Return to Nature Funeral Home: Details about the ‘green’ burials business
Fremont County Sheriff Allen Cooper, left, talks to a deputy Thursday at the road leading to the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose.
Jerilee Bennett, the gazette
Return to Nature Funeral Home, under investigation after more than 115 improperly stored bodies were found this week by authorities, was established six years ago in Colorado Springs, according to public records and past Gazette reporting.
Fremont County Sheriff Allen Cooper confirmed the grisly discovery during a news conference Friday morning the Return to Nature Funeral Home location in Penrose.
Investigators began searching the property, located off Werner Road in Penrose, south of Colorado Springs, on Wednesday.
Fremont County property records show that the funeral home building and lot are owned by Hallfordhomes LLC, a business with a Colorado Springs address that the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office declared delinquent on Oct. 1 for failing to file a routine reporting form that was due at the end of July.
Return to Nature has operated at several different addresses since its establishment in 2016.
Jon Hallford, right, was featured in a 2017 Gazette story about Return to Nature Funeral Home.
Return to Nature Funeral Home performs “green” burials without embalming chemicals or metal caskets, and was touted as Colorado Springs’ first green funeral home in a 2017 Gazette story.
Jon Hallford, wife Carie Hallford and Jack Dhooghe opened Return to Nature Funeral Home, where customers can receive all the services of a traditional funeral home except embalming. It’s different from human composting, where the body is transformed into soil.
‘Disturbing discovery:’ More than 115 bodies found improperly stored at Colorado funeral home
First green burial funeral home in Colorado Springs open for business
“I knew through mortuary school about the cancer-causing (chemicals) but never really thought about it,” Hallford said in previous Gazette reporting. “My mind started shifting from, ‘I hope I haven’t given such an unpleasant experience to families,’ to “I have really been ingesting this stuff for so many years.'”
The Return to Nature Funeral Home was licensed in Colorado Springs in 2017.
According to documentation released by Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA), an investigator ruled that the Return to Nature Funeral Home had been operating as an unregistered funeral home since its license expired nearly a year ago.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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