A Colorado funeral dwelling proprietor accused of improperly storing cremated stays and holding a lifeless girl’s physique in a hearse for over a yr has pleaded responsible, prosecutors mentioned.
Miles Harford, the previous proprietor of Apollo Funeral and Cremation Providers, pleaded responsible on April 14 to 1 felony depend of abuse of a corpse and one misdemeanor depend of theft, in accordance with Denver District Attorney John Walsh. Beneath the plea settlement, Harford will withstand 18 months in jail when he’s sentenced on June 9.
Harford, 34, initially confronted a complete of 12 counts, together with abuse of a corpse, forgery of a loss of life certificates, and theft. Different fees have been dismissed as a part of the plea settlement, native tv station KUSA reported.
Harford was arrested in February 2024 after Denver police found a number of packing containers of cremated stays at a rental property, in accordance with the Denver District Lawyer’s Workplace. Police additionally discovered the stays of Christina Rosales, 63, behind a hearse on the property.
“Miles Harford was entrusted by family and friends of the deceased with offering skilled and dignified cremation providers,” Walsh mentioned in an announcement.
“He violated that belief in an unimaginably dangerous means — robbing these family and friends of their peace of thoughts and alternative to grieve. Mr. Harford is now accepting accountability for these actions, which we hope will present a measure of consolation to the family and friends of the deceased,” Walsh added.
Harford’s responsible plea follows a string of grisly funeral dwelling incidents in Colorado lately, together with a case involving homeowners who have been accused of failing to cremate or bury nearly 200 bodies and giving pretend ashes to households.
These households trusted a funeral dwelling. Their loved ones were left to rot, authorities say.
Cremated stays discovered after house owner evicted funeral dwelling proprietor
On the morning of February 6, 2024, Denver police and medical officers responded to a house Harford was renting from. Police mentioned the property proprietor had evicted Harford and reported discovering packing containers of cremated stays whereas cleansing the house.
The Denver Sheriff’s Division, which was beforehand current through the eviction, inspected the house and found a lifeless girl’s physique in addition to further cremated stays contained in the hearse on the property, in accordance with Denver Police Commander Matt Clark.
On the time of the incident, Clark mentioned the physique was later recognized as Rosales, who died in August 2022. Her household was knowledgeable concerning the discovery, and her stays have been despatched to the medical expert’s workplace in Denver. The Denver District Lawyer’s Workplace mentioned Rosales’ physique had been contained in the hearse for about 18 months.
In accordance with Clark, three dozen momentary urns have been discovered inside the house, with some empty. He described the urns as “black plastic packing containers just like the scale of a shoe field.” All recovered stays gave the impression to be individuals who died between 2012 and 2021, Clark mentioned.
Along with improperly storing the cremated stays, authorities mentioned Harford gave some households stays that weren’t of their family members.
“Harford had given the Rosales household the cremated stays of a distinct individual rather than Ms. Rosales, with the intention of creating them consider that Ms. Rosales had been appropriately cremated,” the district lawyer’s workplace mentioned. “Additional investigation found a number of different inappropriate funeral practices.”
‘Repair this drawback’: Mishandled bodies, mixed-up remains prompt tougher funeral home regulations
Newest case involving Colorado funeral houses
For many years, Colorado had a number of the weakest laws on the funeral dwelling trade within the U.S. The Coloradoan, a part of the USA TODAY Community, beforehand reported that Colorado was the one state with out licensing necessities for funeral trade employees.
In 2024, lawmakers in Colorado tightened laws on the funeral dwelling trade after a number of investigations into funeral houses throughout the state revealed that human stays have been being mishandled. The laws mandates the regulation and licensing of mortuary science practitioners, funeral administrators, embalmers, cremationists, and pure reductionists.
The Colorado funeral dwelling trade got here underneath scrutiny after authorities discovered improperly stored bodies at a funeral dwelling in Penrose, Colorado, a small city about 34 miles southwest of Colorado Springs, in October 2023. After acquiring a search warrant, the FBI, Colorado Bureau of Investigation, and native legislation enforcement discovered that about 190 our bodies, which have been in numerous states of decomposition, had been saved within the constructing.
Prosecutors later accused the funeral dwelling homeowners, Jon Hallford and Carie Hallford, of defrauding households throughout the nation by “not offering a cremation or burial for the deceased as promised.”
The Hallfords additionally allegedly gave households dry concrete as an alternative of ashes, collected greater than $130,000 from households for cremations and burials they by no means carried out, and buried the incorrect physique on at the least two events, in accordance with prosecutors.
Earlier in 2023, the operator of one other Colorado funeral dwelling and her mom have been sentenced to federal jail for illegally promoting physique components or total our bodies with out the consent of the household of the deceased, in accordance with the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace for the District of Colorado.
The U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace introduced in January 2023 that Megan Hess was sentenced to twenty years in jail, whereas her mom, Shirley Koch, obtained 15 years. Prosecutors mentioned the 2 had pleaded responsible to 1 depend of mail fraud and aiding and abetting for his or her involvement in stealing “the our bodies or physique components of a whole bunch of victims, after which (promoting) these stays to victims buying the stays for physique dealer providers.”
Contributing: Anthony Robledo, USA TODAY; Natasha Lovato, Fort Collins Coloradoan
This text initially appeared on USA TODAY: Funeral home owner who kept body inside a hearse pleads guilty
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