The owners of a Colorado funeral home where almost 200 bodies were found rotting were ordered to pay almost $1 billion to families whose loved ones’ remains were abandoned.
Jon and Carie Hallford, a married couple in their 40s, were arrested last November after the decaying corpses were found in their Return to Nature Funeral Home.
The couple are currently facing a number of charges including abuse of a corpse, theft, money laundering and forgery – with a class action lawsuit filed by the families solved this week.
But Andrew Swan, an attorney representing the victims, admitted the owners would not be able to pay it.
‘I’m never going to get a dime from them, so, I don’t know, it’s a little frustrating,’ said Crystina Page, who had hired the funeral home to cremate her son’s remains in 2019. ‘If nothing else,’ Page said, this judgment ‘will bring more understanding to the case.’
Jon and Carie Hallford face 250 charges of forgery, theft, money laundering and abuse of a corpse after nearly 200 decaying bodies were discovered at their funeral home
This week, a judge ordered the owners of the Nature Funeral Home (pictured) to pay $950 million to the families of their alleged victims
On Monday, a judge ordered the Hallfords to pay $950 million to the families.
After the judge slapped the couple with the staggering amount, Swan added that he hopes the result will serve as an example.
‘We hope that the judgment sends an unmistakable message to the industry: Bad behavior has significant consequences,’ he told NPR.
Although the families can attempt to collect the payment handed down by the judge, Swan clarified that it is ‘unlikely that the defendants have any significant assets, unfortunately.’
Before the alleged plot was discovered, families claimed they were even handed urns of their loved ones’ supposed ashes that were allegedly ‘concrete dust.’
Their funeral home promised a more natural burial, offering to bury bodies without embalming fluids or metal caskets if families opted not to have remains cremated.
Relatives would pay upwards of $1,200 for an eco-friendly end, which also came with the promise of a tree planting in the Colorado National Forest.
Chrystina Page, right, holds back Heather De Wolf, as she yells at Jon Hallford, left, as he leaves with his lawyers following a preliminary hearing, Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024
But last November, investigators found almost 200 bodies in ‘abhorrent conditions’ inside the property, which had been left at room temperature to rot.
The bodies were found after neighbors issued complaints over a ‘dead animal smell’ covering the area around the funeral home.
Some of the bodies had been in the maggot-infested building for years before they were discovered following reports of a foul odor.
By the time of the raid it owed more than $120,000 in unpaid bills and had been repeatedly taken to court over unpaid wages and disputes with local medical centers.
When they were charged, investigators claimed the couple used money from the families to buy two vehicles worth over $120,000.
In addition to their funeral home, they used a building in the nearby rural community of Penrose as a body storage facility, prosecutors say.
In April, it was also alleged by federal prosecutors that the Hallfords lied to obtain $882,3000 in relief funds, which they spent on themselves instead of their business.
At a pre-trial hearing earlier this year, FBI Agent Andrew Cohen testified that money, an adjustment to a pandemic-era small business loan given to the Hallfords, was fraudulently obtained after Hallford lied by saying he was not behind on child support payments.
At an earlier hearing for Carie Hallford, prosecutors presented texts suggesting that she and her husband tried to cover up their financial difficulties by leaving the bodies at the Penrose site.
Relatives said they raised their suspicions with the couple but were ignored or brushed off by them every time.
When the family of retired Army officer Tanya Wilson received her ashes, her brother Elliot thought they were unusually heavy and confronted Carie Hallford.
When he took them to a nearby funeral director he was told ‘I’ve never seen anything that looks like that in the range of what cremated remains would typically expect to look like.’
Two families were so suspicious they mixed the ‘ashes’ with water and found that they solidified.
Samantha Naranjo discovered that the body of mother Dorothy had been warehoused for more than a year in the dilapidated building.
She told KRDO: ‘We were hurt, we were frustrated, now we’re angry. We want justice. Not just for us, but every single one of those victims. Every one of them.
‘Their family deserves to be at peace, the community deserves justice.’