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DENVER — Colorado authorities issued an arrest warrant Friday for a former funeral house proprietor they are saying stored a deceased girl’s physique in a hearse for 2 years at a house the place police additionally discovered the cremated stays of no less than 30 folks.
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The grisly discovery occurred Feb. 6 throughout a court-ordered eviction of a home rented by Miles Harford, the 33-year-old proprietor of Apollo Funeral and Cremation Companies within the Denver suburb of Littleton, police stated. It had been closed since September 2022.
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“Mr. Harford seems to have skilled monetary bother in his enterprise. At instances he was not capable of full cremations to offer stays to households for companies,” Denver Police Cmdr. Matt Clark stated Friday. He stated every so often, Harford may need offered members of the family with one other individual’s ashes as a substitute of the ashes of their family members.
Non permanent urns — plastic containers the dimensions of a shoe field — have been discovered within the crawl area of the home whereas a Denver sheriff’s deputy oversaw the proprietor’s elimination of Harford’s belongings, Clark stated. A few of the containers have been empty.
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Different urns have been present in a transferring truck parked exterior and nonetheless others have been in a hearse, the place investigators discovered the lady’s physique lined with blankets, Clark stated. Harford, who is just not on the run and is cooperating with investigators, stated she died in August of 2022.
The recovered cremains look like related to people who handed away between 2012 and 2021, he stated.
The invention is the newest in a string of horrific instances lately involving mishandled our bodies by funeral house operators in Colorado, which has a few of the weakest oversight of the funeral business within the nation. The state has no routine inspections of funeral houses or qualification necessities for operators.
One married couple is awaiting trial in Colorado Springs following their arrest final 12 months for allegedly abandoning virtually 200 our bodies over a number of years inside a bug-infested facility and giving faux ashes to members of the family of the deceased. The operators of one other funeral house within the western Colorado metropolis of Montrose acquired federal jail sentences final 12 months for mail fraud after they have been accused of promoting physique components and distributing faux ashes.
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Harford is predicted to be charged with abuse of a corpse, forgery of the demise certificates and theft of the cash paid for the cremation. Different costs are doable because the investigation continues, stated Denver District Lawyer Beth McCann.
No voicemail was arrange on a phone quantity listed for Harford. He additionally didn’t instantly reply to emails searching for remark.
Clark stated Harford acknowledged to police that he owed cash to a number of crematories within the space and none would cremate the 63-year-old girl’s physique, so he determined to retailer her physique within the hearse. Her household instructed investigators they got what they believed have been the lady’s ashes, which have been turned over to the Workplace of the Medical Examiner.
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The household is devastated, Clark stated.
“They’re shocked. They have been harm by this,” he stated. “They believed that they have been processing their grief with the stays that they’d and had had companies with that. After which they arrive to search out out that that was not the person who was processed, and actually, she was being held in that hearse there.”
The opposite cremains discovered on the property seem to have been professionally cremated, officers stated. Investigators are checking labels on the cremains and state databases and assembly with households.
“As you may think about, these are extraordinarily tough conversations to have and the data comes as a shock to lots of the households, a number of of whom believed they’d the whole stays of their beloved one,” Clark stated.
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State licensing information present no self-discipline or board actions for Apollo Funeral and Cremation Companies, which was licensed from March 2012 by Might 2022.
In 2018, Harford and his firm have been sued by one other funeral house firm and ordered to pay about $27,000 for unspecified companies the opposite house offered, in keeping with courtroom information. The identical firm, Kansas-based Wilbert Funeral Companies, sued Harford and the corporate once more in 2021, saying Harford owed almost $9,000. That case continues to be pending.
Final 12 months, a girl who stated she was Harford’s former employer sought a courtroom order to maintain him away from her over alleged harassment. In her utility, she stated she had paid Harford to cremate two of her pets however he didn’t return them to her. There’s no indication in courtroom information that the order was granted.
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