Judge accepts plea deals from Colorado funeral home owners who
acknowledged abusing 191 corpses
[December 23, 2025]
By COLLEEN SLEVIN
DENVER (AP) — A state judge on Monday accepted plea agreements for the
owners of a Colorado funeral home for the abuse of 191 corpses, many of
which languished in a room-temperature building for years, over the
objections of relatives of the victims.
Authorities say Carie and Jon Hallford, who owned and operated Return to
Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs, maintained a lavish lifestyle
and gave fake ashes to some families of the dead over four years.
The latest plea agreements would have Jon Hallford sentenced to between
30 and 50 years and Carie Hallford to between 25 and 35 years. The
sentences would be served at the same time as their prison terms for
related federal charges. Victims’ family members wanted each of them
sentenced to 191 years — which would include one year for each victim.
Some also said the Hallfords shouldn't be able to serve both the state
and federal sentences at the same time.
Jon Hallford is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 6, 2026. Carie
Hallford is set to be sentenced April 24.
A statement by a group of victims’ family members had said they wanted
to have the cases proceed to trial.
“This case is not about convenience or efficiency,” said Crystina Page,
whose son’s body was among those found. “It is about human beings who
were treated as disposable. Accepting a plea agreement sends the message
that this level of abuse is negotiable. We reject that message.”
Kelly Schloesser said her mother, Mary Lou Ehrlich, looked peaceful
after she died in 2022, but her final memories have been haunted after
learning a year later that Ehrlich's body had been left to decompose.
“I apologize to my mother every day for trusting these people,” she told
state District Judge Eric Bentley.
Lawyers for both Hallford urged Bentley to accept the plea agreements,
which will also ban them from working in the funeral home industry.
Carie Hallford’s lawyer, Beau Worthington, noted that she would be
eligible to be sentenced to probation if she was convicted after a
trial.
In a rare decision, Bentley earlier this year rejected previous plea
agreements that called for up to 20 years in prison, with family members
of the deceased saying the proposed punishments were too lenient.
Bentley praised families of the victims for their advocacy in court,
which he said resulted in the sentence ranges being lengthened
dramatically.
“These are really meaningfully changes from where I sit,” he said.
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A hearse and van sit outside the Return to Nature Funeral Home, in
Penrose, Colo., on Oct. 6, 2023. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)
Bentley said he could not legally stack the state sentences on top
of the federal ones because that would amount to punishing the
Hallfords twice for the same conduct.
The Hallfords are accused of dumping bodies and giving families fake
ashes between 2019 and 2023.
Investigators have described finding the bodies in 2023 stored atop
each other in a bug-infested building in Penrose, a small town about
a two-hour drive south of Denver. The scene was horrific, officials
said, with bodies stacked atop each other in various states of decay
— some having been there for four years.
While Jon Hallford was accused of dumping the bodies, authorities
said Carie Hallford was the face of the funeral home.
During a hearing in November, Bentley said he considered the need
for deterrence in rejecting the plea agreement. Colorado, for many
years, had some of the weakest funeral home industry regulations in
the nation, leading to numerous abuse cases involving fake ashes,
fraud, and even the illegal selling of body parts.
In August, authorities announced that during their first inspection
of a funeral home owned by the county coroner in Pueblo, Colorado,
they found 24 decomposing corpses behind a hidden door.
That investigation is pending as authorities have reported slow
progress in identifying corpses that, in some cases, have languished
for more than a decade.
The Return to Nature case has helped trigger reforms, including
routine inspections.
The Hallfords also have admitted in federal court to defrauding the
U.S. Small Business Administration of nearly $900,000 in
pandemic-era aid and taking payments from customers for cremations
the funeral home never performed.
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