Funeral home owners who allegedly harbored at least 189 dead bodies and gave families fake ashes have been arrested

Funeral home owners who allegedly harbored at least 189 dead bodies and gave families fake ashes have been arrested (archive)​

Authorities arrested the owners of a funeral home after they were accused of improperly storing at least 189 dead bodies and even giving a number of families fake ashes.

Jon Hallford, 43, and Carie Hallford, 46, are in the Muskogee County Jail in Oklahoma awaiting extradition to El Paso County, Colorado. Prosecutors in The Centennial State announced charges on Wednesday of abuse of a corpse, theft, money laundering, and forgery.

This debacle emerged in early October, when locals in Penrose, Colorado, noted an awful smell emerging from the property linked to the Halford-owned funeral home, Return to Nature.

According to a related lawsuit, Jon Hallford tried to pass off the stench as the result of his taxidermy hobby.

However, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation claimed to have found at least 189 bodies at the facility. Authorities were not too sure — they warned the number could change as the investigation and process of identifying the victims continued.
Some families stepped forward to claim that they had paid Return to Nature to cremate their loved ones. Instead, the company allegedly gave them fake ashes.

The aforementioned lawsuit, filed by Richard Law on behalf of his dead father Roger, alleges that the owners gave loved ones “counterfeit ashes” and falsified death certificates.

“They knew what they were doing was disgusting, but they kept doing it,” plaintiff attorney Andrew Swan previously told Law&Crime.

Other loved ones who stepped forward have also cast skepticism on the so-called ashes they received. Four families who’ve spoken to The Associated Press said the material seemed like dry concrete.

One of the relatives, Tanya Wilson, told KDRO about doing side-by-side testing in which she mixed water separately with Quikrete and the so-called ashes that supposedly belonged to her mother, Yong Anderson.

“The reaction, it looked very, very similar, the consistency and everything,” Wilson told KDRO. “Then when it dried, it dried into little tiny rocks, very, very similar. It gave me confirmation that I believe it’s concrete.”

It’s worth mentioning the Hallfords’ cash woes in light of the money-related charges.

The couple owes more than $21,000 to Wilbert Funeral Services, according to another lawsuit covered by KRDO. Kenney and Company, a real estate agency, sued the Hallfords, saying the couple owed more than $97,000 for rent, damages and other charges. Carie Hallford also had thousands in debt with the state’s Department of Revenue.

 

[Spicey McHaggis]

This seriously has to be one of the dumbest scams out there. Sure, you get money for services you didn't actually provide, but you still end up with a bunch of dead bodies you need to get rid of. The real irony is that the easiest way to get rid of them would just be providing the service they were paid to do. Or at least tying some bricks to their feet and dumping them in a large body of water.

 

[CHARizard]

Yeah why the hell didnt they just use the crematorium? Was it broken? Google says its around $7 grand to have a person cremated, and with 189 bodies thats a ton of dough. Theres a money laundering charge so theres probably more to this story.

Heres the previous article. This part stuck out to me, maybe they didnt even own a crematory?

Colorado is the only state that doesn’t require professionals in the funeral home and crematory industry to be licensed, according to KRDO. Return to Nature had reportedly been operating with an expired license.

Imagine the smell.

The bodies turned up after locals noted an “abhorrent smell” coming from the property in question, the complaint stated. Co-defendant Jon Hallford allegedly tried and failed to pass the stench off as the result of his taxidermy hobby.

 

[Mepsi Pax]

That fucking business PRINTS money. How stupid do you have to be? How hard is it to connect propane lines to a shack made out of bricks, or how expensive to buy a basic incinerator "for scrap materials"? If you're really not gonna burn the bodies, start digging. Shovels are like $50. Too many bodies? Rent a backhoe for $1000.

Really I am the stupid one. I work my ass off while abject morons just throw away their own business.

 

[keytar]

Would you at least not use real ashes? Like from a bonfire? Why concrete?

 

[Justa Grata Honoria]

That fucking business PRINTS money. How stupid do you have to be? How hard is it to connect propane lines to a shack made out of bricks, or how expensive to buy a basic incinerator "for scrap materials"? If you're really not gonna burn the bodies, start digging. Shovels are like $50. Too many bodies? Rent a backhoe for $1000.

Really I am the stupid one. I work my ass off while abject morons just throw away their own business.

Pay your cousing in the rural area to feed swines with it, or optional dig a big ditch and bury people in the orchard for extra fertilization

 

[Bland Crumbs]

Ya know for a second I thought about researching some things that might explain why they did this but then I realized I do not really want any of those search terms associated even with my vpn searches.

 

[Miller]

Why did they keep the bodies? At first I misread the beginning of the article, thinking that he was using them for his taxidermy hobby but it's not even that. WTF?!

