Return to Nature co-owner to appear in court for preliminary hearing
Jon Hallford, the Return to Nature co-owner recently released on bail, is expected to appear in court Thursday afternoon for his preliminary hearing.
Hallford most recently appeared in court last month where his attorneys opted to have his preliminary hearing pushed back to February. Jon Hallford’s wife and Return to Nature co-owner, Carie Hallford, completed her preliminary hearing at the end of January where Judge William Moller decided to bind over all charges for trial.
During Carie Hallford’s three-hour long hearing prosecutors reviewed gruesome evidence photos of Return to Nature’s Penrose location, showing the haphazard way in which the Hallford family disposed of bodies in the location, and the horrific conditions of the building itself.
“It looked like something you want to forget but can’t,” FBI Special Agent Andrew Cohen remarked at one point during his testimony at Carie Hallford’s preliminary hearing.
The Hallfords are facing over 200 felony charges stemming from the discovery of 189 improperly stored bodies at a building in Penrose connected to the Return to Nature Funeral Home. The charges include 190 counts of abuse of a corpse, 61 counts of forgery, four counts of theft and money laundering.
According to previous reporting from The Gazette, Jon Hallford posted a $100,000 surety bond to be released from the El Paso County jail on Tuesday, Jan. 30.
Carie Hallford remains in custody at the time of writing on a $100,000 bond.
FILE – This combination of booking photos provided by the Muskogee County, Okla., Sheriff’s Office shows Jon Hallford, left, and Carie Hallford, the owners of Return to Nature Funeral Home. Prosecutors were set to lay out their case Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024, against Jon Hallford, a former co-owner of the Colorado funeral home where nearly 200 bodies, some of them stacked and partially covered, were found last year in a building infested with flies and maggots.