David Clarkson Oak: a chef in Colorado Springs who asked for help

David Clarkson Oak worked as a chef, and at the end of his life he was living in Colorado Springs. He was born in Texas on November 11, 1988, a son of Richard Dixon Oak and Margery Lee Clarkson, as his death certificate records.

He was born into a crisis. By the account of his brother Michael Oak, the family had moved to New Hampshire, but while she was pregnant with David his mother had a mental breakdown and relocated the boys to Texas without his father's knowledge, and she tried to hide the baby from Richard. By the same family account, David's first birth certificate listed him only as "baby boy Oak," father unknown, his race recorded as black. That certificate has not been found, but its address survives on his later record: 525 South Houston in Humble, next door to St. Mary Magdalene Catholic Church at number 527. He was born at St. Joseph Hospital in Houston.

His first Christmas was spent in the Woodlands, where the school and a church brought the family's tree and toys. At some point he and his brothers went into foster care in Texas; when, and for how long, is still unknown. The family has asked the state for the records, and wonders whether foster care is also why that first birth certificate was filed the way it was, about three months after the birth.

For more than fifteen years his birth record still read "father unknown." By his brother's account it was corrected, most likely around David's sixteenth birthday, when he needed a proper certificate for a driver's license. The corrected record names Richard Dixon Oak as his father and informant. Its mailing address was his brother Travis's apartment in Tilton, New Hampshire. After the family home was lost to foreclosure, David and his father were moving around, and Travis's address was a steady place to get mail. His mother's story tells more of that year.

His brother later put six photographs of him together: David as a boy, beside his wrecked truck in 2013, his "Live Free or Die" tattoo, holding two jars of preserves in 2016, on a jail video visit in 2014, and smiling in a wood-panelled room.

The crash, August 2013

In August 2013, David rolled his green Dodge Dakota pickup in the Colorado mountains. Photographs of the wrecked truck in a salvage yard were taken on the afternoon of August 20, around 5:17 p.m. In one he stands beside it grinning, thumbs up, in a dusty white shirt; in another he looks over the crushed roof. The court record dates the Summit County case to August 19, the day before the photographs, so the crash was most likely late that night. By his brother's account, this crash led, in time, to the charges that followed it.

A letter from Pueblo, 2014

In September 2014, when he was twenty-five, David was held in Pueblo, Colorado. His return address reads "Pueblo D.O.C." On September 21 he wrote to his brother, in a letter postmarked in Denver three days later, with a pencil drawing of a jumping trout among cattails at its edge. The letter does not say what he was held for; the later pre-sentence report lists an assault charge from an incident in the Pueblo jail that July.

He thanked his brother for helping him: "I would be in here hungry & smelly without your help." He hoped to be moved to Summit County the following month and said he could not imagine "my charges here will stick but who knows." He wrote that he would like to see someone for his mental health, which he could not do in Pueblo, where his medication had been switched from what the State Hospital had prescribed: "the new ones make me depressed." He owned only the clothes he had come in with and had nowhere in Colorado to go. He thought he might work on his G.E.D. in Summit County, and signed off "Love." On the back of a torn scrap, in the same hand, he asked for the lyrics to a few songs for his cellmate.

Two pictures survive from that autumn. On September 11, 2014, his brother photographed the screen during a video visit, with David in a striped jail uniform on the handset; and the family has his booking photograph, taken no later than September 15. Neither copy records which facility or which arrest.

A week in March 2015

In early March 2015, David was arrested in Lebanon, New Hampshire, on a theft and false-report charge. Within days he was in Vermont, facing new charges in Hartford for a confrontation with law enforcement, firefighters and EMS personnel. In the middle of that same week, March 9 and 10, someone using an alias account sent a series of threatening messages to David's Colorado probation officer: slurs, threats, and a direct statement that he would take his own life if things weren't settled by that Saturday, signing off with the same phrase already inked across his forearm, "LIVE FREE OR DIE." His brother, copied on the thread, told the probation officer he wasn't sure why David was doing this, that David was "now in Vermont," and that he was "making a lot of suicidal comments." The probation officer called the Hartford, Vermont, police for a welfare check.

