Pounds of Cremated Ashes of the Dead Found in a Storage Unit in Colorado

Families Crying, Friends Mourning...And Even More Families Can't Be Located

According to theDenver Post, KK TV, and the Vail Daily, in the magnificent Colorado valley that holds the City of Colorado Springs, a gruesome and heartbreaking discovery has been uncovered; a situation that never would have been possible if the State of Colorado had more oversight into their funeral industry.

In this strikingly beautiful town, hundreds of pounds of human ashes have been discovered, gathering dust, in a small storage unit, many there for more than fifteen years. All of the ashes in the more than seventy urns, had been previously scheduled for scattering or disposition by Neva Nolan, the former funeral director of Nolan Funeral Home. Instead the urns with the human ashes ended their journey on barren, frigid cement inside a still Colorado Springs, Colorado storage unit.

In 2004, Nolan closed the doors of her brick and mortar funeral establishment, deciding instead to go "high tech" by offering a virtual funeral home by making house calls and outsourcing the cremations. The ashes were never scattered because Neva Nolan, allegedly bilked customers out of their money and never carried through with the obligations of her funeral home.

Nolan has been formally charged with more than ninety different criminal charges including abuse of a corpse by not following through with the scattering or the wishes for the ashes, theft, and theft from at-risk adults because many of the victims were elderly. She is also accused of collecting more than $140,000 of up front money for pre-paid funeral services never rendered, including scattering ashes over Pikes Peak and not following through with other plans for the ashes. There are at least sixty-one additional people with claims against her for future cremations and scattering because they all want their money refunded. According to many sources, Nolan is now allegedly broke, but according to another source Nolan has hid the money in an off-shore account.

This last August, Nolan was arrested and held at the El Paso County Jail in Colorado. Her bail was set at $50.000 and her arraignment date is October 30, 2007. She could be sentenced to more than one hundred years in prison if convicted of all counts against her.

According to the Colorado Springs Independent, Colorado is the only state that doesn't require funeral home directors to be licensed. There also are no state inspectors to make sure that bodies are properly embalmed and cremated. Other horror stories out of Colorado include dead babies being transported for cremation in the trunks of automobiles, caskets leaking embalming fluids, and unidentified cremation buckets, making it impossible to identify remains.