Background
Between 2019 and 2023, Jon Hallford, owner of the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, Colorado, and his former wife, Carie Hallford, concealed nearly 200 decomposing bodies inside their facility.1 Many of the bodies were illegally left in a building with no ventilation or refrigeration, and no lawful burial plan. Some grieving families were even given urns filled with pulverized concrete rather than the ashes of their loved ones.
This disturbing pattern of abuse reportedly went on for several years until the shocking conditions were discovered. In October 2023, a putrid odor drew investigators to the building, where the remains of adults, children, and infants had been stacked for years in unrefrigerated rooms. The couple later pleaded guilty to abusing 191 corpses. 2
Return to Nature
Jon and Carie Hallford opened the Return to Nature Funeral Home with the intention of providing “natural burials.” The concept is simple and has a long history. A body is placed directly into the earth or water without embalming chemicals or non-biodegradable materials, allowing it to decompose and return to the earth naturally.
Their clients were promised that loved ones would be laid to rest in biodegradable caskets or simple shrouds, or, if they chose cremation, their ashes would be returned to the family.
For five years, the Hallfords operated under Colorado's notoriously lax oversight. Unlike most states, Colorado did not require routine inspections of funeral homes or enforce strict licensing for operators. This loophole allowed the Hallfords to operate unchecked until October 2023, when the consequences of this regulatory failure became horrifyingly clear.
House of Horrors
In October 2023, neighbors of the Return to Nature Funeral Home began to complain about a ‘putrid’ odor. Situated near the funeral home were a post office, a few homes, and several empty lots with parked semitrailers. There were people nearby all the time.
On October 3, Detective Sgt. Michael Jolliffe and Laura Allen, the county’s deputy coroner, went to the Penrose facility to investigate. Although they could smell a rank odor, they were unable to get inside the building. However, they did see a dark fluid seeping underneath one of the doors, which looked suspiciously like the fluid from a decaying body.
Allen contacted the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies, which oversees funeral home operations. An inspector, Joseph Berry, arranged to meet with Jon Hallford the next day. Though Hallford was not there when Berry arrived, the inspector was able to see what looked like stacked body bags through a gap in a covered window — it was enough for a judge to issue a search warrant.
On October 5, investigators in protective suits entered the building. They found dozens of rooms where bodies had been stored, sometimes for years, in an unrefrigerated warehouse-style space. So many- nearly 190 in all- that they blocked doorways.
The dead included adults, children, infants, and fetuses, kept at room temperature; some in body bags, others wrapped in sheets and duct tape, many half-exposed on gurneys or with no covering at all. The whole area swarmed with bugs and maggots.
Twenty-three had death dates from 2019 and sixty-one from 2020, according to FBI agent Andrew Cohen. Investigators identified the remains by fingerprints, hospital bracelets, medical implants, and DNA. Some were so badly decomposed that identification was impossible.
Grieving families were left to deal with the trauma of the deception and the emotional harm. One man suffered PTSD after learning his mother’s ashes were not spread in Hawaii. Instead, her body had been left to decay beneath a dozen others.
Investigation
For many, the question was why. Why did the Hallfords not properly bury the bodies or practice lawful cremation? Carie Hallford was the public face of the operation, meeting with customers and charging more than $1,200 for ‘cremation expenses.’ "She fed the monster by lying to the customers and taking their money," said Chief Deputy District Attorney Rachael Powell.
Jon took care of removing the bodies and then placing them in the warehouse at the Penrose facility as well as another one in Colorado Springs. The money they charged their victims fed their lavish lifestyle.
Once the operation came to light, investigators found more disturbing evidence. Instead of proper disposal of the remains, they allowed the bodies to accumulate in various states of decay or decomposition inside the funeral home’s facility. Jon took steps to hide his activities by blocking windows and doors, restricting access to the building, and making excuses to explain the odor of decay coming from the site.
The Hallfords knew the reckoning was coming when investigators seized their phones, which contained incriminating texts. Some texts discussed possible ways to destroy evidence. In a 2020 exchange, Jon wrote, "Option A) build a new machine ASAP. B) dig a big hole and use lye. Where? C) dig a small hole and build a large fire. Where? D) I go to prison, which is probably going to happen."
In another series of texts, Jon callously orders a cheeseburger meal after saying he’d gotten “people juice” while moving bodies and needed to clean up before he ate.