Eight days after that threat, on March 18, 2015, David wrote at length about his mind. His brother kept the message: he took a screenshot of it and emailed it to himself that evening. David wrote, in his own spelling:

I have always felt my soul was meant for greater things. Even as a small emotional frustrated child I always felt as though I was different.

I knew I was different. My feelings have always been different from others. I have no medium. I either feel nothing about the subject or I feel overwhelming feelings towards it. this has brought on what I call my "apathetic self destruction phases". I feel so strongly about the few feelings I have that it seems more logical for me to end my own life and end these feelings than to deal with the issue and move on in my organic being.

I remember my first suicidal thought and even then and still to this day it was a peaceful thought. The age of 3 years old is my first memory of these thoughts. As I get older I have come to realize these thoughts are very peaceful to me. I would go insane if not the fact that in suicide I will always have a way out.

I feel I have always been a spiritual person but as an adolescent was unable to comprehend these feelings due to the over powering emotions of my environment.

It was at a young age I started to experiment with mind altering substances.

It's unfortunate neither myself nor most anyone is or was educated on drugs at a young age. Children are just told "it's bad" or "it's illegal" and this has created a negative taboo.

we as naturally curious creatures can't help to think at such a young age "why" and I feel this has started the drug addiction epidemic.

As a child I was doing anything I could just to get high. From huffing starter fluid to smoking shit mexican weed to popping every cold medicine I could. It's in my wiser older self I have realized the damage these substances have had on my mind and body.

As an adult I have educated myself on damn near every chemical I can think of. Only 3 of those chemicals I have found useful for normal and proper brain function and to use as a guide to find and cleanse the soul. These chemicals are known as
THC
OPIATES
DMT

Ketamine is also one drug I have found that could have positive effects on the outcome of your self reflection but that is a whole nother weird story in its own. And with those three drugs mentioned each drug has different chemical compounds that are completely different drugs yet effect our brain in a similar way. For example the chemical compound of psilisin is 4-ac0-h0-DMT where as psylisybin is 4-ac0-hem-DMT. Not so far off from its much stronger cousin more commonly known as ayahuasca. Or the chemical 5-me0-DMT

The writing ends there, mid-sentence; his brother has confirmed that nothing is missing.

David went into Vermont custody over the Hartford charges and stayed there into 2016, held at Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield. The family kept money in his commissary account the whole time, from March 2015 through April 2016. He was put in solitary confinement several times during that stay; he said each time was for talking back to officers. On March 18, 2016, a year to the day after that writing, his brother emailed David's lawyer to ask whether anything could be done: "I'm concerned because being put in solitary before has caused him to have bi-polar episodes and to become suicidal." The lawyer answered the same morning that David's mental-health issues "can be compounded by segregation" and offered to raise it with his caseworker. While still in custody, David worked on his resume with a teacher from the Community High School of Vermont, the state's school inside its prisons, trying to put something together for when he got out. His lawyer had projected his release for late April 2016.

A photograph dated April 6, 2015 shows him in a suit and tie, taken in a mirror with his phone.

Chef Dave's meatballs, 2016

On January 31, 2016, David emailed his brother a recipe under the subject line "Chef Daves FAMOUS Ball Bags." He wrote it down the way a working cook does. Download the recipe (Word document).

Ingredients:
2 Lbs Ground Beef
1 Tbls Salt
1 Tsp garlic powder
2 Tbls Olive Oil
1 Tsp Dry Basil
1 Tsp Dry Oregeno
1 Whole Onion Chopped
1 Tbls Minced Garlic
2 Large Eggs
3/4 Cup Marinara (Franseco Rinaldi Tomatao Basil Brand Used)
1 Tbls Onion Powder
3/4 Cup Bread Crumbs (1/2 cup if fine ground) [Crushed Cheese and Garlic Croutons used]
1/2 cup Grated Parmesan
3/4 cup milk
1 Tbls fresh ground Black Pepper

Directions:
Sautee olive oil and onion until translucent
add basil, oregeno, minced garlic, garlic powder, salt
let cool
pre-heat oven 325*
mix hamburger and rest of ingredients in bowl
add sautee mix
mix thoroughly
Cover and let sit 10-15 min at room temp
make 1 1/2" - 2" balls
place in non-greased deep* hotel pan
cover with foil
check after 30min drain grease
add marinara if desired cook additional 15-25min
EAT (let cool a little maybe)

Oklahoma, 2016

After his release, David went to Oklahoma. By September 2016 he was living in Checotah, not far from his half-brother, working a new minimum-wage job and unable to make his rent; he wrote to his brother that he was eating "nothing but ramen." In the same exchange he wrote that "suicide is really the only way out," calling it "my only retirement plan." Some time after that he went back to Colorado.

