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Tonight on Dateline. The minute my daughter wouldn't answer that phone, I knew. I said something's wrong. I feel it.
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Crystal Rogers was reported missing. She wasn't with her car, her phone. This is really bad.
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Crystal's dad, Tommy, started his own investigation. Very early, yeah. He's killing himself.
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Trying to solve the disappearance of his daughter. Yes. There is a massive twist coming that will shake this community to its core.
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It was hard to believe. He told me Tommy had been shot. Did the same people who wanted Crystal gone take care of Tommy as well?
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Who's involved here? Had you and Crystal ever talked about breaking up? It's mentioned, but it's never happened.
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This guy, he was a silver-tongued devil. How did he do the polygraph? He didn't do well at all.
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I don't like it when people call me a liar. They said you're dealing with some very serious people here.
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How much more do y'all want me to do? Everything! This is good versus evil. You couldn't have described it any better.
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A string of murders rocks a small town. Coincidence or conspiracy? I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.
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Here's Andrea Canning with The Trouble in Bardstown. It's been called America's most beautiful small town.
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Bardstown is kind of like Mayberry, right? It is. It's always been a beautiful town.
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A close-knit community nestled in the heart of Kentucky's bourbon country. The last place you'd expect anything like this.
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This area just kept getting hit by murder after murder after murder. Yep. Now you have to look over your shoulder constantly.
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America's most beautiful small town. Now people are wondering what is going on here.
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A mystery that would pit two families against each other. There's a lot of evil in his family.
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It's like everything they do they don't get in trouble for. And leave the whole town asking, how far would you go for the ones you love?
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I think any mother would do this for their daughter. Take me this hard. It will literally tear Bargetown apart.
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For the family of Crystal Rogers, it all started on the 4th of July weekend, 2015.
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A holiday usually marked by backyard barbecues and playtime for the kids. Just the kind of thing Crystal loved, says her mother, Sherry Ballard.
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It seems to me that Crystal was born to be a mom. Yes, she was a very good mom. She had five children and she even took care of some other kids that weren't hers.
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Despite a rainy forecast, Crystal's oldest daughter, Ashley, was looking forward to spending the holiday with her mom.
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Did she have any specific plans for the holiday? Usually we go and do fireworks together.
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You know, like everybody comes to my mama's house and we'll do like a little bit of fireworks or like have a little cookout.
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But Saturday the 4th came without word. So Ashley, who was staying with Sherry at the time, sent her mom a text.
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It's like, hey, what's going on? You know, come get me. Yeah, it's 4th of July. Yeah.
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But you don't hear anything. No. And what do you think about that? Is it just, oh, she's probably busy?
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Mm-hmm. Maybe she was busy with Eli. Two-and-a-half-year-old Eli was Crystal's youngest and never left her side.
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That evening, Crystal didn't reply to Sherry either. Is that out of the ordinary for Crystal to not respond?
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Yes, Crystal always responded to my text messages, always. So are you starting to worry then?
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I did kind of get a little worried, but I talked myself out of it thinking, well, you know, she's probably her phone might have died or something.
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The next morning, Sunday, Crystal's Aunt Barbara got a text from Crystal's boyfriend, Brooks Houck.
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He also hadn't heard from her. He asked me if I could get a hold of Crystal or I told him that I had tried to get in touch with Crystal and didn't have any luck.
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How are you feeling, though, that now Brooks is looking for her? I thought, well, that's kind of odd.
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It had been nearly 36 hours since Crystal had communicated with anyone. Me and my husband were talking, and I said, I'm telling you, Tommy, something's wrong.
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I know, I feel it, I can just tell you it's wrong. And then I started crying, getting upset.
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Crystal's dad, Tommy, headed out to search, while Sherry and then 15-year-old Ashley headed to the sheriff's department.
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Along the way, they spotted Brooks' truck. Do you stop to talk to each other? I told my granddaughter, I said, call him and ask him to pull over.
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I asked him, I said, Brooks, have you seen Crystal? And he said, no. Brooks said he hadn't seen Crystal since Friday night.
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And then Sherry saw something that sent her pulse racing. Sitting in the back seat was Eli, Crystal and Brooks' son.
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The minute I saw that baby, there was no doubt in my mind at all. Mom never left that little boy anywhere, not even with his daddy.
