Funeral director stores corpse

Insolvent man keeps cremated remains of at least 30 people

DENVER — A financially troubled former funeral home owner kept a deceased woman’s body in a hearse for two years at a house where police also found the cremated remains of at least 30 people, authorities said Friday in the latest case to underscore lax oversight of Colorado’s funeral industry.

The grisly discovery occurred Feb. 6 during a court-ordered eviction of a house rented by Miles Harford, the 33-year-old owner of Apollo Funeral and Cremation Services in the Denver suburb of Littleton, police said. It had been closed since September 2022.

“Mr. Harford appears to have experienced financial trouble in his business. At times he was not able to complete cremations to provide remains to families for services,” Denver Police Cmdr. Matt Clark said Friday. He said on occasion, Harford might have provided family members with another person’s ashes instead of the ashes of their loved ones.

Temporary urns — plastic boxes the size of a shoe box — were found in the crawl space of the house while a Denver sheriff ’s deputy oversaw the removal of Harford’s belongings, Clark said. Some of the boxes were empty.

Other urns were found in a moving truck parked outside and still others were in a hearse, where investigators found the woman’s body covered with blankets, Clark said. Harford said she died in August of 2022.

The recovered cremains appear to be associated with individuals who passed away between 2012 and 2021, he said.

Authorities have been in contact with Harford and an arrest warrant was issued for him Friday. He’s believed to be in the Denver area and police were “working to facilitate his arrest,” Clark said, adding that Harford has been cooperative with investigators.

Former customer Crystallyn Nunez said it took months to get the ashes of her grandfather and father back from Harford after they died in 2021.

Repeated phone calls and texts were met with a series of excuses, she said. Harford at one point said he was in a car crash while transporting the remains, then later claimed his mother had gotten into an accident while trying to deliver them, Nunez said.

She got her grandfather’s ashes after a few months and her father’s ashes after nearly a year, but never received necklaces containing their remains that the family had paid for, she said. Nunez said her family already had doubts that they had received the correct remains.

“It’s making our whole family question whether or not everything was done the correct way,” said Nunez.

The discovery is the latest in a string of horrific cases involving funeral home operators in Colorado, which has some of the weakest oversight of the funeral industry in the nation.

The state has no routine inspections of funeral homes or qualification requirements for operators.