On December 22, 2016, he was photographed holding two jars of Mrs. Miller's preserves.

The acorn

David also burned designs into wood. One of his pieces is an acorn: a jagged cap with a stem, and on the nut a little face, an X for one eye and a crooked grin. A drawing of the same design is among his files, saved alongside his "LIVE FREE OR DIE" tattoo lettering. He also had skull tattoos and a "rabbit hole" on his foot. His brother Travis made a wooden name plaque too; it is in Travis's story.

Childhood and family, in his words to the court

In December 2019, a probation officer preparing his pre-sentence report asked David about his background. His answers, recorded in that report and filed the following January, are the fullest account of his early life that survives. He described a "rough" childhood. His father and stepmother separated when he was about 15, as the report records his answer. His mother, he said, had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder, which his brother confirms independently. He described a younger half-brother with Down syndrome whom his mother stayed home to raise; he needed constant care and was at the center of Margery's life, as her story tells. David told the interviewer that both of his biological parents died in 2008, consistent with the death of his father, Richard Dixon Oak Sr., that February and Margery's that June. Afterward, he said, he lived in the Houston, Texas area for about four months, then back in New Hampshire for about a year, then moved to Breckenridge, Colorado, in 2010. He described staying in regular contact with Travis and with his brother.

He dropped out of school at 16 and went into the restaurant industry, eventually becoming a certified chef (HACCP Certified, ServSafe Manager). His resume lists a steady run of kitchen jobs from 2004 onward: a pizza cook and line cook in New Hampshire through the mid-2000s, sous chef and line-cook positions in Breckenridge from 2011 to 2014, head chef at a hotel in Fairplay, Colorado, in 2013–2014, and a line-cook job back in New Hampshire in 2015. By December 2019 he had a new job lined up as production chef at a restaurant in Colorado Springs, where he had recently moved with his girlfriend.

On mental health, he told the interviewer he had been clinically diagnosed with Bipolar II disorder in 2014. He described marijuana use beginning around age 19, alcohol use that escalated while he lived in Breckenridge, and occasional cocaine use there as well. His writing from 2015, quoted above, described drug experimentation going back much further, to childhood. The two accounts were given to different people at different times, and they differ.

The years after the crash

The record his probation officer compiled for the court in 2020 lists cases going back to 2005, in New Hampshire, Colorado and Vermont; the 2013 crash began the longest run of them.

The court record

• December 2005, Canaan, NH — disorderly conduct; fined.
• January 2006, Canaan, NH — a bail-condition violation; fined.
• September 2007, Lebanon, NH — a theft charge, filed without a finding.
• May 2008, Moultonborough, NH — his first DUI; fined, with probation and a treatment evaluation.
• April 2010, Ossipee, NH — a marijuana-possession fine.
• August 2013, Summit County, CO — the weapon, driving and DUI charges from the crash described above; he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation, electronic monitoring, alcohol education and therapy. His probation on this case was later revoked and reinstated twice, adding jail time each time.
• July 2014, Pueblo County, CO — while in custody there for mental-health treatment, by his brother's account, an in-jail incident led to a felony assault charge, which he pleaded down to a lesser assault count with probation and a mental-health evaluation; that probation was later revoked too, adding more jail time.
• August 2014, Fairplay, CO — an assault and criminal-mischief charge, both later dismissed by the prosecutor.
• August 2014, Fairplay, CO — a trespassing charge, pleaded down, with probation that was later revoked for more jail time.
• March 2015, Lebanon, NH — a theft and false-report conviction; a year's probation and a fine.
• March 2015, Hartford, VT — charges from the confrontation described above; several counts led to 90-day jail sentences. His lawyer projected his release for late April 2016; he spent time in Oklahoma before going back to Colorado.
• Summit County Jail, CO, roughly March to June 2018 — a stay known from phone-account and video-visit records the family kept; the charge behind it is not known.
• April 2019, Summit County, CO — a burglary charge dismissed, with guilty pleas to theft and harassment. The police report describes threatening texts to a roommate and the taking of the roommate's game console; after his arrest David kicked the patrol car and told the deputy, "I have 16 assault on a peace officer charges... you police should be careful."
• June and July 2019, Summit County, CO — the two cases that led to his pre-sentence report: a menacing charge from a threatening text exchange, reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor, and a jail-cell incident that led to a second-degree-assault charge against a sheriff's deputy. He spent 33 days in pretrial custody.

