Mom of 5 Vanishes After Quiet Night With Boyfriend

The Crystal Rogers case is unlike anything I've ever covered before because it truly affected an entire community. It changed Bardstown forever. We need everyone's help and everyone in the Ballard family and in the Brooks-Hout family to come together to try and figure out where Crystal is at. The fact that they're calling me out on a Sunday tells me that there's something that they have found that's unusual about it. It is quite literally a story years in the making, a missing young mother and a case the world would wait a decade to see how it ends. I mean, as far as I know, she's a well-likable person. I can't think of anybody who wouldn't want to harm her. The theory was that the family was somehow involved. If something has happened to her, it wasn't because it wasn't because something he did. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ I was at home. It was July 4th weekend. I was not on call that day, but the detective that was on call on his way to the sheriff's department to assist had a vehicle collision. And so they called me. By the time I'm on my way, they have discovered that her vehicle is abandoned. Crystal Rogers was a mother of five, and over Fourth of July weekend, 2015, suddenly she stopped answering calls. Her daughter was one of the first people who tried getting a hold of her and couldn't. So she contacted Sherry Ballard, who was Crystal Rogers' mother, asking if she'd heard from her, and Sherry hadn't. And initially, Sherry wasn't too concerned, but it was unlike Crystal to not be in constant contact with her children and her family members. The mother of Crystal Rogers then files a missing persons. At that point, there's really no evidence. There's no evidence of any foul play. It's unusual that they would call a detective on a missing persons case. So you'll most immediately understand that there's something about the case that isn't sitting right with the deputies that are there taking the report. Yesterday afternoon at approximately 3 o'clock, a family member came to the sheriff's office to report that they believed that Crystal Rogers was missing. Shortly thereafter, another family member found Crystal's car near the 14-mile mark. The car was parked on the Blue Grass Parkway. It raised a bunch of concern because a tire on the vehicle was flat. The keys are in the ignition. There's a cell phone in a purse in the passenger seat, which is very unusual. No woman that I know would leave her keys in her car and her purse in her seat if she's going to abandon her vehicle on the side of the road. The last person that we know that Crystal was with was her boyfriend or common law husband. They live here at Bardstown and his name is Brooks Howe. And I want everyone to know that he has been completely cooperative with our investigation and has tried to assist us in any way that he can. Crystal's family was devastated. She was their pride and joy. They cared for all their children deeply. And with Crystal missing, it was like a part of them left and that part could never be healed. It becomes pretty obvious. Relatively quickly that this is not going to be our typical missing persons. But at that point, you really don't know what you don't know. So you don't know what's important and what's not. So it's a really dynamic investigation at this point because you don't know where you're headed next. There's no body. There's no weapon. There's no blood. That's where it all begins. Just with her missing and really nothing pointing to anyone at that particular time. Crystal. Crystal was a loving mother of five. She had a huge network of family support in Bardstown. She was born and raised in Bardstown. And she had so much family there who cared so deeply for her. She had made a life for herself in Bardstown. And so many people say that she was an exceptional mother. It was like she was born to do that. One thing about Crystal is that relationships always seemed difficult for her. She had been married once before. And unfortunately, that didn't work out. And for one reason or the other, she could never find that person who truly loved and respected her for who she was. Brooks, when he got together with Crystal, she already had four children. Brooks's family owns a 200-acre farm in Kentucky. And so they have a lot of property. He's obviously very close to his family members. His one family member is actually a police officer in that county. Investigators have to retrace Crystal's steps over the last year. And with little to go on initially, they start looking for leads. The car being on the parkway pointed in the direction of E-Town, kind of alluding to the fact that she may have been going somewhere. We were tracking down some leads that her mother had told us about and her kiddos had told us about where they had been that weekend. And that Friday, they said, "Well, we went to Walmart, so I'm going to send somebody to Walmart to get video of them at Walmart." Who did she have interactions with when she was at Walmart? Did she talk to anybody? Did she appear to have an argument with anyone? I sent somebody else to go and try to find her estranged husband, whether she said anything that might be of importance to him. Crystal Rogers' family had deep roots in Bardstown. Her mother, Sherry, and father, Tommy Ballard, were very well known in the community. In order to really understand how this affected the community, you really have to go back to understand what Bardstown was dealing with at that time. There were already three unsolved murders leading up to Crystal's disappearance. But then all of a sudden, a mother of five disappears. People were scared. And every day, people were out searching. My focus becomes interviewing the person that lives with her because by the accounts that we have thus far, he's the last person to see her. He agrees to come in, and I conduct an interview that Sunday evening with him. He told me who he was because he had filed to run for sheriff at the previous election. He was a landlord, had multiple rental properties. One of the obvious questions was, she managed the rental properties. Did anybody have a complaint? Anybody threaten her? Initially, he kind of implied, without as much saying, that he thought maybe she had gone somewhere to cool off. That conversation that Brooks Houck has with investigators on the night of July 5, 2015, struck a nerve with lead detective John Snow. He said essentially that Friday during the day was normal. She dropped two of the children off to their father. She had been to Walmart. He got home before she did. He says that they had been planning all along to go to the farm that evening with Eli. That's their youngest son. So he tells us that they leave their house and they make their way toward the