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A judge has accepted guilty pleas for the owners of colorado Funeral homes for mistreatment of 191 bodies, many of which remained in the room-temperature building for years.
Authorities say Carey and John Halford, who operated the Colorado Springs funeral home, maintained a lavish lifestyle and gave fake ashes to some families of the dead.
The husband and wife owned and operated Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs. John Holford will be sentenced on February 6, 2026. Carrie Holford will be sentenced on April 24.
The latest plea agreements will see John Holford sentenced to between 30 and 50 years and Carrie Holford between 25 and 35 years. Family members of the victims want each of them to be sentenced to 191 years – which would include one year for each victim.
A group of family members of the victims said in a statement that they wanted the cases to proceed to trial.
“This case is not about convenience or efficiency,” said Christina Page, whose son’s body was one of those found at the funeral home. “This is about human beings who were treated as disposable. Accepting a plea agreement sends the message that this level of abuse can be compromised. We reject that message.”
The judge earlier this year rejected previous plea agreements that had called for up to 20 years in prison, with family members of the deceased saying the proposed sentences were too low.
Halford is accused of dumping bodies and giving fake ashes to families between 2019 and 2023. Last year, both pleaded guilty to 191 counts of abuse of dead bodies. John Halford’s plea was rejected in August, after which he withdrew his guilty plea. Carrie Holford withdrew her guilty plea in early November after it was rejected in a rare ruling by state District Judge Eric Bentley.
Investigators described finding bodies piled on top of each other in a bug-infested building in 2023 in Penrose, a small town about a two-hour drive to the south. denverThe scene was gruesome, officials said, with various decomposed bodies piled on top of each other – some had been lying there for four years,
While John Holford was accused of dumping the bodies, authorities said Carrie Holford 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 regulation of the funeral home industry in the country, leading to numerous cases of abuse involving fake ashes, fraud, and even the illegal sale of body parts.
In August, officials 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 the bodies, which, in some cases, have been lying there for more than a decade.
The Return to Nature case has helped trigger reforms, including regular inspections.
The Halfords also admitted in federal court that they defrauded the U.S. Small Business Administration of nearly $900,000 in pandemic-era aid and collected payments from customers for cremations that the funeral home never performed.