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This is a very bad sign. Yes, very, very bad sign. Brooks agreed it was time to alert the police.
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Sherry and Ashley continued to the sheriff's department. But when they got there, Sherry received some news.
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My son and my husband got a phone call from actually a family member. They found her car on the Bee Gees.
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The Bee Gees, the Bluegrass Parkway? The Bluegrass Parkway yes ma So they found her car just parked on the side and my husband was going to go out there Sherry and Ashley went too They found Crystal maroon Impala sitting on the shoulder but no Crystal
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I was confused, like mom would have never left her car just on the side of the road.
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Why was Crystal's car abandoned here? Where was she? The questions were mounting.
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This is a really horrible moment. Yes. And what's shaping up to be a nightmare. Yes, ma'am.
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One that would engulf the entire town. Were people locking their doors? Were they afraid to go out?
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Well, I think people were scared. And shatter lives. Kelly's at my front door. And she's just screaming, he's dead, he's dead.
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Five murders in four years. In a really small town. We kept thinking, are we missing something?
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I told you, I don't recall. Why are you getting so angry? Because you're calling me a f***ing liar.
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This is good versus evil. You couldn't have described it any better. Crystal Rogers' family was frantic.
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They'd found her car sitting on the side of the busy bluegrass parkway. She just disappeared and nobody had saw her.
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and... Detective John Snow with the Nelson County Sheriff's Department responded to the scene.
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So what are you looking for when you go to a scene like this and you know that this person's
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car is there? It depends on what facts you get when you get there. At that point, I didn't really
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have any facts, so if you want to know why and how the car ends up on the Bluegrass Parkway,
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what condition is the car in this is a potential crime scene you're driving to as he arrived he noted one reason the car might have been abandoned one of the rear tires is flat
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i mean that seems reasonable that that could happen to someone on a on a highway like this but
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this is a missing woman well and what's unusual is there was no signs of anybody trying to change
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the time. Even stranger, Crystal's car keys were still in the ignition, her phone and purse on the
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front seat. Is that like the biggest red flag for you right there, seeing that purse? Well,
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the purse and the cell phone, because everybody's carrying their phones everywhere with them.
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Do you get that bad feeling when you see all that? Like we could be heading down a dark path here.
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You try not to make assumptions, but it becomes very evident that this is not going to be just your
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run-of-the-mill missing persons case. Detective Snow had the car towed to a secure location
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where crime scene investigators could take a closer look. I went back to the sheriff's department to start talking to the family
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to try to get some background on Crystal and her family dynamics. The detective learned that Crystal and her four youngest kids
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lived with her boyfriend, 33-year-old Brooks Houck. They had begun to date maybe like not quite a year
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before she got pregnant with Eli. Brooks was from the area and had made a name for himself
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in construction and property management. The night Crystal's car was found, Detective Snow called Brooks and asked to meet.
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Brooks seemed more than happy to come in. He came in for an interview, came in willingly, sat down with me.
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Well, obviously it's been a busy day. Yes, it is. Does he provide you with any useful information
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or have any idea where she might be? Well, he starts the timeline for us. I thought it would be good for us to start with a conversation about what's going on the last week or so and then move forward from there and see if we can't find her.
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Absolutely. That's what I want you to do. Brooks told the detective everything was fine when they were together Friday night.
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They'd taken their toddler, Eli, on a family outing. They had gone to the family farm on Friday evening after he got off work, and they had stayed out there for a pretty considerable period of time.
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walking around in the fields. How long do you think you were there? Probably around 7.45 or so to maybe 11.
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Brooks said they drove back to their house and were home by 11.30. He went to bed first.
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He says Crystal was still awake. She goes to bed later than what I do. Because I need up earlier than her.
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more often than not usually at night time she's usually playing uh one of those and it's not tetris it's one of them bubble games on her phone the next morning brooke said he woke
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up to find crystal gone and eli next to him did he find that strange well he didn't say that he did
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because he said it wasn't the first time crystal had taken off she's done this about four or five
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times it just has never went this period of time and she usually sent me you know text messages in
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that period he said crystal sometimes needed her space and would visit family for a day or so
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but this time was different immediately thought you know i wondered where she was um you know i've
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called her phone i said her text message but i still haven't got any reply back to you when you
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You called her phone. Did it ring at all Saturday morning or did it go? That's what you know. That's right. It went to the voicemail.
