West
Mixed-up remains, rotting bodies, fake ashes: How grieving families uncovered these five funeral home horrors
Funeral home horror stories have cropped up across the country in an industry riddled with mishaps.
For forty years until this May, Colorado’s funeral directors did not need licenses to operate, and they faced minimal oversight. A litany of horror stories that emerged from the state were “bound to happen,” Bill Booker, owner of Roller Funeral Homes and member of the Arkansas State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors told Fox News Digital.
But even in states with tighter regulations, cases of frightful mix-ups and mismanagement crop up, traumatizing already-grieving families and sparking public outrage.
“I would assure the public that plenty of safeguards are in place, and these instances couldn’t go on for very long outside the situation that was in Colorado,” Booker said. I “I think most funeral professionals consider themselves to have a sacred trust between their clients and themselves and really aspire to be in this profession.”
Regardless, when funeral home mismanagement makes the news, those in the profession are shaken.
“A lot of the work in the funeral profession is done when no one else is present — no one but the funeral director and the deceased,” Booker said. “People need to have the proper education but also the proper heart to serve the public at such a tender time.”
1. Hundreds of bodies left to rot by Colorado funeral directors who misused COVID relief funds on vacations, lavish lifestyle
In April, nearly 200 decaying, maggot-infested bodies were found abandoned in a building by Colorado Springs’ Back to Nature Funeral Home owners John and Carie Hallford, Fox News Digital previously reported.
The couple were charged with five counts of abuse of a corpse, five counts of theft, four counts of money laundering and over 50 counts of forgery.
Instead of their deceased relatives’ ashes, the Hallfords allegedly presented families with dry concrete and buried the wrong body on two occasions. In total, they collected $130,000 from bereaved families for cremation and burial services that they never followed through with. In court, an FBI agent testified that the money was enough to cover cremation costs for all the abandoned bodies twice over.
The mugshots of Jon Hallford, left, and Carie Hallford, right, the owners of Return to Nature Funeral Home. (Muskogee County Sheriff’s Office via AP, File)
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Based on text messages exchanged by the couple, the accumulation of bodies began four years before the grisly discovery. In their messages, the couple had discussed dumping the bodies into a hole, then treating them with lye or setting them on fire.
A later indictment claimed that the Hallfords also used $882,300 in COVID pandemic relief funds to buy cars, dinners, cryptocurrency, their child’s tuition and a slew of vacations.
“In Colorado, it was just a matter of time that someone who was not regulated, not licensed, with no governmental oversight, they eventually lose their sense of right and wrong, and the results are just horrifying,” Booker told Fox News Digital.
The Hallfords were ordered to pay out more than $1 million to the families of the deceased in August, CNN reported.
2. Former Colorado funeral director arrested for hoarding cremated remains, woman’s body in hearse for two years
Two years after his mortuary business closed, a funeral director was found with the cremated remains of up to 30 people in his rented home this February.
Police made the sickening discovery during a court-ordered eviction of 33-year-old Miles Harford from his Denver home on February 6, Fox News Digital previously reported.
Harford also kept the remains of a deceased woman inside a hearse for two years. He acknowledged to police that he owed money to several crematories in the area and that none would cremate the woman’s body, so he decided to store it in the hearse, the Colorado Sun reported.
Seen here is the Return to Nature Funeral Home, in Penrose, Colorado, where stacks of human remains were discovered, and bodily fluid several inches deep covered the floor, an FBI agent testified. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)
INVESTIGATION OF COLORADO ‘GREEN’ FUNERAL HOME UNCOVERS MORE DECAYING BODIES: OFFICIALS
His business, Apollo Funeral and Cremation Services, had been closed since September 2022.
Booker said that “greed” or “the lack of a moral compass” could have motivated Harford.
“Maybe [he didn’t] intend to make a pattern of this. But when you go down that road once, and no one detects it, you can do it again and again,” Booker said.
