“My son David Jaxon Page was 20 years old when he was killed during an officer-involved shooting while in mental health crisis.
It was September 2019. We used the Return To Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs to cremate him because that’s the brochure we were given when the police came to do the official notification and interrogation.
A few days later, I asked if I could identify my son, particularly given the circumstances of his death. Return To Nature said I couldn’t because they had already cremated him. For four years, I mourned my son and fought for him in a homicide case against the police, thinking he had been laid to rest shortly after his death.
Then, on October 24, 2023, I got a call from the FBI saying David had been identified as one of the 190 bodies found at the Return To Nature Funeral Home in Penrose. It was completely devastating. I don’t know how to explain what it feels like; to know that not only was my son taken away, but his body was desecrated. Most people can’t wrap their minds around the gravity of it.
In the months we’ve been going through this, it’s gotten more intense, complex, and layered. It doesn’t get better, only worse.
When the FBI notified me, I asked what David’s condition was, and they told me my son was left naked and exposed. He didn’t even have a body bag. He wasn’t wrapped in a sheet. There was no dignity to this at all.In court we found out my son was likely in what they call “Room L”. It was where most of the older bodies were and had an inoperable refrigeration system.
By inoperable, I mean we have seen no evidence these refrigerators ever worked. There were rats and maggots and eight inches of fluid throughout the entire building, and 190 bodies were found in a similar condition.
We went to court a few months ago for a hearing, and as we were sitting there a woman walked up to us and said: “Here, you’re going to need these.” She handed us half a box of tissues and walked away.
Within 90 seconds, we had photographs of the crime scene flashed on the projector screen. Prior to that, I was having night terrors of rats and bugs eating my son’s face, and bodies stacked on top of each other skin-to-skin.
Seeing those photographs allowed me to understand the reality of the situation. And I realized that most of the bodies there were not left in that condition; a lot were in body bags, or had sheets wrapped around them.It was comforting to know that the reality for everyone wasn’t the scene I had thought, but it was still horrific.
We still have 948 people missing, their bodies not yet identified or accounted for. That’s the hardest part of all this, knowing that I’m somehow a lucky one.
When I first got the FBI’s notification, I went to social media to find out if there was already a support group.I work with people in mental health crisis. I knew that if I was having such a difficult time, then people who had not gone through trauma or who weren’t used to dealing with these kinds of things would have an even tougher time.
So, I reached out. I didn’t realize there was a group already formed, so I went ahead and started a few Facebook groups―for the families, the community, and industry experts—to get the correct information out there.
There are hundreds of us. It helped us build an infrastructure of support where, in a situation like this, there really isn’t any. We have no avenue of support. Things like this don’t happen, so there’s nothing in place for when it does.
We’re not considered victims because of the way Colorado laws are written. The victims in this case are already dead, so there’s no support to be offered. Coming together as a group of victims to support each other has been a blessing out of this.
Criminally, we have two cases right now against Jon and Carrie Hallford, the husband-and-wife owners of Return To Nature. We also have a few civil cases going, which we know we’re not going to get any compensation from, but we’re following through for the principle.
Outside of the courts, the family is doing our own investigation trying to find out more about Jon and their history, to understand the motive. As you can imagine with any case perpetrated against a loved one, you want to understand: Why? We just don’t seem to be able to figure out why.
A lot of people blame it on a financial motive. But with the trade costs of cremation, going by the number of bodies, it would by my calculation have cost them less than $60,000 to have handled our loved ones properly. I don’t believe that they committed these atrocities for that amount of money.
And to be blunt: The photographs I saw in court showed thousands of dollars in mitigation of the effects of the decomposition process at the Penrose facility. Things like five-gallon buckets, body bags, bug bombs, air fresheners, baking soda.
I don’t see how this could have been financially motivated, and that makes this case more difficult for a lot of us. We can wrap our heads around financial motivation. We would be just as angry, but at least we could understand the motive.
If they had been using the bodies for medical purposes, or for experimentation, or even for a deranged ritualistic purpose, we could understand it better and at least have a beat on why they would do such a thing. But we don’t have that answer. We have no idea.
We recently learned that Jon’s alleged involvement with the bodies was hands-on. But Carrie was very much involved too, handling the administrative side of things.
Knowing Carrie was a mother and, with Jon, allowed these things to happen to my child evokes in me absolute disbelief and anger and hatred toward her.
She was meeting with customers, signing contracts, taking our money. Carrie was reassuring us with a smile and a hug that she would take care of our dead in a way that gave them dignity and respect.
