A former Colorado funeral home owner who helped her ex-husband hide nearly 200 decomposing bodies was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Friday in a case that forced the state to clamp down on an industry plagued by scandal and lax oversight. Carie Hallford faced between 25 to 35 years in prison under a plea agreement in state court, the AP reports. Last month, she received an 18-year sentence in a related federal fraud case, in which she said she was a victim of abuse and manipulation in her marriage. In court on Friday, Carie Hallford apologized, saying she was raised to know right from wrong but had lost who she once was.
Her ex-husband was sentenced to 40 years on corpse abuse charges at a February hearing in which he was called a "monster" by relatives of those whose bodies were left to rot. Plea agreements call for the Hallfords' state prison sentences to be served concurrently with the federal sentences. Carie Hallford was the public face of Return to Nature, dealing with bereaved customers at the couple's funeral home in Colorado Springs. Jon Hallford performed much of the physical work, including at a second location in Penrose. That's where authorities found bodies piled throughout a bug-infested building after neighbors in 2023 complained about a foul odor.
Among the remains were those of the mother of Tanya Wilson, who told District Judge Eric Bentley on Friday that the family released what they thought were her ashes from a boat in Hawaii. It turned out her body was lying in toxic fluids on the floor of the Hallfords' makeshift mortuary. Like other Return to Nature customers, the family received fake ashes instead of the cremated remains they were promised. They had prepared her mother's body for meeting her Korean ancestors in the afterlife, Wilson said. To preserve her dignity, they brushed her hair, applied her favorite moisturizer and dressed her in special clothes to preserve the dignity she had in life. "Carie Hallford annihilated that dignity," said Wilson.
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