Funeral home owner Rev. Jeffery Williams arrested again

Just five days after being arrested for the fifth time this year, the owner of Anniston Funeral Service Inc. was back in jail again Thursday. The charge for which he was arrested is a misdemeanor: refusing to surrender a corpse.

Calhoun County deputies arrested the Rev. Jeffery Williams, 41, Thursday afternoon after serving him with a civil order to release a body Williams was keeping at his funeral home.

The 39-year-old brother of the deceased man filed that civil order at the Calhoun County Courthouse earlier this week when he learned that Anniston Funeral Service employees had arrived at Regional Medical Center, picked up the body of his dead brother and taken it to the funeral home without his knowledge or consent, Sheriff Larry Amerson said.

The deceased's family members contacted Williams to ask for the body to be released back into their possession, but Williams refused, Amerson said.

Williams kept the body for three days before Circuit Judge John Thomason issued a writ of assistance requiring Calhoun County deputies to collect the body from Williams.

Amerson said he does not know how the deceased man died, why he was at the hospital, or how Williams was able to take possession of the body.

Attempts to reach Williams and Anniston Funeral Service employees Friday were unsuccessful.

After recovering the body from the funeral home, deputies arrested Williams on the misdemeanor criminal charge, refusing to surrender a corpse.

Williams also was arrested on a bond revocation charge Thursday, because the arrest violated the terms of Williams' bond on an Oct. 25 misdemeanor assault charge, Amerson said.

But that bond revocation was later dismissed, because the man who filed the assault charge against Williams' dropped the case, according to Amerson and court records.

Williams was first arrested Feb. 11, charged with felony theft. He was indicted July 1 by a grand jury on two felony theft charges for allegedly withholding thousands of dollars of insurance money from former funeral home clients. Both times Williams was released on bond. He was then charged with assault Oct. 25. After the assault arrest, Circuit Judge Malcolm Street revoked Williams' bond for the felony thefts. He was arrested again on Nov. 4 and additionally charged with contempt of court for not appearing in small claims court to pay a fine to a local furniture store.

After the Nov. 4 arrest, Williams accepted a plea agreement offered to him by prosecutors that requires him to pay the money he owes to one of the victims in the felony case. By agreeing to repay that victim, prosecutors allowed Williams to plead guilty to a misdemeanor financial crime rather than a felony theft charge. The second felony theft case was dropped by prosecutors because the victim stopped communicating with attorneys.

During that plea agreement hearing, Judge Malcolm Street agreed to let Williams avoid a one-year jail sentence as long as he kept up with his payments to the victim and stayed out of trouble.

But a week later, Williams found himself in trouble and an inmate of the Calhoun County Jail yet again. Deputies arrested the funeral home director on another theft charge -- this time a misdemeanor -- Nov. 11 for allegedly refusing to refund a customer $500.

Williams paid $5,000 to bond out of jail Monday.

The refusal to surrender a corpse charge landed him back in Thursday. He paid $1,000 Friday morning to bond out for his second time this week.

And Amerson said Williams will most likely be back in jail next week, too.

Calhoun County deputies are in the process of putting together another warrant on Williams, one that stems from another customer's report that Williams pocketed $1,500 in insurance money that belonged to him after his girlfriend's funeral.

Amerson said the number of charges associated with Williams and his funeral home requires the attention of state officials.

"There's so much stuff here that at the some point the state funeral home board is going to have to step in," Amerson said, referring to the Alabama Board of Funeral Services, which oversees funeral home operations across the state.