Body and 30 cremated remains found in ex-funeral director's home

A woman's corpse and the cremated remains of at least 30 other people were found in the home of a former funeral director in Colorado, prompting Denver police to issue an arrest warrant for the man on Friday.

The former funeral director, Miles Harford, 33, will likely be charged with abuse of a corpse, falsification of a public document and theft, said Denver District Attorney Beth McCann. during a press conference on Friday.

Denver police said they had contacted the family of the woman, who was 63 when she died in August 2022.

“They're devastated, they're shocked, they're hurt by this,” Cmdr. Matt Clark, who oversees the police department's major crimes unit, said at the news conference.

The cremated remains were discovered on February 6 by the owners of the house where Mr Harford had been a tenant. The owners were cleaning out the house after serving Mr. Harford with an eviction notice when they found boxes of cremated remains. They reported the discovery to Denver Sheriff Department deputies who were present at the eviction.

Investigators from the police department and medical examiner's office then found the woman's body, which was covered with a blanket in a disused hearse in the backyard. Officials said the woman had likely been there since her death.

The discovery was particularly difficult for the woman's family because her relatives had received cremated remains that they believed were hers.

“They believed that they were dealing with their grief with the remains that they had, and that they had services with that,” Commander Clark said.

Mr. Harford, who operated Apollo Funeral and Cremation Services in Littleton, Colorado, from 2012 to 2022, experienced financial difficulties, officials said. He owed money to several crematoria, which prompted them to stop working with him. As a result, he was unable to complete the woman's cremation, officials said.

Police have yet to arrest Mr. Harford, but officials say they were in contact with him both before and after the arrest warrant was issued.

“He does acknowledge that he could not find a crematorium to process the woman's body, and at the time he felt that he had simply stored it in that hearse at that point and then given the remains to the family so that they could enjoyed their services,” said Commander Clark. said.

Attempts to reach Mr Harford on Saturday were unsuccessful.

Officials believe the cremated remains belong to people who died between 2012 and 2021. Mr. Harford's company performed cremations for those in need and those whose next of kin were unknown.

Officials were working to return the cremated remains that had been labeled to families, but they noted that they did not want to conduct DNA testing because the “extreme temperatures associated with the cremation process change the molecular structure of DNA, often making it fragmented and highly degraded.” said Commander Clark.

“It's a very labor-intensive process with a very low probability of success,” he said. “We do not have the ability to do that at this time.”

Officials said the case was not related to a case in Colorado's Fremont County in which investigators found at least 115 rotting bodies at a funeral home that had promised “green” funerals.

“However, this situation raises the possibility of this kind of thing happening in other parts of the state,” Ms McCann said.

Jack Beg research contributed.