farm. He tells me that they left there somewhere between 11 and midnight. And they went home. He says when they got home, she and Eli stayed up while he went to bed. He said when he got up the next morning, she wasn't there. Eli was in the bed with him. Her car wasn't there, but he wasn't overly concerned because she had left before when they had been arguing. So naturally, I asked him if they had been arguing and he said they had not. This begs the question, why would you offer that she would leave when you would argue? If you weren't arguing. This then leads to bringing Brooks Houck in again on July 8th, 2015. And this is where things get interesting. I'll do whatever I can. I don't need an attorney. I haven't asked for an attorney. I'm innocent. I'm willing to talk to whoever. But this to me is really starting to get, it's starting to get silly. I asked Mr. Houck to write out a statement. About everything that he does that weekend, particularly that Friday. Give me as much detail as you can. I'm going to take a minute here to read through your statement. If that's alright with you. I was trying to give as much as I could. If I'm asking you to write a statement about what you did three days ago. And there's a very significant event around that date. I would expect you to be able to write to a pretty good degree what you did that day. None of what he wrote down really had anything to do with what we were asking him to write a statement about. It was really more about what he does every day. The neighbor says she got home around 5:15. You guys leave to go to the farm. You get to the farm about 19 minutes after 7. When you got to the farm, do you know if anybody was there other than your mom? I don't know. We didn't stop up there. We went straight down there. We were going there to take the cows. And he said when they got to the farm. They saw his mother, Rosemary Howe, who lives at the farm. He said they didn't talk to her. He tells me that he and Crystal and Eli go walking around. Which is kind of odd because it's been raining that night. It was pretty wet. So you guys, you've taken your walk. And you're leaving, looking at the video. looks like it's about five minutes till midnight all right uh to me it seems a little late to be out on the farm with a two and a half year old it's still wide open and he'll bring any anybody he's used to used to sleeping so later in the morning you said you went to bed first she stays up what's what's she doing she's she's just on her phone uh playing i don't know what game but she normally plays a game later investigators would put a hole in that story we would later find out that her phone had been powered off for a while at that point his information that he gives to the police about where he was during and after the incident is contradictory it is not um sequential he is very much all over the place when he explains what he was doing that weekend saturday morning he went to the farm any idea how long you were out there yeah usually on saturday i'm not in any kind of a rush did you eat lunch out there i don't know about it once there i know ain't supper out there at fagin's house that night because he had everybody over there at his house at my mom's brother's house did you go home i think we rode with uh we rode with my mother over there then i went home after that and it turns out according to brooks you know the day after she's missing he's at some sort of fourth of july party with his son one would think that in this crisis situation he would not be partying with five fireworks and hot dogs he would instead be looking for his girlfriend did you go anywhere else after you left mom's house before you went home not that i can remember i'm not asking you to recall every detail of your life bro and i realized that it wasn't a big deal for her to be going for you but you know most people can remember you know most of the things they did during the day i don't know if it was uh her mother i met her mother at the gas station somewhere one of them days her mother sherry i pulled in there too um in there to that murphy station and then sherry came up there to my window and asked me uh if i had seen crystal and when you told her what i haven't seen her don't know where she is and she just said okay she said she's gonna go to the police station do you think you talked to sherry the same day there reported her missing you said she said yes she said yes the day the day that yes had you and crystal ever talked about breaking up i mean obviously we have fought just like any other any other uh any other couple it has been uh at times a stressed relationship i'm not here telling you anything other than that uh we loved each other very much and that right there is the bottom uh bottom end of it and he admitted that they did have you know some strains in their relationship but he said that you know he loved her um that's something that people have pointed out before because he said loved in the past tense what i've got to be faced with now is as good a mother as crystal's been now eli is in an atmosphere where i've got all the hope in the world but now i'm a single parent it appears to me if something's not done where she's not brought back safely now one of the very most important people in his life he's got to grow up in here answering a bunch of it's taken a lot of energy and effort away from the other efforts that could be out there trying to help and bring her back here safely i can't even go out on the side of the road without looking like a murderer or something like that it's wrong i've been extremely honest with you all here i've got a million things going on that i have to get done and then who's going to suffer he is and it's not right i'm ready to hire a higher auctioneer to sell all this stuff so i can so i'd be there boring like crystal and there's the question of well why would you sell off your things if you think she's coming back somewhat out of the blue he goes on this tangent about crystal's family he's clearly upset but it seems to be more about the impact this has on him and their young son eli than crystal's disappearance itself i wasn't a loss she'd done this before right and i wasn't i wasn't alarmed that's all there is to it and i can understand the family wanting to vent and stress but these people know me better than what's going on and before this is all over done with you all are too but it really it bothers me because not only have i been a victim my mind's not even where it should be because i'm trying to protect eli from this i don't care about them dragging my name through the mud right now because i'm going to keep the main focus and nephesis on bringing her back safely and as quickly as possible he didn't seem concerned at all at the fact that he was at the sheriff's