Return to Nature gave Wilson’s family and some others death certificates stating their loved one’s remains had been handled by one of two crematories. But those businesses told the AP they were not performing cremations for Return to Nature on the dates included on the certificates.
Calls and texts sent to numbers listed for Return to Nature and owners Jon and Carie Hallford have gone unanswered since the discovery of the decaying bodies.
No arrests have been made. Law enforcement officials have said Return to Nature’s owners were cooperating as investigators sought to determine any criminal wrongdoing.
Four death certificates shared by families all list a crematory owned by Wilbert Funeral Services, but the deaths came at least five months after the company stopped doing cremations for the financially troubled Return to Nature Funeral Home last November.
Lisa Epps, attorney for Wilbert, said members of at least 10 families told the company they had death certificates from after November.
A second crematory, Roselawn Funeral Home in Pueblo, Colorado, was contacted by a family last week that had a 2021 death certificate from Return to Nature listing Roselawn as the crematory. Roselawn did not do the cremation, said its manager, Rudy Krasovec.
None of the families the AP interviewed received an identification tag or certificate that experts say are usually given to ensure cremations are authentic. Members of all four families described a similar consistency of the ashes that seemed like dry concrete.
Two mixed some ashes with water and said they solidified. Dry concrete has been used before by funeral homes to mimic human ashes.
Properly cremated remains are made up of bone fragments that do not have any organic material left, which means they lack DNA that could be used to identify individuals, said Barbara Kemmis, director of the Cremation Association of North America. Sometimes RNA is preserved in the bone fragments, and that can distinguish if the ashes are from a male or female and if they are human or from another animal, she said.
Determining that ashes are fake can be more straightforward, particularly when they’ve been substituted with concrete. A simple test entails wetting the material and seeing if it hardens when it dries, Kemmis said. Real ashes won’t solidify and would stay brittle, said Faith Haug, who chairs the mortuary science program at Colorado’s Arapahoe Community College.
Authorities could be waiting to bring charges until they determine if there are any more improperly stored bodies, said Ian Farrell, a criminal law expert at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.
Potential charges under state law could include misdemeanor violations of mortuary regulations and misdemeanor fraud, Farrell said. Each body could result in separate charges, meaning potential fines topping $1 million. The maximum consecutive sentence for misdemeanors is 2 years in jail, he said.
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