Wife who managed Colorado funeral home where bodies rotted gets 18 years in prison

DENVER (CN) — A federal judge on Monday sentenced a former Colorado funeral home manager to 18 years in prison after she and her husband allowed nearly 200 bodies to rot in a warehouse instead of burying and cremating the dead as promised.

“Ms. Hallford, time and time again, you met with these families and told them you would take care of them,” said U.S. District Judge Nina Wang. “It is evident that you were an equal partner in the fraud."

Before imposing the sentence, the Joe Biden appointee paused to read aloud six pages of named victims, giving voice to the real impact of the unusual crime.

With her husband, Jon, Carie Hallford opened the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs in 2017, telling local press they dreamed of providing eco-friendly end-of-life services to the community. A second location opened in Penrose in 2019, and in 2020, the Gazette in Colorado Springs actually named the business the best funeral home around.

Although the funeral home’s troubles wouldn’t come to light for three more years, prosecutors say the couple had already begun defrauding customers. The ruse finally unraveled in 2023 when the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office investigated a foul odor and discovered 191 decomposing bodies stacked like lumber, rotting and pooling across the floor at the Penrose warehouse.

U.S. Attorney Tim Neff said no sentence would be enough.

“It has been a long, torturous, painful journey for all of the people here,” Neff said. “And that’s just through the justice system. So many of them have expressed they will live with the pain for the rest of their life.”

In addition to securing a 20-year sentence against Jon Hallford last year, Neff led the prosecution against Megan Hess and her mother, Shirley Koch, who sold body parts out of the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, Colorado, during the 2010s. Hess and Koch were each sentenced to 20 years after pleading guilty to single counts of mail fraud.

Although Carie Hallford’s defense attorney, Robert Charles Meliherik, said she acted out of fear of her abusive husband, Neff pointed out that she decided again and again to participate in the crime with each funeral she arranged.

“There were countless acts that allowed this scheme to go on for years,” Neff said. “Every day, she had agency to make different decisions, and she only stopped when the FBI went in there.”

The Hallfords were first arrested in November 2023 on more than 100 state charges ranging from the abuse of a corpse, theft, money laundering and forgery. Jon Hallford was sentenced to 40 years in state court last month, while Carie Hallford faces sentencing in April.

Federal prosecutors filed additional charges in April 2024 related to false statements made on an application for federal Covid-19 aid in 2020.

From September 2019 through October 2023, the couple defrauded hundreds of people who sought funeral services. Charging between $900 and $1,400 for cremations and even more for burials, investigators said the Hallfords collected $193,000 from the 191 named families whose bodies were identified at the Penrose warehouse. The couple did business with an additional 987 families during that time period, many of whom are unable to verify what happened to their deceased loved ones.

More than a dozen victims testified at the Alfred Arraj U.S. Courthouse in downtown Denver, including Kelly Schloesser, who began by apologizing to the court for rereading the same impact statement she had given during half a dozen other court hearings.

Schloesser trusted the Hallfords to cremate her mother, Mary Lou Ehrlich, who loved Christmas and held the family together.

“We can’t get through the grieving process because once we’re in court, the grieving process starts all over again,” Schloesser said.

Like her mother, Schloesser decided to become a nurse. She recalled the first time she lost a patient at the nursing home where she worked with her mother, who guided her through preparing the body and comforting the family when they arrived.

“It is downright insulting that Carie Hallford only faces 20 years,” Schloesser said. “This woman was not only the face of the operation, but she was the one who signed all the documents and receipts.”

Indeed, federal prosecutors characterized Carie Hallford as running the front of the business, interacting with customers and keeping the books, while Jon Hallford was responsible for transporting and preparing bodies for cremation or cemetery burial.

Federal prosecutors’ case against Carie Hallford centered around an application for Covid-19 relief funds that falsely represented the business wasn’t in violation of any law.

With $882,300 obtained from the Small Business Administration, the Hallfords then purchased “a vehicle, multiple vacations, entertainment, dining, tuition for a minor child, cryptocurrency, cosmetic medical procedures, jewelry, various goods and merchandise from Amazon, and payments to other vendors unrelated to their business," prosecutors said in a grand jury indictment.

In court, Meliherik claimed the cosmetic surgery referred to a procedure Jon Hallford underwent to have pronounced abs.

In October 2024, both Hallfords pleaded guilty to a single charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, after which the federal government filed to dismiss a dozen other related charges, including outright wire fraud and aiding and abetting.

Carie Hallford initially rescinded her guilty plea after Wang refused to limit herself to prosecutors’ recommended sentence of seven to 15 years of incarceration, finding such a premade deal was not in the public’s best interest. Ultimately, however, Carie Hallford pleaded guilty a second time to proceed to sentencing.

“The real Carie is not the monster, not the greedy, self-serving, soleless person as the details from this case make me seem,” Carie Hallford told the court, dressed in a charcoal-striped jumpsuit, her grown-out brown hair curled into a ponytail. “I am not here to make excuses, but I do feel I need to explain briefly why the person who made those choices was not my true self."

Hallford described her arrest as the worst day of her life, adding that she also felt a sense of peace at being freed from her husband and the lies. Having finalized her divorce from Jon Hallford last week, Carie Hallford recalled suffering through a decade in an abusive relationship.

“Eventually I became so isolated, so exhausted, so confused and so stressed that I didn’t know who I was anymore," Hallford said. “So many of my decisions were based on self-preservation.”

In calculating the sentence, Wang said she acknowledged the abuse Carie Hallford suffered as a genuine factor in the crime.

“He belittled and berated you,” Wang said. “I can understand the victims’ skepticism, but I must take the psychological reports into account.”

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