A probation officer interviewed him on December 6, 2019, and the pre-sentence report was filed January 10, 2020, recommending county jail on the lesser charge and a prison sentence on the assault charge. Two community-corrections programs had already turned him down, citing risk and, at one, disciplinary problems from an earlier stay. Sentencing was set for January 27, 2020. What sentence was actually imposed, and how much time he served into 2020 and 2021, is not yet known.

The call, January 2021

In January 2021 David called his brother to say he had a bad methamphetamine addiction and was going to try to get help; a family calendar dates the call to January 16. His brother remembers that the wish to get help surprised him more than the confession did. David had visited friends in Oklahoma a few days earlier and had a bad hallucination there, which frightened him into telling the truth. His girlfriend was supporting him.

That day David sent his brother a note. In it he wrote that he was "starting to see a lot of things differently," that he knew he needed a lot of help "and can finally admit that and be open about it." He said he had been using for almost a year and a half and had lied about it. He said he had not used for at least four weeks, but that his tolerance was so high that "it's just a matter of when it's going to kill me." Friends had set up a rehab scholarship, and he planned to put the few thousand dollars he had saved toward a hospital stay. He wrote that he wanted to find out what was wrong with him, physically and mentally: "I don't know what's real and what's not real anymore and it's really scaring me." He ended with thanks: "I'm lucky to have you as my brother."

What happened next

David entered a residential treatment program in Colorado, All Points North Lodge, by March 17, 2021. That afternoon he emailed from a borrowed address, because he couldn't reach his usual one without his phone: "Hi I cant sign into my OG email with out my phone." That evening he began taking Librium, a medication used to ease alcohol withdrawal and anxiety. Two days later, on March 19, his primary therapist emailed his girlfriend a welcome letter and asked to set up a first family meeting; his girlfriend forwarded it to his brother the next day, writing "This includes mailing info for David and general info for us on the outside."

He kept drawing on Colorado crisis and peer-support resources into April, and by May 24 he was in ongoing outpatient therapy with a different provider, continuing care just under three months before his death. By his brother's account he stayed sober for about four months after entering treatment, which would carry him into the summer.

At the end of June 2021, David visited family in New Hampshire. Photographs from June 29 and 30 show him with his brother, his grandfather Ivan Oak, his half-brother and other family. It was the last time most of the family saw him.

He overdosed at home and was brought to the emergency room by ambulance, and at first no one there knew who he was: by his brother's account, he was admitted as a "John Doe," recorded as much older than he was. He was in the hospital in Colorado Springs from at least August 17, 2021; family photographs are dated through the day of his death. He died on August 19, 2021, at the age of 32. His death certificate, filed on August 25 and amended after the coroner's report of October 26, gives the cause as fentanyl, methamphetamine and cocaine intoxication and the manner as accident.

The family photographed him in intensive care at Memorial Central Hospital.

Travis, his older brother, died days earlier, on or about August 15, in New Hampshire.

Return to Nature

David's body went to Return to Nature Funeral Home, and he was to be cremated. His death certificate names the funeral home and records his disposition as cremation at Wilbert Crematory in Commerce City, Colorado. The family paid the funeral home on the day David died. Two days later it wrote that "David is in our care," and by September 8, 2021, less than three weeks after his death, the family had been given what they were told were his ashes; the death certificates followed in November. By his brother's account, most of the ashes were scattered outdoors, and his surviving brothers kept a little in small urns. His brother does not recall a numbered metal identification disc with them, which crematories normally send; none of the Return to Nature families who spoke to reporters received one either.

