Calls for new regulation of death care industry mounting after discovery of bodies inside Colorado funeral home
Abby Swoveland holds a plastic bag in a box that should contain her mother's remains. But she has little emotional connection to it, believing the bag does not hold her mother's ashes.
"Oh, I can tell. I can tell," she says handling it. "Just it looks like cement," Swoveland said.
There is no cremation tag. She did not get a cremation certificate when she went to the Return to Nature Funeral Home to pick up her mother's cremated remains. She didn't know how to look for it.
"You kind of don't know what to expect when- you know, this was all new to me," she said.
She had asked the operators of the funeral home to have her mother cremated close by after the passing of Sally Swoveland on Aug. 5.
But after news came out of over 100 bodies discovered at a Return to Nature facility in Penrose, south of Colorado Springs, she looked at the paperwork she did get. It showed the body was cremated in Commerce City. So she picked up the phone and called.
"They had no record of my mother. And I know that what they gave me is not her ashes," she said of the box and untagged bag she got from Return to Nature.
Alerted that her mother may be among the 189 or more bodies discovered at the Penrose facility, she went to the funeral home in Colorado Springs where she contracted the services.
The doors were closed and locked. A van sat outside with rubber gloves on the seat and a gurney in the back.
"It just struck me that they probably transported my mother in that vehicle," she said.
She thought she heard someone inside and knocked and called for someone to come out and talk to her, to explain. No one came. So she left notes on the van and on the doors. Including, one asking, "Where is my mom?"
Now she wants legislation to change the funeral industry.
"That's the only thing good that can come from this is that not another family ever has to experience this. And we as a state need to take care of our people and come together and get this done," she said.
Colorado has been in the spotlight over the funeral business after the discovery in Penrose and the discovery in 2020 of a funeral home and donor services operation in Montrose where investigators say the operators lied about cremation and sold body parts instead.
Sunset Mesa Funeral Home operator Megan Hess was sentenced to 20 years and her mother received 15 years after the scheme was exposed.
"I'm sorry to say it is," said Joe Walsh, president of the Colorado Funeral Directors Association when asked if is fair to describe the state as a free-for-all in the industry.
The association has about 46 member firms. Return to Nature was not one of them. The association had been talking to lawmakers before the Penrose incident about how to shape legislation to better monitor the industry.
Colorado is the only state in the country with no license requirement to be a funeral director. Walsh said a poll of members showed support for such licensing.
"The majority of the members came back and said they would like some type of licensure," he said.
Right now, all funeral homes have to be registered with the Department of Regulatory Agencies known as DORA. But nothing further.
Return to Nature's registration expired late last year. But there's no indication regulators called or showed up to check to see if it was still operating.
Colorado began to allow unannounced inspections of funeral homes last year, but did not provide money to do them.
"It's a law with no enforcement," said Walsh.
He and other funeral directors are dismayed at the actions of Return to Nature.
"I keep asking myself, what was those individuals' thought process in doing this? And I cannot fathom that," he said. "I can't even come up with a plausible scenario."
Still, Walsh would like to see potential legislation changing regulations before supporting it and hopes that state lawmakers will again ask the association for its thoughts.
"Our laws need to be changed in Colorado. These people have to have oversight and be licensed," said Swoveland. "I have to be licensed to drive my car, but you can run a funeral home and not."
The family waits for further word from investigators.
She has offered them the package she got containing what she is convinced are not her mother's remains. She says she will be pushing for more oversight. Her mother she believes would have wanted it.
"I can't let her down and I know that she's giving me strength to keep going," she said.
She has also put together an online fundraiser. One of the reasons she had initially chosen the funeral home was the promise that a tree would be planted in honor of her mother.
Now she's raising money to plant trees in honor of all of the deceased found in Penrose.
"I am going to buy as many trees as I possibly can with the funds that are raised," Swoveland said.
"In a perfect world, this 'funeral home' would be torn down and a monument/treed area would be planted in honor of our loved ones," she wrote on the fundraising page.
