23-02-2025
A Pile-Up of Bodies: Inside the Funeral Home of Horrors
Originally appeared on E! Online
When a loved one dies, dealing with the loss itself is hard enough.
Close to 200 families who entrusted their loved ones' remains to the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado found out it could get so much worse.
"I can't find my son because I don't know what they did with him," Heather DeWolf, whose son Zach DeWolf died in 2020, said in Investigation Discovery's The Curious Case Funeral Home of Horrors, which delved into the case of funeral home owners Jon Hallford and Carie Hallford's haunting mismanagement of Return to Nature. "I trusted them to be the people who were responsible for my son's physical presence, for his last moments on this earth. We all trusted them."
As Angelika Stedman, who lost daughter Chanel in 2019, put it in the ID show: 'The cremains I received—is it my daughter or cement?"
While it remains unclear how their endeavor spun so bizarrely out of control, Jon and Carie each pleaded guilty last year to 191 counts apiece of abuse of a corpse. Per the terms of their respective plea deals, according to the Colorado Sun, Jon agreed to a 20-year prison sentence, while Carie is facing 15 to 20 years.
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El Paso District Court Judge Eric Bentley said that, should the plea deals be formally adopted, sentencing will take place on April 18.
E! News reached out to Jon and Carie's respective attorneys but did not hear back. (Jon is represented by a federal public defender, whose office generally does not comment on cases.)
In entering his plea, Jon admitted at a Nov. 22 court hearing that he "knowingly treated the bodies or remains of 190 individuals in a way that would outrage normal family sensibility."
Carie said in court that, while she hadn't been inside the Return to Nature building for a year while conditions deteriorated, she did know what was happening within its walls.
"I knew enough that I knew how bad it was and chose to do nothing about it or prevent it," she said, "and just allowed it to continue."
But what did the Hallfords do that not only triggered a multi-agency investigation, but also prompted new state legislation—signed in May 2024—requiring stricter licensing requirements for funeral directors, morticians, embalmers and cremationists working in Colorado?
And what happened to those 191 bodies?
What Was the Return to Nature Funeral Home?Who Are Jon Hallford and Carie Hallford?What Was Going on Inside the Return to Nature Funeral Home?Were There Signs of Trouble at Return to Nature?What Happened to the Bodies Found at Return to Nature?
Who Are the Families That Sent Their Deceased Loved Ones to Return to Nature for Burial or Cremation?What Happened to the Owners of Return to Nature?Where Are Jon Hallford and Carie Hallford Now?
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