A warrant issued for Harford’s arrest at the time listed potential charges of abuse of a corpse, forgery of the death certificate, and theft of the money paid for cremation.
3. Long Island sisters sue funeral home for $60 million after wrong man buried in their father’s plot, wearing his favorite t-shirt
Stacy Holzman and Megan Zaner claim that a South Carolina funeral home mistakenly sent the wrong person’s remains to New York for burial when their father died out of state, and that New York funeral directors insisted it was the correct body even though the women didn’t recognize the man in the casket.
The Long Island sisters sued Fletcher Funeral Home and Cremation Service in Fountain Inn, S.C., and Star of David Memorial Chapels in West Babylon, New York, for $60 million in damages after the interment imbroglio last February.
The women suspected that something was awry when they asked for a final look at their dad. Although the man was wearing his favorite Led Zepplin shirt, his face didn’t look quite right.
A photo of an empty morgue at a crematorium. (Fox News )
STACKS OF BODIES, FLUIDS AND FLIES FOUND AT COLORADO FUNERAL HOME, FBI AGENT SAYS
“Where is his facial hair?” Stacy Holzman asked the funeral home, according to CBS News. “The funeral director said it’s standard practice that we shave everybody.”
The man also had an autopsy scar on his forehead, but the women had asked that their father be buried according to Jewish tradition, which does not allow for autopsies.
“Again, the funeral director is dismissing it, saying, ‘Oh, it’s standard for if somebody passes in a hospital,’ and I’m like, ‘No, this isn’t right, I don’t recognize him,’” Holzman told the outlet.
Weeks later, the South Carolina funeral home confirmed the women’s suspicions. In the lawsuit, they claim that his body had been left “abandoned” inside the morgue “without dignity or respect.” The bereaved daughters buried their father later without his favorite clothing.
The Star of David said in a statement that the family “confirmed the identification of the deceased at the cemetery” before the burial, Fox News Digital previously reported. Star of David said it “took swift and decisive action to contact the family and offer whatever services needed to lessen their grief” after Fletcher notified them of the mistake.
“We deeply regret any sorrow experienced by the family for the mistake made by the funeral home in South Carolina,” the Star of David said, adding that “families are under a great deal of stress when they identify their deceased.”
Booker said that he had “never seen” a body mix-up during his 44 years in the funeral profession.
“I don’t know what all the background information is, but I would like to hope that the people who pass away went through an extended illness and maybe don’t look like themselves as often,” he said. “A mistake could happen in the healthcare setting where the wrong identification is put on the deceased person . . . two people passed away at approximately the same time, there’s a missed identification between the deceased, and you have two funeral homes that are impacted by that.”
4. New Jersey funeral home nearly buries woman 20 years younger in place of 93-year-old woman
The family of Kyung Ja Kim, who died on November 10, 2021, sought a $50 million settlement from two funeral homes, a funeral director and a mortician after the wrong woman was almost buried in their mother’s stead.
Kummi Kim, the woman’s daughter, told NorthJersey.com that their family thought that embalming technology had gotten so good that it made their deceased mother look much younger.
Kyung Ja Kim wore dentures, and the other woman’s body had a full set of teeth, the family’s attorney told the outlet. The dentures were later found under the casket pillow.
A person lays a rose on the grave of a soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, United States military cemetery, on Memorial Day, which is held annually to honor those who died while serving in the armed forces in Virginia, United States on May 29, 2023. (Celal Gunes/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Mourning family members, many who had traveled from Korea, began to throw shovelfuls of dirt onto the woman’s casket during burial. The family realized that something was amiss when funeral director Haemin Gina Chong tried to hurry mourners away.
Chong allegedly showed Kummi Kim a photo of the 93-year-old, asking whether it was her mother. When Kummi Kim replied in the affirmative, Chong allegedly directed the cemetery to lift the casket out of the grave and bring it back to the funeral home, leaving friends and family flabbergasted.
