Colorado funeral director who acknowledged abusing 191 corpses withdraws guilty plea

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A Colorado funeral home owner who acknowledged abusing 191 corpses withdrew his guilty plea Friday and will go to trial, after a judge rejected a plea agreement in a rare decision.

Family members of those whose bodies were found piled up and decomposing in a building in Penrose, Colorado, want a longer state prison sentence than the 20 years in the plea agreement.

Jon Hallford and his wife, Carie, for years ran a fraudulent scheme from their Return to Nature Funeral Home while maintaining a lavish lifestyle, according to authorities. Prosecutors say they took money from customers for cremations, only to stash the bodies and give the families dry concrete resembling ashes.

Jon Hallford has already been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in a separate fraud case.

The rejection the plea agreement in the corpse abuse case followed anguished testimony during a hearing last month. A jury trial for Jon Hallford was set for Feb. 9 and is expected to last a month or longer.

The plea agreement said Hallford’s state sentence was to run concurrently with a 20-year federal sentence, meaning he could have been freed many years earlier than if the sentences had run consecutively. State District Judge Eric Bentley said he had never rejected a plea agreement in his nine years on the bench and called it an “extreme action by the court.”

A conviction for abuse of a corpse is the least serious type of felony under the law, with a possible sentence ranging from probation to a maximum of up to 18 months in prison on each count.

Carie Hallford was accused of the same crimes as her husband and pleaded guilty. She's awaiting sentencing.

Colorado has struggled to effectively oversee funeral homes and, for many years, had some of the weakest regulations in the nation.

It’s had a slew of abuse cases, including 24 decomposing corpses discovered last month at a funeral home in Pueblo owned by the county coroner and his brother.

Investigators in the Pueblo case said this week that they had identified four of the bodies and further identifications could take a significant amount of time. No charges have been filed.