Daughters of serial child sex offender speak out on behalf of victims

Editor's Note: KSL's COLD podcast is airing its fifth episode of season 4: Blamed on Bundy, in conjunction with this article.

BOUNTIFUL, Utah — Utah 2nd District Judge Michael DiReda did not hold back during a sentencing hearing last winter for a former East Layton police officer convicted of child sex abuse.

"Your behavior is evil and your crimes are vile and inexcusable," Judge DiReda said.

The victims in the case against Thomas Richard Jackson, 79, included his two daughters, Heidi Holmberg and Tori Riddle, who'd gone to Davis County detectives after hearing their father in a 2023 episode of KSL's COLD podcast. Those detectives learned Jackson, then a registered sex offender living on parole in Idaho, had committed acts of molestation and abuse against his daughters and another female relative during the 1980s.

"They deserved to have a dad who loved them and protected them. And instead, they had a dad who was a monster and who did horrific things to them," Judge DiReda said.

The question before the judge on that day was whether Jackson, then 78, should serve time in jail or prison for his crimes. Sentencing guidelines, which are based on state statutes created by the Utah Legislature, provided a range of options. The low end of the range called for a split sentence, otherwise known as "jail as a condition of probation," which would allow Jackson to serve a brief period in county jail followed by probation at home.

"The fact that jail as condition of probation is even part of the discussion, is even part of this pre-sentence report, in my view is an absolute mockery of justice," Judge DiReda said. "It is a reflection that our Legislature clearly doesn't view sex crimes against children as intolerably as it should and as the rest of society does."

A serial sex offender

Thomas "Tom" Jackson was not a first-time offender. He'd previously pleaded guilty to sex crimes against children in Utah in 1986, as well as in Idaho in 1996. In the first Utah case, he'd received a lenient sentence of 200 hours community service and a fine.

In the Idaho case, a judge sentenced Jackson to life in prison without the possibility of parole. However, Jackson appealed and in 1997 the Idaho Supreme Court trimmed the sentence down to 15-years-to-life in prison. Jackson served the 15 years and was released in 2011.

His arrest in Idaho 12 years later came even as deputies in Davis County, Utah were looking into Jackson as a "person of interest" in the cold case disappearance of his ex-wife's childhood friend, Nancy Perry Baird, on July 4, 1975. The Baird case was long blamed on serial killer Theodore "Ted" Bundy, but reporting by COLD in 2023 revealed Bundy had an alibi for the date Baird vanished.

The Nancy Baird cold case is the subject of COLD's latest season. Jackson has not been charged with any crimes related to Baird's disappearance. His sentencing in November 2025 dealt only with the previously undisclosed child sex abuse crimes.

Several of Jackson's relatives spoke on his behalf in court. They included a brother, cousin, nephew and niece who all said Jackson underwent a change following his incarceration in Idaho.

Judge DiReda told Jackson he weighed that favorable testimony against the troubling accounts of Jackson's victims. DiReda wondered aloud whether Jackson was a "changed man or master manipulator."

On the opposite end of the sentencing guidelines was the potential maximum: a prison term of one to 15 years on each of the five counts, which the judge could order to run concurrently or consecutively. If concurrent, Jackson might become eligible for parole within a year. If consecutive, the wait for a parole hearing would be five years.

The judge opted for consecutive, the harshest punishment allowed under the law.

Jackson's victims find their voices

KSL was the only media organization in the courtroom for Jackson's sentencing. His daughters spoke during the hearing, providing victim impact statements.

They described how the abuse they'd experienced at their father's hands caused lifelong scars. They talked about struggles receiving or showing affection, as well as difficulties in speaking about the "gross, embarrassing, confusing" subject of their childhood traumas.

Following the hearing, Holmberg and Riddle spoke to KSL about the experience of finding their voices as adults.

"I want pedophiles and people that hurt kids to know that we're scared when we're little and we don't know how to say words or articulate what you're doing to us," Riddle said, "but when we grow up they can be brought to justice."

Riddle said her father groomed not only she and her sister, but also others around him into believing he was a moral person incapable of committing awful crimes.

"He's always been called a good man, but behind closed doors he was a monster," Riddle said.

COLD has learned that more potential victims recently contacted Layton police to report additional acts of sex abuse allegedly committed by Jackson during the 1980s. And at least one woman told detectives Jackson molested her in 1975, while she was 14 and he was a 27-year-old police officer. Davis County prosecutors could not file charges against Jackson in that case because the statute of limitations had expired.

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