Funeral home left body ‘to rot’
Widow tells Melanie Earley she couldn’t have her husband until she handed over $12k.
A grieving widow claims her husband’s body was left to rot for months by a funeral home who demanded she pay them $12,000.
Wei Chen, 39, died in February 2020 after being struck by a boat while diving near Auckland’s Motutapu Island.
He left behind his wife Nan Jiang, who had been living separately from him since 2017, and their 5-year-old son Rex.
Jiang had been married to Chen for more than 16 years; they separated three years before his death, but remained close.
Following Chen’s death, Jiang said she arranged for his body to go to Epsom Funeral Home, but instead he was taken to Auckland Funerals and Memorials Limited.
‘‘Wei’s parents are elderly and live in China, so I promised I would take care of everything,’’ Jiang said. ‘‘When I went to collect him from the coroner, they refused to release him to me.’’
The coroner instead released the body to Chen’s girlfriend and flatmate after police named her the next of kin.
Jiang said she made contact with Auckland Funerals and Memorials Limited and asked for Chen’s body to be taken to Epsom Funeral Home instead, and was sent a tax invoice for $12,316.50.
‘‘I was told by the funeral home that if I didn’t pay the money, Wei would be left to rot, but I refused to pay because it was unreasonable.’’
The tax invoice, seen by the Sunday Star-Times, said Chen’s family needed to pay for a funeral service, embalming, freezing and storage of the body for 80 days, and a week of pre-payment.
But Jiang said no funeral service was held, and Chen’s body hadn’t been properly embalmed.
Carina Zhong, the owner of Auckland Funerals and Memorials Limited, denied ever charging Jiang.
‘‘We never dealt with her, she was not our client. I never asked
her for money, all I did was try to help the family,’’ Zhong said.
Despite Jiang desperately wanting Chen’s body back, an application was lodged to Auckland Council, signed by Zhong, seeking permission to cremate Chen’s body as ‘‘no family members could be reached’’.
‘‘It was beyond unprofessional and shockingly devastating for us,’’ Jiang said.
Zhong also denied she had sent such an application to the council. ‘‘That was never the case, that cremation form is not real,’’ Zhong said.
Chen’s body was eventually released to Jiang in June 2020, despite her not paying any money, but by that stage it was badly decomposed.
Stephen and Leesa King, the owners of Epsom Funeral Home,
were so shocked by the state of the body that they took photographs, seen by the StarTimes,as evidence in case it was needed. ‘‘He’d been frozen and there was an odour,’’ Leesa King said. ‘‘He’d gone off before he’d been embalmed.’’
The Kings said the arm of a female mannequin had been put in Chen’s shirt sleeve, as he had lost his arm in the accident.
‘‘It was just horrific,’’ Leesa King said. ‘‘Why would they do that? We suggested Nan shouldn’t see him because we didn’t want her to remember him like that.’’
Zhong denied the body hadn’t been embalmed.
‘‘We didn’t know how long this situation would eventually take to resolve itself,’’ she said. ‘‘He did decompose a bit because it took so long.’’
Due to the state of Chen’s body, an open-casket funeral wasn’t an option, Leesa King said. That was especially devastating for Jiang as it’s customary in Chinese culture to have an open casket. ‘‘My son and I couldn’t even see him for a last goodbye,’’ Jiang said.
The Kings said the body was so badly decomposed the casket had to be sealed to keep the odour inside.
Stephen King said he was ‘‘shocked’’ by Jiang’s story and had never seen anything like it.
‘‘The cost they wanted her to pay was absurd. There was no way they should have charged her for embalming when it was clear the body had gone off.’’
There were some ‘‘cowboys’’ in the funeral industry, Stephen King said, and there were no regulations around who could become a funeral director.
‘‘It’s really sad it’s gone this way; what happened to Nan has shown a complete lack of empathy. They put heavy tactics on someone in a vulnerable situation.’’
Jiang sent a complaint about Zhong and her business to the Funeral Directors’ Association of New Zealand (FDANZ), but chief executive David Moger declined to look into it, as a complaint had also been made to the coroner’s office.
‘‘Because the coroner’s office is a higher authority than the association, we would not take any action until the results of that were known,’’ Moger said.
A Coronial Services spokesperson said the case remained active. They added that decisions on whom a body was released to were usually based on information provided by police.
‘‘Once released to next of kin the body is no longer under the jurisdiction of Coronial Services,’’ the spokesperson said.
The whole ordeal had been incredibly stressful, Jiang said, and deprived her son of being able to say goodbye to his dad. ‘‘It was cruel, and it’s something that should never have happened.’’