Colorado man who abused nearly 200 corpses gets 40 years jail term
Colorado Springs (US), Feb 7: A Colorado funeral home owner who stashed 189 decomposing bodies in a building over four years and gave grieving families fake ashes was sentenced to 40 years in state prison on Friday.
During the sentencing hearing, family members told Judge Eric Bentley they have had recurring nightmares about decomposing flesh and maggots since learning what happened to their loved ones. They called defendant Jon Hallford a “monster” and “vile” and had urged the judge to give him the maximum sentence of 50 years.
Hallford apologised before his sentencing and said he would regret his actions for the rest of his life.
His former wife, Carie Hallford, who co-owned the Return to Nature Funeral Home, is due to be sentenced April 24. She faces 25 to 35 years in prison. Both pleaded guilty in December to nearly 200 counts of corpse abuse under an agreement with prosecutors.
During the years they were stashing bodies, the Hallfords spent lavishly, according to court documents.
The Hallfords also pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges after prosecutors said they cheated the government out of nearly USD 9,00,000 in pandemic-era small business aid.
“Clearly this is a crime motivated by greed,” prosecutor Shelby Crow said. The Hallfords charged more than USD 1,200 per customer, and the money the couple spent on luxury items would have covered the cost to cremate all of the bodies many times over,” Crow said.
The Hallfords stored the bodies in a building in the small town of Penrose, south of Colorado Springs, from 2019 until 2023, when investigators responding to reports of a stench from the building discovered the corpses.
Bodies were found throughout the building, some stacked on top of each other, with swarms of bugs and decomposition fluid covering the floors, investigators said. The remains – including adults, infants and fetuses – were stored at room temperature. Investigators believe the Hallfords gave families dry concrete that mimicked ashes.
The bodies were identified over months with fingerprints, DNA and other methods.
Families learned the ashes they had been given, and then spread or kept at home, were not actually their loved ones’ remains. Many said it undid their grieving process, others had nightmares and struggled with guilt that they let their relatives down. (AP)
