Families of 190 corpses left rotting in funeral home owed US$950M: judge

The Colorado funeral home owners who allegedly stored 190 decaying bodies and sent grieving families fake ashes were ordered by a judge to pay US$950 million to the victims’ relatives in a civil case, the attorney announced Monday.

The judgment is unlikely to be paid out since the owners, Jon and Carie Hallford, have been in financial trouble for years. They also face hundreds of criminal charges in separate state and federal cases, including abuse of a corpse, and allegations they took US$130,000 from families for cremations and burials they never provided.

That leaves the nearly US$1 billion sum largely symbolic of the emotional devastation wreaked on family members who learned the remains of their mothers, fathers or children weren’t in the ashes they ceremonially spread or clutched tight but were instead decaying in a bug-infested building.

“I’m never going to get a dime 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.