Colorado funeral home director sentenced to 40 years for corpse abuse

Jon Hallford, co-owner of a Colorado funeral home, received a 40-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to corpse abuse involving 189 improperly stored bodies discovered at his Return to Nature facility. The business had operated a scam where grieving families received fake ashes instead of their relatives' actual cremated remains while bodies decomposed in non-refrigerated areas over a four-year period. Family members testified at sentencing, describing Hallford as a "monster" and expressing their trauma over their loved ones' mistreatment.