Colorado authorities found a house of horrors in Miles Harford‘s home after he was evicted, and based on what they uncovered, an arrest warrant was issued for Harford, a former funeral home director in Littleton, a Denver suburb.
Harford rented the Littleton home, and after he was evicted, the owners made a series of gruesome discoveries, leading them to call the police. Harford was head of Apollo Funeral and Cremation Services in Littleton between 2012 and 2022, when The New York Times says Harford ran into financial trouble and closed.
Despite the fact the funeral home shut down, Harford still sold prepaid funeral services until just a few months before cops learned the truth about how Harford’s business was operating.
Cremated ashes and a dead woman’s body
Miles Harford’s landlords discovered the home they rented to Harford, who was 33 at the time, was full of cremated ashes, and behind the house, in a broken down hearse, they found a decomposing dead woman’s body, covered in a sheet. According to Denver police, she died in 2022 at the age of 63, and because Harford couldn’t pay a crematorium, he kept her body and gave her family someone else’s ashes.
Denver police Commander Matt Clark said at a news conference, “They believed that they were processing their grief with the remains that they had, and had had services with that.” When spoken to, Clark said Harford admitted what he’d done. Clark added,
“[Harford] could not find a crematory to process the woman’s body, and then he felt that at that point, he just stored it in that hearse and then provided remains to the family so they could have their services.”
via The New York Times
The people died between 2012 and 2021
Denver police think the remains discovered inside Harford’s rental home all died between 2012 and 2021, and they were in 30 temporary urns stored in the home’s crawl space. After the Harford news broke, Chari Seabaugh told Denver news outlet FOX31 it took months for Harford to deliver her dead brother’s cremated remains in 2019, a process that typically takes a few weeks.
Referring to Harford’s Apollo funeral home, Seabaugh said,
“For some reason, [Harbaugh] didn’t want me to go in the building. That should have been a red flag right there.”
via KDVR.com
In the early going, efforts were underway to identify all the cremated ashes recovered from Harford’s home. Denver Police Commander Matt Clark said because they were cremated, the extreme heat would damage the DNA, making the process difficult. Harford’s business was also known to cremate bodies of unhoused individuals or when next of kin could not be reached.
As of this report, a warrant for Harford’s arrest was issued for abusing a corpse, forgery, and theft. It was widely reported that Harford was not yet in custody and could not be reached for comment.