Judge delays case against funeral home owners accused of 190 counts of corpse abuse

abcnews.go.com:

A Colorado judge has granted a defense request to delay the criminal case of two Colorado funeral home operators accused of letting nearly 200 corpses decay in a decrepit building in some cases for years

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A Colorado judge on Thursday granted a defense request to delay the criminal case against two Colorado funeral home operators accused of letting nearly 200 corpses decay, in some cases for years, angering some families of the deceased who are eager for the case to be resolved.

Jon and Carie Hallford are now scheduled to enter pleas to the numerous felony charges they face in June, with a tentative trial date in October. That would be a year after the corpses were discovered in a decrepit, bug-infested building.

Prosecutors did not object to the defense request for a delay, which attorneys for the couple said was necessary to prepare their case.

“Every single time this is postponed or this is dragged out, it just reopens that whole wound all over again,” said Heather DeWolf after the hearing. She wore a shirt with a photo of her son, Zach DeWolf, who died aged 33 in 2020. His remains were handled by the Hallford's funeral home but haven't yet been identified among the bodies that were found.

Before a previous hearing, DeWolf confronted Jon Hallford outside the court room, demanding: “What have you done with my son? Where is my son?”

DeWolf said Thursday that she’s living through “the deepest sorrow that I have ever experienced in my life.”

The Hallfords were arrested in Oklahoma in November and accused of corpse abuse, falsifying death certificates and sending fake ashes to families.

They operated Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs and a storage facility in the small Rocky