PENROSE, Colo. — The couple who owned and operated a southern Colorado funeral home under investigation for improperly storing more than 100 bodies owed tens of thousands of dollars, court records show.
Jon and Carie Hallford, who have not been charged with a crime, face civil filings from a real estate company alleging they owe $97,000 in rent and a lawsuit from a coffin supply company demanding more than $20,000.
Multiple 9NEWS attempts to reach the Hallfords since news of the investigation broke last Thursday were unsuccessful.
On Monday, authorities set up tents and tarps to block the view of their work as they started to remove improperly stored remains belonging to at least 115 people. Investigators could be seen in hazmat suits and wearing breathing apparatus while apparently awaiting decontamination outside the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose.
"What they were doing here just does not meet the standard that we expect in Colorado," said Colorado Rep. Matt Soper (R-Delta). "Certainly families would be shocked to know that their loved one's body was just lying out decomposing along with 100 other bodies."
On Friday, the Department of Regulatory Agencies ordered a second location of Return to Nature in Colorado Springs to close. The department said Jon Hallford acknowledged he had "a problem" at the Penrose location and claimed he was practicing taxidermy there.
Soper has led the charge to regulate the funeral home industry in Colorado, after the operators of a Montrose funeral home were charged with stealing the bodies of hundreds of his constituents. One of the reforms included making abuse of a corpse a felony. Soper said he believes what the Hallfords are alleged to have allowed would fall under that definition.
"A bad funeral home can have a huge impact on their community," he said.
The FBI is asking families whose loved ones were sent to Return to Nature to fill out a questionnaire, describing any tattoos or scars their loved one had and asking for their dentist's information as part of the work to identify the remains.
Soper believes the legislature needs to add a licensing requirement for funeral home operators, especially after the revelations about Return to Nature.
"Seeing what's happened here in the Fremont County case to me just ignites the fire to move full speed ahead in that direction," he said.
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