By JESSE BEDAYN, Associated Press

A Colorado funeral home owner accused of stashing nearly 190 decaying bodies in a bug-infested building took a plea deal last year for abusing corpses, but on Monday, family members of the deceased will argue that the deal’s 15- to 20-year sentence isn’t enough.

Carie Hallford and her husband, Jon Hallford , owned Return to Nature Funeral Home and are accused of piling the bodies in the building in a rural town between 2019 and 2023, giving families fake ashes and defrauding the federal government out of nearly $900,000 .

Families, who believed they had honored their loved ones’ wishes with a cremation, learned that their son’s, husband’s or mother’s remains weren’t in the urn or the ashes they ceremonially spread, but instead languishing with

See Full Page