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So I thought she had it turned off. And I just thought, give her a little bit of time.
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It'll be fine. Detective Snow probed a bit about their relationship. You all didn't have a fight Friday night or she didn't say anything Friday about being upset.
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No. She dated somebody else, going out with her girlfriends. Not to my mind you know something going on behind my back that I don know about That a different situation but I do not believe that at all What do you think Catherine I shocked I do not know I want the answer to it
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Thanks, sir. I appreciate it. Investigators did, too. But first, they needed to check out Brooks' story.
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They found this. Security video from a neighbor's place showed Brooks' truck driving to and from his family farm, just like he told the detective.
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This video is, for the most part, backing up. Sure. The time that he's giving you coming to the farm and leaving the farm.
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Yeah. So investigators returned to the biggest clue they had, Crystal's car. And a question, who was really behind the wheel that night?
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We felt like that the positioning of the seat was not proper for where she would have had it.
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News of Crystal's disappearance was spreading fast, and local journalists poured into town.
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Dateline consultant Shay McAllister was a rookie reporter out of Louisville then.
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She covered the story for her podcast series, Bardstown. I'm Shay McAllister. I want to tell you a story about a town in Kentucky.
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What are the initial things you're hearing as a reporter about this disappearance?
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This disappearance was different because, you know, people go missing every single day.
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But in a small town, a mother who's in constant contact with her kids, that was getting everyone's attention.
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The day after Crystal's car was found, the sheriff's department held a press conference.
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If the public saw anything on the Blue Dress Parkway near the 14-mile marker involving the Varun-Chevrolet and Fallon, we would like to hear from them.
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Did the phone start ringing after that press conference? We got so many tips. What kinds of tips?
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Just everything from we saw the car on the parkway at this time and this day. People were calling in. We had one that spotted her in Rhode Island.
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As investigators sifted through all those tips, they also continued to take a closer look at Crystal's life.
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They learned she was born and raised in Bardstown, the oldest of three. What was Crystal like as a little girl?
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Very shy. You know, she was my first, so very spoiled. The whole family adored her, especially her aunt and uncle, Barbara and Tom Roby.
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We talked just about every day on the phone. If we went on the phone, either she was at my house or I'd go to her house.
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Crystal was almost more like a best friend to you than a niece, it sounds like. Yes, she was.
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She was a very giving person. You know, she had a heart of gold. She truly did. Crystal grew up surrounded by aunts, uncles, and cousins.
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Her family had lived in Bardstown for decades and often gathered at her parents' farm for weekends and holidays.
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At 19, she took a job at a bank and had her first child. Motherhood came naturally to Crystal.
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Her love life was more complicated. She'd eventually have more relationships, more kids,
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and even marry once before separating. Did you feel like Crystal was searching kind of for the perfect man?
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I did. You know, she thought she found that in her marriage, but it just didn't work out with them being married.
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Then Crystal met Brooks. She started renting a house from him, and then he asked her out on a date.
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Crystal was excited to be with a man who had his life together. She finally felt like, you know, she might be headed in the right direction
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to get her life in order to and find somebody to love and settle down with. Brooks also came from a close-knit family who'd put down roots in Bardstown.
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He'd even go on to run for sheriff. My name is Brooks Houck, and I look forward to becoming your next Nelson County Sheriff.
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Forrest Berkshire was the editor-in-chief of the Kentucky Standard and covered the campaign.
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He had no law enforcement background. He talked a lot about his business background.
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It was a very unique campaign. Like the Ballards, the Houks had a sprawling family farm.
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Ashley enjoyed going there. We would go out and ride four wheelers around the farm.
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I remember one time that he took us riding, and he went up this really big hill that was, like, really steep,
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which was kind of scary, but it was fun, you know. That's what us kids like to do.
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Sherry says Brooks' mom, Rosemary, a daycare owner, also seemed to welcome Crystal and her kids into the family.
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They had a good relationship. She actually brought crayons and coloring books to the kids once when she came over.
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So I thought, well, you know, at least his mom's nice to the other kids, so that's a good sign.
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Soon, Crystal was pregnant with her youngest, Eli. She moved in with Brooks and started working for him.
