Judge delays case against Colorado funeral home owners accused of 190 counts of corpse abuse

By JESSE BEDAYN (Related Press/Report for America)

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A Colorado decide on Thursday granted a protection request to delay the prison case in opposition to two Colorado funeral residence operators accused of letting practically 200 corpses decay, in some circumstances for years, angering some households of the deceased who’re looking forward to the case to be resolved.

Jon and Carie Hallford at the moment are scheduled to enter pleas to the quite a few felony prices they face in June, with a tentative trial date in October. That may be a 12 months after the corpses have been found in a decrepit, bug-infested constructing.

Prosecutors didn’t object to the protection request for a delay, which attorneys for the couple stated was needed to arrange their case.

“Each single time that is postponed or that is dragged out, it simply reopens that entire wound over again,” stated Heather DeWolf after the listening to. She wore a shirt with a photograph of her son, Zach DeWolf, who died aged 33 in 2020. His stays have been dealt with by the Hallford’s funeral residence however haven’t but been recognized among the many our bodies that have been discovered.

Earlier than a earlier listening to, DeWolf confronted Jon Hallford exterior the courtroom room, demanding: “What have you ever achieved with my son? The place is my son?”

DeWolf stated Thursday that she’s dwelling by means of “the deepest sorrow that I’ve ever skilled in my life.”

The Hallfords have been arrested in Oklahoma in November and accused of corpse abuse, falsifying dying certificates and sending faux ashes to households.

They operated Return to Nature Funeral Dwelling in Colorado Springs and a storage facility within the small Rocky Mountain city of Penrose the place the our bodies have been discovered. Additionally they face prices of cash laundering, and prosecutors say they spent funds obtained from households of the deceased on cryptocurrency, a $1,500 dinner in Las Vegas and two autos with a mixed value over $120,000.

The disturbing particulars of the case left households greedy for solutions, their grieving processes shattered after the deaths of sons, grandmothers and oldsters. Some have stated they’ll’t shake ideas of what their decaying family’ our bodies should have appeared like.

It’s certainly one of a number of prison circumstances to rock Colorado’s funeral trade. One funeral residence was accused of promoting physique elements between 2010 and 2018, and final month, the proprietor of one other funeral enterprise in Denver was arrested after authorities say he left a girl’s physique behind a hearse for over a 12 months and hoarded cremated stays at his residence.

The horror tales observe years of inaction by state lawmakers to carry Colorado’s lax funeral residence laws as much as par with the remainder of the nation. The state doesn’t conduct routine inspections of funeral houses and has no instructional necessities for funeral residence administrators; They don’t want a highschool diploma, not to mention a level in mortuary science, or to cross an examination.

Colorado lawmakers have proposed payments to overtake funeral residence oversight. They’d require routine inspections and hefty licensing necessities for funeral residence administrators and different trade roles.

Considerations over the mishandling of our bodies on the Hallfords’ funeral residence have been raised by a county coroner greater than three years earlier than the 190 our bodies have been found.

Prosecutors beforehand stated Jon Hallford expressed issues about getting caught way back to 2020 and recommended eliminating the our bodies by dumping them in an enormous gap, then treating them with lye or setting them on fireplace.