 

[FamicomGorby]

Would you at least not use real ashes? Like from a bonfire? Why concrete?

Easier to get and looks enough like the real thing for the family that's gonna stick em an urn forever probably.

This seriously has to be one of the dumbest scams out there. Sure, you get money for services you didn't actually provide, but you still end up with a bunch of dead bodies you need to get rid of. The real irony is that the easiest way to get rid of them would just be providing the service they were paid to do. Or at least tying some bricks to their feet and dumping them in a large body of water.

I think it's some mental illness that comes from working with corpses all the time. This isn't even the first time something like this has happened, there was a pretty famous case in the early 2000's where a guy running a crematorium wasn't doing his job and they discovered sheds full of corpses on the property. Maybe it has to do with these joints being family businesses usually, so when someone gets depressed that this is their life and they can't do anything else because it's all they know they just stop working.

 

[beautiful person]

You can't even trust other people, alleged professionals, with your family's corpses. This isn't even the first time I've heard of this happening.

 

[a hapless toad]

Yeah why the hell didnt they just use the crematorium? Was it broken? Google says its around $7 grand to have a person cremated, and with 189 bodies thats a ton of dough. Theres a money laundering charge so theres probably more to this story.

A direct cremation is about $1,300 according to the price list on their website, which was archived in July.

https://web.archive.org/web/2023072...t/uploads/2022/10/RTN-COS-GPL-2022-FALL-1.pdf

Granted that doesn't include services and casket rental and other shit like that, but I have a feeling the bodies they failed to cremate were probably DC where the families weren't as involved in the process as if they would be if they were having an actual service.

 

[Onni Kalsarikännit]

One of the relatives, Tanya Wilson, told KDRO about doing side-by-side testing in which she mixed water separately with Quikrete and the so-called ashes that supposedly belonged to her mother, Yong Anderson.

“The reaction, it looked very, very similar, the consistency and everything,” Wilson told KDRO. “Then when it dried, it dried into little tiny rocks, very, very similar. It gave me confirmation that I believe it’s concrete.”

How do you get the idea that the ash of your beloved dead one might be fake? I mean, most of my dead relatives are burried in the traditional way. My dad got cremated but somehow I never felt the urge to look into the urn when we got it. I honestly never thought "Hey, the funeral service might have scam us. I better check the ash of my dad".

 

[CowPox]

When Ed Gein kept the remains of dead people in his house he was labeled a ghoul, when some block headed Oklahomo assholes do it to their gay granny or dipshit "papa" its considered a wholesome remembrance, you people and your hypocrisy sicken me.

 

[The Punished Mitch]

This has to be one of the dumbest scams on Earth, all you have to do is open the door, put the body inside and press the button and you get paid - how the fuck do you mess that shit up?

 

[Koby_Fish]

This has to be one of the dumbest scams on Earth, all you have to do is open the door, put the body inside and press the button and you get paid - how the fuck do you mess that shit up?

some retardation about thinking they're saving money by not running the crematorium, is my guess. Penny wise and pound foolish.

 

[Snekposter]

Pay your cousing in the rural area to feed swines with it, or optional dig a big ditch and bury people in the orchard for extra fertilization

I know, right? Even the British know that pigs are one of the best ways to dispose of any purely hypothetical unwanted bodies.

 

[Mourning_Cloak]

I've spent the morning making an OP for this only to find someone beat me to it haha.

Apparently the location where they found the bodies has been closed since at least the summer (it looks abandoned as hell on Google Street view) and according to a reddit post I found, their last post to FB was June 10th, announcing they were moving. Can't find the Facebook.

Also, earliest death date for a body I've seen mentioned in the media is 2019.

 

[SlaanyChaser]

How do you get the idea that the ash of your beloved dead one might be fake? I mean, most of my dead relatives are burried in the traditional way. My dad got cremated but somehow I never felt the urge to look into the urn when we got it. I honestly never thought "Hey, the funeral service might have scam us. I better check the ash of my dad".

A lot of times when you get cremated remains back when you don't buy an urn from the funeral home, it is just in a plastic bag in a cardboard box.
So if the woman did that and wanted to transfer the ashes to a urn she had or other apparatus or spread them, that's how she would have noticed.

 

[General Disarray]

The lastest capture was last month. It looks like they already discovered the bodies given the tarps and the fencing?
Ewww... reminds me of the Tranch.

 

[Meat Target]

Pay your cousing in the rural area to feed swines with it, or optional dig a big ditch and bury people in the orchard for extra fertilization

Melt them with some acid in 55-gallon drum and give their human smoothie remains to the customers in a mason jar. Careful not to spill the dearly departed.

Hey, it's more dignified than being carved up for organs used in rotdog/neovag experiments, or for explosives testing.