Judge lowers funeral home owner’s bond despite text messages claiming he’s a flight risk

EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) -- Families who used Return to Nature to cremate their loved ones walked out of an El Paso County courthouse in tears Thursday after a judge lowered the owner, Jon Hallford’s, bond.

During Thursday’s hearing, the defense asked 4th Judicial District Judge William Moller to lower Hallford’s bond from $2 million to $100,000. Hallford faces numerous felony charges after nearly 200 decomposing bodies were found inside his Penrose funeral home.

The defense argued Hallford has no criminal history and can’t afford to pay the $2 million cash only bond, which the defense claimed violated Hallford’s rights.

However, the prosecution countered with new evidence, text messages from Hallford, which they read aloud to argue he was a flight risk.

“I don't give a f* about this family,” the prosecution said while reading Hallford’s text message. “I'll give a f* about what’s happening in Penrose and not going to prison and getting the f*** out of this community.”

According to the prosecution, the Hallfords initially fled to a Native American reservation in Oklahoma because they thought they could avoid extradition back to Colorado. However, they drove back to Colorado to gather personal belongings before going back to Oklahoma where they were later arrested.

The prosecution even claimed Hallford knew about the consequences he faced if he was ever caught, based on text messages and the fact he threw away his phone while on the run and used his son’s phone instead.

“If Penrose were to be exposed, we would both lose everything anyway,” Hallford texted his wife Carie Hallford in August, about two months before Penrose was discovered, according to the prosecution.

Samantha Naranjo, whose grandmother was one of the Return to Nature victims, said she was shocked to hear the new evidence.

“He's heartless,” Naranjo said of Jon Hallford. “You had to have been heartless to do this in the first place, to look at us in our faces, to give us cement after knowingly keeping our loved one's body.”

The prosecution also said the Hallford’s have no place to live and now no employment, which should deter the judge from lowering the bond.

However, Judge Moller lowered Hallford’s bond from $2 million, cash only, to a $100,000 cash, surety or property bond. Hallford will only have to pay $10,000 to walk out of the El Paso County Jail. The bond comes with conditions though. Hallford will have to wear a GPS monitor, surrender all passports and is prohibited from contacting any victim family members.

“I believe the court can fashion conditions of release on a lower bond that are sufficient to protect public safety and to preclude Mr. Hallford from fleeing the area,” Moller said.

Families, like Naranjo, are upset Hallford could soon be released from the El Paso County Jail and walk among them.

“190 victims…for him not to be held (in jail) it doesn't seem right,” Naranjo said. “It's not fair. He took advantage of us when we were most vulnerable, at a sacred time in someone's life. He gave us cement and told us to trust him.”

Hallford’s preliminary hearing, which was supposed to be Thursday, was postponed to February because the defense has thousands of pages of evidence it still has to work through. The prosecution said Hallford’s case has the most felony charges, more than 200, since a case back in 2009. They said if Hallford is sentenced to the max for all charges, he faces 525 years in prison.

Hallford’s defense also asked the judge to keep the arrest affidavit sealed from the public, because he claimed the document was “editorialized and inflammatory” with images that could taint the case and negatively affect Hallford’s rights to due process.

The prosecution disagreed the court document would taint the case and there are no statutes that require the arrest affidavit to remain sealed.

The judge said he would decide after Carie Hallford’s preliminary hearing, which is scheduled for next week.