A former Colorado funeral home owner who helped her ex-husband hide nearly 200 decomposing bodies in a building is asking for leniency when she is sentenced Monday, saying she was a “scared and desperate mother” who was manipulated to keep the family business operating.
Carie Hallford, 48, faces up to 20 years in prison for taking over $130,000 from families for funeral services, including cremations, and often giving them urns full of concrete mix instead. In two cases, investigators found the wrong body was buried. In August, she pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and admitted that she and her ex-husband Jon Hallford cheated customers and also defrauded the federal government out of nearly $900,000 in pandemic small business aid.
Minor point, but most people never open an urn unless it’s been damaged and the remains need transferring. It’d be simple enough to pour in a different powder and adjust volume to match the expected weight. Even if someone did happen to open the urn, they might not notice by eye that the material was wrong.
We opened an urn because we needed to scatter some of the ashes in a symbolic location as requested in the deceased’s will. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have. The other provision of the will was great: “In lieu of a memorial service, have a nice seafood dinner. I’ll pay.” And that’s what we did.