40 years in prison<\/a>. Carie Hallford, was to be sentenced in April. Attorneys for Jon and Carie Hallford did not respond to an AP request for comment.<\/p>\nJohnson, 45, who’s suffered panic attacks since the FBI called, promised himself that he would speak at Hallford’s sentencing.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the judge passes out how long you\u2019re going to jail, and you walk away in cuffs,\u201d he said, \u201cyou\u2019re gonna hear me.\u201d<\/p>\n
‘She lied’<\/p>\n
Jon and Carie Hallford were a husband-and-wife team who advertised “green burials” without embalming as well as cremation at their Return to Nature funeral home in Colorado Springs.<\/p>\n
She would greet grieving families, guiding them through their loved ones’ final journey. He was less seen.<\/p>\n
Johnson called the funeral home in early February 2023, the week his mother died. Carie Hallford assured him she would take good care of his mother, Johnson said.<\/p>\n
Days later, she handed Johnson a blue box containing a zip-tied plastic bag with grey powder, saying those were his mother’s ashes.<\/p>\n
“She lied to me over the phone. She lied to me through email. She lied to me in person,” Johnson told the AP.<\/p>\n
The following day, the box lay surrounded by flowers and photos of Ellen Marie Shriver-Lopes at a memorial service at a Holiday Inn in Colorado Springs.<\/p>\n
Johnson sprinkled rose petals over it as a preacher said: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”<\/p>\n
Caught on video<\/p>\n
On September 9, 2023, surveillance footage showed a man appearing to be Jon Hallford walk inside a building owned by Return to Nature in the town of Penrose, outside Colorado Springs, according to an arrest affidavit.<\/p>\n
Camera footage inside showed a body lying on a gurney wearing a diaper and hospital socks. The man flipped it onto the floor.<\/p>\n
Then he “appeared to wipe the remaining decomposition from the gurney onto other bodies in the room”, before wheeling what appeared to be two more bodies into the building, the affidavit said.<\/p>\n
In a text to his wife, Hallford said, “while I was making the transfer, I got people juice on me”, according to court testimony.<\/p>\n
The neighbourhood mum<\/p>\n
![\"Photographs](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/photographs-of-ellen-marie-shriver-lopes-whose-body-was-one-QBJ6IDE6RJH2BCGKHSMMWGABVM.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Photographs of Ellen Marie Shriver-Lopes, whose body was one of 189 left to decay in the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, Colorado. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n
Johnson grew up with his mother in an affordable-housing complex in Colorado Springs, where she knew everyone.<\/p>\n
Johnson’s father wasn’t around much; at 5 years old, Johnson remembers seeing him punch his mum, sending her careening into a table, then onto a guitar, breaking it.<\/p>\n
It was Lopes who taught Johnson to shave and hollered from the bleachers at his football games.<\/p>\n
Neighbourhood kids called her “mum”, some sleeping on the couch when they needed a place to stay and a warm meal. She would chat with Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses because she didn\u2019t want to be rude. With a life spent in social work, Lopes would say: “If you have the ability and you have the voice to help: Help.”<\/p>\n
On Friday, Johnson held a pink Mother’s Day card he had written in high school and discovered among her things. “I think I wrote ‘I love you’ in there 20 times,” he said, “because how many times did I miss saying it?”<\/p>\n
“It makes me feel so good that she kept this.”<\/p>\n
Johnson said he spoke with his mum nearly every day. After diabetes left her bedridden and blind at age 65, she’d ask Johnson to describe what her grandchildren looked like over the phone.<\/p>\n
It was Super Bowl Sunday in 2023 when her heart stopped.<\/p>\n
Johnson, who had flown in from Hawaii to be at her bedside, clutched her warm hand and held it until it was cold.<\/p>\n
A gruesome discovery<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/a-hearse-and-van-sit-outside-the-return-to-nature-funeral-ho-4ZU6DPHU4VEA5GQWU4Q7UHIRC4.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
A hearse and van sit outside the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, Colorado. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n
Detective Sergeant Michael Jolliffe and Laura Allen, the county\u2019s deputy coroner, stood outside the Penrose building on October 3, 2023, according to the 50-page arrest affidavit.<\/p>\n
A sign on the door read “Return to Nature Funeral Home” and listed a phone number. When Jolliffe called it, it was disconnected. Cracked concrete and yellow stalks of grass encircled the building. At back was a shabby hearse with expired registration. A window air conditioner hummed.<\/p>\n
Someone had told Jolliffe of a rank smell coming from the building the day before, the affidavit said.<\/p>\n
One neighbour told an AP reporter they thought it came from a septic tank; another said her daughter’s dog always headed to the building whenever it got off-leash.<\/p>\n
Reminiscent of rancid manure or rotting fish, it struck anyone downwind of the building.<\/p>\n
Jolliffe and Allen spotted a dark stain under the door and on the building\u2019s stucco exterior. They thought it looked like fluids they had seen during investigations with decaying bodies, the affidavit said.<\/p>\n
