New accuser alleges abuse at the hands of former East Layton police officer

BOUNTIFUL — When the red and blue lights of an East Layton police patrol car flashed on behind Gorgi Rigby, she knew she was busted. Rigby didn't have a license. She was only 14 and had snuck out after dark with friends to go joyriding in her mom's car.

"I pulled over," Rigby, now 65, said in an interview for KSL's COLD podcast. "Tommy Jackson, who I knew from my [Latter-day Saint] ward, pulls up."

Thomas Richard Jackson was, at that time in June of 1975, a couple of weeks into a new job as a part-time reserve police officer. He had not yet attended POST, Utah's police academy.

"He said, 'Drive the car back home. I'll follow you,'" Rigby said. "I just thought for sure I was going to get the lecture of my life."

Instead, Rigby said when she arrived back at her family's home, officer Jackson instructed her friends to go inside while taking Rigby into the front seat of his police car. Rigby felt confused, but did as she was instructed by the 27-year-old officer.

Jackson allegedly sat in the driver's seat and told Rigby to place her head in his lap.

"So I laid down, and he put his hand under my shirt and pushed my bra out of the way and just fondled me while he gave me his lecture," Rigby said.

Rigby didn't shout, struggle or attempt to flee.

"It was a freeze response," Rigby said. "But I think I kind of knew the drill because of [my relative]."

Tom Jackson and the world of "terrible men"

Rigby was, by her own description, a rebellious teen who acted out due to traumas experienced early in her life. Her father died before she was born, leaving Rigby craving a father figure. She said an older relative lived with her family for a time.

"He kind of introduced me to the world of terrible men," Rigby said. "I was about 11 when he started to groom me, getting used to his touch under my clothes."

Because of her young age and her desire for fatherly attention, Rigby said she didn't recognize or have words to express the wrongness of what this relative was doing. Keeping the secret proved corrosive to Rigby.

"I started smoking and drinking in 5th grade," Rigby said. "I was stealing, doing anything for attention."

That's how her life collided with that of Thomas "Tom" Jackson on that summer night in 1975, when the teen took her mother's car out for a joyride.

Jackson, a former East Layton police officer, is today incarcerated on felony child sex abuse charges stemming from molestation he committed against his own daughters and another relative a decade after this alleged encounter with Rigby.

The Davis County Sheriff's Office also considers Jackson a "person of interest" in the cold case disappearance of 23-year-old gas station attendant Nancy Perry Baird, who vanished on July 4, 1975. Baird's disappearance occurred within days of the molestation Rigby described to COLD.

Rigby's account paints Jackson as a man who was willing to abuse his position of trust as a law enforcement officer, taking advantage of an at-risk child, during the same period of time as Baird's disappearance.

"He was a police officer and he was a church member, and so he was someone I looked up to as being a good guy in the community, someone I could trust," Rigby said.

Denial in Jackson's letters

Jackson has not responded to a request for comment about Rigby's accusations, but COLD obtained letters Jackson wrote to family members while he was incarcerated for child sex crimes in Idaho during the 1990s and early 2000s. In them, Jackson denied any wrongdoing related to Rigby.

"I had hung around her a lot because of the attention she gave me," Jackson wrote in one letter to his daughter, Tori Riddle, in 2004. "I truly did not want to go to bed with her and I never did. I didn't touch her in any way, but I got a lot of compliments and requests to go to bed."

Rigby said after the first encounter when Jackson pulled her over in the summer of 1975, he continued to find opportunities to touch her inappropriately in the weeks and months that followed.

"If I was walking around and he was on duty, he would pick me up in his cruiser and take me somewhere kind of private and repeat those things," Rigby said. "He would pick me up from the junior high and just drive me around again with my head in his lap. ... It just became very normal."

Rigby said the behavior escalated to the point that Jackson invited her to come over to his house one weekend while his wife and children were away.

"It had never gone beyond just fondling in the car as we drove around, and I was afraid of what might happen if I went," Rigby said. "So I chose not to go, and he picked me up later that night and he said, 'Why didn't you show up?' And I just said, 'I was afraid.'"

After several months, one of Rigby's friends discovered what was going on and told Rigby's mother. Rigby said her mother confronted her, telling teenage Rigby that Jackson's behavior must be her own fault.