department talking about the mother of his child being missing that doesn't make sense a couple things that order i want to get into it's intended to pry into what's going on in crystal's mind so that i can rule out any possibility of uh intention to harm self or things of that nature crystal is not that kind of person i don't believe at all i'll be honest with you i have been all along will continue to be if i woke up on a saturday morning and my wife wasn't with me in the bed as is normal which might not be normal for you i don't know but if she were not probably the first thing i would do would be to call her to find out where she was he only had reached out to crystal a couple of times in those first few days where she was missing his explanation was not very convincing and so his thought process was that well he would rather leave her alone rather than blow it up more and although that seems like maybe an innocent explanation if somebody isn't answering your calls after a couple of hours and also not there or days later it doesn't explain behavior when your girlfriend is literally missing out of nowhere so the phones wouldn't really give us much on the end of their giving us a picture of their relationship there would be a few text messages certainly it did not appear that they had been fighting that night for me the biggest thing that is absent in the phones is the plan to go to the farm so he says that it was all along the plan to go to the farm she has been telling people all day that they are going out on a kid-free date night are you familiar with a woman named christina holly yes i know you're talking okay there are some text messages between her and crystal on friday she tells her well i've got it we've got a sitter for the evening uh it's our first time being kid free for a while so we don't want to you know we're kid free we're going to enjoy ourselves why would she lie to her about it i don't know i can't answer that question as far as you know you all did not have plans for a babysitter the plan was all along for you guys to go to the farm yes she is telling people that this is the first time they've had a date night in a long time and she's really excited about it he says to us that that's that wasn't true that she only told them that so that the other children would not be jealous because they were going to spend time with eli alone well that would make perfect sense except for she told her best friend that who wouldn't care one way or the other there's some discrepancies between what law enforcement is learning from brooks versus what they already know from crystal's family and friends he is the only one around right now who's able to tell the story of what happened over the last few days but with text messages and witness accounts something's not adding up so detectives they build a timeline and key to that timeline is cell phone records one of the things that that shows up as odd is a phone call around midnight on saturday morning i asked him about this and he seems genuinely surprised i can see it on your phone logs and on saturday morning there appears to be a phone call um around midnight do you know who that person was that called you around midnight do you remember talking about taking a phone call yeah look at my phone but i don't i don't remember i remember getting a phone call on the way home it was a pretty short phone conversation kind of unusual to get a 13 second phone conversation at midnight it would just say i want to get your phone to look that phone number all right so at the time all i had was the phone number so i said who's this phone number he said i don't know let's call it just call it oh steve who's who is steve lawson he's i seem like it works for me hey steve hey i've got some things going on next week i'm gonna need your help with you when steve lawson picks up the phone he immediately goes into what seems to be a rehearsed story that he is supposed to say i appreciate you uh you saying that but hey do you remember the other night you called me really really late can you remember what you asked me or what you were after - Yes, sir, I can, I called to ask you for their numbers for a house. - Oh, for a rental house. - Yes, sir. - And what did I tell you? - She told me that you would call, what's her name, Katie or whatever she handles all that. - Crystal. - Crystal. Okay, I apologize. - Yeah. - When Brooks hangs up the phone, I said, "Well, if Crystal's in the truck with you, why didn't you just give the phone to Crystal?" And he gives me a really strange look, like he doesn't know exactly what to say to that. So it's clear that this is not, this was not an anticipated question. - If she's in the truck next to you when he called, why would you need to call her about getting numbers for rental property? - 'Cause being that way at night, she was not gonna deal with stuff that way. I'm sure if I try to answer the phone really quickly, so that it wouldn't, a lot of times after I get moving, Eli goes to sleep, you know. - Although he had just told me that Eli was asleep. - Yeah. - That Eli was wide awake. That is probably the moment when it becomes clear that both Mr. Houck and Mr. Lawson have something to do with Crystal's disappearance. - So now we find out there's more potential players here. Steve Lawson, an associate of Brooks, and not only him, but his son, Joey Lawson, could be involved. - Steve and Joey Lawson were father and son. They worked for Brooks Houck. Steve Lawson would occasionally. Help Brooks Houck with some of his construction projects and do other odd jobs. - Both of them had a, already had a criminal element to their background. It's already in their nature to not give us information. I interviewed Steven Lawson a couple of times to try to get him to bring in his cell phone 'cause we had a search warrant for it. He would refuse to do that. - Do you know of anybody that would want to hurt her? I can't think of anybody who. Who wouldn't want to harm her. - The interview takes a turn when Brooks' phone starts going off. Now remember, at this point in time, he's been at the station for hours. This call is from his brother, Nick Houck, who's a local police officer in that area. - We're still getting video from different places, you know, along that route. - Can I get this? - Sure, go ahead. - Hello? - No. - I'm up here. I know that you didn't know. I'm up here. I'm up here in this interview with the detective, Detective Snow. - It's my habit to just let people take phone calls during the interview because you never know what they're gonna blurt out. - Are you telling me that's what I need to do? I know, I know, I know. I know I'm not. I know that. But the way that I look at it is I'm innocent. I ain't done nothing wrong. Well, you know, I know you've told me innocent