DENVER (AP) — A judge has accepted a guilty plea from the owners of a Colorado funeral home for mistreating 191 corpses, many of which languished in the building at room temperature for years.
Authorities say Carey and John Hallford, who ran a funeral home in Colorado Springs, lived an lavish lifestyle and distributed fake ashes to some of the victims' families.
A husband and wife team owned and operated Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs. John Hallford will be sentenced on February 6, 2026. Carey Hallford will be sentenced on April 24.
Under the latest plea agreements, John Hallford was sentenced to 30 to 50 years in prison and Carey Hallford was sentenced to 25 to 35 years in prison. Family members of the victims want each of them to be sentenced to 191 years in prison, including one year for each victim.
In a statement, a group of victims' family members said they want the cases to go to trial.
“This case is not about convenience or efficiency,” said Christina Page, whose son's body was among those found at the funeral home. “This is about people who were treated as disposable. Accepting a plea agreement sends a message that this level of violence is negotiable. We reject that message.”
Earlier this year, a judge rejected previous plea agreements that called for up to 20 years in prison, and family members of the victim said the proposed sentences were too lenient.
The Hallfords are accused of dumping bodies and distributing fake ashes to families between 2019 and 2023. Both pleaded guilty last year to 191 counts of abuse of corpses. John Hallford's plea deal was rejected in August, after which he withdrew his guilty plea. Carey Holford withdrew her guilty plea in early November after it was rejected by state District Judge Eric Bentley in a rare decision.
Investigators described how in 2023 they discovered bodies stacked on top of each other in a bug-infested building in Penrose, a small town about two hours south of Denver. Officials said the sight was horrifying: bodies lay on top of each other in varying states of decomposition – some had been there for four years.
Although John Hallford was accused of dumping the bodies, authorities said the face of the funeral home was Carey Hallford.
During a hearing in November, Bentley said he was considering deterrence in rejecting the plea agreement. Colorado has had some of the laxest funeral home regulations in the country for years, leading to numerous cases of abuse involving fake ashes, fraud and even the illegal sale of body parts.
In August, authorities announced that during an initial inspection of a funeral home owned by the county coroner in Pueblo, Colorado, they discovered 24 decomposing corpses behind a hidden door.
That investigation is not yet complete as authorities report slow progress in identifying the bodies, which in some cases have languished for more than a decade.
The Return to Nature case helped initiate reforms, including regular inspections.
The Hallfords also admitted in federal court that they stole nearly $900,000 in pandemic relief from the U.S. Small Business Administration and charged clients for cremations that the funeral home never performed.
