Funeral home owner kept woman's corpse in hearse for 2 years and stashed 30 more

23 February 2024 , 19:31

747     0

Ashes were swapped and families may have had other people's loved ones ashes (Image: AP)

A former funeral home owner is being hunted by the police as they say he kept a woman's body in a hearse for two years and stored the cremated remains of at least 30 people in a crawl space in his Denver, CO home.

The abandoned 63-year-old woman's body and the cremated human remains were found on February 6 during a court-ordered eviction of a house rented by Miles Harford, the 33-year-old owner of Apollo Funeral & Cremation Services in the Denver suburbs.

The woman who died in August of 2022 was discovered in the car. Police said Harford had been cooperating with investigators when the arrest warrant was announced last week. But he failed to turn himself in to authorities leading to an offer of a $2,000 Crimestoppers award for information leading to his arrest because authorities are unable to find him.

READ MORE: Student and woman found dead with gunshot wounds in University of Colorado dorm room

Remains were found at his residence (AP)

Missing Harford appeared to have experienced financial trouble in his business and was at times not able to complete cremations to provide remains to families for memorials. Shockingly for families of the deceased, Harford might have provided them with another person's ashes instead of the ashes of their loved ones, Denver Police Commander Matt Clark said.

Tragedy as 13-month-old boy dies after the stolen car he was in crashed

Temporary urns were found in a tight crawl space of the house while a Denver sheriff's deputy oversaw the removal of Harford's belongings. However, some of the plastic urn boxes were empty. More urns were found in a moving truck parked outside, while others were in the funeral hearse where investigators found the woman's dead body hidden under blankets.

Harford is facing charges of abuse of a corpse, forgery of the death certificate and theft of the money paid for the woman's cremation.

Click here to follow the Mirror US on Google News to stay up to date with all the latest news, sport and entertainment stories.

It appears he had befallen financial troubles (AP)

Further charges are possible as the investigation continues, Denver District Attorney Beth McCann said last week.

The recovered remains date back a long way as some appear to be associated with individuals who passed away between 2012 and 2021, Clark said. The fugitive's business performed cremations for people who were low on money and those whose next of kin were unknown until he seemingly ran into financial strife himself.

Officials would like to return the remains to loved ones but it is not simple when they have said they will not conduct DNA tests because the "extreme temperatures involved in the cremation process alter the molecular structure of DNA, often rendering it fragmented and highly degraded".

"It's a very resource-intensive process with a very low likelihood of success," Clark said. "We don't have the ability at this point to undertake that."

Imy Brighty-Potts