But the building\u2019s windows were covered and they couldn\u2019t see inside.<\/p>\n
Allen contacted the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies that oversees funeral homes, which got in touch with Jon Hallford. Hallford agreed to show an inspector inside the next afternoon.<\/p>\n
Inspector Joseph Berry arrived, but Hallford didn\u2019t show.<\/p>\n
Berry found a small opening in one of the window coverings, the affidavit said. Peering through, he saw white plastic bags that looked like body bags on the floor.<\/p>\n
A judge issued a search warrant.<\/p>\n
Bodies stacked high<\/p>\n
Donning protective suits, gloves, boots and respirators, investigators entered the 232sqm building on October 5, 2023, according to the affidavit.<\/p>\n
Inside, they found a large bone grinder and next to it a bag of Quikrete that investigators suspected was used to mimic ashes. Bodies were stacked in nearly a dozen rooms, including the bathroom, sometimes so high they blocked doorways, the affidavit said.<\/p>\n
There were 189.<\/p>\n
Some had decayed for years, others several months, according to the affidavit. Many were in body bags, some wrapped in sheets and duct tape. Others were half-exposed, on gurneys or in plastic totes, or lay with no covering, it said.<\/p>\n
Investigators believed the Hallfords were experimenting with water cremation, which can dissolve a body in several hours, the document said. There were swarms of bugs and maggots.<\/p>\n
Body bags were filled with fluid, according to the affidavit. Some had ripped. Five-gallon buckets had been placed to catch the leaks. Removal teams “trudged through layers of human decomposition on the floor”, it said.<\/p>\n
Investigators identified bodies using fingerprints, hospital bracelets and medical implants, the affidavit said. It said one body was supposed to be buried in Pikes Peak National Cemetery.<\/p>\n
Investigators exhumed the wooden casket at the burial site of the US Army veteran, who served in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. Inside was a woman\u2019s deteriorated body, wrapped in duct tape and plastic sheets.<\/p>\n
The veteran’s body was discovered in the Penrose building, covered in maggots.<\/p>\n
‘Ashes to ashes’<\/p>\n
![\"Derrick](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/derrick-johnson-holds-photographs-of-his-mother-whose-body-w-NJDVMDSW5VB7NGNO56HQSUIKCI.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Derrick Johnson holds photographs of his mother, whose body was one of 189 left to decay in the Return to Nature Funeral Home. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n
Following the call from the FBI, Johnson promised himself he would speak at the Hallfords’ sentencing. But he struggled to talk about what had happened even with close friends, let alone in front of a judge and the Hallfords.<\/p>\n
For months, Johnson obsessed over the case, reading dozens of news reports, often glued to his phone until one of his children would interrupt him to play.<\/p>\n
When he shut his eyes, he said he imagined trudging through the building with “maggots, flies, centipedes. There\u2019s rats, they\u2019re feasting.” He asked a preacher if his mother\u2019s soul had been trapped there. She reassured him it hadn\u2019t. When an episode of the zombie show The Walking Dead came on, he broke down.<\/p>\n
Johnson started seeing a therapist and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He joined Zoom meetings with other victims’ relatives as the number grew from dozens to hundreds.<\/p>\n
After Lopes\u2019 body was identified, Johnson flew in March 2024 to Colorado, where his mother’s remains lay in a box in a crematorium.<\/p>\n
“I don\u2019t think you blame me, but I still want to tell you I\u2019m sorry,” he recalled saying, placing his hand on the box.<\/p>\n
Then Lopes\u2019 body was loaded into the cremator and Johnson pushed the button.<\/p>\n
Justice<\/p>\n
Johnson has slowly improved with therapy, engaging more with his students and children. He practiced speaking at the Hallfords’ sentencings in therapy. Closing his eyes, he envisioned standing in front of the judge \u2014 and the Hallfords.<\/p>\n
“Justice is, it\u2019s the part that is missing from this whole equation,” he said. “Maybe somehow this justice frees me. And then there\u2019s part of me that\u2019s scared it won\u2019t, because it probably won\u2019t.”<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Johnson spoke about his mother at Hallford\u2019s sentencing.<\/p>\n
“My mother earned the right to be known for her presence and not her death,” he said. “Jon Hallford stole that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Derrick Johnson buried his mother\u2019s ashes beneath a golden dewdrop tree with purple blossoms at his home on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[67,42,43,64,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-272045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-north-america","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Fremont](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/fremont-county-coroner-randy-keller-centre-and-other-authori-O55GGGC3AZCZDCJZGB7CMTKSGU.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Chrystina](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/chrystina-page-right-holds-back-heather-de-wolf-as-she-yells-ASUOJ73GDRDZFNKTX6XLHOW2JI.jpg\")
<\/p>\n