections and adopting a funeral director licensing system.
Southern Colorado
Return to Nature Funeral Home co-owner Jon Hallford sentenced to 40 years
Last year, state inspectors found 24 decomposing bodies and multiple containers of bones behind a hidden door of a funeral home owned by the Pueblo County coroner and his brother. It was the first ever inspection of that Pueblo mortuary.
Before the bodies were found in Penrose, a mother and daughter who operated a funeral home in the western Colorado city of Montrose were sentenced to federal prison after being accused of selling body parts and giving clients fake ashes. In 2024, authorities in Denver arrested a financially troubled former funeral home owner who kept a body in a hearse for two years at a house where police also found the cremated remains of at least 30 people.
Carie Hallford was ‘the one who fed the monster’
Carie Hallford asked for leniency in March when she was sentenced in a related federal fraud case, saying she was a victim of abuse and manipulation in her marriage.
She entered Friday’s hearing with limited sympathy from victims such as Crystina Page, whose son, David, died in 2019. His body languished for years inside the room-temperature building in Penrose with other corpses before their discovery.
Jon Hallford “was the monster under the bed, but Carie was the one who fed the monster,” Page said.
Her attorney, Michael Stuzynski, said Friday said Carie Hallford initially believed what happened at Return to Nature was entirely her fault. He said she had a “lonely, gray and terrifying existence” and found solace in the interactions she had with the funeral home’s customers.
But Chief Deputy District Attorney Rachael Powell said Jon Hallford couldn’t have carried out the crimes alone. While his actions were gruesome, Powell said, Carie Hallford was the one manipulating clients as she smiled and took their money, knowing she was lying to them.
“She solicited bodies and took the checks. She fed Jon the bodies,” Powell said.
The Hallfords divorced following their arrest. Jon Hallford was sentenced to 20 years in the federal fraud case. They have each appealed.
Plea agreements call for the Hallfords' state prison sentences to be served concurrently with the federal sentences. Family members of some victims objected to the plea agreements as too lenient.
Confidence in industry has diminished
Matt Whaley, president of the Colorado Funeral Home Directors Association, suggested that customers have become more cautious after years of news coverage about Return to Nature and other businesses where crimes occurred.
More often now, family members ask to be present for a cremation, Whaley said.
“The confidence level of a funeral professional in the state of Colorado is questioned, and we’ve got to work hard, one family at a time, to build that trust back,” he said.
Blanca Eberhardt, a licensed funeral director who previously practiced mortuary science in Indiana, Texas and Hawaii, recalled moving to Colorado and being appalled at the mistreatment of some corpses inside a Pueblo funeral home where she worked. For Eberhardt, the experience confirmed Colorado's reputation for lacking basic oversight.
“The joke has been for the last 40 years if you lose your license in another state, just move to Colorado,” she said.
___
Brown reported from Billings, Montana. Associated Press journalist Thomas Peipert contributed to this story.
