Final plans are underway for the demolition of the Penrose funeral home, where 191 bodies were found in various stages of decomposition and stored in various ways in October.
After a building assessment in November, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency determined complete demolition is necessary to safely remove all medical, biological and hazardous materials from the former Return to Nature Funeral Home, located at 31 Werner Road in Penrose.
Minor preparation for the demolition will begin the week of April 8, and the demolition is scheduled to begin April 16, with the final disposal of all debris in an Otero County landfill.
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“We are grateful to our partners in Otero County for accepting this material,” said Kevin Grantham, Fremont County Commissioner and Chairman of the Fremont County Board of Public Health and Environment, in a press release Thursday. “Unfortunately, we were unable to come to a disposal agreement with either Pueblo County or the Twin Enviro landfill here in Fremont County. We hope demolition of the building and final disposition of the waste will help the affected families and the entire community to heal from this tragedy.”
Carie Hallford, 46, and her husband, Jon Hallford, 43, are accused of accepting payment from families of decedents for cremations, piling 189 bodies in the Penrose facility, and giving families falsified death certificates and bags of what appeared to be concrete powder in place of their loved ones’ ashes.
They are facing numerous felony charges, including abuse of a corpse, theft, money laundering and forgery. The couple currently is going through the court process in El Paso County, where their business' home office was located.
During a court hearing in February, Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Andrew Cohen described the conditions inside the facility, where investigators were not allowed to enter without specialized personal protection gear.
“Some of the bodies were wrapped in plastic, some of the bodies were exposed entirely to the elements, some of the bodies were wrapped in blankets commonly found in hospital or hospice type care facilities, and some bodies were stored in plastic totes,” he said.
The temperature inside the rebuilding was about 70 degrees. A typical temperature for storing a body should be between 35-40 degrees, he said.
The building itself had coverings on all windows, including shades, drapes or blackout material.
“The floors of the building were covered in a brownish sludge fluid that was most likely the byproducts of human decomposition,” Cohen said. “There was also a large insect presence within the building.”
The earliest date of death for the bodies was Sept 15, 2019, and the most recent date of death was Aug 22, 2023.
The EPA’s emergency response personnel and trained hazardous materials contractors will conduct the cleanup. To initiate the process, EPA is finalizing a work plan for mobilization to the site.
The demolition is expected to take approximately 10 days, weather permitting.
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In order to prepare the site for demolition, EPA will continue to work with Fremont County, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, and the local utility companies to ensure safety control measures are established at the site. Before and during demolition, EPA’s contractors will spray a disinfectant and odor suppressant into the interior of the building. Staging areas for loading trucks with demolition materials will be located next to the building.
Once demolition begins, excavators will start to break up the building from the top down and remove large pieces of the structure, while working to keep it within the foundation footprint.
During this process, EPA will use water and other liquid solutions for dust suppression, but not in quantities that would cause runoff of contamination from the interior of the building to the ground surface outside.
Ground crews will manage demolition materials to ensure the loading process into the dump trucks is efficient and protective. These materials will be prepared and loaded into trucks per applicable regulations and landfill requirements. Once the building and concrete foundation slab have been removed, EPA will conduct a shallow surface scrape of soils on the footprint of the building. The soils will be transported to the landfill through the same process as the building materials.
All updates will also be posted on their website at www.response.epa.gov/PenroseFuneralHome.