In early October 2023, neighbors reported a foul smell from Return to Nature's building in Penrose, west of Colorado Springs. Inside, investigators from the Fremont County Sheriff's Office found nearly 190 decaying bodies. Families learned that the "ashes" some of them had been given were dry concrete, and crematories named on families' death certificates told reporters they had not performed cremations for the funeral home on the dates shown. The owners, Jon and Carie Hallford, left Colorado and were arrested in Oklahoma in November 2023. Both pleaded guilty to 191 counts of abuse of a corpse, and to defrauding the federal government of nearly $900,000 in pandemic relief. Jon Hallford was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for the fraud in June 2025 and to 40 years on the state charges on February 6, 2026. Carie Hallford was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison in March 2026 and to 30 years on the state charges on April 24, 2026, to run at the same time. At her sentencing, Judge Eric Bentley noted that beyond the 191 people recovered, "987 other clients still don't know what happened to their loved ones."

A Colorado Springs Gazette investigation in May 2024 had already found that at least 989 of the more than 1,100 families who used Return to Nature were never among the bodies found, and had no formal way to learn whether the ashes they were given were real. One daughter was told by a coroner that she likely did not have her mother's remains, and could have "the human remains of another individual or simply a concrete mix." In at least one case the FBI examined a family's "ashes" and told them it was concrete. In the families' civil case, a judge ordered the owners to pay $950 million.

The investigation covered Return to Nature's business from September 2019 to September 2023, and some of the bodies found had died as early as 2019; David died in the middle of that span. The crematory named on his certificate matters. Wilbert did Return to Nature's cremations until November 2022, when it cut ties over unpaid bills, and families with certificates naming Wilbert for deaths after that date were the first to show the paperwork was false. David's certificate is dated more than a year before Wilbert stopped, in the period when Wilbert was still taking Return to Nature's bodies, but nothing yet shows that Wilbert actually received or cremated him: the crematory line on the certificate was filled in by Return to Nature itself. By April 2026, all but two of the bodies found had been identified and their families told.

For years no one from the investigation contacted the family, either to say David was among the bodies or to answer their questions. The family wrote and sent overnight letters to the county coroner's office, with no reply. In February 2026 they asked the Colorado Springs police, who sent them to the Fremont County Sheriff; the sheriff's office sent them to the Fremont County Coroner. In October 2026 the family wrote to the FBI team assigned to Return to Nature families, with David's death certificate and the funeral home's emails, submitted the FBI's questionnaire for Return to Nature families, wrote to the sheriff's case address asking whether investigators would examine the remains, and called the Wilbert crematory in Commerce City, which could not confirm or deny anything by phone and passed the question to its legal department. They also asked a laboratory in Texas whether the remains could be tested; it said it could not reliably confirm whether cremated remains are human.

On October 9, 2026, the FBI team answered. David was not among the people recovered at Penrose: the family would have been notified if he were, and the two still unidentified are both women. Because he died in 2021, the FBI wrote, it has "investigative reasons to believe that he was most likely handled correctly and returned to you." It also confirmed that cremated remains cannot be tested for DNA; a test can only show whether they resemble human ashes, and many Return to Nature families have asked a local funeral home to look at theirs. So the family has an answer, though not a proof: no test can show that the ashes they scattered and kept were David's.

A family illness

Their mother, Margery, lived with mental illness for decades. She used to tell people, as David's brother recalled in a public post in 2018, on the tenth anniversary of her death, "I'm a sickie, not a sorry. Don't look at me and feel bad. Look at me and pray I get better. It's a disease, an illness." Travis's story and Margery's are told alongside this one.

David asked for help, and he meant it.

About the evidence

The dates, place, occupation and cause of death are on his certificate, shown on his page with the identifying numbers and addresses blacked out. The criminal history, family background, education, work and mental-health summary come from his 2020 pre-sentence report. Social Security numbers, a victim's phone number and the names of victims and officers in that report or any court record are not reproduced; his girlfriend and a roommate are referred to by role. The call, the note and the sobriety are the family's account, from a phone note, a calendar entry and David's message to his brother. The 2021 treatment dates, the continuing-care record, and the June visit and August hospital photographs come from his and his girlfriend's emails at the time and from photo dates. The context around his March 2015 writing, and the Vermont solitary confinement that followed, comes from emails his brother sent and received at the time; the threatening messages are summarized, not quoted. The Return to Nature account comes from his death certificate, the funeral home's emails and receipt, the family's inquiries, and the published news reports listed below.