5. Texas funeral home sued for allegedly letting body “literally rot” during Winter Storm Uri in 2021
Julietta Guerra sued Integrity Funeral Home in south Houston last February, claiming that her son, Edward Silva, had not been embalmed for four days.
Fox News Digital previously reported that Silva had died unexpectedly on February 9, 2021. According to Guerra’s lawsuit, funeral home director Hilda Rojas assured the woman that her son would be embalmed by Feb. 12 and that “they would make him look like he was real.”
Guerra was allegedly told that her son’s body wasn’t ready yet on February 12, then again when she called the next day.
On February 14, Winter Storm Uri hit Houston. Guerra and her husband drove to the funeral home when they were unable to reach them by phone. The door was locked, and the mourning parents noticed that there weren’t any generators as they drove around they building.
Guerra arrived at the funeral home on Feb. 22 with a beautician to do Silva’s hair and makeup. The lawsuit said he was “severely decomposed” and smelled so strongly that the beautician told Guerra’s sister to not let her see her son. The funeral home director allegedly did not say anything to any family member beforehand about the state of the body.
The funeral suit that the family had brought for Silva also would not fit because of “extreme post-mortem swelling,” according to the lawsuit. The clothing ultimately had to be cut open and draped over his body for him to be able to wear it.
The family was forced to hold a closed-casket funeral, with many of more than 100 mourners “retching” at the smell.
“No family should have to endure the desecration of their loved one’s body like the Guerra family did,” family attorney Omar Khawaja said. “We intend to hold Integrity Funeral Home at Forest Lawn Cemetery accountable for their egregious conduct.”
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West
Supreme Court ruling on secretive California gender policy could reshape parent rights fights nationwide
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Parental rights advocates celebrated Monday after the Supreme Court temporarily stopped California from blocking school policies requiring parents to be told when their child identifies as transgender.
Corey DeAngelis, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital the high court’s order, in which the three liberal justices dissented, was a “huge win.” The decision marks the latest in a string of victories for conservatives seeking to tighten policies surrounding transgender people, though DeAngelis noted it only applies to California at this stage.
“Parents in California should be very excited that the law that they have on the books to keep secrets from parents will no longer be in effect,” DeAngelis said, adding, “This precedent is surely a sign of good things to come. If there’s a lawsuit that arises in another state, you can be pretty sure that the Supreme Court is going to rule on the side of families.”
The case, Mirabelli v. Bonta, arose from a lawsuit brought by California parents and teachers who argued that the state’s policy violated their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment and religious freedom rights under the First Amendment. The parents said the policy prevented school administrators from telling them about their child’s potential efforts to engage in gender transitioning unless the child consented to it. The policy also required school staff to use a student’s preferred name and pronouns regardless of the parents’ wishes.
A protester holds a transgender pride flag outside the Supreme Court as it hears arguments in 2026. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP)
After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit sided with California Attorney General Rob Bonta, an elected Democrat, the parents and teachers appealed to the Supreme Court, and on an expedited and temporary basis, the high court vacated that order while the case proceeds through the lower courts.
“The State argues that its policies advance a compelling interest in student safety and privacy,” the high court wrote in the unsigned order. “But those policies cut out the primary protectors of children’s best interests: their parents.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta speaks during a news conference. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, wrote in a dissent that the temporary order was a sign that the Supreme Court’s emergency docket, sometimes known as a shadow docket, continued to “malfunction.”
Attorneys for California argued that balancing the interests of parents and the “needs of transgender students” presented complex questions.
“In this case, the district court entered a sweeping permanent injunction that would require instant, dramatic changes from the status quo,” California attorneys wrote. “Currently, under California’s laws and constitutional provisions on privacy and antidiscrimination, schools may balance parental interests with students’ particular needs and circumstances, such as the risk of harm upon disclosure of the student’s gender identity without student consent.”
DeAngelis said the Supreme Court’s ruling also bolstered the case for school choice, which allows the government to funnel public education funds to schools parents want to send their children to that are not necessarily the designated public school in their neighborhood.