"And I felt like it was because I didn't say no," Rigby said.

Rigby believes her mother, Deane Rigby, likely lodged a complaint against Jackson with East Layton City leaders because she said Jackson's alleged molestation stopped at the same time her mother discovered it. Deane Rigby worked as East Layton's city recorder during the late 1970s. She died in 2002.

East Layton City Council minutes obtained by COLD through an open records request revealed that the council placed officer Jackson on probation in May of 1976 as a result of "complaints." Jackson resigned a couple of months later, in July.

Jackson, in the 2004 letter to his daughter, described running into Gorgi Rigby sometime later.

"She told me that a person had called her mother up and said, 'I know for a fact that Tom Jackson is taking Gorgi to bed.' Well, like the dumb fool I was, I was mad that someone would lie about me in such a way," he wrote.

A life of distrust and addiction

Gorgi Rigby said the molestation she experienced as a child left a lasting impact. She blamed Jackson for instilling her with a deep-seated distrust of men.

"He changed me from a free-spirited little girl to a girl who had secrets that I wasn't prepared to handle," she said.

Rigby said that as she grew into an adult, she leaned on marijuana to cope with the stress and anxiety brought on by her childhood traumas. She said a therapist once told her she was lucky she didn't have a needle in her arm, because many survivors of childhood abuse turn to illegal narcotics.

"I do have my addictions as an adult still to this day that help keep the demons at bay," Rigby said.

Rigby also sought out sexual relationships with older men, while finding it difficult to trust any male partner.

"Sex is what made me acceptable to men, and beyond that, I had nothing to offer," Rigby said. "I had a 9-year relationship with a really wonderful man. I helped him raise his children, but I couldn't give him my heart."

Rigby also kept her experiences with Jackson a secret, fearing people might not believe her or would respond the same way her mother had, by placing blame on her.

When contacted by COLD in the summer of 2026, Rigby provided several pieces of corroborating evidence to support her account. They included one half of Thomas Jackson's East Layton Police identification card from 1975, as well as a photograph dated October 1976 showing Rigby wearing what appeared to be a police officer's uniform jacket.

"[Jackson] gave me his police jacket and I wore it everywhere," Rigby said. "I used it as a Halloween costume."

Prior to being contacted by COLD, Rigby was unaware Jackson had gone on to commit child sex crimes against his own daughters, as well as other relatives. Jackson's daughters had succeeded in bringing new criminal charges against their father in 2023, leading to Jackson pleading no contest to five counts of 2nd-degree felony sexual abuse of a child in 2025.

Jackson's daughters, Heidi Holmberg and Tori Riddle, confronted their father in court during a sentencing hearing last November, telling him they hoped he would die in prison.

No criminal charges against Jackson

After speaking to COLD, Rigby decided to pursue her own justice against Jackson. She met with detectives from the Davis County Sheriff's Office and Layton Police Department. The detectives took Rigby's report and consulted with prosecutors, who declined to file criminal charges.

Their reason was tied to how Utah's laws were written at the time, in 1975, as well as a legal concept known as the statute of limitations.

Prior to 1983, state statute did not include a specific crime of sexual abuse of a child. If Jackson were to be charged today, prosecutors would have to apply the laws that existed at the time of the alleged offense, in 1975, due to a Constitutional prohibition on ex post facto laws. An ex post facto law is one that applies retroactively.

As it was written in 1975, Utah law did criminalize sexual abuse, but it also required charges to be filed within four years of the alleged offense. That time limit is the statute of limitations.

Since 1983, the Utah Legislature has repeatedly expanded the definitions for sex offenses, creating specific offenses for various crimes against children. It has also lengthened or removed the statute of limitations from child sex offenses.

Utah law did not include a statute of limitations on rape in 1975, but the molestation Gorgi Rigby alleged she experienced did not rise to the level of rape. As a result, prosecutors were barred from filing charges in her case.

Rigby said looking back, she felt guilt over not having spoken out against Jackson during the narrow window of time when he could've been charged. She believed it might have prevented sex crimes that Jackson later committed against other girls during the 1980s and 1990s.

"I was afraid, for whatever reason, to use my voice," Rigby said. "I've so much guilt that I could have maybe changed the trajectory of what happened to his children."

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