Carie Hallford, a former Colorado funeral home owner, is asking a federal judge for leniency as she faces sentencing for her role in a truly awful scheme that involved hiding nearly 200 decomposing bodies and giving families fake ashes. Hallford, 48, claims she was a “scared and desperate mother” who was manipulated into keeping the family business afloat.
She is looking at up to 20 years in prison for taking over $130,000 from grieving families for funeral services, including cremations, and often handed them urns filled with concrete mix instead of their loved ones’ remains. In a couple of cases, investigators even found that the wrong body had been buried.