Sources

• State of Colorado, Certificate of Death, David Clarkson Oak, died August 19, 2021 (certified copy issued November 1, 2021; masked copy on his page). Funeral home: Return to Nature Funeral Home; disposition: cremation, Wilbert Crematory, Commerce City, Colorado.
• State of Texas, Certificate of Birth, David Clarkson Oak, born November 11, 1988, Houston (certified copy issued December 20, 2016; private).
• David Oak, letter to Michael Oak, September 21, 2014, postmarked Denver, September 24, 2014 (private original).
• David Oak, personal writing on his mental health and drug history, saved and emailed by Michael Oak to himself March 18, 2015 (David's own words; private original).
• Messages to David's probation officer and Michael Oak's reply, March 9-10, 2015 (private originals; summarized, not quoted).
• Michael Oak and David's lawyer, emails about his Vermont custody, March 18, 2016 (private originals).
• Commissary deposit receipts, Southern State Correctional Facility, Springfield, Vermont, 2015-2016 (private originals).
• David Oak, resume (private original).
• David Oak, emails to Michael Oak, September 2016 (Oklahoma; private originals).
• David Oak, email to Michael Oak, January 31, 2016, recipe (private original; header not reproduced).
• Colorado 7th Judicial District (Summit County), Adult Presentence Report, David Clarkson Oak, filed January 10, 2020 (court record; private original).
• Summit County Sheriff's Office incident report, April 2019 (court discovery; private original; no names reproduced).
• Michael Oak, notes of January 2021, with David's message to him (family account).
• David Oak and his girlfriend, emails about All Points North Lodge, March 17-20, 2021 (private originals).
• Family photographs, June 29-30 and August 17-19, 2021 (dates from the photo files).
• Return to Nature Funeral Home, emails and receipt to Michael Oak, August-November 2021 (private originals).
• Michael Oak, inquiries about David's remains to the Colorado Springs Police Department and the Fremont County Sheriff's Office (February 2026), the Fremont County Coroner, the FBI (October 2026) and the Wilbert crematory (October 2026); the FBI's reply of October 9, 2026 (private).
• Michael Oak, public post on the tenth anniversary of his mother's death, 9 June 2018.
• Associated Press, "After 189 bodies found in Colorado funeral home, evidence suggests families received fake ashes," October 2023: www.ktvu.com/news/colorado-funeral-home-bodies-found-evidence-suggests-families-received-fake-ashes
• Colorado Public Radio, "Customers believe Penrose funeral home gave them fake ashes, fabricated cremation records," 20 October 2023: www.cpr.org/2023/10/20/penrose-return-to-nature-funeral-home-fake-ashes/
• Colorado Public Radio, "Return to Nature Funeral Home stored bodies for 4 years, repeatedly deceived families, arrest documents say," 9 November 2023: www.cpr.org/2023/11/09/return-to-nature-funeral-home-stored-bodies-for-years-repeatedly-deceived-families-arrest-documents/
• Colorado Springs Gazette, "Return to Nature purgatory: at least 989 families remain without answers," 19 May 2024: gazette.com/2024/05/19/return-to-nature-purgatory-at-least-989-families-remain-without-answers/
• NPR, "Funeral home owner who stashed nearly 190 decaying bodies is sentenced to 20 years," 28 June 2025: www.npr.org/2025/06/28/nx-s1-5449615/funeral-home-owner-decaying-bodies-sentenced-colorado
• Colorado Springs Gazette, "'I could not carry out his last request': Victims turn final chapter in Return to Nature Funeral Home case," 24 April 2026: gazette.com/2026/04/24/i-could-not-carry-out-his-last-request-victims-turn-final-chapter-in-return-to-nature-funeral-home-case/
• Colorado Sun, "Former Colorado funeral home owner sentenced to 30 years in case that forced industry crackdown," 24 April 2026: coloradosun.com/2026/04/24/colorado-funeral-home-owner/
• CBS News Colorado, "Judge orders $950M payout for families of loved ones left decaying in Colorado funeral home": www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/judge-orders-950m-payout-families-loved-ones-decaying-colorado-funeral-home/
• "Return to Nature Funeral Home," Wikipedia (read 7 October 2026).