The proprietor of a Colorado funeral dwelling and his spouse have been arrested after the decaying stays of not less than 189 individuals had been lately discovered at his facility.
Jon and Carrie Hallford had been arrested in Wagoner, Oklahoma, on suspicion of three felonies: abuse of a corpse, cash laundering and forgery, authorities stated in an e mail to aggrieved households. Jon Hallford is being held on the Muskogee County, Oklahoma, jail, although there aren’t any information displaying that his spouse may additionally be there, in accordance with a person who answered a name to the jail however refused to provide his title.
The Hallfords couldn’t instantly be reached for remark Wednesday. Neither has a listed private telephone quantity and the funeral dwelling’s quantity not works.
Jon Hallford owns Return to Nature Funeral Dwelling in Penrose, a small city about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Denver. The stays had been discovered Oct. 4 by authorities responding to a report of an “abhorrent odor” inside the corporate’s decrepit constructing. Officers initially estimated there have been about 115 our bodies inside, however the quantity later elevated to 189 after they completed eradicating all of the stays in mid-October.
A day after the odor was reported, the director of the state workplace of Funeral Dwelling and Crematory registration spoke on the telephone with Hallford. He tried to hide the improper storage of corpses in Penrose, acknowledged having a “drawback” on the website and claimed he practiced taxidermy there, in accordance with an order from state officers dated Oct. 5.
The corporate, which was began in 2017 and provided cremations and “inexperienced” burials with out embalming fluids, stored doing enterprise whilst its monetary and authorized issues mounted in recent times. The house owners had missed tax funds in latest months, had been evicted from one in all their properties and had been sued for unpaid payments by a crematory that give up doing enterprise with them virtually a yr in the past, in accordance with public information and interviews with individuals who labored with them.
Colorado has among the weakest oversight of funeral houses within the nation with no routine inspections or qualification necessities for funeral dwelling operators.
There’s no indication state regulators visited the positioning or contacted Hallford till greater than 10 months after the Penrose funeral dwelling’s registration expired in November 2022. State lawmakers gave regulators the authority to examine funeral houses with out the house owners’ consent final yr, however no further cash was supplied for elevated inspections.