people have gotten jammed up, but if you're telling me to leave, I'll get up and leave. I don't think she's ran off with some other guy. I don't believe that. So when he gets off the phone, he says something that is very, very interesting and would prove to be very consequential to the case. He thinks y'all are bulls**t is what he thinks. Have I told you that I'm for you? Yes, you have. I said, what did I say? My job is to find Crystal, right? That's right. Did I not tell you when you come in here and sit down today that right now you're the main person of interest? Yes, that's right. You're the last person to see her live, right? And I went through your timeline with you and explained to you that there's gaps in your timeline. If Nick thinks you should go and you want to take his advice, go ahead. Now at this point, Nick hadn't even entered into the picture. Aside from the phone call, but when he says to me, he thinks you're trying to screw us. That's not a, you're trying to screw me. He just put his brother somehow or another involved in this. And so now knowing who his brother is, knowing that he's a city police officer, this case just got way more complicated. This case is getting more and more complicated. It's getting more and more complicated by the hour and Brooks Houck is becoming the prime suspect, but there's still so many unanswered questions. So now detectives have to verify or refute the things that Brooks is saying. And one way to do that is by administering a polygraph test. Investigators will sometimes use polygraph tests to kind of determine whether something somebody is telling them is accurate or misleading or a flat out lie. Brooks' polygraph test here was inconclusive. inconclusive. Sometimes investigators will deem an inconclusive polygraph test as evidence of lying in and of itself or an attempt to manipulate the machine. So an inconclusive test sometimes can betray the person. Meanwhile, this case is garnering national attention and Brooks Houck is hounded by the media for an interview, but he only grants one to Nancy Grace. Mr. Houck, thank you for being with us. When did you realize, Brooks Houck, that she was gone? The very next, the very next morning. So you slept through the whole night and did not realize that she was gone? That's true. Exhausted my efforts with the law enforcement agencies to gather all the facts necessary to allow me to have a clean name again. Very important to me. The appearance on Nancy Grace was really interesting. Brooks up to that point had largely avoided local media. Almost every news organization was trying to get his side of the story and had been unsuccessful. However, he continued to live his life. He went about Bardstown, by most accounts, acting like nothing was wrong. Detectives move on to another member of the Houck family, Nick Houck. This is Brooks' police officer brother. So investigators need to find out what he knows, particularly given the odd remark after Nick's sudden call interrupted his interview with Detective Snow. How much interaction did you have with Crystal over the years? Almost nine. So when's the last time that you had seen Crystal? I'm sure it was sometime last year, just driving around out on the road, but I don't really remember where I was at or. So you knew her, you knew her enough to know her car, to know where her car was? Oh yeah. We had enlisted the help of the city police to help us gather up video and find potential witnesses. So now we have to rethink that because this person is potentially involved in this crime and he's employed at this agency. So we have to be very careful. When did you find out Crystal was missing? Within a couple of days. How did you find out? I don't know if Brooks had mentioned her. I saw her on TV. I mean, this is, this is for all intents and purposes, your sister-in-law and she's missing. I mean, did you and your brother just not talk to that extent that. That's kind of bad, isn't it? You would think if he was really, you know, concerned that he would pay my brother's police officer. He knows what to do. Let me call him and see what's going on. Yes. It's not like that. I've seen him on the road and that's about it. But it's kind of like pointing the finger at him. At this point, it doesn't matter what he does, you know, he looks like the bad one. So. Here's the problem. Days earlier, Nick called Brooks telling him to leave his police interview, and now he's saying we're not that close. I'm sure these investigators are confused, and rightfully so. They're probably scratching their heads and saying, well, which is it? This conversation with Nick Houck opens up a whole different can of worms. They want to figure out, was he involved? And if so, to what extent? Friday night the 3rd, I think, was the last time that anybody said they saw her, right? Mm-hmm. Where was that at? Do you know? I think somebody said it was at Walmart. She goes missing on Friday. Saturday's the 4th. Sunday's the 5th. Yeah. So that's when she gets reported missing. Mm-hmm. And he never called you for any advice on what to do. No. He's so busy, we just, we don't hang out much anymore. Nick is an interesting character because he's both law enforcement and a potential co-conspirator. Police obviously wanted to zero in on whether he was influencing the investigation. Do you remember when he was interviewed? Oh, yeah. Did you make a phone call to him when the SO was interviewing him? Yes, I knew him. What, what, why did you call him? Well, you know, just basically, I mean, Brooks is a really cooperative guy. And, you know, obviously at this point you want to be cooperative, but you also want to protect yourself. Nick was also confronted about his own whereabouts and potential involvement in the case. He, like his brother Brooks, gave inconsistent answers. So you all have said you've been out to the farm, and do you all go out there together to work, or be… When was the last time, I guess, you and him were out there together? We weren't into each other out there. Did you go out there together? Did you meet him out there? No, I didn't. He just happened to be out there. Do you remember going out to the farm the, even the July the 8th? I don't. That was, that was, incidentally, the same night that your brother was interviewed by police. What if the cameras would have caught your, your car following Brooks, wouldn't have let me out to the… It wouldn't have surprised me. Was there a time that you all both went out there at the same time for a specific reason? Not that I ever thought. You remember that night? No, I don't. What went on while you were out there at the farm? Yeah, if I knew, I'd tell you. You arrived together and you left together. We know that. When he said that he either was or was not in certain locations at certain