DENVER—The Colorado funeral parlor owners who allegedly hid 190 decaying bodies and delivered bereaved families false ashes were ordered by a judge to pay $950 million to the victim’s family in a civil action, the attorney revealed Monday. Families Whose Loved Ones Were Left Decaying in Colorado Funeral Home News in USA
The judgment is unlikely to be paid out as the owners, Jon and Carie Hallford, have been in financial problems for years. They now face hundreds of criminal counts in separate state and federal cases, including misuse of a body, and allegations they stole $130,000 from families for cremations and burials they never supplied. Families Whose Loved Ones Were Left Decaying in Colorado Funeral Home News in USA
That left the roughly $1 billion payment mostly symbolic of the emotional anguish wreaked on family members who realized the remains of their moms, fathers, or children weren’t among the ashes they ceremonially
I’m never going to get a dollar from them, so, I don’t know, it’s a little frustrating,” said Crystina Page, who had hired the funeral home, Return to Nature, to cremate her son’s remains in 2019. Families Whose Loved Ones Were Left Decaying in Colorado Funeral Home News in USA
She took the urn she thought housed his ashes throughout the country until the news arrived in 2023 that his remains had been recognized in the Return to Nature facility, four years after his death.
Dozens of family members have gotten similar news as the 190 remains have been identified, shattering their grief processes. Many are still picking up the pieces, haunted by nightmares of what their decomposing family member may have looked like, or overwhelmed by remorse that they had let a loved one down.
If nothing else,” Page said, this judgment “will bring more understanding to the case.”
“I’m hoping it’ll make people go, ‘Oh, wow, this isn’t just about ashes,’” she said, adding that far more individuals are harmed than simply those listed in the case.