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She managed his rental properties, interviewing applicants and collecting rent. Barbara says dealing with tenant problems was also part of Crystal's job.
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The hard side of working for a landlord is evictions. Right. So she had to go to court for that for some of the tenants?
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Yes. She would go for him all the time. She would always get the rent and take care of all that for him.
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When Detective Snow learned those details, he wondered if Brooks' business was somehow connected to Crystal's disappearance.
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Did she have an argument with a renter over an eviction or something? When Brooks next spoke to the detective, he told him there were times when things got heated.
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I know that she'd done a few evictions with some folks, got a few people upset, but...
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Were they just seeing evictions? I mean, like threat? I mean, there's never a good eviction.
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Detectives followed up, but when they tracked some of the renters down... Were there any disgruntled tenants anyone that you know didn want to pay the rent or was unhappy Yeah I mean there were there were normal kinds of things with that Nobody really stood out to us as having really had a battle with them over being evicted
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Investigators moved on. They learned that the day before she disappeared, Crystal had met with the father of two of her children, Keith Rogers.
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Here's Crystal at Walmart shortly before. Anything come out of the interview with Keith Rogers that was eye opening?
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Not really. He was able to confirm the timeline that we were building, that she had dropped the children off to him in the afternoon on that Friday.
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As for Crystal's other exes, did she have any issues with any of the other dads?
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No. That gave you pause? No. Another dead end. Then Detective Snow got the forensic results from Crystal's car.
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There was no blood, no evidence of a struggle. But there was one thing that caught the investigator's attention.
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We felt like that the positioning of the seat was not proper for where she would have had it.
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Too far back or too far? It was too far back for her to have been driving the vehicle when it was left on the park.
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So it looks like a taller person has been driving and just didn't readjust the seat?
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Yeah. It may not seem like a big deal, but it very well could be. Yeah, certainly left open the possibility that someone else had been driving that vehicle when it was abandoned on the parkway.
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Someone who may know where Crystal is. Yeah. Yeah. Who was it? The summer of 2015 was sweltering in Bardstown, Kentucky, but Tommy Ballard was undeterred.
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Day after day, he searched for his missing daughter, Crystal. Sadly, it wasn't the first time Tommy and his family had been in a situation like this.
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Your sister Sherry also went missing. Yes. And that happened a long time ago. 1979.
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And she was found murdered. Yes. And she was seven and a half months pregnant. They couldn't find her for probably two, two and a half years.
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And they finally did. They did find her. They did find her. It was a very hard time for the family. Very hard time.
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She had been murdered by her husband. And now Tommy's reliving that experience, but with his own daughter.
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This time Tommy wasn't waiting for answers. He and Sherry organized regular searches for Crystal.
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The people of Bardstown and beyond showed up to help. A small army, all wearing Crystal's favorite color, pink.
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They started what's called Team Crystal, which was just a group on social media, and they would, every weekend, they would plan a search.
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But one person was notably absent, her boyfriend Brooks. Brooks was just not there, and that was the top question. Why aren't you searching for her?
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At a press conference, law enforcement didn't seem that concerned. In fact, they insisted Brooks was doing what he could.
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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.
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Still, the town was talking and pointing fingers straight at Brooks. Five days after Crystal's disappearance, he went on national television to defend himself.
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Brooks Hauk is with us. Brooks called into the HLN show Nancy Grace. So, Brooks, you go to bed and she's still playing games on her phone.
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The next morning around 8 o'clock, you notice that she's missing. Did you report her missing?
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No, ma'am. Why? That is a great question and one that I definitely want to hear the public and the media.
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I was not, in the least little bit, alarmed in any way, shape, or form. Brooks repeated what he told investigators, that Crystal sometimes took off to spend time with family.
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Detective Snow called Brooks back down to the sheriff's office. Are you holding up?
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Not very good. My son's going to be a terrible one. I'm sure a terrible time. Now one of the very most important people in his life, he's going to grow up without.
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What else do you want? Take me this or... No, it's... It's different. Again, Brooks was cooperative.
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He even gave Detective Snow his cell phone. Whatever you ask me, I'll be more happy to do.
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He also wrote out a timeline of events, including more about that trip to the family farm
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the night before Crystal went missing. Something about that account didn't sit right with Detective Snow.