times, police were able to retrieve surveillance video of, Nick being in certain areas like the farm, those types of inconsistencies are problematic for Nick. We took Nick's police car at the behest of the city police department and ultimately I would get a search warrant to have it processed. What do you normally keep in your trunk? I've got a cardboard box back there. There's many forms. There's a PBT fire extinguisher. When the PD took your car from your house, what was in the trunk bin? All the stuff I just told you, but there was also just a regular blanket for moving. I got the blanket at the farm. I used it and then I was going to take it back in a few days. I forgot about it. The one part of the car that we had any interest in, forensically in the beginning, was that blanket. Have you ever heard of Luminol? All right, you know what Luminol is used for? To find blood? Okay. Or other bodily fluids. Why would your trunk look like a Smurf if they sprayed it? There's a couple spots in the trunk. And that blanket, I mean, just lit up like general. There shouldn't be any bodily fluids in the trunk. I mean, there's only one way bodily fluids can get into a trunk. That's if a body's near it. Is there any reason that her DNA is going to come back in your trunk? I'm 100% certain it won't. Ultimately, they said there was no evidence to be recovered from the blanket. Doesn't necessarily mean the blanket wasn't important. Doesn't necessarily mean that the blanket wasn't used for something. It just means that now there's no longer any evidentiary value to it. Did your brother ever call you and say that he'd done something to Crystal? No, he did not. There is some reason why you all went out to that farm. She's got kids. I mean, there's no way that I would cover this up for him. Who else would be responsible for this? I mean, I don't have any names to give you if I did. What do you think happened? You know, I don't know what happened. But I know Brooks didn't have anything to do with it. So you never helped him move a body? I did not. And you're telling me you want to be cooperative. That's why you're here, right? Yes. OK. What about taking a polygraph exam? I've got nothing to hide. Now, days later, Nick Houck is given a polygraph, and it sparks even more discussion about his alleged involvement. Well, Nick, I've had a chance to review your charts on both tests. That first test, you did not pass the test. And it's pretty clear to me that you haven't told me the complete truth. And the questions you're having a problem with are questions about Crystal, and in particular, one about whether or not you know where she is right now. The time has come for you to think real hard about the rest of your life. It's results on your test. Deception indicated, 100%. And it's at that point that he got really defensive. Whereas we saw Brooks Houck in his interrogation being calm and almost nonchalant, Nick was the exact opposite. I can demonstrably point out through forensic evidence already that things that you told us about where you were at various times are-- they're demonstrably not true. You can deny, deny, deny, and that's fine. That's what people do. They immediately circle the wagons and start to say, well, self-preservation, we all-- Man, let me just cut you off. I mean, do we need to take this any further? I would like to take it to the truth. I mean, you're talking crazy. The accusations you're making-- Yeah, I'm saying you're involved in this. Absolutely not. I'm talking to someone who's a family member, essentially, is missing and possibly dead. You've seen some interviews. Well, you haven't been completely truthful about things. I've been 100% truthful. Listen to what I'm saying. You listen to what I'm saying. Why are you yelling at me? Well, because you're telling me I'm lying, and I know I'm not. I know the truth. And if you don't want to believe it, that's your issue. It's not mine. I showed you. Dude, I don't give a what your computer said, OK? I think you do. Then why are you getting so angry? Because you're calling me a liar. That's why. You're calling me a liar. He was not happy about being questioned by them. Pretty much kept running around in circles. What we would ultimately do-- ultimately get out of that is the polygrapher would tell us that he believed that Nick was involved and that they had disposed of Crystal's body. It was enough for him to no longer have a job at the police department. We had an administrative hearing concerning the employment status of Officer Nick Houck. The mayor's been considering the evidence. Earlier today, he issued a final order, and that order terminates Officer Houck from the Barsetown Police Department. In a case where you don't have a body, and you don't have a murder weapon, you don't even really have a crime scene, I felt like we had a really good circumstantial case. In the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the Commonwealth attorney would make the determination typically as to whether or not you're going to charge this individual, especially in a case this big. I felt like we had a good enough circumstantial case to prosecute it prior to my retirement. He did not. They weren't really even involved. They weren't really able to charge Brooks or the Lawsons or any of those people. There's no body. There's no DNA evidence anywhere, really. There's no evidence that really a crime was committed at all. This case comes to a standstill for months. There's little to no updates, no movement in the investigation. And about a year after Crystal's disappearance, there is an incident that raises a lot of questions. When Crystal disappeared, no one searched harder than her father, Tommy Ballard. November 19, 2016 is a day in my career I will never forget. When we learned that there had been an incident in Bardstown, our hearts sank. Tommy Ballard was going hunting with his grandson. They were just getting out of the truck. And all of a sudden, a gunshot rang out. And that single shot went through Tommy Ballard's chest and killed him. It is still, as far as I know, still a very open case and being actively worked by the detectives at the Kentucky State Police Post. I think everyone believes that it's connected to Crystal's case. Naturally, there was speculation that Crystal's father's murder could have been connected to her disappearance. Was he maybe onto something? Through Tommy's efforts to try to find answers in Crystal's case, one of the things that he uncovered was a tip that proved to be really critical. People would go to the Ballards with information. We got the tip early from Crystal's brother. He says, hey, these guys saw this white Buick parked in the woods next to the farm the night that she goes missing. We don't really know how it fits into things in the beginning. Tommy