Ryan Staggs missing person — **Missing persons organizations created flyers and social media posts to publicize the January 2022 disappearance of Ryan Staggs of Newport. His body was unearthed three years later.**

By Lincoln Chronicle staff

A 62-year-old Tidewater man was sentenced to five years in prison Wednesday nearly two years after he led police to a shallow grave in a remote area of Lincoln County where they found the body of a used car dealer who disappeared in 2022.

Jack D. Baird pleaded guilty to abuse of a corpse and burglary in an agreement with the Lincoln County district attorney’s office and was sentenced by presiding Judge Sheryl Bachart. Under the agreement, a second burglary accusation and a tampering with evidence charge were dismissed.

Baird was not charged in the Jan. 29, 2022, disappearance of Ryan Staggs, 31, of Newport. Staggs, the owner of Happy Motors, was last seen in January 2022 and was reported missing a month later.

Police arrested Murphy C. Henry II, 56, of Toledo, in January 2025 and accused him of killing Staggs. Henry is scheduled to go on trial in February.

Henry’s arrest came several weeks after Baird’s arrest and after police dug up his Newport backyard where he was then living in the search for Staggs body. A probable cause affidavit filed in circuit court when Baird was arrested said witnesses told police that Baird rented a backhoe two days after Staggs disappearance and buried him in his backyard.

While the body was not found there, police said cadaver dogs alerted to the scent of human remains, investigators developed more information and witnesses which led them to the remote grave.

Sentencing hearing

During a sentencing hearing Wednesday, Staggs’ uncle told the court that Ryan Staggs withdrew from his family in his early 20s when he became addicted to oxycodone following a sports injury.

Staggs was a “kind soul who did not inflict harm upon anyone but himself,” Scott Staggs said in a victim’s statement.

“Our deep shock, anger, and grief upon hearing that Ryan was a victim of the abuse of a corpse crime was profound,” Scott Staggs said. “It has created for myself and other family members horrific imagery of how Ryan was treated. To this day, and likely our remaining days, we will be haunted by the desecration and violation committed to Ryan’s body.”

Baird made a brief statement apologizing for his involvement.

“I’m so sorry, this family has had to suffer,” Baird said. “If the police just knocked on my door they would have heard everything because I’ve been bursting to tell it since it happened, and I just didn’t know what to do. And I am so sorry for all of it.”

Defense attorney Kathryn Benfield argued that Baird should get a lesser sentence because of the 16 years since his last crime and because he cooperated with police to help find Staggs’ body during a two-day search in the woods.

But Bachart declined to do that, citing the deliberate cruelty of burying Staggs’ body.

“We’ll never know what type of life he would get to lead, and what choices he would have made later in his life had the opportunity to rehabilitate. That was taken from him,” the judge said.

“One of the aggravating factors is deliberate cruelty, and that’s what this looks like — deliberate cruelty to this family to live in that space of just not knowing what happened to their loved one, and then discovering what actually did happen, and that there were people that knew and nobody was talking and nobody did anything, because protecting themselves was more important than their pain.”