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You're there from roughly 7.30 until almost midnight. So it's pretty close to four and a half hours.
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four and a half hours is a long time to be outside in the rain in the bud with a two and a half year
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old does that make sense i already sure that was your son why would you have a two and a half year
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old child yeah out walking around in a cow field at 11 30 at night i was strange right detective
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snow asked about something he'd noticed in brooks's phone records a 13 second call with a man named
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steve lawson okay who's who is steve lawson he's uh somebody works for me brooks said he couldn't
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remember what it was about so he gave steve a call hey steve i i can't i can't hear you real
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good i'm uh i want you to speak up a little bit okay the other night you called me really
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really late and i forgot i forgot what you asked me can you remember what You asked me what you were after.
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I can't remember. I did. I went out for a rental house. It seems to have been a pre-planned phone call between them.
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So my antennas are going up. Going up, yeah. Brooks insisted it was just a call with an employee.
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And he made it clear he didn't like where the conversation was going. Well, do what you got to do.
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I'll do whatever I can. But this is this is starting to get silly. I don't need an attorney.
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I haven't asked for an attorney. I don't think that I'm innocent. The conversation continued.
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Then Brooks's phone rang. It rings and he kind of gives me a look like, can I answer?
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I'm sure. Answer it. You know, you know. No. I'm up here. I know that you didn't know.
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I'm up here in this interview with the detective, Detective Snow. It was his brother, Nick.
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He was an officer with neighboring Bardstown Police Department, and he seemed to be giving Brooks advice.
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It's clear that he's pretty animated. He's a little excited about the fact that Mr. Hauk is still there.
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He told me innocent people got jammed up, but if you're telling me to leave, I'll get up and leave.
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You can see a brother wanting to protect his brother, and the brother's in law enforcement, and he knows how this goes.
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And on the other hand, this is a really critical investigation that's happening here.
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A woman is missing. And maybe you should leave it alone. It's not a woman. It's your significant other.
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It's the person that you claim to love. That you should be wanting to find. He thinks y'all little **** is what he thinks.
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My job is to work for Crystal. Plain and simple. It's just that simple. If that means that I have to interrogate you, then that's what I have to do.
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The interview was over. Brooks was free to go, but... It's definitely becoming clear that there's more to the story than what he's telling us.
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Maybe his brother Nick would have some answers. You're talking crazy. What's crazy about it?
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Explaining the accusations you're making. It was time for law enforcement to talk to one of their own.
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Sherry and Tommy Ballard felt helpless. She's got little kids, you know, when they miss their mama.
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Crystal's disappearance was making national headlines. Dateline's Missing in America, among others, began covering her case.
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But no amount of news coverage or searches or flyers turned up any sign of the missing mom.
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Four days in, her family gathered for a vigil. Brooks wasn't there. Instead, he was across town facing police questions.
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That's when he got that call from his brother Nick. Shortly after, he left and drove straight to see his brother.
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Immediately after leaving me, both of them are going to the family farm. They're having a meeting.
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So it seems like that there's something more going on there than just going to the family farm.
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Detective Snow called Nick Houck. Hello. Nick. Yeah. Hey, it's John Snow over at the sheriff's office.
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What's going on? Oh, well, you know, still trying to find Crystal. Yeah. Hey, do you mind, are you busy right now?
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Do you mind to come down and talk to me? Man, I am. I mean, I really don't have any information to give you.
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I mean, you know, I think Brooks has been completely cooperative. If I have anything at all to give you, I'd be the first one to be there.
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So you're not going to come down here and talk to me? That's correct. Nick's refusal to cooperate didn't sit well with his boss, Rick McCubbin,
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who was the Bardstown police chief at the time. He said, well, I don't want to. And I said, well, we're the police, first of all.
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We took a no. We don't get to not. You know, we don't take the fifth. You're going to cooperate.
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And I said, so you need to march over there. And he and I got to talking. I was getting madder at him.
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I got to the point, my exact quote, I said, you're going to unass that chair. You're going to cooperate.
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And that's a direct order. And I said, get your ass over there now. Hello. All right. Hey, guys. Fine. How are you?
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Nick followed orders. Six days after Detective Snow called him, he sat down with investigators.
