Denver (AP) – It’s two years About 200 decay bodies A fetus in rural colloido was discovered in room temperature construction. On Friday, the owner of a funeral house is sentenced in the state court. Calculation of misuse of 191 corpse,
John Holford and his wife, Carrie, run a sick racket for four years from his return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs: assure people Dry concrete ash,
John Holford is already Went to jail After being convicted for allegations of federal fraud. The hearing of Friday sentence will focus on the state’s allegations related to the misconduct of the dead bodies. Family members will have a chance to describe the pain of learning to a loved one who gradually decay among the piles of others.
“It is the heart of the case for me. It is the worst part of the crime,” Tanya Wilson said, who is traveling from Georgia to speak in punishment. He hired the funeral house of funeral to argue his mother and later did not look at the family spread in Hawaii from his mother’s body, which was being ruined in the building in Penroes, 35 miles from Colorado Springs.
A petition agreement asked Hallford to receive a 20 -year jail sentence for allegations of misuse of the corpse.
Wilson said he and some other families want Judge Eric Bentley to reject the agreement as Holford’s state sentence is expected to run concurrently with his 20 -year federal sentence, which means that if the sentences run continuously, it can be freed many years ago.
“Its scale is shocking. Why does the state believe that they deserve a plea?” Wilson asked. “Accountability is required.”
If the judge dismisses the agreement, Holford will not be punished immediately and the case is probably the first step towards a criminal case, Kate Singh said that the fourth judicial district is likely to go to a criminal case with the District Attorney Office.
Colorado has struggled to effectively maintain the funeral homes and there were some for many years Weakened rules In the nation. It was a group of cases of misuse with an estimate 20 decomposing dead bodies for this week A funeral in the publo at home.
Carrie Holford is accused of her husband’s similar crimes and also argued guilty. His sentence has not been determined on allegations of misuse of the corpse.
The couple were accused of decaying 189 bodies. In two other examples, wrong bodies were buried. Singh said that four remains are yet to be identified.
Holford received a license for his funeral house in 2017, and officials said the bodies started by 2019. In the states of decay for many years, some disintegrated beyond recognition, some unwanted or bodies on the floor in inches of fluid.
As the fierce number increased, John and Carrie Holford were also cheating the federal government from about $ 900,000 in the Kovid -19 ERA assistance.
With the money of families and federal government, Holford bought a price of $ $ $ 120,000 from stores like Tiffany & Company, a GMC Yucon and Infinity, a price of $ 31,000 in laser body sculpting and cryptocurrency.
In 2023, the building smelled a put and the police changed. The investigators tilted the building, donated the Hazmat suit and pulled out the body to remove the body. Hallford and his wife were arrested in Oklahoma, where John Holford had a family, more than a month later.
Families learned that in moments of grief – spreading ashes of a mother in Hawaii or raising a son’s urn in a rocking chair – a deception was fired. It was as if those signposts of the mourning process were torn down, exposing months and years of working through the deaths of their loved ones.
Some had bad dreams that their relatives would look like a decayed body. Others feared that the souls of their family members were stuck, unable to be free.
A mother, Christina page, demanded her son to be seen as a body, which was saved from return to nature’s building, cremated for real. Wilson, who thought he had already spread to his mother’s ashes in Hawaii, said that the family cremated his mother’s remains after being recovered by the officials. She is waiting to conclude the court cases before returning to air to spread the ash again.
Hallford convicted a conspiracy to commit wire fraud in the federal case. John Holford has appealed for his federal jail sentence. Carrie Holford faces a December sentence in that case.
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Brown reported from Billings, Montana.
Jessie Bedain, Matthew Brown and Coline Sleewin, Associated Press