CALIFORNIA SCHOOL DISTRICT LETS STUDENTS CHANGE NAMES AND GENDER IDENTITY IN SECRET FROM PARENTS
Facade of the Supreme Court on Oct. 3, 2024. (Valerie Plesch/picture alliance via Getty Images)
“It would be great if more areas, like California, that are controlled by Democrats had policies like school choice. … You should be able to take your child’s education dollars somewhere else, to a private school that’s more aligned with your values, maybe a charter school,” DeAngelis said.
He added that Monday’s decision was a “wake-up call for school choice policy as well, because parents may be upset about a lot of things in the public schools. Transparency is just the very bare minimum that the public schools in too many places aren’t getting right.”
Carrie Severino, president of the conservative JCN Network, said the 9th Circuit appeared to disregard the Supreme Court’s key ruling last year in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which allowed parents to opt their children out of lessons that involved gender ideology or other sensitive topics based on religious beliefs.
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“The liberal Ninth Circuit disregarded the Court’s ruling in Mahmoud,” Severino wrote. “Today, the justices reaffirmed the principles of its landmark ruling and said that California’s law substantially interferes with the ‘right of parents to guide the religious development of their children.’”
New York Times columnist David French also agreed with the high court’s decision.
“The idea that a school could withhold such key information about a child from the child’s parents (in the absence of evidence of abuse) was ludicrously unconstitutional from the beginning,” French wrote on X.
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San Francisco, CA
Celebrated San Francisco historic landmark, the Huntington Hotel officially reopens
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — First opened as apartments in 1922 and converted into a hotel two years later, the Huntington was once a playground for socialites and Hollywood stars.
It shut its doors in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and remained shuttered until this week, following new owners and a million-dollar, top-to-bottom renovation.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held for The Huntington Hotel in San Francisco’s Nob Hill neighborhood Monday.
The hotel officially reopened on Sunday.
Mayor Daniel Lurie attended the celebration for the hotel on California Street.
“This is another sign that San Francisco is on the rise, when you have major institutions and major hotels reopening,” Lurie said. “We’re seeing it in Union Square. We’re seeing it now up here on Nob Hill. This is an exciting moment for San Francisco.”
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The hotel, known for its iconic sign, will be restoring the landmark sign to its former glory.
Many say it’s a symbol of what’s going on in San Francisco.
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“It came to symbolize San Francisco’s decline during COVID when it shut and it now, I think, symbolizes San Francisco’s rebirth,” said Greg Flynn, Flynn Group Founder, Chairman, and CEO. “It’s sort of the perfect symbol of it because it’s coming back better than it ever was.”
Alex Bastian, President and CEO of the Hotel Council of San Francisco, said hotel occupancy rates are up in 2024.
“Our data team crunched the numbers, and the four-week rolling hotel occupancy rate for San Francisco Bay Area hotels is 55.1 percent as of January 17 of this year. Compare that to January 17 of 2021, during the pandemi,c when it was 13.1 percent.”
Of course, the Super Bowl helped.
Here’s what Super Bowl LX visitors are saying about San Francisco
“There’s no marketing campaign better than what we achieved as San Franciscans,” Bastian said. “The mayor and his team really elevated the game. They did an incredible job. We are so fortunate, as a city, because so many came here and they left their hearts here in San Francisco.”
Eyewitness News wasn’t allowed to gather video of the hotel’s features, but the hotel provided renderings of a sample room.
Matthew de Quillien, The Huntington Hotel General Manager, said the hotel has 143 rooms, many of them suites. Also, the Nob Hill Spa, Arabella’s Cocktail Salo,n and a reopening of The Big Four Restaurant, featuring its famous chicken pot pie.
“Our owner was able to find the original recipe from the 70’s and we remastered it and we’re … serving it to our guests,” de Quillien said.
He said rates range from $600 a night to $7,000 a night for its Presidential suite.
The restaurant opens to the public on March 17.
