Ex-site of Return to Nature sits barren, racking up tax bills, while victims search for memorial site
PENROSE, Colo. (KRDO) - A month ago, Jon Hallford was finally sentenced on his state criminal charges. An El Paso County judge handed down a sentence of 40 years to be served at the same time as his 20-year federal sentence, a sentence that Hallford is appealing.
RELATED COVERAGE: Jon Hallford sentenced to 40 years for abuse of a corpse charges at Return to Nature Funeral Home
"I don't think this is the end of it for us, the living victims. We are going to have to live with this forever. I will take it as a step towards healing, knowing that you know he won't see the light of day, or know what a hamburger tastes like, or a Slurpee for quite a long time," said Derrick Johnson, after Jon Hallford's sentencing hearing in February.
Now, a month later, Johnson is searching for a spot to memorialize his mother, whose body was improperly stored and left to rot at the Return to Nature Funeral Home.
The only issue is that potential locations keep denying him.
"It's so heartbreaking that we're not getting the yeses," Johnson said over a video call.
Johnson wants to build a wind phone in Southern Colorado. A wind phone looks a lot like those neighborhood libraries, but instead of books inside, there is a landline telephone that's only connected to the wind and a call log.
It would be one more chance to speak to his mother over the phone, something Johnson says they did often after his life took him to Hawaii while his mother stayed in landlocked Colorado.
"We talked on the phone constantly. We were always around each other. So having a place where I can speak to her and know that my voice is being carried off by the wind, in particular, it means the world," Johnson said.
The hang-up is that Johnson doesn't have a place to put it. He's been denied by multiple parks and trails in Colorado Springs. He was even denied by Bear Creek Park, where a bench dedicated to the Return to Nature victims was unveiled in 2024.
KRDO13 Investigates asked if he had considered the former site of Return to Nature itself.
"There were talks about this wind phone going out there," Johnson said. "Who even owns that piece of land right there?"
What's going on with the former funeral home site?
In late April 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finished the demolition and clean-up of the funeral home formerly located at 31 Werner Road in Penrose.
During the six-day process, the EPA said, "the building materials and foundation were disinfected, demolished, and transferred off-site for disposal. The foundation was replaced with clean soil."
Driving by the site today, it's just an empty field running up a hefty tab of property taxes.
The Fremont County Treasurer, Kathy Elliott, says the owners of the property owe
$18,774.96 in unpaid property taxes. It's a hefty tab that would typically lead to the property going up to a tax sale.
A tax sale, according to the El Paso County Treasurer, is the last step the county takes to collect unpaid taxes on properties.
But that hasn't happened, mainly because Fremont County officials aren't convinced there is any interest. Elliott told KRDO13 Investigates over the phone that she didn't think anyone would buy the property.
Stacey Seifert, the Fremont County Assessor, further confirmed that the Hallfords, under their LLC, still own the property. Seifert also expressed similar concerns about the commercial interest of the property.
"Even if it was for sale, it would never bring more than a fraction of those [potential lien] costs, and who would want it anyway?" she wrote in an email.
According to the Secretary of State's Office, there are two liens currently against the property. The most recent was filed in late November last year.
Could the site become a memorial?
KRDO13 Investigates asked Fremont County Commissioner Kevin Grantham if the county would consider buying the property for cheap at a tax sale auction and turning the site into a memorial for victims of the Return to Nature Funeral Home.
Grantham said there were no plans for that to be done by the county and presented a different vision for the now vacant land. "Our preference is for it to remain on the rolls and be available for future commercial/business use," Grantham said via email.
Johnson said he would love to see the land donated to the victims or a victims' group such as Colorado Remembers.
"[To] take a spot that you know was once what you would call one of the worst places in the state and turn it into something where people can heal from it," Johnson said.
While Johnson is on board, others are torn, unsure if they ever want to go back to 31 Werner Road in Penrose ever again.
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