Colorado woman suspects she may have concrete mix instead of family member's remains
Kayondra Hood says when her mom Wildflower Hood died in 2019, planning the funeral was overwhelming.
"It was unreal for a while. I just felt like everything was nonstop," said Hood.
She was comforted by the service she initially received from the Return to Nature Funeral Home.
"Kind is the word I would use. They were very welcoming," said Hood.
Her experience quickly took a turn for the worse. She says it took them nearly a month to cremate her mother. When they finally said they had, they charged her an extra fee.
"I asked what the fee was, and he explained that my mom was overweight and that 'it took them longer to cook,'" said Hood.
She says in retrospect there were more red flags that things weren't on the up and up. They wouldn't let her see her mom before they cremated her and once they claimed they had they lost their sensitive touch.
"They were just super like, nonchalant about dealing with her ashes," said Hood.
Also, she got a tattoo with her mom's remains mixed in the ink because her mom always wanted a tattoo but never got one. It's usually a safe procedure because the ashes are sterilized by the high temperature of the cremation, but Hood got an infection just two days later.
"I couldn't touch my arm. My arm couldn't rub up on anything. I couldn't put a shirt over it. I had blisters everywhere, blisters on top of blisters," said Hood.
She also thought she saw rocks in the remains, but Return to Nature told her they were bone fragments.
"I don't know anything about it. So I ran with it," said Hood.
At the time all of the funeral home's explanations made sense, but now she thinks it may be a concrete mix in the box Return to Nature gave her, and not her mom.
Hood says her aunt recently passed away and was cremated by a different funeral home and there is a noticeable difference between the two sets of remains.
"It's like I got, like, dirty beach sand in one and ashes in another," said Hood.
She has to wait to see if investigators can identify her mother among the 189 bodies found in Penrose in October.
"Which is probably worse than knowing either way," said Hood.
No matter if her mom was among the bodies or not, Hood wants Jon and Carie Hallford, the owners and operators of Return to Nature, to be held responsible for the trauma they are putting her family through.
"I'm going to live with that forever. I trusted people who weren't trustworthy," said Hood.
The Hallfords were arrested in Oklahoma on Nov. 8 on suspicion of committing the crimes of abuse of a corpse, theft, money laundering and forgery, which are all felonies.
The Hallfords remain in custody on a $2 million cash bond after their arrest in Wagoner, in eastern Oklahoma. The couple is facing extradition back to Colorado.
The Fremont County Sheriff's Office began an investigation on Oct. 4 after neighbors reported an odor emanating from the Penrose facility located at 31 Werner Road.
