Cops released our dad’s body to a stranger who had him cremated and didn’t pay bill
Daughter reveals how woman acting as next of kin took his money and some of his ashes
THE heartbroken daughter of an Army veteran has hit out at Police Scotland after they failed to notify the family of his sudden death five months earlier.
Stacey Pickles, who lives in Lancashire, received a letter in February stating that someone had made a claim against dad Gerard McNulty’s pension.
The 55-year-old, who had served with the Royal Corps of Transport and suffered from PTSD and alcohol dependency, was known to lose contact with loved ones for long periods.
But when his eldest daughter got the letter, she and her sister Kirsty followed it up and found he had passed away at home in Wishaw in September 2020.
Their grief deepened when they were told that someone else, not known to the family, had been identified as his next of kin.
The woman, who we have chosen not to name, also failed to inform his family and had Gerard cremated before leaving the funeral bill unpaid.
As a result, his grieving loved ones were not entitled to collect his ashes which had sat at the funeral directors due to the outstanding funeral balance.
Stacey, 35, told how the family’s contact details were already registered on the Police Scotland system as they had previously requested a welfare check in February last year.
The force has since admitted that officers failed to carry out sufficient inquiries to find his blood relatives.
Stacey said: “He was quite hard to keep track of. He became less and less sober and moved around quite a lot. He’d lose a phone, you’d get a number for him but then he’d lose it again.
“He would always make attempts to get back in touch and give us his new number though.
“That’s one of the reasons why we didn’t have a clue he had died because it wasn’t out of the norm for him to disappear for a while.”
Stacey recounted their horror at discovering how their dad was treated in death.
Civil servant Stacey explained: “The woman who was named on the death certificate had arranged the funeral but had abandoned the payment for it. This meant his ashes were still at the funeral directors.
“This left us with a problem, because this woman had made the application for the cremation, it meant we weren’t legally entitled to any of the ashes.
“I submitted a complaint but it took Police Scotland a month to come back to me.
“As far as we’re concerned, she should never have been identified as his next of kin, his body shouldn’t have been released to her and the officers should have looked for one of us.
“They said they tried to contact my uncle – who lives two miles away – but that they couldn’t find him, which we strongly disbelieve.
“They have since upheld my complaint and said that the officer investigating it didn’t do sufficient inquiries and that they still had my sister’s details from the welfare check she did in February 2020.
“They could have contacted us but they didn’t. They chose to take this woman’s word as gospel instead.”
The family found that a new bank card in his name had been requested three days after he died before almost £1000 was taken from his account.
Stacey added: “I was miles away and we were in the middle of Covid. I could have travelled up to Scotland but by that point six months had passed.
“His property was gone, his possessions were gone, all of his paperwork was gone.
“When I eventually got his bank statements back, I noticed that after his death somebody had started taking money out of his bank account. Almost £1000 had gone.
“To make matters worse, this woman has decided she wanted to keep part of my dad’s ashes so there’s a bit of him missing now and we’ll never know where it is.
“I asked Police Scotland to make an offer of compensation so we could do something for dad to remember him. But they came back with an offer of £1000. It’s disgraceful. My dad is worth more than that.“
A second complaint about the lack of communication from the force with the family was also upheld.
Police Scotland told the Daily Record that inquiries into the alleged bank fraud remain ongoing.