In November 2023, Jon and Carie Hallford fled to Oklahoma to avoid prosecution. In 2024, they were arrested and extradited to Colorado. Both pleaded guilty to 191 counts of abuse of a corpse as well as defrauding the Small Business Administration (SBA) of nearly $900,000 through fraudulent COVID-19 loan applications.3
Prosecution and Sentencing
The charges against the Hallfords were staggering. From September 2019 to October 2023, prosecutors alleged that Jon Hallford failed to cremate or bury the bodies despite collecting more than $130,000 from families for services never provided.
Jon routinely filed death certificates with the state, falsifying the method of disposal, and misrepresented decedents' identities to third-party crematories, producing inaccurate records. In some cases, the remains were never cremated or buried.
Some families received urns of dry concrete mix instead of cremated remains. On at least two occasions, the wrong body was delivered for burial, with the error concealed from the next of kin. One recovered body — a former Army sergeant first class believed buried in a veterans' cemetery — turned out, when exhumed, to be a woman; the deceased veteran was later reburied with full military honors at Pikes Peak National Cemetery.
"Jon Hallford's criminal fraud was a vehicle to exploit grieving families so he could give himself a lavish life with luxury cars and expensive vacations," said U.S. Attorney Peter McNeilly. "His actions were not just fraudulent, but deeply inhumane. We offer our condolences to the families who continue to suffer because of Mr. Hallford’s crimes, and we hope this case brings them some measure of peace.”4
District Judge Eric Bentley rejected a plea agreement for a 20-year sentence in November 2025, saying that it was too lenient.5 Instead, on February 6, 2026, the judge sentenced Jon Hallford to 40 years in prison. On April 24, 2026, Carie Hallford, who had apologized in court and said she deserved to be punished, was sentenced to 30 years in prison, to run concurrently with an 18-year federal sentence, plus $1 million in restitution. 6
The couple later divorced; Carie said her marriage had been abusive and that she feared Jon's control.
Aftermath
After the Hallford trial, Colorado's funeral home industry underwent widespread reform. For years, Colorado had some of the weakest funeral service laws in the nation; funeral home directors didn’t even need a license. That lack of oversight allowed several funeral home operations to engage in shocking misconduct that went undetected for years.
The Hallfords were not even the first such scandal. Between 2010 and 2018, Megan Hess and Shirley Koch, the owners of the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, lied to hundreds of families, promising cremations and instead selling the bodies to brokers who supplied human remains for research. Hess received a 20-year prison sentence, and Koch received 15 years.7
After the Return to Nature scandal, the building was condemned by the EPA as a toxic-waste site and demolished in 2024. On May 24, 2024, Governor Jared Polis signed a series of laws requiring background checks, formal education, and stricter oversight for anyone working in the funeral industry. It was a direct response to the Hallford case.
While new laws and oversight cannot undo the pain and trauma caused by the Hallfords’ actions, they can at least place guardrails within the industry to help ensure that something so vile does not happen again.
Associated Press. "At Colorado Funeral Home Where 115 Decaying Bodies Were Found, Troubles Went Unnoticed by Regulators." AP News, October 2023, https://apnews.com/article/colorado-funeral-home-bodies-found-investigation
The Colorado Sun. "Judge Accepts Guilty Pleas From Colorado Funeral Home Owners Who Acknowledged Abusing 191 Corpses." The Colorado Sun, December 22, 2025. https://coloradosun.com/2025/12/22/colorado-funeral-home-plea-deal-191-corpses/
U.S. Small Business Administration. "Colorado Springs Funeral Home Operator Sentenced in Gruesome Fraud Scheme." SBA, June 27, 2025. https://www.sba.gov/article/2025/06/27/colorado-springs-funeral-home-operator-sentenced-gruesome-fraud-scheme
Colorado Public Radio (CPR News). "Victims Say Funeral Home Owner Who Abused Nearly 200 Corpses Is a 'Monster.' Sentenced to 40 Years." CPR News, February 6, 2026. https://www.cpr.org/2026/02/06/penrose-funeral-home-return-to-nature-sentencing-prison/
Denver7. "Judge Rejects Plea Deal for Ex-Funeral Home Operator Jon Hallford: 'Violated Every Norm of Civilized Society.'" Denver7, November 2025. https://www.denver7.com/news/colorado-springs-area/judge-rejects-plea-deal-for-ex-funeral-home-operator-jon-hallford-violated-every-norm-of-civilized-society
KKTV. "Carie Hallford Receives Concurrent Sentence on State Charges Related to Return to Nature Funeral Home Investigation." KKTV, April 24, 2026. https://www.kktv.com/2026/04/24/carie-hallford-receives-concurrent-sentence-state-charges-related-return-nature-funeral-home-investigation/
Wikipedia. "Return to Nature Funeral Home." Wikipedia. Accessed October 13, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Nature_Funeral_Home