The owner of a Colorado funeral home where nearly 200 bodies were found stacked in various stages of decay has been sentenced to 40 years in prison by a state district court judge.
Jon Hallford, who, along with his wife, Carrie, owned the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, CO, was charged with scores of counts of abuse of corpse and other crimes. He agreed to a plea deal in December 2025 that would place him behind bars for decades. Carrie Hallford also agreed to plea to charges that would yield between 25 and 35 years in prison. She is due to be sentenced in April 2026.
The couple also both pleaded guilty to federal charges of wire fraud in October 2024 in connection with the fraudulent acquisition of Small Business Association loans designed to provide relief for businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Hallfords were arrested in November 2023 after a foul odor was reported emanating from their funeral home. Once investigators entered, they discovered a disturbing scene–corpses piled up throughout the facility. As the probe continued, it was found that the Hallfords had promised cremation to families, only to deliver, in some cases, fake ashes and dried concrete mix to survivors.
Family members, speaking at the sentencing hearing, detailed the horror of finding out what the Hallfords had done with decedent’s remains. Survivors called Jon Hallford a “monster” and “vile,” according to an Associated Press article, and urged the judge to sentence him to the maximum of 50 years.
“I’m a daughter whose mother was treated like yesterday’s trash and dumped in a site left to rot with hundreds of others,” the Associated Press reported Kelly Mackeen, whose mother’s remains were at Return to Nature, as saying during the hearing. “I’m heartbroken, and I ask God every day for grace.”
Hallford, apologized during his sentencing on February 6, 2026.
“I deserve every word you have said and every day that I will sit in prison,” he told the court. “Regret will sit with me the rest of my life.”
The Return to Nature Case was just one of several sensational crimes that rocked the funeral industry in Colorado, which had the most lax regulations governing funeral service in the country. Colorado was the only state in the U.S. where funeral directors were not licensed. Until recently, the state also required prior approval from funeral home owners before inspectors could enter the facilities.
The state in 2024 adopted a sweeping reform of funeral industry regulations, which called for the licensing of funeral directors, along with basic education and continuing education requirements. Those reforms, however, will not take effect until 2027.
Families initially had requested the Hallfords be sentenced to 191 years in prison, one for each body found in the funeral home. District Court Judge Eric Bentley, upon hearing the families’ stories, had rejected a previous plea deal that would have seen the Hallfords imprisoned for up to 20 years.
Bentley alluded to the extraordinary nature of the crime during the sentencing, saying that sentences as long as Jon Hallford’s were usually reserved for violent criminals accused of crimes such as murder.
“Every time I approach this case, I am bowled over again by the enormity of the harm that was inflicted,” Bentley said, according to an article in The New York Times. “This is not ordinary harm.”