DENVER — Tom Simpleman and Don Campbell were shocked when they saw news of a former funeral director evicted from his southwest Denver home with cremated remains and a decomposing body found nearby.
Just months before, the same funeral director sold the couple prepaid cremation arrangements.
Denver Police still have a warrant out for Miles Harford, the former owner of Apollo Funeral and Cremation Services in Littleton. He’s wanted on three charges related to the gruesome discovery at his former home.
Denver Police said Harford kept a deceased woman under a sheet inside an inoperable hearse for more than a year and a half and gave her family the cremated remains of someone else.
Simpleman and Campbell said they contacted Harford, a Facebook friend of Campbell’s, to arrange prepaid cremation services so their kids wouldn’t have to take care of it when they passed away.
“We wanted to have everything all set up and nobody would have to do anything when we passed on,” Campbell said.
The couple said Harford came to their home in the summer of 2023. Police said his business, Apollo Funeral and Cremation Services, closed in September 2022. A funeral home license issued by the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies for the same business expired in May of that year, records show.
“He came to our condo and he brought the information to us first… and then later he came back with all the documents,” Simpleman said.
Then, they said, Harford picked up the checks, totaling just under $3,000.
“We were supposed to meet with him another time to plan more, but he always had an excuse not to show up,” Simpleman said.
At a Friday news conference announcing a warrant for Harford’s arrest related to the eviction, Denver Police Commander Matt Clark said an investigation showed Harford had accumulated significant debt with crematoriums around the metro area.
“As a result, these businesses would no longer work with Mr. Harford,” he said.
Harford’s alleged misdeeds come as Colorado considers regulating the funeral home industry in the state for the first time since 1983, when state lawmakers deregulated it.
“We’re one of the only states in the entire country that doesn't have any funeral regulations whatsoever,” said Michael Blackburn, a retired funeral home owner who served as the president of the state’s funeral directors association in 1983.
Blackburn said at the time, the state only allocated $2,000 to inspect funeral homes around the state each year.
“You couldn't cover the Western Slope alone for $2,000, even back in ’83,” he said.
Blackburn said he and other independent funeral home owners lobbied the state for more funding for regulation, arguing to legislators at the time that deregulation would lead to problems in the industry.
“If you do this, you're going to end up as a dumping ground for states that have taken licenses away from funeral homes and funeral directors,” Blackburn recalls telling a legislator at the time.
But, lobbied by larger funeral home companies, Blackburn said, the state chose to deregulate.
Now that lawmakers are considering new licensure procedures for funeral directors, Blackburn still warns that it may take time for bad operators to stop.
“It's going to take a while for that to be weeded out," he said.
Simpleman and Campbell aren’t sure they’ll get their money back from Harford or get the services they paid for. The couple contacted Denver Police.
“We thought we were doing the right thing,” Campbell said. “Now we’ve got to start over.”
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