A former Colorado funeral home owner who helped her ex-husband hide nearly 200 decomposing bodies in a building was sentenced Monday to 18 years in prison for cheating customers and defrauding the federal government out of nearly $900,000 in pandemic small business aid.
Carie Hallford had faced up to a maximum of 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. She and her ex-husband Jon Hallford took $130,000 from families for funeral services, including cremations, often giving them urns full of concrete mix instead. In two cases, investigators found the wrong body was buried.
Hallford asked for leniency, saying she had became another person because of abuse and manipulation during her marriage to Jon Hallford and operating Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs. She apologized to U.S. District Judge Nina Y. Wang and the victims for her actions.
“I was always trying to please a person who was impossible to please,” she said.
Federal sentencing guidelines recommended prison time of up to eight years since Carie Hallford didn’t have a criminal history. But lawyers for the government asked Wang to sentence her to 15 years, the most they could ask for under her plea agreement, in part for taking advantage of grieving people following one of the largest discoveries of decaying bodies at a funeral home in the U.S.
Wang said she read about 4,000 text messages between the Hallfords in which she said her ex-husband had berated and belittled her, and she responded by trying to placate him. But Wang said Hallford’s treatment did not excuse her deceit of the funeral home’s grieving customers.
Families struggle with guilt, shame and trauma
Those who entrusted their loved ones to the Hallfords have struggled with guilt, shame, nightmares and panic attacks since the bodies were discovered in a building used as a mortuary in Penrose, Colorado, in 2023. They were stacked so high in some places that they blocked doorways. There were bugs and maggots. Buckets had been placed to catch leaking fluids.
Carie Hallford, the public face of the business who met with families and comforted them, did not seem to show any reaction as she sat near her lawyer and victim after victim urged the judge to impose the maximum sentence.
Elizabeth Gannon described experiencing “ongoing trauma” over her choice to trust the Hallfords with both of her parents’ end-of-life arrangements in 2022 and 2023.
“She chose to take our money and our loved ones’ remains knowing exactly what Jon intended to do with the bodies,” Gannon said.
Erin Smelser and her sister Caitlin Castillo said investigators only confirmed about a month ago that the body of their mother, Cindy Smelser, was among those found in the building through DNA testing. After accepting that they might never know what happened to their mother, the sisters had her remains cremated and now plan to scatter the ashes.
“We should never have to stand here now figuring out how to mourn her all over again,” Erin Smelser said.
Lavish spending described as ‘love-bombing’
Prosecutors also pushed for a longer sentence because the former couple, who had offered “green burials” without embalming, lavishly spent a pandemic-era small business loan on vehicles, cryptocurrency, pricey goods from stores like Gucci and Tiffany & Co. and laser body sculpting rather than on their business.
Hallford’s lawyer, Robert Charles Melihercik, said Hallford’s actions were motivated by “fear and severe anxiety.” He said Hallford’s former husband used “classic instruments of domestic violence” to control her, including threatening at times to kill himself and her.
The lawyer who represented Jon Hallford in state court, Adam Steigerwald, declined to comment on the abuse allegations. The lawyer who represented him in federal court, Laura Suelau, did not return a call seeking comment.
Hallford said much of the lavish spending of the government loan money was the result of “love-bombing” as Jon Hallford attempted to apologize to her. She urged her husband to buy a cremator with the loan money, but was too scared to force the issue, Melihercik said in a court filing.
Carie Hallford is also facing 25 to 35 years in prison when she is sentenced in state court on related charges next month.
Jon and Carie Hallford each pleaded guilty in December to nearly 200 counts of corpse abuse in state court. The plea deals require their state and federal sentences to be served at the same time.
Jon Hallford was sentenced to 20 years in the federal case and 40 years in the state case.