Colorado Couple Arrested After Funeral Home ‘Improperly Stored’ 190 Bodies

A husband and wife who owned a Colorado funeral home were arrested in Oklahoma on Wednesday in connection to the improper handling of at least 190 bodies that had been left in their care, the authorities said.

The couple, Jon and Carie Hallford, were operating the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs and Penrose, Colo., which offered so-called green burial options. The services advertised on the business’s website featured burials without chemicals or concrete vaults, which included placing bodies in biodegradable caskets, baskets, shrouds or “even nothing at all.”

The Hallfords were arrested in Wagoner, Okla. They had not been formally charged but were held on suspicion of committing abuse of a corpse, theft, money laundering and forgery, all felony charges, according to a statement from the Fourth Judicial District Attorney’s Office in Colorado Springs.

District Attorney Michael J. Allen said at a news conference on Wednesday that the probable-cause affidavit in the case had been sealed but added, “The information contained in that affidavit is absolutely shocking.”

Last month, a foul smell led investigators to the funeral home, where they found at least 115 decaying bodies, said officials, who described the scene as horrific. The bodies were “improperly stored” in what the Fremont County coroner, Randy Keller, described as a “hazardous scene.”

“The work conditions were very tragic,” Chris Schaefer, the director of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, said at the news conference, adding that the decay they had to confront “impacted all of our staff.”

Because the Hallfords were arrested in a different state, their first appearance at El Paso County District Court in Colorado will be determined during the extradition process, the district attorney’s office said. Bond was set at $2 million, Mr. Allen said.

Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado said in a statement on Wednesday that he was “relieved” the criminal case was proceeding, even though the families of the deceased were hurting. “I know this will not bring peace to the families impacted by this heart-wrenching incident, but we hope the individuals responsible are held fully accountable in a court of law,” he said.

The Hallfords could not be immediately reached on Wednesday; the funeral home’s telephone number was out of service.

Last month, Mr. Keller said it could take months to determine the identities of the deceased through fingerprints, dental records or DNA. He said on Wednesday that so far, 110 people had been identified. About 137 families have been notified and 25 bodies have been released to their families.

State and federal agencies, including the F.B.I., were helping with the investigation, and Governor Polis issued a verbal disaster declaration for Fremont County to provide additional resources in that effort.

State regulators suspended the funeral home’s license and wrote in a letter dated Oct. 5 that Mr. Hallford had “attempted to conceal the improper storage of human remains” on the property.

Mr. Hallford spoke to a funeral home regulator last month, “acknowledged that he has a ‘problem’ at the property,” and “claimed that he practices taxidermy” there, according to the letter.

Two weeks after the discovery, teams removed the remains of at least 189 people from the funeral home in Penrose, about 105 miles south of Denver. The bodies were then transported to the El Paso County Coroner’s Office, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation said last month. As of Wednesday, the count was 190 people.

The district attorney’s office said that multiple agencies were working to identify the bodies, and law enforcement officials were asking affected survivors to fill out an online form with victim information. Mr. Allen also said that prosecutors were reviewing the investigation’s findings to decide on the appropriate charges, which could include prison and probation.