Ludington mortician faces additional charges after more cremains found at Whitehall funeral home.

Thomas Clock III

WHITEHALL — A Ludington funeral home owner is being investigated by law enforcement to determine if he made a business mistake or defrauded an area family, according to a report by our partners at WZZM-TV 13 of Grand Rapids. Thomas Clock III, continues to be the subject of an on-going investigation by the Muskegon County Sheriff’s Office. Clock owns Clock Funeral Home of White Lake and Clock Funeral Home of Ludington.

Cremains of a baby who died one year ago were found at the Whitehall funeral home by Muskegon County sheriff’s detectives as part of an ongoing investigation. The child’s family thought the child had received a proper burial.

Detectives found those cremated remains while executing a search warrant at the funeral home, WZZM reported.  The remains were contained in a cardboard box and discovered stored inside the funeral home. Records indicate the infant’s cremains belong somewhere else, “supposedly buried at a local cemetery,” Muskegon County Sheriff Dean Roesler told WZZM.

The Muskegon County Prosecutor has already charged Clock with felony fraud after he was arrested in January for operating a vehicle while under the influence, second offense. At that time,

Clock Funeral Home of Ludington.

Clock was arrested in January for OWI. Following his arrest, the deceased body of an 86-year-old woman was found in the back of Clock’s funeral van. Clock, who was also hospitalized after the January arrest, allegedly buried an empty urn, misleading family members who believed it contained her cremated ashes. The empty urn was buried in a local cemetery after a funeral service Dec. 28, prosecutors said. He’s accused of presenting relatives of a deceased woman with an empty urn, which they believed contained her cremated remains.

Muskegon County Sheriff Roesler.

The family of the infant and the cemetery have granted detectives permission to retrieve the container from the infant’s burial site “and determine what is in the container, if anything,” said Sheriff Roesler. “Every indication is that it is not the cremains of the infant as reported.”

Clock was arrested again March 11, for driving a vehicle under the influence of alcohol in the cities of Whitehall and Montague. It was the second time in less than two months that he had been arrested on the charge and his third arrest for OWI. Because he has not yet been sentenced on a January OWI charge, he could not be arrested for OWI third offense, a felony.

Clock is accused, too, of performing services without a license and remains in the Muskegon County Jail on a $500,000 bond.