Colorado lawmakers announced a bipartisan bill on Monday that would reinstate licensing regulations for funeral directors. The bill is the first of three potential bills aimed at preventing atrocities like the November 2023 discovery of nearly 200 decomposing bodies in a Penrose, Colorado green burial storage facility.
“We are here today to declare that enough is enough in Colorado,” said State Senator Dylan Roberts, a Democrat from Colorado’s Eighth Senate District, according to a report by Denver’s ABC-TV affiliate. “Too many Colorado families have had to face the gruesome and unacceptable reality that their loved one’s remains have been mishandled, lost, improperly cared for, sold, and completely disrespected by bad actors in our state.”
Licensing is first step
The bill, which as of Tuesday afternoon had not been formally introduced, would create a licensing process that would require applicants to graduate from an accredited institution for mortuary services, complete a background check and serve as an apprentice for at least one year. Licensing would be required for virtually all deathcare-related positions, including funeral directors, cremationists, embalmers, and those offering natural organic reduction.
If passed, the bill would go into effect in 2026. It would include an option for current deathcare operators who haven’t met the new requirements. The option would require a criminal background check and 6,500 hours of work experience to obtain a provisional license. That license would become a full license after two years with no disciplinary actions. License renewals would require applicants to retake short classes on the applicable law, ethics, and public health requirements.
A second bill that is expected to be introduced would require regular funeral home inspections, while a potential third bill would continue the regulation of nontransplant tissue banks for nine years.
Joe Walsh, president of the Colorado Funeral Directors Association, seemed cautiously optimistic when commenting on the licensing bill, but added that licensing is just the first step in the right direction.
“Yeah we got the license, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to equate to perfection, unfortunately,” said Walsh. “The best way to do this is to improve and show that we are adapting, and adjusting and overcoming,”
Forty years too late?
Although Colorado requires licensing for deathcare facilities, it is the only state that does not require licenses for the individuals providing funeral services. Those regulations were deactivated in 1983 when the Colorado funeral board was eliminated by sunset laws.
“Since then, we’ve ended up being a dumping ground for funeral directors or practitioners throughout the country who have lost licensing in other states,” Michael Blackburn, the former president of the Colorado Funeral Directors Association, told CBS News in October 2023, just days after bodies were discovered at Return to Nature in Penrose, Colorado.
The owners of Return to Nature, Jon and Carie Hallford, were arrested in Oklahoma in November 2023 and extradited back to Colorado to face charges of theft, abuse of a corpse, money laundering, and forgery, which are all felonies. Both are now free on $100,000 bond each.
Last month Colorado authorities discovered a body decomposing in a hearse and 35 boxes of unidentified cremains at the former home of Miles Harford, a former Denver funeral director. After initially eluding police, Harford was arrested on suspicion of abuse of a corpse, forgery and theft, and has been released on his own recognizance with no bail or bond. Harford’s business, Apollo Funeral and Cremations Services, lost its license nearly two years ago, but it is believed that Harford was still operating as recently as August 2023.
These two travesties followed the January 2023 sentences of Megan Hess and her mother, Shirley Koch, former owners of Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors in Montrose, Colorado. Hess pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and aiding and abetting, admitted to stealing bodies or parts of bodies from hundreds of victims from 2010 to 2018 and selling the parts to body brokers. She was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. Koch also pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and aiding and abetting, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
