LAYTON, UT — A former East Layton police officer who once avoided prison after admitting child sex abuse in Utah has now pleaded no contest to new felony charges tied to years of abuse against his daughters and stepdaughters.
Thomas Richard Jackson, 78, entered the plea in Davis County and was sentenced to five consecutive terms of 1-to-15 years in prison. He is currently incarcerated and not eligible for parole until 2030, although he is appealing the sentence.
The case has also revived attention on the 1975 disappearance of Nancy Perry Baird, a cold case that Jackson’s daughters now believe may have involved their father. Investigators have not said Jackson has been charged in Baird’s disappearance.
How Jackson’s abuse case first surfaced in 1986
Court records and statements from Jackson’s children show the first known abuse case began in May 1986, when Jackson molested his daughters, then 11 and 9, while two friends were staying over for a sleepover.
Those friends told their parents, who informed their Latter-day Saint bishop. The bishop sent Jackson to a therapist, and the therapist told him to confess to police. Jackson did so, but Layton police did not book him into jail.
The Davis County Attorney’s Office filed a second-degree felony charge of sexual abuse of a child. Jackson later pleaded guilty and appeared for sentencing before Utah 2nd District Judge Douglas Cornaby on Nov. 10, 1986.
His daughters were at the courthouse that day, but they were kept in the hallway and never allowed to tell the judge what they had experienced.
A suspended prison term and a sentence his daughters call lenient
Under Utah law, Jackson’s conviction carried a possible prison term of one to 15 years. Cornaby instead imposed an indeterminate sentence of zero to five years, then suspended the prison term and placed Jackson on probation.
The judge also ordered counseling, a fine and 200 hours of community service. Jackson did not spend a single day in prison for the offense.
Jackson’s daughters have long said the punishment was far too light. They also say he went back home with them after sentencing and continued to abuse them.
Archived court records do not explain why Cornaby chose that outcome, and the case drew little public attention at the time.
Idaho prosecution ended with a life sentence that did not last
After Jackson’s wife filed for divorce in 1991, he moved to Buhl, Idaho, where he married a woman with four daughters, all younger than 10.
In December 1995, two of those stepdaughters told their mother Jackson had been molesting them for years. He was arrested and charged in Idaho, and unlike in Utah, he was booked into jail and remained there while the case moved forward.
Jackson later accepted a plea deal in early 1996, admitting one count of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child while a second count was dropped. His biological daughters testified against him at sentencing on April 2, 1996.
Judge R. Barry Wood imposed a life sentence and pointed to Jackson’s police training and experience in calling him dangerous.
Idaho Supreme Court later reduced the punishment
Jackson appealed, and the Idaho Supreme Court later decided the life sentence was too severe. In a split ruling, the court cut the punishment to 15 years to life.
Jackson served the required 15 years and was released on parole in 2011. That history has become part of the larger record now surrounding his latest Utah case.
His daughters say the Idaho case confirmed the scale of what they had already lived through. Tori Riddle said she told her father at sentencing that she wanted to make sure he never harmed another little girl again.
That plea, she said, came after years of abuse and fear within the family.
A 2023 phone call helped lead to new Utah charges
KSL’s COLD podcast contacted Jackson in April 2023 while reporting on the July 4, 1975 disappearance of Nancy Perry Baird. At the time, Jackson was working as a reserve officer with the East Layton Police Department, and his first wife had been a childhood friend of Baird’s.
During that reporting, Jackson’s daughters began asking whether he, rather than Ted Bundy, might have been involved. A Davis County sheriff’s detective encouraged Heidi Holmberg to call her father while the detective listened on speakerphone.
An audio recording of the call, reviewed by COLD, captured Jackson speaking openly about abusing his daughters and acknowledging that the abuse began when one of them was only 3 or 4 years old. He also admitted the abuse continued after his 1986 arrest.
Those statements led Davis County prosecutors to file five felony counts of sexual abuse of a child in August 2023, involving alleged acts against Holmberg, Riddle and another relative between 1983 and 1988.
Investigators are again looking at Nancy Baird’s disappearance
For years, Baird’s disappearance had been linked to Bundy, but COLD reported evidence showing Bundy was about 100 miles away from East Layton on the day Baird vanished. Bundy denied involvement before his 1989 execution in Florida.
Since that reporting, the Davis County Sheriff’s Office has refocused on Jackson as a person of interest. Deputies excavated Jackson’s former backyard in spring 2025 in search of Baird’s body, but they did not find human remains.
Jackson’s daughters say he used to brag about working a Bundy case and sometimes claimed he was one of the last people to see Baird before she disappeared. Their mother, Geraldine O’Farrell, said she is no longer sure what to believe about her former husband.
Jackson has not responded to requests for clarification about his actions on the day Baird disappeared.