Colorado funeral home owner who abused nearly 200 corpses gets 40 years,
decried as a 'monster'
[February 07, 2026]
By JESSE BEDAYN and MATTHEW BROWN
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — 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 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 urged the judge to
give him the maximum sentence of 50 years.
Bentley told Hallford he caused “unspeakable and incomprehensible” harm.
“It is my personal belief that every one of us, every human being, is
basically good at the core, but we live in a world that tests that
belief every day, and Mr. Hallford your crimes are testing that belief,”
Bentley said.
Hallford apologized before his sentencing and said he would regret his
actions for the rest of his life.
“I had so many chances to put a stop to everything and walk away, but I
did not,” he said. “My mistakes will echo for a generation. Everything I
did was wrong.”
‘Motivated by greed’
Hallford’s attorney unsuccessfully sought a 30 year sentence, arguing
that it was not a crime of violence and he had no prior criminal record.
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. That included purchasing a GMC
Yukon and an Infiniti worth over $120,000 combined, along with $31,000
in cryptocurrency, pricey goods from stores like Gucci and Tiffany & Co.
and laser body sculpting.
“Clearly this is a crime motivated by greed,” prosecutor Shelby Crow
said. The Hallfords charged more than $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 also pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges after
prosecutors said they cheated the government out of nearly $900,000 in
pandemic-era small business aid. Jon Hallford was sentenced to 20 years
in prison in that case, and Carie Hallford’s sentencing is pending.
A plea agreement in the corpse abuse case calls for the state prison
sentence to be served concurrently with the federal sentence.
Heartbroken families
One of the family members who spoke at the hearing was Kelly Mackeen,
whose mother's remains were handled by Return to Nature.
[to top of second column]
|
Crystina Page, left, hugs Angelika Stedman outside of the El Paso
County Courthouse in Colorado Springs, Colo., Friday, Feb. 6, 2026,
ahead of the sentencing of Return to Nature funeral home owner Jon
Hallford. (AP Photo/Thomas Peipert)
“I’m a daughter whose mother was treated like yesterday’s trash and
dumped in a site left to rot with hundreds of others,” Mackeen said.
“I’m heartbroken, and I ask God every day for grace.”
As she and others spoke of their grief, Jon Hallford sat at a table
to their right, wearing orange jail attire and looking directly
ahead. The courtroom’s wooden benches were full of relatives of the
deceased and also journalists.
The Hallfords stored the bodies in a building in the small town of
Penrose, south of Colorado Springs, from 2019 until 2023, when
investigators responded to reports of a stench from the building.
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.
The bodies were identified over months with fingerprints, DNA and
other methods.
Investigators believe the Hallfords gave families dry concrete that
resembled ashes.
After families learned that what they received and then spread or
kept at home were not actually their loved ones' remains, many said
it undid their grieving process, while others had nightmares and
struggled with guilt.
Lax regulations
One of the recovered bodies was that of a former Army sergeant first
class who was thought to have been buried at a veterans’ cemetery,
FBI agent Andrew Cohen said.
When investigators exhumed the wooden casket at the cemetery, they
found the remains of a person of a different gender inside, he said.
The veteran, who was not identified in court, was later given a
funeral with full military honors at Pikes Peak National Cemetery.
The corpse abuse revelations spurred changes to Colorado's lax
funeral home regulations.
The AP previously reported that the Hallfords missed tax payments,
were evicted from one of their properties and were sued for unpaid
bills, according to public records and interviews with people who
worked with them.
In a rare decision last year, Judge Bentley rejected previous plea
agreements between the Hallfords and prosecutors that called for up
to 20 years in prison. Family members of the deceased said the
agreements were too lenient.
___
Brown reported from Billings, Montana.
All contents © copyright 2026 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
