A funeral home owner who hid 190 rotting bodies in a filthy building and gave families fake ashes has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Jon Hallford, 44, co-owner of the Return to Nature Funeral Home in southern Colorado, was sentenced in federal court on Friday after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. His actions, including defrauding clients and misusing nearly $900,000 in COVID relief funds, shocked the nation.
Hallford admitted using the stolen money on luxury shopping, laser body sculpting, expensive cars, and cryptocurrency. His sentence was five years more than prosecutors requested and double what his defense attorney sought.
“I am so deeply sorry for my actions,” Hallford told the judge. “I still hate myself for what I’ve done.” He claimed he initially wanted to make a positive difference but said everything spiraled out of control.
Between 2019 and 2023, Hallford and his wife, Carie, ran a scam that unraveled in October 2023 when neighbors in Penrose reported a strong odor coming from the building. Authorities discovered 190 bodies stacked and decaying inside. Some had been there for years, including the grandmother of Colton Sperry, whose death in 2019 left a lasting impact on her family. In court, Colton said he became suicidal after learning what had happened to her.
Another grieving relative, Derrick Johnson, told the court he still lies awake at night, haunted by the image of his mother being “stacked like lumber” in a “festering sea of death.” He believed the money he paid for her cremation may have funded the Hallfords’ luxurious lifestyle.
In some cases, the funeral home sent families urns filled with worthless dust—leading to emotional devastation and even mistaken burials.
Prosecutors said the Hallfords spent pandemic relief funds and client payments on an extravagant lifestyle that included two luxury vehicles worth more than $120,000, designer jewelry, and cosmetic treatments.
In addition to the prison sentence, Jon Hallford was ordered to pay over $1 million in restitution—$193,000 of it will go to victims’ families, with the rest reimbursed to the Small Business Administration.
His federal sentence will run concurrently with a state sentence expected in August, after he pleaded guilty to 191 counts of corpse abuse and numerous other state crimes, including forgery and money laundering.
His wife, Carie Hallford, withdrew her federal guilty plea and will face trial in September. She also faces 191 counts of corpse abuse at the state level. The couple was arrested in Oklahoma last November after fleeing the state. By then, the decaying funeral home had already been demolished.
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