In the days after her 33-year-old son, Zach, died in July, 2020, Heather DeWolf started taking a new route to and from work so she could slow-roll by the Colorado Springs funeral home that was handling his final arrangements.

She knew the oldest of her three boys, an aspiring author and stand-up comic who favored fedoras and red sneakers, was gone. But the body she’d hugged — those blue eyes that twinkled when he said something silly to make her laugh, the voice that said ‘I love you, Mom’ — was still here.

Still there, at Return to Nature on Platte Avenue. At least, until Zach’s body could be cremated, after which his ashes would be returned to the family and a tree planted in his honor in a national forest. Such were the promises made when DeWolf signed the contract with funeral home owners Jon and Carie Hallford, who’d seemed so nice on the phone.

“When I got the call letting me know he was ready to be picked up, I felt like it was as hard for her to tell me as it was for me to hear,” said DeWolf, fighting back tears as she recounted that 2020 conversation with Carie Hallford.

DeWolf said she took comfort knowing the couple handling Zach’s cremation were caring people. She’d made the right choice, not going with the first funeral home, where it felt like the guy was trying to sell her a used car.

Now she’s wishing she’d gone with the used-car salesman, said DeWolf with a wry laugh, her gaze slamming down to the hard-plastic Return to Nature urn on her coffee table.

“We don’t know if those ashes are Zach; we don’t think they are … and all any of us is being told is, basically, get used to it and go away,” she said.

DeWolf is among more than 1,100 families who fell for Return to Nature’s false compassion and “green burial” spiel between November 2017 and August 2023, according to death certificates filed with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Return to Nature Funeral Home case: Latest news, complete coverage

However, because her son was not among the 189 “improperly stored” bodies discovered inside the company’s unlicensed Penrose property last October, DeWolf and families like hers are not officially considered victims.

At least 989 families remain stuck in limbo, re-grieving and reliving one of life’s most painful, confusing and vulnerable times, with no end in sight.

Such families have been left with no avenue forward, to justice, victims’ resources or compensation. With a wide-ranging gag order in place as the Hallfords’ state and federal trials loom, even basic questions are unanswerable.

Questions such as: Is the investigation into the crimes at Return to Nature over?

Silence, they say, feels like a “yes,” despite hundreds of urns filled with ashes that may or may not be the person they’re supposed to be, that may or may not be human, and simple math that seems to indicate decedents — perhaps hundreds of them — remain unaccounted for.

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“I feel betrayed, by those monsters who did this, and also by the state that allowed this to happen,” said Keri Wirick Pollakoff, of Colorado Springs, who used Return to Nature for her father’s cremation in 2020. “Not knowing what is in our urn, not knowing what they have done with my dad. It is incomprehensible.

“I don’t understand how we are not considered victims.”

The Hallfords opened Return to Nature on Platte Avenue in Colorado Springs in 2017, and later operated for a time from an address on East Las Animas Street. By November 2022, the business had lost its license and the companies it contracted with to outsource cremations had severed ties for nonpayment.

The Hallfords are alleged to have continued selling cremation and burial packages through the following summer, and using that money — as well as COVID-19 relief funds — to fund a lavish lifestyle while covertly decamping the business to their 2,500-square-foot funeral home in Penrose, a Fremont County whistle-stop southwest of the Springs known for apple harvests and antiquing.

Concerns about a lack of proper body storage at that location in 2020 led Fremont County Coroner Randy Keller to lodge a complaint with the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies, the only agency tasked with mortuary industry oversight in the state, but no one followed up.

Three years later, in early October 2023, police responding to reports of a foul, rotting odor made an unfathomably gruesome discovery: Almost 200 bodies, in various states of decomposition, in a scene so horrific responding officers became physically ill.

Like everyone, Brody Perales cringed at the news reports, never imagining his family might be involved. He couldn’t remember the company’s name, but knew the funeral home they’d used for his mom’s cremation in April 2020 was in Colorado Springs.

“The headlines all were ‘Penrose Funeral Home,’ so I didn’t think much of it,” he said.

His sister in Washington state connected the awful dots after stumbling across the grisly news later that year. Samantha Perales did as instructed by authorities who were requesting the public’s help identifying the remains. She tracked down her mom’s dental records and immediately turned them over to the coroner and FBI.

“Then, radio silence,” she said.

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Teresa Zeiter recounted a similar experience after filling out a questionnaire and sending in all the requested documents, receipts, dental records and death certificate, which listed Wilbert Funeral Services, in Commerce City, as the company that cremated her 21-year-old son, Levi.

She said she waited, anxiously, for months, for a call to let her know if Levi was among the Penrose bodies. That call never came, but when she finally got the FBI on the phone, she did receive some prescient advice.

“We were told we needed to accept the fact that no one was going to look for answers or for our son’s remains once all of the bodies in Penrose are identified, and it is likely we will never know if it is Levi’s ashes we are burying in his cemetery plot … or wearing in the necklace urns around our necks,” Zeiter said.

Fifteen of the bodies found in Penrose remain unidentified, according to the 4th Judicial District in El Paso County.

