Co-owner of troubled Colorado funeral home sentenced to 30 years; Victim says she "defiled our values and grieving process"
One of the disgraced co-owners of the Return to Nature Funeral Home in southern Colorado was sentenced to 30 years on Friday, in what the judge called an end to a "very emotional" case.
It was the last of the sentencing on the main charges against Jon and Carrie Hallford.
District Court Judge Eric Bentley said the harm caused by Carrie Hallford and her now ex-husband was "not ordinary harm."
In the courtroom at the El Paso County Courthouse, family members of those whose remains were at the Penrose funeral home gave victim impact statements. Carie Hallford, 49, faced between 25 and 35 years in prison after pleading guilty in December to almost 200 counts of abuse of a corpse and one count of forgery of a government-issued document, which are both felonies.
She was already sentenced to 18 years in federal prison and ordered to pay over $1 million in restitution. This sentence is expected to run concurrently to that, meaning she'll serve the federal sentence and 18 years of her state sentence at the same time and then serve the balance of her time in state prison. Everyone who spoke asked the judge to give her the maximum sentence.
Bentley told the court he saw Carrie Hallford as "the less powerful one" and "the one being pulled along." Carrie Hallford's attorneys have claimed she was being abused by her husband, Jon Hallford.
Tanya Wilson brought her deceased mother, Kim, to the Return to Nature Funeral Home in the dress she wanted to greet her ancestors in, in accordance with Korean customs. The sentence, she said, doesn't put an end to her suffering and said there are "no words" to describe what this ordeal did to her soul.
"It was our duty to ensure she kept the same dignity and grace she did in her life," Wilson said in court. "Hallford annihilated that dignity; she defiled our values and grieving process."
Wilson said she thought her mother was buried "in a place she wanted to be," but was actually "on the floor at Penrose, getting eaten up by insects."
Hallford and her husband, Jon Hallford, owned the funeral home and have both pleaded guilty to the charges of abuse of a corpse.
An investigation into the funeral home began in October 2023 when neighbors reported a foul odor to the Fremont County Sheriff's Office. Investigators found at least 190 improperly stored bodies and the cremains of an unknown number of people inside.
The couple was arrested in Oklahoma in November 2023 after fleeing the state.
The funeral home building was demolished in 2024 after the EPA condemned it, classifying it as a toxic waste site.
Jon Hallford was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison and 40 years in his state case.
At the hearing on Friday, Carol Prest also asked for the maximum possible sentence to be handed down, saying that while it wasn't enough, anything less would be an injustice. Prest was married to her husband Richard for 53 years, the last 20 of which were spent helping him amid declining health.
"I watched as he suffered the physical and mental decline of Parkinson's disease for over two decades, passing away in our home, where I took care of him," she said. "As painful as this slow demise was, I greatly mourned his death. I took solace, though, in the fact that he was finally at peace. That was until the FBI notified my elder son that his father lay rotting among so many others."
Prest said her son had to inform his brother and his mother of Richard Prest's fate; "Something a son should never have to do," she said.
Her and her family's suffering didn't end there, though, describing confusing and sometimes contradictory information from authorities as they grieved.
"She may only suffer a few years in prison," Prest said of Carie Hallford. "We will suffer for a lifetime."
A trend among almost every victim who spoke is that part of their suffering stems from the uncertainty about the ultimate fate of their loved ones' remains and cremains. As the investigation unfolded, many family members were told the cremains they were given by the Hallfords were, in fact, the remains of someone else, sometimes a mix of multiple people's remains, or in some cases, cement mix.
"I drove out to the coroner's office several times and stood on the sidewalk, staring at the refrigerated trucks, trying to guess which one my husband was in," she said. "No last goodbye. No last goodbye."
Wilson and other family members spread what they thought were the ashes of her 76-year-old mother, Yong Anderson, off the coast of Hawaii. It was likely cement dust.
Wilson, who lives in Georgia, has made numerous trips to Colorado to attend court proceedings as well as to advocate for changes in Colorado law around the funeral industry.
"It sits with me, and I just get angry all over again. I get heartbroken all over again. And I think about my Mom, and I just have to continue to fight. Have to see it through," said Wilson. "The last thing I want is for anybody to go through this. And the sad thing is that it has continued to happen. It definitely highlights that there is a need for reform. In the funeral industry. In our laws."
She does not feel the penalty for one of the charges against the Hallfords is enough.
"Abuse of corpse charge, I don't feel is large enough. It doesn't fully capture the harm," she said. "It strips away the humanity of it. It treats it as if my mom was just an object."
Wilson says after her mother's remains were recovered from the Return to Nature funeral home facility in Penrose, she was properly cremated.
"I use properly very loosely because she wasn't in the condition that she was supposed to have been in when she was cremated," said Wilson.
Right now, she has her mother's ashes at home.
"My brother and I decided that we would wait until all of this was over and they were both in prison. And the court proceedings would be done, and then we would go back and do it again," she said.
In delivering the sentence, Bentley told the victims who spoke, "You are an extraordinary group of people, and you have an extraordinary message."