I don’t believe we’ll ever get the answer to why. They filed over 1,100 death certificates in the time they were in business, and the FBI has told us that there are roughly 30 they have cleared so far, i.e. the body was properly dispositioned at the time of death.
I know of one family member told her daughter was cleared and cremated, but who has concrete in the urn rather than her child’s ashes.
If we minus those cleared, and the 190 bodies investigators found, that still leaves well over 900 people who don’t know what happened to their loved ones. And they likely won’t have answers because there’s no way to test cremated remains for DNA.
I carried cremated human remains for four years thinking it was my son only to find out that he was in the building. Whoever’s cremated remains I carried, I will never know.
That person’s family also won’t know that their loved one was treated with dignity and respect and got to travel thousands of miles back and forth across this country with me seeking justice, love, light and peace. It’s heartbreaking for all of us.
When we talk about getting answers, we must remember a large percentage of this victim population won’t know if they are victims or not. As far as I’m concerned, that in itself victimizes them.
I can’t imagine not knowing where my son was or holding his urn every day and wondering if that was really him in there.I have questions that no mother should ever have to ask about her son. When David was properly cremated, it took about three times longer than it should.
He was covered in a black goo at the end of the cremation because the bags he was wrapped in never disintegrated, even at the correct temperature and three times the duration.
The cremated remains I got back were roughly the weight you would expect, but the volume was about three times what they should have been. That led me to believe that there was some chemical treatment happening to my son at Return To Nature.
I presented that to the coroner and to an FBI agent and asked them if they could explain what might have happened to make my son heat-resistant and light and fluffy.
They said it was impossible. The coroner said to get the volume I did there must have been another body in the cremation. I told him there wasn’t, and he said that there was no way for me to know. So, I told him I was there; I witnessed my son’s second cremation. He was appalled and said I wasn’t allowed to.
I said I know, but I did and I have it videotaped. I know my son was the only one in there—so, can you please explain to me how I got back 600-plus cubic inches of cremated remains for my child’s body?
The coroner couldn’t explain it. A few months later, we heard in court that there were in fact chemical agents at the Return To Nature location and the potential for water cremation occurring.
It breeds distrust in the people handling this case and leaves us with more questions than answers.
It’s all just disgusting to me. I don’t think there’s ever been anything that’s made me so sad, and feel so hopeless and so powerless, as knowing that, no matter how hard we fight in this case, we can’t win.
Because I will never be able to give my son the disposition that he deserved, and the dignity and respect that he should have had in death.
I don’t want my son to be remembered like this. The complexity and horror of this case overshadow the lives of our loved ones, and this becomes their story. My son David was so much more than a body left to rot.
He was so vibrant and bright, and funny and intelligent. He had autism. He was highly functioning, but he had obstacles in his way every time he turned.
And he was so intent on fighting for truth and justice for people in his life. Sometimes it seemed he would fight to the death over something that appeared petty to the rest of us.
But when he felt as if somebody was being treated unfairly, he would chase that and make sure he could save and protect that person, especially when it came to women, children, and animals.
We purchased 15 acres of land in San Luis Valley back in 2007 and we were intent on turning it into a community center. David wanted to have a wildlife rescue down there.
And that’s what we were going to do. We were going to set up this acreage and build a tiny house down there for him so that he could live on 15 acres in the middle of nowhere away from society and all its demands, and he could run free with the wolves.
Instead, he didn’t graduate high school. He didn’t get a driver’s license. He didn’t have a job. He never was able to have children. And the pain of his life being cut short, especially in the way it was, is something I don’t know how a mother heals from.
To now know that he was left in the manner he was, losing 106 pounds of his body while he laid there with rats and maggots eating his face, tossed in there so haphazardly that he slipped out of his body bag, takes away so much of the joy that he brought us.
It takes away from the good memories we would hold on to, because now when I think of my son, I’ll forever think of Jon and Carrie Hallford.
My son should have been remembered for how he lived, and maybe for the struggles he had, because that was part of him.
I should remember his smile when he walked into the room that lit everybody up. I should remember the backpacking trip down Pike’s Peak. The traveling and seeing the world. The sitting in rocking him when he was a baby, and reading Little Golden Books. But now every first memory that I have of him is somehow related to this case.
They’re leaving us with memories such as showing up for the demolition ceremony at the Penrose facility, and my son’s daddy not being able to get close enough to hear the memorial because the smell of his son six months later still overpowered him.
Things like that are real consequences of what they did. But I want my son to continue to be remembered for how he lived, and not for how he died and how he was left.
I don’t know how to do that yet.
There must come a point, at some time, where our families are truly allowed to start healing and remembering our dead for who they were when they were alive.
I just don’t know how or when that time will come. It feels very far off right now.”