If you’re on the ABC7 News app, click here to watch live
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Denver, CO
Former Avs defenseman launches beer brand in Denver
While most people know beers as “cold ones,” Tyson Barrie opts for a different name.
“We’ve always just called beers chilly ones,” the former Colorado Avalanche defenseman said.
Now, Barrie hopes his moniker goes mainstream with his beer brand Chilly Ones, which made its U.S. debut weeks ago in Colorado. He plans to move to the Centennial State from his home country of Canada come fall to build it out.
So far, the beer is in about 200 businesses across the state, mostly liquor stores like Bonnie Brae and Argonaut, but also eateries such as Oskar Blues.
The light lager is available in cans at 3% alcohol by volume. The less-than-light ABV is popular in Australia and some parts of Europe, he said, but nothing serves that segment in the U.S.
Barrie also said the brand has a nonalcoholic version “in the tanks and ready to go” at Sleeping Giant Brewing Co., the Denver facility where Chilly Ones is made. He said it’s one of the only booze-free options that could “trick” him, and he expects the version to be available by April.
“If you look at all the data that we’re seeing, these two categories – the nonalc and the low – seem to be two of the only ones in the alcohol space that are growing,” Barrie said.
Chilly Ones has been available in Canada since late 2025, and he said a 4.5% to 5% edition is also in the works, though that one won’t hit the shelves for months.
“From what we can see in Canada, people question the 3%. They say it’s not enough,” he said through a grin. “Then in the U.S., people aren’t questioning it at all. They really liked a little bit less and the moderation factor to it.”
That’s why he thinks the low-carb, zero sugar, under 100 calorie drink is a perfect fit for Denver. With the city’s storied history in craft beer combined with a more conscious, active lifestyle, it’s the perfect stateside launching point for his brand, Barrie believes.
Drafted by the Avs and playing in the city from 2011 through 2019, his preexisting connections also were a selling point.
“Every occasion is a little bit different, whether you’re parenting or you’re at a concert or you’ve got to get up early or you’re having two after work and you want to drive,” he said, explaining why there will be multiple versions of the drink available.
“It’s pick your own adventure. We’re not going to judge you,” he continued. “If you want to celebrate and get absolutely hammered, we’ll give you that option too. It’s just you can do it a little bit healthier.”
The idea came to Barrie when he had “a dozen” or so chilly ones during a night with friends years ago. In his phone’s notes app, he wrote that he would one day start a beverage brand with his NHL buddies and call it his colloquial name for beer.
He was still playing in the league at the point, but in 2024, two years after, somebody from the beverage world “very serendipitously” reached out to see if Barrie would be interested in starting a wine or whiskey company.
“And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’d do a beer,’” he recalled.
He was still in the NHL playing with the Nashville Predators but nearing the end of his career. The now-34-year-old gathered several of his fellow skaters, including Avs star Nathan MacKinnon, and other career connections like Lumineers frontman Wesley Schultz, and Chilly Ones was born.
Having that post-playing career journey already laid out has been challenging but worth it, he said.
“I have a lot of friends who have retired, and you struggle with a bit of purpose and you wake up and you’re just kind of looking around, not sure what to do with yourself,” he said. “So I feel grateful. I didn’t even have any time to reset. I was just kind of thrown in the fire.”
Barrie and Chilly Ones raised an undisclosed amount from friends and family to start the brand and are in the midst of a more institutional round.
He and Chilly Ones have no plans to venture outside the state in the short-term. He said he, Chief Operating Officer Kimberley Kainth and CEO Matthew Clayton want to test the market for all three options and get feedback before expanding elsewhere.
Longmont-based Oskar Blues founder Dale Katechis is an adviser, along with White Claw and Mike’s Hard Lemonade alum Todd Anderson.
“We have a team that we really, really trust who has scaled and built products in Colorado and moved out,” Barrie said. “We want to get our feet under us in Colorado and then we’ll start to really look at who’s next.”
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