Former funeral home owner arrested after a corpse lay in a hearse for 2 years
A former funeral home owner accused of keeping a woman's corpse in the back of a hearse for two years and hoarding the cremated remains of 35 people has been arrested, authorities said.
Thursday night's arrest of Miles Harford, 33, comes in connection with the latest in a series of offenses by Colorado funeral home owners, including the discovery of nearly 200 decomposing bodies in a bug-infested funeral home facility last year. The finds have underscored the laxness of state funeral home regulations and have brought pressure on lawmakers to try to strengthen the laws.
A grisly scene of urns stashed around the Harford property, from a crawl space to inside the hearse where the 63-year-old woman's body lay, was uncovered in early February during a court-ordered eviction at Harford's home, police said.
While searching the property, police opened the door of the hearse to a “foul odor,” seeing the outline of the human body seemingly strapped to the gurney and covered by blankets, according to the arrest affidavit.
What.
Remarkably commonplace issue we have here. Happens to the best of us. First, you're managing a funeral home like any other member of society. Then, one November not quite enough people die, you can't quite make the bills. It'll be OK, you tell yourself. Il just pay the crematorium their fees next month, it'll be OK. There's a second crematorium down the street anyways, I'll just send my biz there.
Well crap, people are living longer. Still can't pay that bill. Next month. Meantime, I'll head to the third crematorium. I'll push back on the electricity bill in the meantime and use the credit cards!
It's been six months. I still haven't paid these guys. Now they won't take new bodies. They're on to me, I'm on the crematorium black list. Ugh. Shit, what do now? I'm sure I'll have the funds next month. In the meantime, just leave this body in the hearse we no longer use...
We have some leftover ashes, we can split those up into these nice urns and just tell new customers that these belong to their loved ones! They'll never know the difference!
Then the cops showed up, weird
I'm imagining a movie based on these events, played out as a comedy of errors. Probably in too poor taste for the major studios.
This summer... we're putting the fun in funeral
It'd be like Pain and Gain. Throughout the move they would have to keep reminding the audience that it's based on true events.
Or he wanted to use the carpool lane
This guy
The worst part is that stories about this sort of thing keep happening. Sometimes with a lot of corpses.
This is just from the past couple of years-
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/colorado-funeral-home-stacked-bodies-maggots-penrose-return-to-nature/
https://www.wave3.com/2022/07/02/31-decomposed-bodies-cremated-remains-discovered-during-clark-county-funeral-home-investigation/
And you can see that story over and over again stretching back years.
Your first link is the same case as the OP. It just keeps getting bigger and more complex.
Source? This article says the owners of the one in Penrose is a married couple, not this guy.