Davis County deputies excavate back yard of former police officer in search of cold case victim

LAYTON — A former police officer for the defunct city of East Layton has become a focal point in the unsolved disappearance of a gas station attendant 51 years ago.

Thomas Richard Jackson, 78, served as a police officer in East Layton from April of 1975 to July of 1976. During that time, on July 4, 1975, Nancy Perry Baird vanished from a Fina-brand gas station on the side of U.S. 89. In recent years, cold case investigators from the Davis County Sheriff's Office have speculated Jackson might've been involved in Baird's disappearance.

That suspicion even led detectives to excavate the backyard of the home where Jackson lived in 1975, searching for Baird's remains. The dig, which has not been previously reported, occurred in May of 2025.

The disappearance of Nancy Baird was long blamed on serial killer Theodore "Ted" Bundy, though Bundy denied any knowledge of Baird prior to his execution. KSL's COLD podcast has also reported Bundy had an alibi, as Bundy was with a girlfriend 100 miles from East Layton on the day Baird was last seen.

Baird's unsolved case and the crimes committed by former East Layton police officer Thomas "Tom" Jackson are the topic of a new season of COLD. Episode 3 of the season, which released today, details how Jackson pleaded guilty to child sex crimes in Idaho in 1996 and subsequently spent 15 years in prison. Jackson was released on parole in 2011.

Tom Jackson's inconsistent statements about Nancy Baird

COLD approached Jackson in April of 2023, to interview him about his role investigating the Nancy Perry Baird case. During that interview, Jackson said he'd first learned Baird was missing when he'd driven by the gas station where she worked and saw his police chief, Ray Adams, and fellow officer David Ray Anderson searching for Baird.

Jackson told COLD he'd informed Adams and Anderson he couldn't join the search right away, as he was on his way to the county sheriff's office.

"I says, 'I got to go into County,' and 'I'm just going there and coming right back,'" Jackson recalled. "I don't remember why I was going in [to the sheriff's office]."

Based on a timeline of events from an official report authored by officer Anderson, Jackson's arrival at the scene of Baird's disappearance would've occurred at approximately 7:30 p.m., after Baird had been missing for about two hours. It is likely the county offices were closed at this time, as it was after business hours on a federal holiday.

Later in Jackson's interview with COLD, he made a contradictory statement that implied he was present five minutes prior to when Baird was presumably abducted from her workplace.

"I wished I would've had some kind of a inclination to stick around five minutes," Jackson said. "I would've loved to have caught somebody doing that."

Lie detector for former officer Tom Jackson

COLD published portions of Jackson's interview in a podcast episode titled "The Convenient Alternative" in May of 2023. Several weeks later, detectives from the Davis County Sheriff's Office and Layton Police Department visited Jackson at his residence in Idaho. Jackson at that time consented to speak with investigators and to submit to a polygraph examination about the Baird case.

A partial recording of that interrogation obtained by COLD through an open records request showed Jackson denied any involvement in Baird's disappearance. Jackson said he expected to learn the truth of what'd happened to her in the afterlife.

"I'm looking forward to seeing Nancy," Jackson said. "I didn't do that to her. I wouldn't do that to her. I couldn't do murder-type things."

During the polygraph examination, Jackson repeatedly answered "no" when asked if he'd physically caused Baird's disappearance, if Baird was dead or dying the last time he'd seen her, or if he could take investigators to Baird's body.

Detectives also questioned Jackson about instances of child sex abuse he'd allegedly committed that were unrelated to the Baird case, including some where Jackson's own daughters were victims. KSL does not typically identify victims of child sex abuse, however Jackson's daughters have given KSL permission to reveal their identities.

A detective subsequently told Jackson he did not believe Jackson was fully honest in his answers.

A police hunch about Nancy Baird's gravesite

Police suspicion about Jackson peaked in May of 2025, when the Davis County Sheriff's Office visited the home where Jackson lived at the time Baird was last seen.

"We were working off a hunch, initially, to be quite honest," investigative Sgt. Ryan Kirkman said.

That "hunch" being Baird's remains might be buried in Jackson's former backyard. Detectives had already searched the yard with the assistance of human remains detection canines, otherwise known as cadaver dogs. In a search warrant affidavit, Sgt. Kirkman wrote the dog handlers observed "alert behavior" in one particular portion of the yard.

Davis County then brought in a private contractor to conduct a ground-penetrating radar, or GPR, survey of the yard. The contractor identified a subsurface "void" in the same general area where the dogs had shown their alert behavior. Kirkman presented those circumstances to a judge and requested a search warrant, which would allow detectives to excavate the "void."

"We ended up ultimately getting a search warrant and digging quite a large hole," Kirkman said in a recent interview for COLD. "Nothing came of that."

Detectives did not locate any trace of human remains. The suspected void turned out to be a false positive.

Kirkman said he later told Jackson about digging in Jackson's former backyard.

"He didn't really care either way that we were back there," Kirkman said. "We've since ruled out the possibility that his former residence could be involved."

Tom Jackson is a 'person of interest'

The disappointing outcome of Davis County's excavation has not cleared Jackson of suspicion in the Nancy Baird case.

"I would classify him as a person of interest," Kirkman said.

Jackson is not the only person of interest, however. Detectives have also speculated about the possible involvement of other members of the former East Layton Police Department, including Jackson's former colleague, David Anderson.

"We have various theories about what we think may have happened," Kirkman said. "We're working off those. This case is still very active."

Kirkman and his team are continuing to seek information about the whereabouts of Baird's remains, in hopes of solving the 51-year-old mystery of her disappearance and providing answers to Baird's son, Brant Baird.

"That's the end goal of this, is to find Nancy," Kirkman said. "I think there's still some people out there that probably have information that they haven't come forward with."

Those could include former associates of Jackson, or others who were aware of goings-on in the East Layton community during the summer when Nancy Baird disappeared. Jackson himself is currently incarcerated and has not responded to a request for comment from COLD.

"Recently, we have received some information that leads us to two additional sites that we're currently looking at," Kirkman said. "We will put the work in necessary to solving this case."

Related topics