A Colorado funeral home owner who left nearly 200 bodies to decay in an abandoned, infested building — while handing out fake ashes to grieving families — has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
Jon Hallford, 44, co-owner of the now-defunct Return to Nature Funeral Home, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was sentenced on Friday in a case that stunned the nation.
Hallford admitted to defrauding clients, misusing nearly $900,000 in Covid relief funds, and using the money to fund a luxury lifestyle that included Gucci shopping sprees, cosmetic treatments, luxury vehicles, and cryptocurrency investments.
“I am so deeply sorry for my actions. I still hate myself for what I’ve done,” Hallford told the judge, breaking down in court.
The sentence handed down was five years longer than what prosecutors had requested, and double what Hallford’s own attorney argued for.
Bodies Left to Rot Like “Stacks of Lumber”
Hallford and his wife, Carie Hallford, are accused of running a gruesome scam between 2019 and 2023, hiding corpses rather than cremating them, as promised.
The horror came to light in October 2023 when neighbors in Penrose, Colorado began complaining about an overwhelming stench.
Authorities discovered 190 decaying human bodies stacked throughout the property — some left for years, including the grandmother of one young boy, Colton Sperry, whose death in 2019 had been entrusted to the Hallfords.
Colton, now 11, told the court he became so grief-stricken upon learning the truth that he told his parents:
“If I die too, I could meet my grandma in heaven and talk to her again.”
He was later hospitalized for suicidal thoughts and began therapy and support animal treatment.
Another victim, Derrick Johnson, traveled nearly 3,000 miles to testify, telling the court his mother was “thrown into a festering sea of death.”
“While the bodies rotted in secret, the Hallfords dined, laughed, and traveled. My mom’s cremation money probably bought them cocktails and first-class flights,” he said.
Lavish Lifestyle on Death’s Dime
Federal prosecutors revealed that instead of using client payments for cremations, the Hallfords went on a pandemic-fueled spending spree:
- A GMC Yukon and Infiniti SUV worth over $120,000
- Over $30,000 in cryptocurrency
- Luxury jewelry from Gucci and Tiffany
- Laser body sculpting procedures
Families were devastated after discovering they had buried the wrong ashes — or none at all. Two families received urns filled with meaningless dust.
Restitution and State Charges Ahead
In addition to his 20-year sentence, Hallford was ordered to pay over $1 million in restitution, with $193,000 allocated directly to victims’ families. The remainder will be repaid to the Small Business Administration, which provided the defrauded Covid relief funds.
Hallford’s federal sentence will run concurrently with a separate state sentence expected in August. He has already pleaded guilty to:
- 191 counts of abuse of a corpse
- Forgery, money laundering, and other charges at the state level
His wife, Carie Hallford, who co-owned the business and was charged alongside him, withdrew her federal guilty plea and will go to trial this September. She also faces 191 state counts of corpse abuse.
On the Run and Finally Caught
The couple was arrested in Oklahoma last November after fleeing Colorado. By the time of their arrest, the decaying funeral home had been torn down.
What was once marketed as an eco-friendly “green” funeral service had become one of the most disturbing funeral fraud cases in U.S. history.
