PENROSE, Colo. — Families are still waiting for closure to find out if their loved ones' remains are some of the nearly 200 left in a funeral home in Southern Colorado. In October, the El Paso County Coroner told our partners in Colorado Springs that 150 of the 189 bodies found inside the Penrose funeral home were identified.
The FBI said they're still working to identify the rest. For Randy Adolf, that answer is simply not good enough.
"Well, like everyone you just want to throw up. You just can't believe something like that can be true," he said via Zoom from his home in Maui. "Mom's death would have been very near when they found all of this out."
Adolf's mom, Barbara Charles, died last May at 92 years old. He said he hired Return to Nature for her cremation. He flew back to his home in Maui with what he thought was a box of her ashes. Then he heard about the bodies.
"I’d like to know where my mom’s body is. What’s in this container that they gave to me, they said it's her ashes? Which is the most upsetting part."
Adolf said he reached out to the Fremont County Coroner's Office in hopes of finding his mom as well as a few other agencies. He said he hasn't heard back.
"It's terrible. The agencies in charge and people that should be going out of their way to let families know what's going on and keep us apprised haven't done that," he said.
In an email to 9NEWS on Friday, the FBI said they're still working on ID's and wouldn't say how many have yet to be identified. They encouraged people to fill out a form online to figure out what to do next. The questionnaire asks about business done with Return to Nature and things like what their loved one was wearing when they died, and if they were buried or cremated with anything.
Questions, Adolf hopes, answer a major one.
"I'd like to know where mom is," he said. "Without a doubt, that's the hardest part of all this."
9NEWS reached out to the coroner's office and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to see if they could state how many bodies have been identified. The Fremont County Coroner's Office never replied, and CBI cited a gag order. The FBI does stress anyone who had dealings with Return to Nature since 2019 need to fill out the questionnaire online.
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