A man whose mother was found among 189 rotting corpses tells the story

Then the FBI called.

It was February 4, 2024, and Johnson was teaching eighth grade gym class.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Johnson recalled, “Are you Ellen Lopes’ son?” a woman asked.

The caller said there had been an incident and an FBI agent would come to explain. Then he asked: “‘Did you experiment return to nature To the funeral home?”

He added, “You should probably Google them.”

In the hum of the weight room, Johnson typed “Return to Nature” into his cellphone. dozens of news report Appeared, coming out in a blurry form.

Hundreds of bodies were kept on top of each other. inches of body decomposition fluid. Swarm of insects. The investigators are in shock. Governor announced emergency situation.

Johnson felt nauseated and his chest constricted, forcing him to breathe from his lungs. He pushed himself out of the building as another teacher heard his screams and came running.

Two FBI agents met with Johnson the following week to confirm. His mother’s body was one of 189 Return to Nature’s owners, John and Carrie Halford, hid them in a building in Colorado between 2019 and October 4, 2023, when the bodies were found.

it was one of The biggest discovery of rotting dead bodies Lawmakers at American Funeral Home make changes to state’s lax funeral home rules. In addition to handing out fake ashes to bereaved families, Halfords Also admitted to defrauding the federal government Of the nearly $900,000 in pandemic-era aid for small businesses.

Even though Halford’s bills went unpaid, authorities said he spent lavishly on Tiffany jewelry, luxury cars and laser-body sculpting, pocketing nearly $130,000 that he paid for cremations.

He was arrested in Oklahoma in November 2023 and accused of abusing nearly 200 corpses.

Hundreds of families learned from authorities that the ashes they ceremoniously spread or kept nearby were not actually the remains of their loved ones. There were the bodies of their mothers, fathers, grandparents, children and infants Molded in a room temperature building in Colorado.

John Halford will be Sentenced on FridayCarrie Halford faces 30 to 50 years in prison, and will be sentenced after a judge in April His plea agreement was accepted in December. Attorneys for John and Carrie Halford did not respond to requests for comment.

Johnson, 45, who has been experiencing panic attacks since being called by the FBI, promised himself that he would speak out at Halford’s sentencing and seek the maximum penalty.

“When the judge tells you how long you’re going to jail for, and you walk away in handcuffs,” he said, “you’re going to listen to me.”

John and Carrie Halford were a husband-and-wife team who advertised “green funerals” without embalming at their Return to Nature funeral home in Colorado Springs.

She will greet the bereaved families and guide them on the last journey of their loved ones. He was less visible.

Johnson called the funeral home in early February 2023, the week his mother died. Johnson said Carrie Holford assured her she would take good care of her mother.

A few days later, she gave Johnson a blue box containing a zip-tied plastic bag with gray powder, saying these were her mother’s ashes.

“He lied to me over the phone. He lied to me via email. He lied to me in person,” Johnson said.

The following day, the box was surrounded by flowers and photographs of Ellen Marie Shriver-Lopes at a memorial service at a Holiday Inn in Colorado Springs.

Johnson sprinkled rose petals on him as a preacher said: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

According to the arrest affidavit, on September 9, 2023, surveillance footage showed a man resembling John Holford walking inside a building owned by Return to Nature in the city of Penrose, outside Colorado Springs.

Camera footage from inside shows a body lying in a diaper and hospital socks. The man turned her over on the floor.

The affidavit states that he then “appeared to be wiping the dirt left over from the litter on the other bodies in the room” before he carried two more bodies into the building.

In a message to his wife, Halford said, “When I was transferring, people gave me juice.” court testimony.

Johnson grew up with her mother in an affordable housing complex in Colorado Springs, where she knew everyone.

Johnson’s father was not around much; At age 5, Johnson remembers seeing his mother punch him, slamming him into a table and then onto a guitar, breaking it.

It was Lopez who taught Johnson how to shave and yell from the bleachers at football games.

The neighborhood children called her “Mom”, some children slept on the couch when they needed a place to stay and a hot meal. She talked to Jehovah’s Witnesses because she did not want to be rude. Having spent his life in social work, Lopez used to say: “If you have the ability and the voice to help: help.”

On Thursday, Johnson was holding a pink Mother’s Day card she had written in high school and had discovered among her things. “I think I wrote ‘I love you’ 20 times in there,” he said, “because how many times have I missed saying it?”

