Denver police have issued an arrest warrant for a former funeral home operator after discovering a woman’s body and the cremated remains of dozens of people at his rented house.
Police and the Denver Medical Examiner’s Office on Feb. 6 responded to reports of a suspicious occurrence at a house in the 2500 block of South Quitman Street, authorities said in a Friday news conference.
The reporting party was in the process of cleaning out the house after evicting Miles Harford when they discovered boxes of cremains located in a crawl space, Cmdr. Matt Clark, who leads the Major Crimes Unit, said Friday.
Investigators then found a hearse parked at the property that contained the body of a deceased woman, covered by a blanket, and additional cremains.
The woman, 63, had died of natural causes in 2022, police said. Investigators said they believe the body had been stored in the hearse since shortly after her death. The woman’s family told authorities that Harford had provided them with cremains after she died.
Investigators also served a search warrant on a U-Haul in front of the house, which contained temporary urns holding additional cremains, Clark said. Police believe the remains of some 30 decedents have been recovered, including some that were cremated as early as 2012. They’re working to determine the next of kin and facilitate the return to families.
“It’s an unusual situation,” Denver District Attorney Beth McCann said during the news conference. “We intend to fully prosecute once Mr. Harford is arrested.”
Harford owned Apollo Funeral and Cremation Service, a business with a Littleton mailing address that has been closed since September 2022, police said. show no disciplinary actions against the funeral home, which first obtained a license in 2012.
The former funeral home operator is cooperating with police and is not on the run, Clark said. Harford will be arrested on investigation of abuse of a corpse, forgery and theft, though McCann indicated additional charges could be added.
Harford appears to have experienced financial issues, Clark said, leading crematories to end their agreements with him.
“Unbeknownst to families, Harford may have occasionally provided families with other people’s remains so services could be held,” Clark said. Harford told police that he could not find a crematory to process the 63-year-old’s body, the police commander said.
Court records show Harford owed money to a variety of creditors, including cremation companies.
Wilbert Funeral Services sued Harford twice between 2018 and 2021, saying he owed the company some $35,000 in unpaid bills. The Colorado Department of Revenue issued a nearly $15,000 judgment against Horford last year for unpaid taxes. And an apartment complex in Englewood three times in 2013 took Harford to court over unpaid rent.
In September, a woman filed for a temporary protection order against Harford, saying he had been harassing her through text messages. The woman said Harford was previously an employee of hers but had been fired for stealing. The woman alleged that she had paid for Harford to cremate two of her animals, but he never did.
Authorities encouraged any clients of Apollo Funeral and Cremation Service who did not receive cremains or experienced irregularities with their service to call the Denver Police Major Crimes Division and Denver Police Victim Assistance Unit at 720-913-6610.
Police say the shocking discovery is not connected to the Return to Nature Funeral Home case in Penrose, which garnered national attention last fall. Authorities in that case found nearly 200 bodies decomposing in the decrepit building, some of which hadn’t been touched in four years. The owners, Jon and Carie Hallford, were arrested in Oklahoma in November and charged with abuse of a corpse, forgery, theft and money laundering.
The Penrose discovery represented yet another egregious case of funeral home misconduct in Colorado, and shined a glaring light on the state’s lax funeral home and mortuary regulations.
Five years earlier, the FBI raided the Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors in Montrose. A multiyear investigation found the operators, Shirley Koch and Megan Hess, were selling body parts around the world without the consent of grieving families. They each received more than a decade in prison after pleading guilty to federal charges.
Experts say few states regulate the industry as lightly as the Centennial State, which remains the only one in the country to license funeral home businesses but not the people who run them.
State officials don’t regularly inspect funeral homes and only devote one-quarter of one full-time position to regulate 220 funeral homes and 77 crematories.
Lawmakers, in response to a series of grisly mortuary cases in recent years, are making a push this session to bring Colorado in line with the rest of the country.
State Sen. Dylan Roberts, an Avon Democrat, told The Post he will be running a bill that would add licensure requirements for funeral home operators and add periodic inspections from regulators.
The funeral home industry says it’s on board with these changes and welcomes the additional oversight.
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