- Sheriff Kelly Sparks has personal ties to the Nancy Baird cold case.
- His brother, John Sparks, was a potential witness; officer Tom Jackson is a suspect.
- Sparks maintains distance from the case to avoid conflict of interest allegations.
LAYTON — When Nancy Perry Baird disappeared from the gas station where she worked on July 4, 1975, the four-person East Layton Police Department requested assistance from the Davis County Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff’s deputies joined the search for Baird on the second day of the investigation, dividing workload with the East Layton officers. That work included interviewing Baird’s friends, family and romantic partners in an effort to determine who might’ve abducted the 23-year-old woman.
Case records obtained by KSL’s investigative podcast series COLD through an open records request in 2022 reveal one of the men interviewed by an East Layton officer in 1975 was Baird’s ex-boyfriend, John Thomas Sparks. Today Sparks’ younger brother, Kelly Sparks, serves as Davis County sheriff…