Charles Langston:These families trusted a funeral home. Their loved ones were left to rot, authorities say.

COLORADO SPRINGS - When Marella Canfield-Jones died in October 2019,Charles Langston her grief-stricken parents turned to a locally owned funeral home that promised all-natural cremations and a heart-warming touch: They'd plant a tree in her memory.

A few weeks later, her father collected a small cardboard box from Return to Nature Funeral Home and brought Marella, who died at 38, home one last time. He and his wife placed her cremated remains in a hand-blown glass globe, illuminated letters spelling out "Love." They grieved and began healing. 

Until the FBI called, almost exactly four years later.

Stunned, Gary and Sheila Canfield-Jones met with an agent who delivered horrifying news: Instead of being cremated, Marella's body had been left to rot at the funeral home, surrounded by nearly 200 other bodies stacked on tables and the floor.

And the glass globe watching over her son likely contained cement dust — or another person's remains.

"It's the thing nightmares are made of," Sheila Canfield-Jones said.

Federal and state authorities are say the owners of Return to Nature failed to cremate or bury at least 190 bodies they were paid to handle by families across the country. The funeral home's owners, Jon and Carie Hallford, are in custody and charged with hundreds of felonies, including fleeing to Oklahoma to avoid prosecution.

The Hallfords are accused of failing to cremate bodies dating back to at least 2019. They are charged with abusing corpses, theft, money laundering and forgery. Many families that hired Return to Nature are also suing the Hallfords, including the Canfield-Jones.

Authorities began investigating the funeral home in early October after neighbors reported the putrid smell of decaying bodies, which investigators say Jon Hallford falsely attributed to his taxidermy hobby. The EPA has concluded the building itself is too full of "biohazard" to ever be reused and is preparing to raze it in January.

"To think that her body was laying there for four years is devastating," Sheila Canfield-Jones said. "To think the bodies of our loved ones had become biohazards."

What's in the urn from Return to Nature Funeral Home? This family isn't sure.

Kelly Bennett's aunt died from cancer in 2019, and Bennett, who lives on the East Coast, found Return to Nature online.

Her aunt, a longtime special education teacher in the Colorado Springs area, wanted to be cremated, and Return to Nature had good reviews and reasonable prices.

"They looked like ... a good business," Bennett said. "They had good reviews and so we called them when she passed away."

Janet McGowan was 63 when she died, and Bennett was her aunt's executor.

She called Return to Nature. Jon Hallford and another man came to her aunt's house to collect her body.

A few weeks later, Bennett picked up an urn she was told contained McGowan's remains, and her family continued their grieving and healing process. They didn't think again about the funeral home.

"We went on with our lives, with healing. It was a really traumatic summer to lose her," Bennett said.

But a few weeks ago, Bennett's mom saw headlines about the decaying bodies, and they checked their paperwork, hearts breaking. They are still waiting to hear if McGowen was properly cremated or if her body was among those stacked inside the funeral home.

"At this point, we don't know if we even have my aunt," she said. "We don't know if we have cement. We could have someone else, for all we know."

Colorado only loosely regulates funeral homes, so there's little formal tracking of what happened to the bodies. Authorities have already identified some of the bodies via fingerprints and dental records, but others may require DNA comparisons.

Because cremation typically destroys DNA, it's almost impossible to tell whose ashes are whose, although some families said in court filings they were given cement dust, not human remains.

Bennett said she received no paperwork confirming where and when her aunt's body had been cremated. Officials say the Hallfords contracted with a separate crematorium to handle the cremations that did occur. Investigators are still trying to figure out whose bodies were actually cremated, whose were left stacked at the funeral home in nearby Penrose, Colorado, and exactly what's in the boxes and urns given to families.

"We're in this place of not knowing. You put a Band-Aid on a wound and now we've had to rip it off. We're reliving everything we went through," Bennett said. "I don’t even know at this point if I honored her wishes. I did what I thought was right, I trusted them to do what they said they were going to do. But I don't even know anymore."

Civil suit against funeral home owners, in addition to criminal charges

Some of the families that hired Return to Nature are now suing the Hallfords in what they hope becomes a class-action lawsuit. The lead plaintiff, Richard Law, said he paid for his father Roger's cremation in November 2020 and received a small box of what he was told were his father's ashes.

A longtime local resident, Roger Law had played professional baseball, fought as a U.S. Marine in Okinawa and opened a small chain of shoe stores.

"The Hallfords conduct is so outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency," Law said in his lawsuit. "It is utterly intolerable in a civilized community."

Gov. Jared Polis issued a disaster declaration to help speed the investigation and cleanup, and thanked prosecutors for their work: "I know this will not bring peace to the families impacted, but we hope the individuals responsible are held fully accountable in a court of law," he said in a Nov. 8 statement.

As the criminal and civil cases against the Hallfords progress, stunned family members are holding new memorials for their loved ones, as they get back cremated remains from authorities.

The Canfield-Jones's recently got their daughter's ashes back. Now they've refilled the hand-blown glass globe they bought four years ago. The light still spells out "Love," and now they're pushing state lawmakers to tighten funeral-home regulations.

They haven't yet worked out the details for a new memorial service, but they're just glad to know she's back with them.

"It was like she was coming home," Sheila Canfield-Jones said.