Colorado authorities on Friday issued an arrest warrant for a former funeral home owner accused of keeping the body of a deceased woman in a hearse for two years, where police also discovered up to 30 cremated bodies. .
The gruesome discovery was made on Feb. 6 after Miles Harford, a 33-year-old owner of Apollo Funeral and Cremation Services in the Denver suburb of Littleton, was evicted from a rented Denver home under court order, Denver police said. It is said that he woke up in the middle of It has been closed since September 2022.
The discovery is the latest in a series of horrific incidents in recent years related to mishandling of bodies by funeral home owners in Colorado, a state with the weakest funeral industry oversight in the nation. The state does not have regular inspections of funeral homes or qualification requirements for operators.
A 13-year-old Denver boy is charged with murder in the shooting death of a man who blocked the path of a bus.
A couple is awaiting trial in Colorado Springs after being arrested last year on charges of abandoning about 200 bodies in an insect-infested facility over several years and giving fake remains to the families of the dead. Operators of another funeral home in the western Colorado city of Montrose were accused last year of selling body parts and distributing fake remains and were sentenced to federal prison for mail fraud.
Police say Harford is not at large and is cooperating, and is expected to be charged with abuse of a corpse, falsifying a death certificate and stealing cremation funds. Denver District Attorney Beth McCann said other charges are possible as the investigation progresses.
A former funeral home owner in suburban Denver has been arrested after a woman’s body and up to 30 other remains were discovered on the property he was vacating.
The phone number listed for Harford did not have a voicemail set up. He did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Denver Police Commander Matt Clark said Harford admitted to police that he could not find a crematorium to dispose of the 63-year-old woman’s body and decided to store it in a hearse. The woman’s family told investigators they were given a body believed to be the woman’s, which was turned over to the medical examiner’s office.
Clark said her family is devastated.
“They are in shock. They are hurt by this,” he said. “They believed that they were processing their grief with the ashes that they had and were receiving services using it, and then it wasn’t the person who was being processed, it was actually her. It turned out that she had been tied up in the hearse of “There. “
Other remains found on the property appear to have been professionally cremated, officials said. Investigators are examining the remains’ labels and state databases in hopes of returning the remains to their families. Officials said DNA testing is not available.
State licensing records do not show any discipline or board action against Apollo Funeral and Cremation Services. The business license was issued in March 2012 and expired in May 2022.
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Harford and his company were sued by another funeral home in 2018 and ordered to pay about $27,000 for unspecified services provided by the other party, according to court records. The same Kansas-based company, Wilbert Funeral Services, sued Harford and the company again in 2021, claiming Harford owed nearly $9,000. That case is still pending.