puts out a Facebook post, hey, we need to know about this white Buick. So it doesn't become urgent until we find out, kind of by happenstance, actually, that it belongs to a family. It's a family member of the house. What we would later figure out is that Anna Whitesides, who is their grandmother, owns a white Buick. Shortly after we find out about her owning the white Buick, Nick takes her to Louisville and gets rid of the car. And I know the community really wanted us to hurry up and charge someone. Calling someone a suspect is one thing. Accusing someone of homicide is another thing. Fast forward several years, 2018, the investigation is still ongoing. And Detective Jon Snow retires. And what comes next is nearly half a decade of silence. There is very little information that is publicly released as the FBI fully takes over. The FBI did one search in 2021 that took several days. It was in a subdivision in Bardstown. And their focus was a home that was being built by Brooks Houck. The items they recovered from-- from that property were women's underwear and women's clothing. There were some that was found under the driveway and some that was found under the sidewalk. However, the DNA did not match Crystal Rogers. Here we are, years later. The FBI has the case in hand. Brooks Houck, his brother Nick, the Lawsons, they may be the prime suspects connected to the disappearance of Crystal Rogers. But none of them have faced any charges so far. But then you go to 2020. And investigators, with the help of another government agency, they make a discovery that no one saw coming. Even the IRS came in to conduct searches. If, for example, there were tax fraud issues, the FBI was looking, obviously, for other things to try to link the Houcks to this crime. And by the time all of these years passed, the investigators have to start looking at a page. It's a paper trail like that. The IRS had different resources than the FBI. They had a legal avenue to conduct searches on electronics under the auspice of investigating tax crimes, which leads to finding hidden recording devices. All of them had been recording interactions with the police. They'd been recording their conversations with each other. They'd been recording conversations with their lawyers. It was just bizarre. You know, they would find those recorders during a search warrant of the farm. There were recordings of Nick in the grand jury, his mother, Rosemary Houck in the grand jury. Some of those random conversations would become pretty important, because they revealed information that they probably didn't intend to. And on one of the recordings, Rosemary Houck says to Brooks, she says, what about the blanket? And he says, it's fine. Ultimately, what we would figure out was that this is a blanket. figure out is that the blanket that she's talking about is the blanket in the trunk of Nick's car. The FBI ends up conducting hundreds of new search warrants and interviews, retracing the steps of local law enforcement and creating new paths, but all following the same leads as laid out by Detective Jon Snow. They gather all the evidence collected by local law enforcement, combing through every inch of it extensively. They pull out all the stops, including using new tech tools. Google at the time had this reverse location technology, which showed Brooks' whereabouts despite the fact that he seemingly turned off his location services on his phone and also told his family to do the same. They had no idea that Google was still tracking them. Early on, investigators were interested in Steve Lawson largely because of that 13 second call, but they didn't have any crime or wrongdoing they could pin him for. But as time went on, they got more and more curious. They were curious about why he made that call and just what his relationship was with Brooks Houck. What they would ultimately learn over the years is that Steve Lawson and Joey Lawson had a really hard time keeping their mouths shut. Eventually, investigators would hear from one of Steve Lawson's ex-girlfriends, who said she overheard a conversation between Steve and Joey talking about moving a body. When the FBI got involved, one of the things they revisited. Were phone records. They looked back into Brooks Houck's phone records, the records of Steven Lawson and the records of Joey Lawson. And what they ended up finding was that Joey Lawson made two calls to Steve Lawson on the night of Crystal's disappearance. And also this goes back to Steve Lawson. His phone pinged on towers near where Crystal's car was abandoned. I'm not sure that we entirely understand their role. I don't know that we ever got the full story as to what they were involved. They were accused of being involved in the conspiracy to murder her, meaning that they did things and agreed to do things in furtherance of that murder. And specifically, they were involved with tampering with physical evidence by moving her vehicle. They were both involved in removing her vehicle from her residence and ending up on the Bluegrass Parkway with it. And you know what's more incriminating? Steven admitting that he picked up Joseph from the Bluegrass Parkway and moved the driver's seat in Crystal's car to make it look like someone shorter had been driving. They're also accused of giving the car a flat tire to stage the scene. Officials learned from another witness, a different employee of Brooks Houck, that Brooks said he wanted to, quote, "get rid of Crystal" and that Joseph Lawson said, quote, that he would pull her teeth and the hogs would do the rest. Now, while the evidence doesn't seem like it, it doesn't seem to be true. Now, while the evidence doesn't seem like the strongest, admitting to all this implicates Brooks Houck and Joey and Steven Lawson. It isn't until eight years after Crystal's disappearance that anyone is criminally charged in connection with this case, and that's because of the efforts of federal agents to remove the Nelson County prosecutor who wouldn't move forward with charges in this case if there was no body. In late 2023, a series of grand juries are impaneled and this is where Steve Lawson testifies about his involvement in Crystal's disappearance. Steven Lawson, ultimately he would end up subpoenaed to the grand jury where I would confront him about the phone call and he really kind of plays it off and tries to act like he doesn't know what phone call and then he's like, "Oh yeah, I remember talking to him about it." Without knowing it, he really kind of gives away his involvement in it by trying to be cagey about the nature of the phone call. And then there is a special grand jury that's assembled for the sole purpose of indicting Brooks Houck. In early September of that same year, Joseph Lawson is arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with