Authorities have discovered the remains of at least 189 decaying bodies from a funeral home in Colorado.
These remains were located when officials responded to a report of a bad smell at the Return to Nature funeral home in Penrose, Colorado.
Efforts to figure out who these remains belong to began last week with the help of an FBI team that typically deals with big disasters like plane crashes.
The sheriff, Allen Cooper, described the scene as “horrific”.
The discovery occurred after the funeral home was found to have missed tax payments and was evicted from one of the company’s buildings.
The company was also sued for unpaid bills by a crematory that stopped working with them nearly a year ago.
Authorities went into the neglected building with a search warrant on October 4 because of the “abhorrent” smell and found the decomposing bodies.
The director of the state office in charge of funeral homes and crematories talked to the owner, Jon Hallford, the following day.
He admitted to having a “problem” at the Penrose site and said he was practicing taxidermy there, as stated in an official order from state officials on October 5.
They have been trying to contact Jon Hallford, his wife Carie, and Return to Nature, but no one has responded to their text messages or phone calls.
The company, which provided cremations and eco-friendly burials without using embalming fluids, continued its operations despite its problems.
In Colorado, it is legal to have eco-friendly burials, but state laws say that anybody not buried within 24 hours must be kept properly refrigerated.
Colorado has some of the least strict rules for funeral homes in the country, with no regular inspections or requirements for the people who run funeral homes.
More than 120 families who were worried that their loved ones might be among these remains have contacted law enforcement about this situation.
The El Paso County coroner, Leon Kelly, has said it could take several weeks to identify all the remains.
State regulators didn’t visit the site or get in touch with Jon Hallford until more than 10 months after the Penrose funeral home’s registration had expired.
The state allowed regulators to inspect funeral homes without the owners’ permission last year but did not provide extra funding for such inspections.
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