On Monday, the relatives of the 189 people whose bodies were found in a Colorado funeral parlor filed a lawsuit against the business, saying that the operators had allowed the bodies to “rot” while sending them “fake ashes.”
About 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Denver, at the Return to Nature Funeral Home, a horrifying discovery was made in early October after complaints of an “abhorrent smell” coming from a facility.
After years of purportedly being burned and distributed as ashes to devastated relatives, law enforcement officials have begun identifying the bones and telling families that their loved ones were among the corpses.
The complaint accuses Return to Nature and its owners, Jon, and Carie Hallford, of purposefully inflicting mental anguish, carelessness, fraud, and breaking a variety of Colorado statutes, among other accusations.
Since the discovery of the rotting carcasses, calls and SMS to the phones given for Return to Nature and their owners have gone unanswered.
Up to this point, no one has been taken into custody.
“In death, these men and women deserved to be treated with respect and dignity. Instead, they were defiled,” Andrew Swan, an attorney who will be representing families, said in a statement.
The Associated Press reported earlier this month that the funeral company appears to have falsified cremation paperwork and may have handed families bogus ashes.
Richard Law, who initiated the class action case on behalf of grieving families, delivered his father’s ashes to Return to Nature in 2020 after Roger Law, a shoe store owner with an offbeat sense of humor and a quiet religion, passed away from COVID-19.
The funeral parlor told the younger Law that they had cremated his father and given him what seemed to be the remains. His father’s body was found in the structure three years later.
“For nearly three years, Return to Nature Funeral Home and the Hallfords allowed my father to rot along with nearly 200 others,” he said.
This is completely harrowing, and I hope those who are involved are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
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