Former funeral home owner sentenced to 18 years in prison after giving families fake ashes

DENVER - A former Colorado funeral home owner who helped her ex-husband hide nearly 200 decomposing bodies in a building for years and gave families fake ashes was sentenced Monday to 18 years in prison.

Carie Hallford had faced up to a maximum of 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. 

Former funeral home owner sentenced to prison

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She and her ex-husband Jon Hallford took $130,000 from families for funeral services, including cremations, often giving them urns full of concrete mix instead. In two cases, investigators found the wrong body was buried.

Hallford asked for leniency, saying she became another person because of abuse and manipulation during her marriage to her ex-husband and operating Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs. She apologized to U.S. District Judge Nina Y. Wang and the victims for her actions.

What they're saying:

"I was always trying to please a person who was impossible to please," she said.

Federal sentencing guidelines recommended prison time of up to eight years since Carie Hallford didn’t have a criminal history. But lawyers for the government asked Wang to sentence her to 15 years, the most they could ask for under her plea agreement, in part for taking advantage of grieving people following one of the largest discoveries of decaying bodies at a funeral home in the U.S.

Wang said she read about 4,000 text messages between the Hallfords in which she said her ex-husband had berated and belittled her, and she responded by trying to placate him. But Wang said Hallford’s treatment did not excuse her deceit of the funeral home’s grieving customers.

What's next:

Carie Hallford is also facing 25 to 35 years in prison when she is sentenced in state court on related charges next month.

Jon Hallford was sentenced to 20 years in the federal case and 40 years in the state case.

Who is Carie Hallford?

The backstory:

Hallford and her former husband owned the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs. From 2019 until 2023, the Hallfords stored 189 bodies in a building in the small town of Penrose. Investigators discovered the rotting bodies after reports of a foul odor coming from the building. They believe the Hallfords gave families dry concrete that resembled ashes.

RELATED: Funeral home owner gets 40 years in prison for abusing corpses: 'Monster'

During the years they were stashing bodies, the Hallfords spent lavishly, all while missing tax payments, getting evicted from one of their properties and being sued for unpaid bills, according to court documents. That included purchasing a GMC Yukon and an Infiniti worth over $120,000 combined, along with $31,000 in cryptocurrency, pricey goods from stores like Gucci and Tiffany & Co. and laser body sculpting.

Both pleaded guilty in December to nearly 200 counts of corpse abuse under an agreement with prosecutors. The Hallfords also pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges after prosecutors said they cheated the government out of nearly $900,000 in pandemic-era small business aid.