Carie and Jon Hallford have pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges, one year after the married couple fled Colorado, leaving 190 decaying corpses in their funeral home. They were accused of taking money from customers and a pandemic relief fund and spending it on themselves, paying for things like travel, plastic surgery and expensive cars.
The couple have been charged with numerous state and federal crimes. In April, they were indicted on 15 federal counts related to wire fraud and conspiracy charges.
The Hallfords had been set to begin a jury trial on the fraud charges last week, but as that date approached, they asked to change their pleas. They pleaded guilty on Thursday afternoon, at a hearing where victims’ families were able to listen via audioconference.
“The plea agreement, which stipulates that prosecutors will not request over 15 years imprisonment, still has to be approved by the judge,” The Associated Press reports. “It’s unclear when that will happen.”
Federal prosecutors said the pair operated two fraudulent schemes that, together, netted just under $1 million. On one hand, they funneled $882,300 from a COVID-19 relief fund for businesses; on the other, they victimized customers who paid for their loved ones’ remains to be treated legally and with respect.
The Hallfords’ Return to Nature Funeral Home had touted its service as being more natural, pledging to cremate or bury bodies without using embalming fluids or metal caskets.
But in reality, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Neff said at a court hearing earlier this year, the Hallford’s funeral home “turned into a macabre and ghoulish house of horrors, where bodies were stacked like cord wood, and left to decay and decompose.”
The duplicity unraveled a year ago, when law enforcement was alerted to a "horrific" odor coming from the Hallfords' facility in Penrose, Colo.
For several years, families had been given containers holding the purported cremains of their loved ones — but after discovering the scene at the funeral home last October, law enforcement concluded that the ashes could not have been from bodies sent to the funeral home.
In August, a judge overseeing a civil case ordered the Hallfords to pay $950 million to families whose loved ones’ remains were mishandled — a judgment seen as symbolic, given their lack of substantial assets.
As early as the summer of 2020, the Hallfords were discussing the mounting problem at their main facility, according to text messages quoted in court hearings. In them, Jon Hallford repeatedly cited the difficulty of finding a way to dispose of the bodies, and the threat of being exposed.
In October 2020, he sent a text telling his wife they had four possible options: build a new crematory machine; dig a hole and use lye on bodies; burn the bodies in a hole; or “(d) I go to prison, which is probably what's going to happen."
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