Funeral home owners plead guilty after discovering nearly 200 decomposing bodies

Married co-owners of a funeral home in Colorado where about 200 decomposing bodies were found guilty on Friday of desecration of corpses.

John and Carey Holford operated Return to Nature Funeral Home, which operated in the Colorado Springs area and Penrose, Colorado.

The shocking discovery was made in Penrose in October 2023 after the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office responded to residents’ reports of a foul odor coming from the property. Some of the bodies found died as early as 2019, officials said.

The two pleaded guilty to 191 counts of abuse of a corpse, said 4th Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen, whose office prosecuted the case. The tallies include two cases where the wrong bodies were buried.

The judge accepted their pleas during a hearing Friday, although he has not yet accepted a plea agreement and will defer a decision on the matter until sentencing next year, Allen said.

Carey Hallford faces 15 to 20 years in prison, and John Hallford faces 20 years, the district attorney said.

Their sentencing is scheduled for April 18, 2025.

“Obviously this case has been a huge emotional struggle for all the families here,” Allen said outside the El Paso County Courthouse on Friday. “The impact on these family members has been enormous.”

He acknowledged that the victims will “probably never recover” from the breach of trust, but that his office was honored to “get justice for them.”

After the bodies were discovered, investigators uncovered a scheme in which the couple defrauded clients who believed their loved ones would be buried or cremated, according to court documents.

The couple previously admitted in the federal case that they accepted payment for services but never performed them, according to court documents, in some cases providing dry concrete mix in bins instead of cremans.

The couple admitted to accepting more than $130,000 from victims for cremation or funeral services they never provided for more than four years, court documents show. They also admitted to conspiring to defraud the U.S. Small Business Administration of more than $800,000 in COVID-19 relief funds, according to court documents.

Both pleaded guilty last month in a federal case to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. They each face up to 20 years in federal prison, prosecutors said.

Allen said it was possible that the state prison sentence would run concurrently with the federal sentence.

Carey Holford’s bond was revoked during a hearing Friday and she was remanded in custody. Her lawyer declined to comment to ABC News.

John Hallford was already in custody. His interests are represented by the prosecutor’s office, which does not comment on cases.