By Erin Pearson
A funeral director failed to embalm the body of a woman or look at her remains until five weeks after her death, despite taking money from her family for the procedure.
Helen Moraitis died on June 27, 2022, and was cleared by the coroner for release on July 7, 2022, but contractors for Peter Tziotzis Orthodox Funeral Services did not collect her body until July 18, 2022.
It wasn’t until a further three weeks later, on or about August 1, 2022, that Tziotzis said he first laid eyes on the body, together with his on-site embalmer.
Teresa Moraitis and her nephew Jim Moraitis attend a hearing at the Supreme Court.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
He maintains this delay occurred because the family took weeks to secure a crypt, and his practice was to not begin formal arrangements until this was done.
Tziotzis said by then, Helen’s body was in such a poor state and unable to be embalmed and presented in an open casket for a viewing, as per her family’s wishes. Instead, it was presented at her funeral in a closed casket.
“She was severely decomposing, like pretty bad, when she came from the coroner’s office,” he told police during a November 2022 interview played to the court.
“I saw it within days of arriving.”
The court heard on June 27, 2022, 56-year-old Helen Moraitis died in her sleep. Her mother, then aged 81, engaged the services of Tziotzis and his company, Melbourne Orthodox Funeral Services, in Oakleigh, to carry out a traditional Greek Orthodox funeral and a trisagion – a viewing usually held the night before the funeral.
Tziotzis is suing this masthead and A Current Affair for defamation over news reports made when Helen’s family later had her body exhumed in November 2022, fearing her remains might not be inside because the coffin was closed at her funeral, contrary to her wishes.
During the exhumation, the court heard Helen’s mother, Teresa Moraitis, found her daughter had been placed naked into a body bag and buried without the clothing or jewellery given to Tziotzis to be included with her burial.
Tziotzis says media reporting of the matter had damaged his reputation, and he denies stealing or deliberately retaining the clothing and jewellery later found at his business premises by police.
He said the news reports had left him feeling humiliated, disgusted and like a criminal, with his children unable to attend school for three months.
While in the witness box on day three of the trial, Tziotzis admitted he would not have seen the body until about August 1, weeks later than he told police he did, but he maintained the error was not made to mislead anyone.
While he did not look at Helen’s body until five weeks after her death, he said decomposition was not something that could be managed.
He told the court that keeping bodies in a refrigerated room did not slow decomposition, and he only did this because it was “common practice” and to help the embalmer do her work because it was easier to prepare a cool body over a warm body.
When asked if he believed keeping a body outside a cool room for anything more than a few hours was a significant departure from best practice, he replied, “No sir”.
“Even if you have the body of deceased in a cool room, it doesn’t mean it will stop decomposition. You cannot slow down decomposition,” Tziotzis said.
During the cross-examination, Tziotzis admitted to changing documents after they were returned to him by police, some 18 months after the 59-year-old’s death, and before they were put into evidence.
He said this was done to remind him to speak with his contracted on-site embalmer to seek “clarity” over what had happened to the body and denied this was done to mislead the court into thinking he checked the body when it arrived on July 18, 2022.
“An innocent notation,” Tziotzis said.
“It was flagging to me to ask Janet ‘what do you remember regarding the Moraitis case’. That’s all it was.”
Earlier in the trial, he denied knowing a bag he was given by the deceased’s mother contained jewellery and maintains he never looked inside the bag of clothing.
On Wednesday, the court was shown police photographs of the brown paper bag handed to Tziotzis by Helen’s mother on July 2, 2022, when the funeral contract was signed at her home.
Tziotzis told the court he had written the words “ring etc” on the bag alongside Helen’s name.
The court heard this bag was later found in a drawer at the funeral parlour during the police raids.
“I had to put something on the outside of the bag. It wasn’t anything sinister, anything sneaky,” he said.
The trial was stood down for the day because Tziotzis’ barrister requested time to provide his client with legal advice. “I want to give him some advice and I want to give him the opportunity to consider that advice. So I make application, Your Honour, to have this matter adjourned until first thing tomorrow morning,” David Gilbertson, KC, said.
This is the first week of the trial, which is slated to run for six weeks.
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