COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — In October, law enforcement found 190 bodies inside the Return to Nature funeral home's office in Penrose. They weren't supposed to be there. Families hired the funeral home to cremate or bury the bodies.
The coroner has identified 170 of the 190 bodies. For people who have not found out if their loved one was inside, the math isn't in their favor to get answers.
Heather DeWolf is one of the people waiting.
"He was very funny," DeWolf said about her oldest son Zach.
Zach died on July 5, 2020, from an accidental overdose. He was 33.
"You get passed something like that. You don't get over it," she said.
DeWolf trusted Return to Nature funeral home to cremate Zach. She was one of the more than 1,000 people who had used Return to Nature since 2017, prosecutors say.
"I don't know what they did with him. I don't know if the ashes that I have belong to him, if they belong to somebody else, or if they're not human ashes at all," she said.
Like hundreds of families, DeWolf is wondering if Zach was inside the Penrose office. If he wasn't, she wonders what actually happened to his body.
"There's so much sorrow. Just a deep, deep sorrow that is just always just beneath the surface," she said.
After law enforcement made the discovery last fall, they arrested the funeral home owners Jon and Carrie Hallford. Prosecutors said they falsified death certificates and pocketed people's money, instead of cremating or burying their loved ones.
"It's sickening to me to think that I could never know what happened to my son," DeWolf said.
When Jon Hallford appeared in court last week, DeWolf tried to get answers.
DeWolf said she wanted Jon Hallford to feel her sorrow.
"I see a mom who has lost a child and hasn't gotten him back, doesn't know where he is, and that wants him back," she said.
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