Tipene Funerals is under fire after a former employee was accused of putting dead bodies in plastic bags.
Video / Finn Little
Tipene Funerals, of television show The Casketeers fame, is under fire because one of its funeral directors allegedly swindled her grieving clients and put their dead relatives in plastic rubbish bags instead of the coffins they had paid for.
The bodies of several prominent Auckland Samoanswere discovered to have been bagged by funeral director Fiona Bakulich, to the dismay of the families. How they found out only caused more distress.
When Cyclone Gabrielle hit last March, the public mausoleum where the bodies were interred at Auckland Council-run Waikumete Cemetery was damaged and needed repairs. The bereft families’ relatives needed to be disinterred for this to go ahead.
Fiona Tania Bakulich.
In mausoleums, each body is placed inside a vault. Disinterments involve removing each body from its vault and the families can be present for this.
“When the families opened up the caskets, it was just a whole other level of grief. There was just wailing and screaming,” one relative told the Herald.
“How could you do this to our loved ones? You just bagged them like a piece of rubbish.”
The pain struck deep for the affected families, as they had trusted Bakulich to handle the interment of their relatives with the utmost cultural respect.
Families robbed of their final goodbyes, charged for coffins never delivered
Auckland Council told the Herald bodies interred in the public mausoleum at Waikumete Cemetery needed to be hermetically sealed with either zinc, stainless steel, tin or copper inner coffins inside wooden caskets.
The families each paid $3000 to Bakulich and Tipene Funerals for the zinc-lined coffins.
They also expected they would be able to farewell their dead loved ones in culturally significant final viewings at home before their coffins were to be sealed and interred in the mausoleum the next day.
However, the families claimed Bakulich did not allow them the opportunity to pay their final respects, keeping their dead relatives at the funeral home instead - where they were put in rubbish bags without their knowledge.
The affected families were led to believe they needed to pay for zinc-lined inner coffins to go inside the normal coffins to comply with laws for mausolea. They each paid $3000 to Bakulich and Tipene Funerals for the zinc-lined coffins. Photo / Michael Craig
“A lot of us have been deprived and robbed of the last night with our loved ones - you know, when we would sing around the body. We just felt so betrayed, ripped off and short-changed by one of our own,” an affected relative said.
“Francis [Tipene] claimed he had no idea Fiona was doing all this. When I addressed it with Francis later down the track he goes, ‘Oh no, the normal procedure is when they go to line the body [in the inner coffin], it’s the final farewell’.
“But none of us were offered that. The body was just taken from the church.”
The situation has left the grieving families racked with guilt and shame: “A lot of us are just too embarrassed to even talk about it because we were just beyond hurt.
“We were also really upset that it was sort of swept under the rug - but it’s major.”
‘We have fallen short’ - Francis Tipene
Francis Tipene and his wife Kaiora are the sole directors and shareholders of Tipene Funerals Limited and starred in The Casketeers, which has been running since 2018. Radio New Zealand has called the show “an unexpected runaway success” and the Spinoff said it was “an instant Kiwi classic”.
Tipene told the Herald his company “deeply regrets the actions taken by its former employee”.
Fiona Bakulich (from left), Francis Tipene, Kaiora Tipene, and Fatafehi Tamale.
Tipene said: “We unreservedly apologise for the distress their actions have caused the families involved. I am deeply sorry for the pain and sorrow that this has caused those affected.”
He said his “former employee” worked for Tipene Funerals as a funeral director for seven years.
“And in doing so, a huge amount of trust was placed in her, both by Tipene Funerals, myself as director and the families she was taking care of,” Tipene said.
When he first learned Bakulich “had not followed proper procedure”, Tipene said his immediate priority was to apologise to affected families “and do everything in my power to put this right”.
Tipene said: “Tipene Funerals prides itself on its professionalism and integrity, and our families need to have the utmost trust and confidence in our ability to ensure their loved ones are treated with dignity and respect.
“And in this instance, we have fallen short.”
Letters were sent to families offering compensation, including an offer to have other deceased relatives’ bodies disinterred from graves and placed inside the mausoleum for free.
The mausolea at Waikumete Cemetery in West Auckland, showing the city in the background on August 1, 2024. Photo / Michael Craig
Tipene said he had “put procedures in place” to ensure similar incidents would not happen.
He no longer employed Bakulich.
The Herald has made numerous attempts to contact Bakulich. Her brother, Nicholas Bakulich, the chairman of the Panmure-Ōtāhuhu local board in Auckland, told the Herald the family had supported Fiona Bakulich through “some things”.
“It [the allegations] are between the funeral home and the families.”
Raphael Franks is an Auckland-based reporter who covers breaking news. He joined the Herald as a Te Rito cadet in 2022.