evidence. Brooks Houck is then indicted for murder and tampering with evidence. He's held on a whopping $10 million bond. Three months later, Steven Lawson is charged with conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with evidence. But it is important to note that as of this recording, neither Nick Houck nor Rosemary Houck have been officially charged in connection to this case. You're glad of it, but it's also scary because you know now this begins what is either the beginning or the end of this case, right? You know that one way or the other, this case is going to come to a resolution and it may not be the way that you think that it should, which is obviously with a guilty verdict. A case 10 years in the making. It culminates with three men standing trial in the disappearance and presumed murder of Crystal Rogers. First, in May 2025, Steven Lawson stands trial and is found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with evidence. But then just a month later comes the trial that so many people had been waiting for, that of Brooks Houck and Joseph Lawson. This is a sad case, very sad. A young woman, 35 years old, with five children, disappeared. They didn't go out to romantic get-togethers at 12:15, 12:18 at night. Brooks Houck is moving from the Houck farm to his home, and she wasn't in that truck. She wasn't going home with them. We believe the evidence will show from your God-given common sense that she's died, and that she's in a coma. As long as this investigation took, and as complicated as this case was, it was very important for the jurors to understand what are the different roles of the players here. Brooks Houck, his brother Nick Houck, and of course, Joey and Steven Lawson. Did you ever hear any conversation between Joseph Lawson and Steve Lawson as it relates to Crystal Rogers? Yes. I overheard Steve Lawson and Joey Lawson. Talking about moving a body at the Houck farm with a skid steer. There was a lot of new information that came out during the trial. It was amazing to me to see how much investigators were able to keep close to chest. I think the most heartbreaking was that Crystal went into that evening thinking that she was going to have a kid-free romantic date night with Brooks. This is a woman who felt like her relationship was failing. This date night that was promised to her felt like a glimmer of hope. Prosecutors say that it was all part of his plot to lure her to his family farm. The whole time that I lived there, I never seen Rosemary or Nick at the house. And that week that week Crystal went missing, did you see Nick at the defendant's house? Yeah, me and Rosemary, I've seen them there a lot. There was one day that I witnessed the Rosemary's car pull in the driveway. That the cop car pulled in, and they turned the cars around. Nick got in the back of the cop car, grabbed two bags and put them in Rosemary's car. And then he went back and got two more. The neighbor who's very nosy, thankfully, tells us that Rosemary and Nick almost never come to Brooks' house because Rosemary did not get along with Crystal. We got information that Rosemary had gone to the house just a couple of days into this thing. And she had pulled up. And thrown away some flowers that Crystal had planted. Did you see anything else with Rosemary that week? I can remember one day when I looked across the street, seeing Rosemary with the shovel digging up the flowers and throwing them over in the trash can. You know, the first thing that comes to my mind is, if you think she's coming home, why are you pulling flowers up at her house? You don't think that's going to be upsetting to her, you don't think that's going to further hurt that relationship? She knows daggone good and well Crystal ain't coming back. How does she know? So, do you remember the week, weekend of July 4th? Yes, sir. Do you remember any conversation you had about Joey, about Crystal's car that week? He said he was burying it with a skid string, nobody ever found it. What about Steve? Uh, Steve had come up to me and said, "Isn't that Brooks wanting to get rid of his old lady?" Now, this is when that white guy came up to me. That white Buick that's owned by the grandmother of Brooks and Nick Houck, that comes back into the picture. Why? Because it is believed that that could have been used to transport Crystal's remains. Now, were you aware of anything collected out in the vehicle? I am. Was there a hair located in the vehicle? Yes, sir, there was. The head hair with Caucasian characteristics in item 26, that would be the hair that was located in the vehicle, microscopically compared with the head hair standard collected from Crystal Rogers' hairbrush, and determined to be similar in color and limited microscopic characteristics, was different from the head hair standard in item 63, which was in a white size. Okay. Now, after the seizure of the vehicle and after it was processed, did you arrange for a cadaver, though? Yes, sir. A detective by the name of Jamie Brooks would be working off-duty in Louisville. I didn't accidentally meet a guy who has a cadaver dog. This man would agree to come and take the cadaver dog and run away. it around the white buick and the cadaver dog indicates on the trunk of the white buick we find a couple of hairs in it they don't produce any real dna but we're able to use those during the trial to kind of build that case i was presented with a relatively small parking lot he unlocked the parking lot and asked me to to search that area ranger cleared the area of any live victims ranger gave his train final response uh at the right rear corner of that buick le sabre sitting very close to that buick le sabre and telling me that that that's where he had the strongest scent of human remains not only did the evidence stack up against brooks hauck forensically but court documents suggest there was a motive here that he'd allegedly had an affair just a month before crystal disappeared but the defense they focus on discrediting the state's law enforcement and the law enforcement department's defense against brooks hauck and the state's witnesses criticizing the police investigation and saying that law enforcement focused so narrowly on brooks hauck that they may have ignored other leads we certainly agree with mr lasowski on one and critical point and that is this is absolutely heartbreaking case from the early hours of this investigation brooks hauck became the sole focus that this case was going to be the focus of the investigation and the investigation of the case was going to be the focus of the investigation and the investigation of the case was going to be the focus of the case and the investigation of the case was going to be the focus of the case and the investigation of the case and the investigation of the