The Republican Party mantra is to deregulate businesses whenever and wherever possible. Colorado is no exception. The Centennial State has some of the weakest funeral home regulation in the US and now many of its citizens are paying the price for that legacy.
Jon and Carie Hallford, owners of Return To Nature Funeral Home, have been facing more than 200 criminal charges for improperly storing 190 decaying bodies in a bug-infested storage building.1
Now this ghoulish couple (and flight risk) face an additional 15 federal charges alleging they spent $882,300 in COVID relief funds on two luxury vehicles (a GMC Yukon and an Infiniti worth over $120,000), as well as vacations to California, Florida and Las Vegas, $31,000 in cryptocurrency, laser body sculpting, and jewelry from Gucci and Tiffany & Co.
Concerns were raised as far back as 2020 about the business’s improper storage of bodies but regulators did not act, allowing the number of corpses to grow to 190. Authorities finally examined the 2,500-square foot storage building in Penrose (30 miles south of Colorado Springs) after neighbors complained about the overpowering stench emanating from the facility.
Footnotes:
1The Hallfords were first arrested months ago. The initial Colorado state charges included corpse abuse, money laundering, theft and forgery, including allegations they gave families dry concrete instead of cremated ashes, collecting money for burials and cremations they never provided, and burying the wrong body on two occasions. Dozens of families had been informed the cremated ashes they received could not have been the remains of their loved ones.