115 BODIES FOUND AT ‘GREEN’ FUNERAL HOME
At least 115 decaying bodies were found at a storage facility for a “green” funeral operator, after neighbors reported abhorrent smells emanating from the location in rural southern Colorado, police said Friday, calling it a “disturbing discovery.”
The owner tried to conceal the improper storage of corpses, claiming he was doing taxidermy at the facility, according to a suspension letter sent to him by state reguproperty, lators that was made public Friday. No one has been arrested or charged.
The Return to Nature Funeral Home facility in the small town of Penrose had been unregistered with the state for 10 months on Wednesday when owner Jon Hallford spoke by phone with a state regulator the day after the smells were reported and police launched an investigation.
Hallford acknowledged that he had a “problem” at the though the Colorado Office of Funeral Home and Crematory Registration document obtained by The Associated Press didn’t explain what Hallford meant.
Text messages and phone calls were not answered at the funeral home, which had no working voicemail.
Officials declined to describe the scene inside the Return to Nature Funeral Home facility. A multi-agency effort to recover and identify the remains was under way.
Some identifications would require taking fingerprints, finding medical or dental records and DNA, Fremont County Coroner Randy Keller said.
The funeral home performed “green” burials without embalming chemicals or metal caskets. Local residents said they smelled foul odors around the building for months but thought little of it, assuming a dead animal or septic system was to blame.