case and the investigation of the case and the investigation of the case eventually caused the facts and truths that we look for in the justice system to be replaced with suspicions assumptions guesses and theories and it caused ultimately in this case these two men brooks have and joey lawson to sit here before you today charged with horrific crimes that they did not commit we're all assuming that she was deceased but there was no evidence of any kind of any cause or mechanism of her death a circumstantial case like that still don't have a body still don't have any other real hard evidence that anyone was even killed let alone who did it there was testimony earlier the dog involved in this case was cross-trained could you please explain to the jury what that means a cross-trained dog and for this instance is a dog that's trained for live scent to find live humans as well as human remains detection do you personally sir recommend cross-training or cross-certification of canines no sir i do not in this case we hired you to look at police searches and laboratory reports correct that's correct did they find uh based on your review the evidence that was collected was any of joey lawson's fingerprints found in the car not that i could find no was there any dna of joey lawson found in his car uh not that i could determine no what about steve lawson same the same yes there was one hair on the driver's seat that could have been tested for dna and one uh on the driver's side floorboard is that correct correct were those tested they were not okay should they have tested those yes they should have been was there any dna of crystal rogers was in formerly anal bite-sized white buick there was not the defense team they tried to say that joey and steve lawson were never on the bluegrass parkway they said that the cell phone records that they had actually showed that they could have been on a road that ran parallel with the bluegrass parkway following 10 days of testimony and more than 50 witnesses clearly the jury has their work cut out for them early on i got i got a pretty good feeling about it you don't know what 12 individual people are going to do when they get behind closed doors and start talking but i was very confident in the case that mr young and his team laid out ladies and gentlemen the jury is not understanding the bailout indicated that you all have reached the verdict but it took less than four hours for the 12-member jury to come back with their decision in regard to commonwealth versus brooks william howe we the jury find the defendant guilty of murder we the jury find the defending guilty of tampering with physical evidence in regard to joseph lawson we the jury find the defending guilty of conspiracy to commit murder we the jury find the defending guilty of tampering with physical evidence the case is clearly a circumstantial case there was no body found or recovered there was no witness to the actual event but that being said the evidence against brooks including the motive for him to to kill crystal the fact that he was already having an affair the fact that crystal was looking to leave all of the things that always make the boyfriend or the husband the prime suspect all of those ingredients were there with brooks if he's going to be released he's going to be released he's going to be released he's going to be released he's going to be released he's going to be released you saw the news footage of it i cried like a baby i don't even know how to describe it it was very emotional when you get that result at the end of it when especially in a case when you quite frankly had your doubts as to whether it would ever go to trial you know it's just it's almost too much to bear really so at this time it's the sentence of the court in regard to mr lawson's case that he'd be confined in a penal institution therein to remain for a period of life and five years for complicity to tampering with physical evidence with those sentences running concurrently for life you never cared about anybody but yourself you say you love eli so much but if you really loved him you wouldn't have murdered his mother she was amazing mother my mom didn't deserve his love she was the only one who could have loved him she was the only one who could have loved him she was the only one who could have loved him she was the only one who could have loved him she was the only one who could have loved him she was amazing mother my mom didn't deserve any of this when you thought you had planned the perfect murder i guess you're not as smart as you think you are for 10 years i have suffered the pain of losing my daughter never once have i seen you shed one tear this case is one that changed bart's town forever and the community became incredibly invested in it and i think a lot of that had to do with sherry and tommy ballard everyone could look at them and see themselves as a parent a sister a brother a loved one and they felt their pain i pray that one day you will grow a heart and have the decency to tell me where my daughter is and now you will spend the rest of your miserable life in prison where you belong brooks hauck is sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole he's already appealing his sentence meanwhile joseph lawson was given 25 years in prison and stephen lawson will spend 17 years behind bars but the most heartbreaking part the most tragic part of this story is that crystal's family may never get full closure crystal's body has still not been found and that remains the biggest mystery in this whole case this is a case that had gone on for more than 10 years by the time that it got into a courtroom and i think there are a lot of people in the community who worry that day would never come although there is some relief from the conviction and sentencing of brooks hauck joseph lawson and stephen lawson a lot of people would like to see investigators take this case further the prosecution during the trial referred to nick hauck and rosemary hauck as unindicted co-conspirators a lot of people wonder what's next and then there's also the question of what about tommy ballard what happened to him will anyone ever be charged with his murder i think the the community as a whole um is healing from it since the convictions i think there's still a lot of unanswered questions which may or may not ever get answered and that's hard to to face that we may never know what's going to happen in the future but i think there's still a lot of time left for us to talk about and i think that's what's going to happen in the future and i think there's still a lot of time left for us to talk about and i think that's what's going to happen in the future and i think that's what's going to happen in the future and i think that's what's going to happen in the future