Families Whose Loved Ones Were Left Decaying in Colorado Funeral Home Owed $950 Million, Payout Unlikely

DENVER—The Colorado funeral home owners who allegedly stored 190 decaying bodies and sent grieving families fake ashes were ordered by a judge to pay $950 million to the victim’s relatives in a civil case, the attorney announced Monday. The judgment is unlikely to be paid out since the owners, Jon and Carie Hallford, have been in financial trouble for years. They also face hundreds of criminal charges in separate state and federal cases, including abuse of a corpse, and allegations they took $130,000 from families for cremations and burials they never provided. That leaves the nearly $1 billion sum largely symbolic of the emotional devastation wreaked on family members who learned the remains of their mothers, fathers, or children weren’t in the ashes they ceremonially spread or clutched tight but were instead decaying in a bug-infested building....