DENVER (AP) — Colorado funeral home owners accused of piling 190 bodies in a room-temperature building and giving fake ashes to grieving families were expected to plead guilty Friday to charges of exploiting hundreds of corpses.

Last year’s discovery shattered the families’ grieving process. The turning points of grief – the “goodbye” as the ashes are carried away by the wind, the relief of having fulfilled loved ones’ wishes, the moments of embracing the urn and reflecting on memories – now felt hollow.

Jon and Carie Hallford, the couple who own the Back to Nature Funeral home in Colorado Springs, began hiding the bodies in a dilapidated building outside the city and giving families dry concrete instead of cream, starting in 2019, according to the charges.

Prosecutors say the Hallfords overspended while getting into debt. They used clients’ money and nearly $900,000 in pandemic relief funds for their business to buy luxury cars, laser body sculptures, trips to Las Vegas and Florida, $31,000 in cryptocurrency and other luxury items, according to court records.

Last month, the Hallfords pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges as part of a deal in which they admitted defrauding customers and the federal government. In state court on Friday, the pair were expected to plead guilty to more than 200 charges related to corpse abuse, theft, forgery and money laundering.

Jon Hallford is represented by the public defender’s office, which does not comment on cases. Carie Hallford’s attorney, Michael Stuzynski, declined to comment.

For four years, Back to Nature’s customers received their family’s remains. Some scatter these ashes in meaningful places, sometimes a plane distance away. Others brought the jars with them on their trips across the country or kept them tightly at home.

Some were impressed by the funeral home’s “green” funeral offering; The house’s website stated that embalming chemicals and metal coffins were omitted and that it did not use biodegradable coffins, shrouds or “anything.”

The morbid discovery of allegedly improperly disposed bodies was revealed last year, when neighbors reported an odor coming from the building owned by Return to Nature in the small town of Penrose, southwest of Colorado Springs. In some cases, bodies were found piled on top of each other, infested with insects. Some were so decomposed that they could not be visually identified.

The area was so toxic that responders had to use special hazmat equipment to enter the building and could only stay inside for short periods of time before exiting and undergoing rigorous decontamination.

This situation was not unprecedented: Six years ago, the owners of another funeral home in Colorado were accused of selling body parts and similarly using dry concrete to imitate human remains. The suspects in this case were sentenced to lengthy federal prison terms for mail fraud.

But it wasn’t until the bodies were found at Back to Nature that lawmakers finally strengthened what had previously been some of the laxest funeral home regulations in the country. Unlike most states, Colorado did not require routine review of the credentials of funeral homes or business operators.

This year, lawmakers, largely with the support of the funeral home industry, brought Colorado’s regulations in line with most other states.

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Bedayn is a syndicated member of the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. report for america is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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