FREMONT COUNTY, Colo. — The 4th Judicial District Attorney's Office has reportedly offered plea deals to southern Colorado funeral home owners accused of mishandling hundreds of remains, according to an email to impacted families obtained by Denver7.
Jon and Carie Hallford, the owners of the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, are accused of improperly storing 191 bodies since at least early October 2023 after reports of a horrific odor coming from the building along Highway 115 in Fremont County were first made public. The Hallfords were arrested in connection with the discovery in Oklahoma around a month later.
The earliest date of death found within the funeral home was Sep. 15, 2019, according to testimony from a preliminary hearing. The most recent date of death was Aug. 22, 2023.
The couple also faces 13 federal counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
According to the email, under the offered plea deal, Jon Hallford would plead guilty to 191 counts of abuse of a corpse, a Class 6 felony. He would then serve 20 years in the Department of Corrections concurrent to — or at the same time as — the federal sentence he receives.
Carie Hallford, under the offered plea deal, would plead guilty to 191 counts of abuse of a corpse, a Class 6 felony, according to the email. She would then serve 15 to 20 years in the Department of Corrections concurrent to the federal sentence she receives.
The email states the offers will expire on October 4 — exactly one year since the remains were discovered by authorities.
The Hallfords are expected in court at 8:30 a.m. on July 11. The DA's office anticipates that the couple will plead not guilty, according to the email, and the case will be scheduled for a jury trial. However, the Hallfords could potentially accept the plea deal at the court date, the email states.
Tanya Wilson's mother, Yong Anderson, was identified as one of the bodies found within the Fremont County funeral home.
“I was actually told by the victim advocate that we would be, the family members, would be notified if there were any plea deals on the horizon, basically. So I thought that we would be told ahead of time before it was actually extended. So to hear that it was actually offered to them both was a bit surprising to say the least. Disheartening, as well," Wilson said. “I feel like the plea deal that was offered does hold them accountable to some extent, but I also feel that, I think a lot of the family members, myself included, were looking for a more decisive form of justice that was more reflective of just the gravity of the violations and the pain that they have caused the families. And it's almost as if they're just giving them a way out.”
Wilson lives in Georgia and was hoping to attend the trial. She wants to deliver a victim impact statement in person but does not know if she can attend the arraignment on July 11.
“I wrote a victim impact statement to send to the DA's office, and it was probably one of the hardest things I've done," Wilson said, before describing some of the comments from within that statement. “I will never forgive them, never, for destroying our peace.”
Crystina Page used the Penrose funeral home for her son, David. She is angry about the plea offers in the Hallford cases.
“I don't care if they do a minute in jail or not. It doesn't affect me one bit whether they're behind bars. What affects me and what affects the rest of the families is whether or not we get the answers from them, and we will not get the answers if they get to plea out," said Page. “Each of our reactions is going to be extremely different from each other. But I would say that if somebody doesn't want to go through trial, they don't have to attend, right? Those of us who do want to go through trial and want to hear explanations out of these people's mouths, I feel, are entitled to that explanation.”
Heather DeWolf is one of the people who wants answers in this case after using Return to Nature for her son, Zach. DeWolf said her son has not been identified as one of the bodies found inside the funeral home, but she wants to know definitively what happened to his body.
“I am willing to go through that trauma to to get answers," said DeWolf. "I really need to know where my son is.”
