The owners of a Colorado funeral home are ordered to pay $950M over mishandled remains

The funeral home promised a more natural way to be buried, pledging to cremate or bury bodies without using embalming fluids or metal caskets. But instead of a “green burial,” authorities allege, the Return to Nature business in Colorado abandoned bodies to decay at room temperature in its storage facility, where the remains of some 190 people were found last fall.

On Monday, a judge ordered the funeral home’s married owners, Carie and Jon Hallford, to pay $950 million to families whose loved ones’ remains were mishandled.

The new court order would resolve a class-action civil lawsuit — and set an example, even if the owners don’t have the resources to pay most of the large reward, Andrew Swan, an attorney representing the victims, told NPR.

“We hope that the judgment sends an unmistakable message to the industry: Bad behavior has significant consequences,” Swan said.

The Hallfords, who are in their 40s, currently face a raft of criminal charges. In some cases, they are accused of giving their customers urns holding fake ashes rather than their loved ones’ cremated remains. Prosecutors say other remains were buried in mislabeled gravesites.

While families can attempt to collect what they’re owed under the settlement, Swan added, “It is unlikely that the defendants have any significant assets, unfortunately.”

His law firm represented the families pro bono, or without charging a fee, Swan said.

The Hallfords were arrested last November in Oklahoma after an apparent attempt to flee what became a growing list of federal and state criminal charges. The couple are accused of theft, fraud, abusing corpses, laundering money and forging documents, along with abusing the COVID-19 pandemic relief fund. 

Federal prosecutors said in April that the Hallfords lied to obtain $882,300 in relief funds for their business — and then spent the money on themselves.

Return to Nature Funeral Home opened for business in 2017, touting itself as a more natural option than traditional funeral homes. It operated mainly out of Colorado Springs, using the facility in Penrose to store remains of its customers’ family members and loved ones.

But the local sheriff’s department investigated the funeral home last fall, after receiving calls about strong odious smells coming from the building in Penrose, about 30 miles south of Colorado Springs. They found a large number of bodies, forcing authorities to set about the onerous task of identifying the remains.

“Some of the dates on the bodies listed deaths dating back to 2019,” the U.S. attorney’s office said.

The situation at the facility was “horrific,” Fremont County Sheriff Allen Cooper said last October.

The shocking discovery at the Return to Nature facility brought public outrage and, for families, renewed waves of mourning as their loved ones’ final repose was thrown into terrible uncertainty. 

It also led to a new scrutiny of laws in Colorado, which was known to have a remarkably lax laws regarding funeral homes. In May, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed three bills providing new regulations for the industry.

“Up until now, Colorado had been the only state in the country that did not regulate funeral home directors,” Colorado Public Radio reported.