Judge orders $950M payout for families of loved ones left decaying in Colorado funeral home
A judge has ruled that the Return to Nature funeral home must pay $950 million to the families of the loved ones who were left decaying in a funeral home in Penrose. The judgment was ordered in a civil case and it is unlikely to be paid out.
It was last fall when 190 improperly stored bodies were discovered in the small town southwest of Colorado Springs. The owners of the funeral home, Jon and Carie Hallford, are facing hundreds of charges in Colorado including abuse of a corpse, forgery and money laundering.
Since the couple's arrest, family members have learned the remains of their mothers, fathers or children weren't in the ashes they ceremonially spread or clutched tight but were instead decaying in a bug-infested building.
"I'm never going to get a dime from them, so, I don't know, it's a little frustrating," said Crystina Page, who had hired the funeral home, Return to Nature, to cremate her son's remains in 2019.
She carried the urn she thought held his ashes across the country until the news arrived in 2023 that his body had been identified in the Return to Nature facility, four years after his death.
"If nothing else," Page said, this judgment "will bring more understanding to the case."
"I'm hoping it'll make people go, 'Oh, wow, this isn't just about ashes,'" she said, adding that far more people are impacted than just those listed in the lawsuit.
While the victims and the class action's attorney Andrew Swan understood from the outset that it was unlikely families would receive any financial compensation, part of the hope was to haul the Hallfords into court and demand answers.
That, too, went unfulfilled.
Jon Hallford, who is in custody, and Carie Hallford, who is out on bail, did not acknowledge the civil case or show up to hearings, Swan said.
"I would have preferred that they participate, if only because I wanted to put them on the witness stand, have them put under oath and ask them how they came to do this, not once, not twice, but hundreds of times," said Swan.
According to the email sent to victims, obtained by a CBS affiliate in Colorado Springs, the firm that filed the lawsuit, Leventhal Lewis, it is the largest judgment in Colorado history.
The investigation into the funeral home began in early October 2023 when neighbors reported a foul odor to the Fremont County Sheriff's Office and investigators discovered 190 improperly stored bodies inside the building which was demolished earlier this year.
The couple was arrested in Oklahoma in November 2023. They were offered plea deals last month however have not accepted any agreements with the 4th Judicial District Attorney's Office at the time of publishing.
The Hallfords are also facing charges in an indictment from the federal government for allegedly defrauding customers and the government. They have each been charged with 10 counts of wire fraud over their alleged failure to bury or cremate bodies of people, even though they received money for those services. The Hallfords have also been accused of making false statements to the U.S. Small Business Administration in their efforts to qualify for three separate loans totaling $882,300.
The civil lawsuit lists more than 100 family members but is open in case other victims come forward since the investigation began into the funeral home in Penrose, southwest of the company's office in Colorado Springs.