COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Derrick Johnson fulfilled his mother’s wish to have a final resting place where she could care for her grandchildren by burying her ashes under a golden dewdrop tree with purple flowers at his home on Maui’s Haleakala volcano.

Then the FBI called.

It was February 4, 2024, and Johnson was teaching eighth-grade physical education.

“Are you Ellen Lopez’s son?” one woman asked, Johnson recalled in an interview with The Associated Press.

The caller said there was an incident and an FBI agent would fly out to explain. Then she asked: “‘Have you ever used it? Return to nature To a funeral home? ‘”

“‘You should probably Google it,'” she added.

Amid the buzz in the weight room, Johnson typed “back to nature” into his phone. dozens news reports Appeared, appeared out of thin air.

Hundreds of bodies were stacked on top of each other. inches of body breakdown fluid. Swarms of bugs. Investigators were traumatized. governor announced state of emergency.

Johnson felt nauseous and his chest constricted, forcing the breath out of his lungs. He pushed himself out of the building when another teacher heard his cries and ran over.

Two FBI agents visited Johnson the following week, confirming His mother’s remains were among 189 corpses Back to Nature owners Jon and Carrie Hallford hid in a building in Colorado from 2019 until October 4, 2023, when the body was discovered.

this is one of them Biggest discovery of rotting corpses A U.S. funeral home lawmaker has launched an overhaul of the state’s lax funeral home regulations. In addition to delivering fake ashes to grieving families, the Holfords Also admitted to defrauding the federal government Part of nearly $900,000 in aid provided to small businesses during the pandemic.

Although the Holfords’ bills were unpaid, they squandered money on Tiffany jewelry, luxury cars and laser sculpting, pocketing about $130,000 in client cremation costs, authorities said.

They were arrested in Oklahoma in November 2023 and accused of abusing nearly 200 corpses.

Hundreds of families have learned from officials that the ashes they had ritually scattered or kept around them were not actually the remains of their loved ones. The bodies of their mothers, fathers, grandparents, children and babies Rotting in a climate-controlled building in Colorado.

Jon Holford Will sentenced on fridayFacing 30 to 50 years in prison, Carie Hallford told a judge in April Accepted a plea deal in December. Attorneys for Jon and Carrie Holford did not respond to requests for comment.

Johnson, 45, who has been panicking since the FBI call, promised himself he would speak at Holford’s sentencing and ask for the maximum sentence.

“When the judge says how long you’re going to jail and you walk away in handcuffs,” he said, “you’re going to hear my voice.”

Jon and Carie Hallford are a couple who promote “green burial,” which eliminates the need for embalming and cremation, at Back to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs.

She greets grieving families and guides them through their loved one’s final journey. His presence is getting less and less.

Johnson called the funeral home in early February 2023, the week his mother died. Johnson said Carrie Holford assured him she would take good care of his mother.

A few days later, she handed Johnson a blue box containing a Ziploc plastic bag containing gray powder, saying it was his mother’s ashes.

“She lied to me over the phone. She lied to me over email. She lied to me in person,” Johnson told the outlet.

The next day, flowers and photos of Ellen Marie Shriver-Lopez were placed around the box at a memorial service at the Holiday Inn in Colorado Springs.

Johnson sprinkled rose petals over it, and as the preacher said, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

According to the arrest affidavit, on September 9, 2023, surveillance video showed a man suspected to be Jon Hallford walking into a building owned by Return to Nature in Penrose Township, a suburb of Colorado Springs.

Camera footage inside shows a body lying on a gurney, wearing a diaper and hospital socks. The man threw it to the floor.

He then “appeared to wipe the remaining decomposition on the gurney onto the other bodies in the room” before pushing two more bodies into the building, the affidavit said.

“When I made the transfer, I was on people’s radar,” Holford reportedly said in a text message to his wife. court testimony.

Johnson and his mother grew up in an affordable housing complex in Colorado Springs, where she knew everyone.

Johnson’s father was not around. At age 5, Johnson remembers seeing him hit his mother, knocking her into a table and then onto a guitar, shattering it.

Lopez taught Johnson how to shave and yelled it from the stands at his football games.

Neighbor children called her “Mom,” and some slept on the couch when they needed a place to stay and a hot meal. She would chat with Jehovah’s Witnesses because she didn’t want to appear rude. Lopez, who has spent his life in social work, would say: “If you have the ability and the voice to help: then help.”

