Nancy Perry Baird disappeared from the Fina-brand gas station where she worked on the afternoon of July 4, 1975. The station sat on the west side of U.S. Highway 89, near the intersection with Cherry Lane, in the quiet community of East Layton, Utah.
Baird, a 23-year-old divorcee with a 4-year-old son, was scheduled to staff the self-serve station along from 3 p.m. to midnight on that Independence Day. But when the station’s manager, Bonnie Peck, stopped in to the business a little after 5:30 p.m., she found several patrons waiting to pay. Baird, the clerk, was nowhere to be found.
Nancy Baird’s wallet, purse, keys and car were all still at the station. There were no signs of a struggle inside the store, no money missing from the cash register. Police quickly concluded Nancy Baird had not left of her own accord. The most obvious reason why: Baird’s son, Brant, was also left behind, in the care of her parents.
A few days later, a reporter for KSL-TV stood in front of the Fina station clutching a microphone. Looking into the lens, he said “there is a wrinkle in this case that might relate to another.”
The Fina station was owned by a company called Tri-angle Oil. One of the co-owners of that business was a man named Dean Kent, whose 17-year-old daughter Debra Kent had disappeared the prior November.
1975-7-11 Davis County Clipper Nancy Baird Jul 11, 1975 Davis County Clipper (Bountiful, Utah) Newspapers.com
“When asked about this coincidence, police said it was nothing more than just a coincidence,” reporter Steve Schwartz said, “but the investigation goes on.”
The Ted Bundy coincidence
Police across Utah were at the time in the summer of 1975 operating under the belief a serial killer was in active in their communities. That suspicion proved true. Weeks after Nancy Baird vanished, a state trooper made the first arrest of a man named Theodore “Ted” Bundy.
Bundy, it would later be proved, had abducted and murdered Debra Kent. The notorious serial killer admitted to that killing in an audiotaped interview two days prior to his execution in 1989. But during that same conversation with a detective, Bundy denied abducting Nancy Baird.
“Nancy Baird, who’s that,” Bundy said. “No, I didn’t have anything to do with that disappearance.”
Ted Bundy was telling the truth. Research by Tiffany Jean from the blog Killer in the Archives later revealed Bundy was 100 miles away from East Layton on the day Nancy Baird disappeared.
COLD first shared that information in a May, 2023 bonus episode of season 3 titled “The Convenient Alternative.” The news of Bundy’s unexpected alibi reached Nancy Baird’s son, Brant, who had lived his life up to that point believing Bundy had killed his mom.
Nancy Baird’s childhood friend
The bonus episode also had a profound impact on the family of a former East Layton police officer who’d worked the Nancy Baird case, right from the first night. COLD interviewed that former officer, Thomas Richard Jackson, as part of the reporting process for the bonus episode. Jackson was, at the time in 2023, a registered sex offender living on parole in southern Idaho.
Jackson acknowledged at that time he might be a suspect. He’d been married to one of Nancy Perry Baird’s childhood friends at the time of Baird’s disappearance. That woman, Geraldine O’Farrell, recalled learning from her ex-husband that Baird was missing.
“He knew I had been friends with her,” Geraldine said in an exclusive interview with COLD.
Geraldine and another girl, Shelley Williams, had been close with Nancy Perry (later Baird) during their junior high years. The trio spent their time rollerskating at the Berthana in Ogden, or flirting with boys at the Lagoon amusement park.
But Geraldine was ousted from the friendship at age 14, when she got into an argument with Shelley and Nancy at Lagoon one day about calling home to check in with their parents.
“I had a set time I had to call,” Geraldine said. “They didn’t want to go home then so they told me not to call.”
Geraldine’s ouster from the friendship left her feeling a profound sense of loneliness. Thomas Jackson, an older neighbor boy, took notice of her soon after.
“He was in the Army and had already served his time and was out,” Geraldine said. “So he was a lot older than me.”
Nancy and Dee Baird
Nancy Perry, meanwhile, soon began dating the man who would later become her husband, Dee Baird. Nancy and Dee wed in 1970, toward the end of Nancy’s senior year of high school, and welcomed their son Brant the following October.
The marriage lasted three years before Dee filed for divorce in the summer of 1973. The divorce proceeded quickly, with Nancy signing the papers weeks later.
After Nancy Baird vanished two years later, police case files show detectives at first investigated whether her ex-husband, Dee Baird, might’ve been responsible. But Nancy and Dee had remained amicable after their split, even dating on occasion. Dee Baird also had a solid alibi for the date of his ex-wife’s disappearance: he’d been in the vicinity of Jackson Hole, Wyoming with friends who vouched for his location.
Nancy’s job at the Fina station put her in constant contact with the officers of the little police department in the town of East Layton. One of them, David Ray Anderson, was among the last people to have seen Nancy alive on that July 4th afternoon.
East Layton City Council minutes obtained by COLD through an open records request revealed the then-husband of Nancy’s former friend, Geraldine, had signed on as a part-time reserve officer for East Layton just a few months earlier, in April of 1975.
Thomas “Tom” Jackson is identified in the Nancy Baird case files by the callsign E-4. Geraldine O’Farrell told COLD she believes Jackson might’ve talked to Nancy Baird on the day of Nancy’s disappearance.
“I’m sure he flirted with Nancy, I’m sure he did,” Geraldine said. “He’s a police officer, they probably all were in there flirting with her.”
Today, with Ted Bundy removed from the list of suspects by alibi, Geraldine also wonders if her ex-husband might’ve played an active role in Nancy’s disappearance.
“Five years ago would I have thought he did? Probably no,” Geraldine said. “But now, I don’t know. So much has come out on what he has done.”
Episode credits
Research, writing and hosting: Dave Cawley
Audio production and mastering: Aaron Mason
Cold main score composition: Michael Bahnmiller
KSL executive producer: Sheryl Worsley
KSL companion story: https://www.ksl.com/article/51627365/son-of-woman-claimed-to-have-been-abducted-by-serial-killer-ted-bundy-breaks-silence
Episode transcript:
