DENVER — The owners of the Colorado funeral home that reportedly 190 decomposing bodies And sent grieving families fake ashes have been ordered by a judge to pay $950 million to the families of the victims in a civil case, the lawyer announced Monday.
It is unlikely that the judgment will be paid out, as the owners, Jon and Carie Hallford, are in financial problems for yearsThey also face hundreds of criminal charges in separate state and federal affairsincluding abuse of a corpse, and allegations that they accepted $130,000 from families for cremations and burials they never conducted.
The nearly $1 billion figure is largely symbolic of the emotional devastation wrought on family members who discovered that the remains of their mothers, fathers or children were not in the ashes they had ceremonially scattered or tightly held, but were instead decomposing in a building full of insects.
“I’m never going to get a dime from them, so I don’t know, it’s a little frustrating,” said Crystina Page, who hired the funeral home Return to Nature in 2019 to cremate her son’s remains.
She carried the urn she believed contained his ashes across the country until news broke in 2023 that his body had been identified at the Return to Nature center, four years after his death.
Dozens of family members have received similar news as the 190 bodies have been identified, shattering their grieving process. Many are still trying to pick up the pieces, tormented by nightmares of what their decomposing family member looked like, or was burdened with feelings of guilt because they had abandoned a loved one.
“If nothing else,” Page said, “this judgment will bring more understanding to the case.”
“I hope this will make people think, ‘Oh, wow, this isn’t just about ash,’” she said, adding that many more people are affected than just those named in the lawsuit.
Although the victims and class action lawyer Andrew Swan knew from the outset that the families were unlikely to receive financial compensation, there was still a push to take the Hallfords to court and demand answers.
That too remained unfulfilled.
Jon Hallford, who is in custody, and Carie Hallford, who is free on bail, did not admit to the civil case and did not appear at the hearings, Swan said.
“I would have preferred if they had participated, if only because I wanted to put them on the stand, put them under oath and ask them how they came to do this, not once, not twice, but hundreds of times,” Swan said.
For Page, it felt like another slap in the face for the Hallfords.
The civil lawsuit names more than 100 family members, but the case is ongoing in case other victims come forward. A total of 190 bodies were found at the Penrose funeral home, southwest of the company’s Colorado Springs office.
Jon Hallford is 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 has prompted Colorado lawmakers to adopt far-reaching regulations about the funeral industry in the state, which previously had some of the least stringent regulations in the country.