WAGONER, Okla. — A federal magistrate judge dropped FBI charges for Jon and Carie Hallford Thursday morning, but the married couple's original arrest charges in Colorado remain.
Those include 190 counts of abusing a corpse, as well as forgery of documents and theft after an investigation uncovered a gruesome scene at the Hallfords' Penrose, Colo. business Return to Nature Funeral Home.
Documents show agencies found bodies inside stacked on top of each other, some not even covered up.
Colorado Springs resident Mike Martínez said his grandmother, who died in 2020, was among those allegedly neglected by the Hallfords and that it wasn't until last week he found out the urn holding her ashes likely has no cremated remains at all.
"To me, this is severe, like tantamount to murder in my opinion," Martinez told 2 News via Zoom Thursday. "Like, there's no greater disrespect for someone else's remains."
In Wagoner, the news of the Hallfords' arrest just north of town at his parents' home Wednesday morning is still settling in.
"If he's from Wagoner and people know him, I mean, that's hard on the town, especially being a small town," Wagoner resident Don Standifird said.
Standifird added he is from Grand Junction, Colo., and recalls a similar case involving a funeral director in his city that affected a friend.
"It just kind of brought back a little bit of memory about it," Standifird said. "I saw the story, and I'm like, 'Wow, I can't believe that it happened in another place that I lived in.' So yeah, it just was kind of surprising."
"I would hope that (Jon Hallford) is innocent, but if not, then he gets what he deserves as far as jail sentence or whatever," he added.
It's unclear when the two suspects will see a judge to decide their extradition or if it will happen at the federal courthouse in Muskogee.
Both Jon and Carie Hallford remain booked in the Muskogee County Jail as of Thursday.
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