“It makes me feel really good that he kept it.”

Johnson said he talks to his mother almost every day. When she became disabled and blind due to diabetes at the age of 65, she asked Johnson on the phone to tell her what her grandchildren would look like.

It was Super Bowl Sunday in 2023 when his heart stopped.

Johnson, who had flown from Hawaii to be at her bedside, took her warm hand and held it until it cooled.

Detective Sgt. Michael Jolliffe and County Deputy Coroner Laura Allen stand outside the Penrose Building on Oct. 3, 2023, according to a 50-page arrest affidavit.

A sign on the door read “Return to Nature Funeral Home” and listed a phone number. When Jolliffe called him he got disconnected. Broken concrete and yellow stalks of grass surround the building. Behind was a dilapidated hearse whose registration had expired. A window air conditioner was humming.

The affidavit says someone had called Jolliffe about a strange smell coming from the building the day before.

A neighbor told the reporter that he thought it came from the septic tank; Another said her daughter’s dog always runs toward the building whenever it’s off leash.

Reminiscent of rancid manure or rotting fish, it hit anyone on the downside of the building.

Jolliffe and Allen noticed a dark stain under the door and on the building’s plaster exterior. The affidavit states that he thought it resembled fluids he had seen with decomposing bodies during the investigation.

But the windows of the building were covered and they could not see inside.

Allen contacted the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies, which oversees funeral homes, who contacted John Halford. Halford agreed to show an inspector inside the next afternoon.

Inspector Joseph Berry arrived, but Halford did not.

Berry found a small opening in a window casing, the affidavit says. Peeking out, she saw white plastic bags on the floor that looked like body bags.

A judge issued a search warrant.

Wearing protective suits, gloves, boots and respirators, investigators entered the 2,500-square-foot building on October 5, 2023, according to the affidavit.

Inside, they found a large bone grinder and a bag of Quikrete next to it, which investigators suspected was used to incinerate ashes. In about a dozen rooms, including bathrooms, bodies were piled so high that the doors were closed, the affidavit said.

There were 189.

Some had been rotting for years, others for several months, according to the affidavit. Many were in body bags, some wrapped in sheets and duct tape. It said the other half were uncovered, lying on gurneys or in plastic totes, or uncovered.

The document states that investigators believe Halford was experimenting with water cremation, which can incinerate a body in several hours. There were swarms of insects there.

The body bag was filled with liquid, according to the affidavit. Some were torn. Five-gallon buckets were placed to catch the leak. It said removal teams “scraped up layers of human decomposition on the floor”.

The affidavit said investigators identified the bodies using fingerprints, hospital bracelets and medical implants. It said a body should have been buried at Pikes Peak National Cemetery.

Investigators exhumed a wooden coffin at the burial site of a US Army veteran who served in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. Inside was the dismembered body of a woman, wrapped in duct tape and plastic sheets.

The veteran’s body was found covered in maggots in the Penrose Building.

After the FBI call, Johnson promised himself that he would speak out at the Halfords’ sentencing. But she found it difficult to talk about what had happened even to her closest friends, let alone in front of the judge and Halford.

For months, Johnson obsessed over the case, reading dozens of news reports, often glued to his phone until one of his children stopped him from playing.

When she closed her eyes, she said she imagined walking into the building “with insects, flies, centipedes. There are rats, they are feasting.” He asked a preacher if his mother’s spirit was trapped there. She assured him that this had not happened. When an episode of the zombie show “The Walking Dead” came out, he was broke.

Johnson began seeing a therapist and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He joined a Zoom meeting with relatives of other victims as the number grew from dozens to hundreds.

After Lopes’ body was identified, Johnson flew to Colorado in March 2024, where his mother’s remains were in a box at a crematorium.

“I don’t think you blame me, but I still want to tell you that I’m sorry,” he said, placing his hand on the box.

Lopes’ body was then loaded into the incinerator and Johnson pressed the button.

Johnson has gradually improved with therapy, becoming more involved with his students and children. He practiced speaking at Halfords’ sentencing in therapy. Closing his eyes, he imagined himself standing before the judge and Halford.

“Justice is the part that is missing from this whole equation,” he said. “Maybe somehow this justice will set me free.”

“And then there’s a part of me that’s scared it won’t happen, because it probably won’t.”

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without any modifications to the text.