A mother penned a first-person piece on how she found out that her deceased, 20-year-old son was never cremated as she was told, but instead left to rot in a room in a Colorado funeral home
A grieving mother thought she had put her son to rest, cremating him four years ago - but a recent investigation into a criminal Colorado funeral home found that his body was left decaying in a sheet.
Crystina Page lost her son David Jaxon Page in a police shooting during a mental health crisis. He was only 20 years old. She had him cremated, or so she thought. She also spent years fighting a legal battle for justice for her son.
When she was called to identify his body, she was told she couldn't because he had already been cremated. Now, in a first-person piece for Newsweek, the mother says she found out from a phone call from the FBI that her son's body was one of the 190 bodies discovered decaying at the now-infamous Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado.
READ MORE: 'My mom was found among 190 rotting bodies - I got concrete instead of ashes'
READ MORE: Daughter's horror of finding out mum was among 190 decomposing bodies in funeral home
Jon and Carie Hallford, the managers of Return to Nature Funeral Home in the town of Penrose in Colorado, were arrested in October on a $2 million bond alleging approximately 190 counts of abuse of a corpse, five counts of theft, four counts of money laundering, and over 50 counts of forgery.
Return to Nature's registration expired in November last year, but the husband and wife were able to run the home without any regulation or restrictions, as anyone can become a funeral director in Colorado. They can obtain a license through the Colorado Funeral Directors Association, but it is voluntary by other state standards.
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Page is one of the many people now discovering that their loved ones were not put to rest with dignity at all. "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," Page wrote.
"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," she continued.
David Page's body was discovered in a room with an 'inoperable,' which means it had no working fridge. In fact, there is evidence it never had a working fridge.
Page's letter says that police found rats, maggots, and eight inches of fluid throughout the entire building.
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"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," Page said. She said once she saw the photos, she was relieved to find that her worst fears weren't true - but the situation comes pretty close.
"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," Page laments. She says that she's found community and support groups for the hundreds of others in her situation.
She says she and the other family members have followed through with whatever legal recourse they can, and even spent their own money to investigate the owners to try and find a motive. She doesn't believe the couple was motivated by money, but simply wants to know why they didn't care for any of these bodies.
Page was given a jar of ashes. Now that she knows her son's body was simply kept in the funeral home, she's horrified to know that she has someone else's remains - possibly even one of the 900 or so individuals who's remains they can't find because DNA testing doesn't work on ashes.
She's had her son's body cremated, for real this time, and was horrified to discover the funeral home managers may have used a chemical agent that interfered with the second cremation.
She says she wants her son to be remembered for the person he was, instead of this horrifying case that she's dealing with. She added that it's hard for her to do sometimes.
"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."