On Thursday, Johnson was holding a pink Mother’s Day card he had written in high school and discovered it among her belongings. “I think I wrote ‘I love you’ 20 times in there,” he said, “because how many times have I missed the opportunity to say that?”

“It makes me feel good that she kept this.”

Johnson said he talks to his mother almost every day. At age 65, after becoming bedridden and blinded by diabetes, she asked Johnson on the phone to describe what her grandchildren looked like.

It was Super Bowl Sunday 2023, and her heart stopped.

Johnson flew from Hawaii to stay at her bedside, holding her warm hand until it grew cold.

Detective Sgt. Michael Jolliffe and county deputy coroner Laura Allen stand outside the Penrose Building on Oct. 3, 2023, according to the 50-page arrest affidavit.

A sign on the door reads “Back to Nature Funeral Home” and lists a phone number. When Jolliffe called, the phone was hung up. Cracked concrete and yellow straw surround the building. Behind it was a dilapidated hearse with expired registration. The window air conditioner hums.

Jolliffe was told by someone the day before that there was a foul odor in the building, the affidavit said.

One neighbor told reporters they believed it came from a septic tank; another woman said her daughter’s dog would run toward the building whenever it was off its leash.

Reminiscent of rancid feces or rotting fish, it strikes anyone downwind of a building.

Jolliffe and Allen discovered dark stains under doors and on the building’s stucco exterior. They thought it looked like the liquid they saw while investigating decomposing bodies, the affidavit said.

But the building’s windows were covered, making it impossible to see inside.

Allen contacted the Colorado Department of Regulators, which regulates funeral homes, who in turn contacted Jon Holford. Holford agreed to take the inspector in the next afternoon.

Inspector Joseph Berry arrived, but Holford did not appear.

Berry found a small opening in one of the curtains, the affidavit said. He looked inside and saw white plastic bags on the floor that looked like body bags.

A judge issued a search warrant.

Investigators entered the 2,500-square-foot building on Oct. 5, 2023, wearing protective suits, gloves, boots and respirators, the affidavit said.

Inside, they found a large bone crusher with a bag of Quikrete next to it, which investigators suspect was used to imitate the ashes. Bodies were stacked in nearly a dozen rooms, including bathrooms, sometimes so high they blocked doorways, the affidavit said.

There are 189.

Some had been rotting for several years, others for months, according to the affidavit. Many were in body bags, some wrapped in sheets and duct tape. Others were left semi-naked on gurneys or in plastic totes, or without any coverings, reports said.

Investigators believe the Holfords were trying water cremation, a method that dissolves bodies within hours, documents say. There were swarms of bugs and maggots.

The body bag was filled with liquid, the affidavit said. Some were torn. Five-gallon buckets were placed to catch the spill. The report said cleanup teams “struggled through layers of human decomposition on the floor.”

Investigators used fingerprints, hospital bracelets and medical implants to identify the bodies, the affidavit said. A body was allegedly supposed to be buried at Pikes Peak National Cemetery.

Investigators unearthed a wooden coffin at the grave of the U.S. veteran who served in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. Inside was the decomposed body of a woman, wrapped in duct tape and plastic sheeting.

The veteran’s body was found in Penrose House, covered in maggots.

After receiving a call from the FBI, Johnson promised himself that he would speak at the Holfords’ sentencing. But he struggled to talk about what happened even with close friends, let alone in front of a judge and the Holfords.

Johnson had been obsessed with the case for months, reading dozens of news reports and often staring at his phone until one of his children interrupted him playing.

When he closed his eyes, he said he imagined himself trudging through the building with “maggots, flies, centipedes.” There are also rats, they are feasting. He asked a priest if his mother’s spirit was trapped there. She assured him no. He broke down when an episode of the zombie show The Walking Dead aired.

Johnson began seeing a therapist and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He participated in Zoom meetings with relatives of other victims that grew from dozens to hundreds.

After Lopez’s body was identified, Johnson flew to Colorado in March 2024, where his mother’s remains lay in a box at a crematorium.

“I don’t think you blame me, but I still want to tell you I’m sorry,” he recalled, putting his hand on the box.

Lopez’s body was then loaded into the cremator and Johnson pressed the button.

Johnson slowly improved through therapy and more contact with his students and children. He practiced speaking at the Holfords’ sentencing in therapy. Closing his eyes, he imagined himself standing before the judge and the Holfords.

“Justice is the missing piece of the equation,” he said. “Maybe this justice has freed me in some way.”

“And then part of me is afraid that it won’t, because it probably won’t.”

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