Janet Rasmussen Clark, a 37-year-old female, was killed on January 17, 1961, only days after she and her family moved into a new house on Oldbridge Drive in Grand Blanc, Michigan. The Clark house was so new that it had barely become a home; the family had occupied the brick-front, story-and-a-half dwelling for just five days, and boxes were still waiting to be unpacked. Neighbors in the new subdivision barely knew the family, and the sidewalks outside were described as looking almost freshly poured when shocked residents gathered near the home after learning that all six members of the household were dead.
The deaths were attributed to Janet’s husband, Thomas B. Clark, who killed his wife, their four children, and then himself inside the family home. According to the account, residents learned that the “family of six was dead at the father’s hand,” turning what had been meant to be a fresh start into a scene of sudden devastation. The family had recently returned to the Flint area after Thomas’s work had taken them to St. Charles, Missouri, and they had stayed at the Temp Ho Motel before moving into the Grand Blanc house on Friday and Saturday, just before the killings.
One of the last known people to see the Clarks alive was Mrs. Ernest J. Somers, the real estate agent who had sold them the house. Around 7 p.m. on Monday, she went to the Clark home with documents that needed signatures. Thomas was home, but Janet had gone to the grocery store. Mrs. Somers waited until Janet returned, and later said Thomas appeared “very nervous” and did not seem capable of discussing the papers. Janet told her she would return the signed papers Tuesday morning. When Mrs. Somers came back at about 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, the family’s late-model station wagon was still in the driveway, so she rang the bell for nearly five minutes, thinking Janet might be upstairs asleep. No one answered. When she returned later, the bodies had already been discovered.
The article describes Thomas Clark as a man whose family and friends did not recognize him in the violence that followed. His mother, Mrs. Oscar Ostrander, said she could not understand why he took the lives of Janet, the children, and himself. She described him as a man devoted to his family, saying he had spoken often of his admiration for Janet and that he loved his children. She also said he had been worrying a great deal and that relatives had tried to persuade him to see a doctor. The family had hoped that once he moved into the new house, the worry would leave his mind, and as recently as the weekend before the deaths, they thought everything was all right.
Thomas had reportedly been under strain from studying in Detroit, moving to Missouri, changing jobs, and returning to the Flint area. His mother also recalled that he had suffered a serious back fracture in January 1945 while tobogganing with a church group on the grounds of the Flint Golf Club. Doctors had once feared he might not recover or might be paralyzed, and although his condition improved, his mother said doctors had warned the family that a severe nervous shock could cause something more serious to happen to him. She believed the pressure of the family’s recent disruptions may have become too much for him.
No arrests, criminal charges, trial, or conviction followed, because the identified suspect, Thomas B. Clark, died by suicide at the scene after killing Janet and the children. The available account presents the case as a murder-suicide carried out by the father of the household, not as an unsolved killing involving an outside suspect. What remained afterward was the image of a family that had just stepped into what was supposed to be a secure new life, only for that promise to end within days behind the doors of a house that never had time to become their home.