Beyond that, The Gazette’s attempts to get answers about any aspect of the case from any agency involved in the investigation were shut down by authorities who cited the gag-order, as the Hallfords face trials and hundreds of state and federal charges. The Return to Nature owners have pleaded not guilty on all counts.

Eventually, Samantha Perales said she was able to reach Fremont County Coroner Randy Keller, who confirmed that her mother, Christine Lynn Richardson, was not among the bodies found in Penrose. What seemed like good news quickly soured, though, when she learned the crematorium listed on the death certificate had no record of having performed her cremation.

Return to Nature Funeral Home case: Latest news, complete coverage

“The coroner asked me if I had a cremation tag and certificate. I told him that I did not, and he informed me that it was likely I did not have my mother’s remains. However, I could still have the human remains of another individual or simply a concrete mix,” Samantha Perales said.

In one of her rare conversations with the FBI, Perales said she pointed out that investigators’ work wasn’t nearly done.

“We have no clue where my mother’s body may be … and there are many customers of Return to Nature who were able to confirm they don’t have their person’s cremains …and their person is not one of the 189 … ”

Where are all of these people?

Perales said she was told: “If we knew where the bodies were, we’d be looking.”

Perales then suggested they do know where to look, or at least where to start.

At least one burial performed by Return to Nature is known to have contained the wrong body, according to the indictments against the Hallfords, but that exhumation at Pikes Peak National Cemetery only occurred because the veteran who was supposed to be interred there was found among the bodies in Penrose.

“I really think the state needs to exhume every body that was handled by Return to Nature,” said Wirick Pollakoff, the Colorado Springs woman who used Return to Nature for her father’s cremation. 

Once their loved ones were ruled out as potentially being among the bodies found in Penrose, and the trickle of official responses dried up, many of the “non-victim” victim families turned to social media for connection and compassion.

With almost 700 members, and counting, the Return to Nature Community Support Group on Facebook is a virtual epicenter of shared updates, experiences, grief and virtual meetups regarding Return to Nature and the legal proceedings of its owners, the Hallfords.

The group is also a forum for grassroots investigations, as families try to fill in the gaps between them and any sense of closure. Several say they have found what appear to be pieces of metal in their loved one’s alleged ashes, possibly the remnants of an implanted medical device their loved one did not have. Proof the ashes aren’t theirs, and also a clue to the true identity.

Properly cremated remains should not contain anything other than the ashes or fragments of organic material, said Joe Walsh, president of the Colorado Funeral Directors Association.

“But we certainly know they didn’t do things the way they were supposed to be done,” Walsh said.

Even with such a clue, without a serial number it’s likely meaningless.

“Sometimes those can be tracked, but much past that, you know … there’s no real way of determining who cremains belong to if there’s no tag, and things weren’t done properly, which we know they were not,” Walsh said.

In almost all cases, physical remains containing traceable genetics are destroyed during the cremation process. In the rare cases they are not, DNA testing is expensive, complicated and doesn’t guarantee results.

Still, Walsh said he understands families’ desperate need to grab at any straw.

“They are very much victims, and it’s a very sad, tragic situation that should have never happened,” Walsh said. “But you look at what it spurred, it spurred action on the state legislature to hopefully prevent anything like this from ever happening in the future.

“We’ve tried to get licensure for many years, and this is what it took, sadly.”

After unanimous approval earlier this month, a bill overhauling the mortuary profession in Colorado — and, for the first time, requiring funeral home operators to be qualified and licensed, starting in 2027 — is expected to be signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis. The roll-out of new laws begins this summer.

Sen. Bob Gardner of Colorado Springs, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said that he and his colleagues spoke with and heard “heartbreaking” testimony from a number of the official victim families as they put together the ground-changing legislation.

“It’s like they’ve suffered the loss of their loved one all over again. It prolongs their grief,” said Gardner.

He said it’s hoped that the legislation can keep such horrendous crimes from ever happening again in Colorado, but acknowledged there’s likely little that can be done for affected families stuck in a “Catch-22” without answers or any real reason to believe they might get them, gag order or not.

Where facts and hope are scarce, speculation reigns.

The void of official information has led some back into crippling grief, others to fury, and some to dark theories that haunt their thoughts, about how such crimes possibly could have been perpetrated.

“Levi was a thin, young man, and after organ donation and autopsy, he only weighed 90 pounds,” Teresa Zeiter said. “It makes sense to me that they would cremate larger people to create more ashes. And larger people are more difficult to move and dispose of …

“It’s horrible, but it’s hard to keep your mind from going places  like that.”

Brody Perales said what haunts him is that all those special moments and rituals over the last four years — spreading what he believed were his mom’s ashes on memorial snowboarding and motorcycle excursions — are now corrupted by doubt.

“Luckily, I had a mother who believed the body was just the body,” Perales said. “But for me, it goes deeper than that.”

Just a body, maybe, but not just any body.

When he last spoke with the designated victim liaison, Perales said he was told that if he needed to, he should consider getting some counseling. On his own dime.

“I already signed up for therapy because of this and I’m lucky I can do that, but some of these other families can’t,” Perales said, pausing to carefully consider his next words.

“To me … it doesn’t feel like anybody is trying to hide anything,” he said, finally. “It feels like they just don’t care.”