Families of 190 corpses left rotting in funeral home owed US$950M: judge

FILE - A hearse and debris sit behind the Return to Nature Funeral Home, Oct. 5, 2023, in Penrose, Colo. (Jerilee Bennett/The Gazette via AP, File)

DENVER -

The Colorado funeral home owners who allegedly stored 190 decaying bodies and sent grieving families fake ashes were ordered by a judge to pay US$950 million to the victims' relatives in a civil case, the attorney announced Monday.

The judgment is unlikely to be paid out since the owners, Jon and Carie Hallford, have been in financial trouble for years. They also face hundreds of criminal charges in separate state and federal cases, including abuse of a corpse, and allegations they took US$130,000 from families for cremations and burials they never provided.

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That leaves the nearly US$1 billion sum largely symbolic of the emotional devastation wreaked on family members who learned the remains of their mothers, fathers or children weren't in the ashes they ceremonially spread or clutched tight but were instead decaying in a bug-infested building.

"I'm never going to get a dime from them, so, I don't know, it's a little frustrating," said Crystina Page, who had hired the funeral home, Return to Nature, to cremate her son's remains in 2019.

She carried the urn she thought held his ashes across the country until the news arrived in 2023 that his body had been identified in the Return to Nature facility, four years after his death.

Dozens of family members have received similar news as the 190 bodies have been identified, shattering their grieving processes. Many are still picking up the pieces, haunted by nightmares of what their decomposing family member may have looked like, or burdened by guilt that they had let a loved one down.

"If nothing else," Page said, this judgement "will bring more understanding to the case."

"I'm hoping it'll make people go, 'Oh, wow, this isn't just about ashes,"' she said, adding that far more people are impacted than just those listed in the lawsuit.

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While the victims and the class action's attorney, Andrew Swan, understood from the outset that it was unlikely families would receive any financial compensation, part of the hope was to haul the Hallfords into court and demand answers.

That, too, went unfulfilled.

Jon Hallford, who is in custody, and Carie Hallford, who is out on bail, did not acknowledge the civil case or show up to hearings, Swan said.

"I would have preferred that they participate, if only because I wanted to put them on the witness stand, have them put under oath and ask them how they came to do this, not once, not twice, but hundreds of times," said Swan.

To Page, it felt like another slap in the face from the Hallfords.

The civil lawsuit lists over 100 family members but has been left open in case other victims come forward since 190 total bodies were discovered in the funeral homes facility in Penrose, southwest of the company's office in Colorado Springs.

Jon Hallford is being represented by the public defender's office, which does not comment on cases. Carie Hallford's attorney, Michael Stuzynski, was not immediately available for comment.

The case helped spur Colorado lawmakers to pass sweeping regulations on the funeral home industry in the state, which previously had the laxest rules in the nation.