Owner of US funeral home, convicted of hiding 191 deceased individuals, receives 20-year prison term | Criminal Law Updates

A Colorado judge has sentenced the owner of Return to Nature Funeral Home to 20 years in prison for deceiving customers and defrauding the federal government. Jon Hallford and his wife, Carie Hallford, stored 191 deceased bodies on their premises from 2019 to 2023 and provided families with phony ashes. According to investigators, bodies were stacked atop each other in a dilapidated, bug-infested building in Penrose, approximately 160 kilometers south of Denver, and some families received the wrong ashes or urns filled with dry concrete mix. Jon Hallford has also pleaded guilty to 191 counts of corpse abuse and is set to be sentenced for those charges in August. Carie Hallford is scheduled to go to trial for the federal case in September and for the state case, which charges her with 191 counts of corpse abuse, in the same month. Additionally, Jon Hallford has been sentenced for defrauding the US federal government out of nearly $900,000 in emergency financial assistance provided to Americans affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/28/us-funeral-home-owner-who-stashed-over-190-bodies-sentenced-to-20-years?traffic_source=rss