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How do you know Crystal Rogers? She's my brother's girlfriend. Nick said he barely knew Crystal and rarely saw Brooks.
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When did you find out Crystal was missing? When do you remember finding out? Within a couple of days. How did you find out?
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I don't know if Brooks had mentioned her. I saw her on TV. They were all over Facebook and everything.
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You know, man, he's everywhere. From the national news. I mean, this is, for all intents and purposes, your sister-in-law.
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I don't know. And she listened. I mean, do you and your brother just not talk to that extent?
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You know, he... Let's come back. Nick assured the investigators that his brother would never hurt Crystal.
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I know he's a good guy, and he wouldn't have anything to do with something like this, so...
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Investigators asked him about that meeting he had with Brooks at the family farm a week earlier.
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Then, they asked about that call he'd made to Brooks while he was being interviewed by Detective Snow.
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I'm not gonna cover something like this up for him. I'm just not that kind of guy.
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And furthermore, I mean, there's no way he had anything to do with this. Then they asked him point blank
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if he was involved in Crystal disappearance So you never helped him move a body I did not Never helped him move any evidence Never Investigators told Nick he had one chance to tell the truth
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So Nick, this is the only opportunity that we have to sit here and find out if you're the actual honest person that we think that you are.
00:30:12
Well, I'm 100% honest. When he said him, Brooks did it and I was in on it. I mean, there's no way.
00:30:18
Nick was resolute and even agreed to take a polygraph. How did he do on the polygraph?
00:30:23
He didn't do well at all. He spoke to the examiner after the test. It didn't go well.
00:30:28
You did not pass the test, and it's pretty clear to me that you haven't told me the complete truth to that.
00:30:34
The examiner told Nick he'd failed on key questions about Crystal's disappearance.
00:30:39
What are the questions? Do you know where Crystal is right now? Are you hiding any information about what happened to Crystal?
00:30:45
You didn't tell me the truth on both of those questions. Nick listened for a while, and then...
00:30:51
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.
00:30:57
That's the whole reason we're here. Yeah, that is a test, though. I mean, man, this, I mean, you're talking crazy.
00:31:02
What's crazy about it? Explain it to me. The accusations you're making. Yeah, I'm sorry.
00:31:06
I bet you're not involved in this. I absolutely know it. The examiner pressed him further.
00:31:12
I'm 100% honest with you, the grand jury, and everybody else I've spoken with. You haven't.
00:31:17
Here's what I'm getting. We just said it. Yes, I have. No, you haven't. I most definitely have.
00:31:21
and if you don't want to believe it, that's your issue. It's not mine. It's not just me. I showed you.
00:31:26
I don't give a much. I think you do. I'm telling you that I have been 100% honest with you.
00:31:33
Is this how you act? Is this how you act towards Crystal? Is this how I act towards Crystal?
00:31:38
I act towards people that accuse me of lying when I'm not lying. Did you accuse you of lying?
00:31:43
No, I didn't know Crystal. Why are you getting swayed with me? Because you're calling me a liar.
00:31:47
No, I'm just calling you a liar. I don't. I don't like it when people call me a liar.
00:31:53
I'm being 100% truthful with you. Nick denied any involvement in Crystal's disappearance and left the office.
00:32:00
I brought him back in my office for the third time, and that's when I told him, I said, I'm going to fire you.
00:32:08
I'm not going to be a police officer as long as I'm chief. McCubbin believed Nick had not cooperated with the investigation
00:32:13
and therefore had no place at the Bardstown Police Department anymore. I said, I'm going to write it up.
00:32:20
I'm going to go see the mayor. What did he say to that when you fired him? He just basically okay.
00:32:25
He never argued back. Fired, though like his brother, not charged in Crystal's disappearance.
00:32:31
That didn't sit well with Tommy Ballard. He would take matters into his own hands and soon find his own evidence.
00:32:39
He made it his life's mission. But would that mission lead him down a dark and dangerous path?
00:32:50
Investigators had a feeling that Brooks Hauk and his brother Nick were involved in Crystal's disappearance, but they had little proof.
00:33:06
They searched Brooks' house and the family farm several times, but found no evidence of a crime.
00:33:13
There's no pool of blood, there's no body, there's no murder weapon. Even so, three and a half months after Crystal disappeared,
00:33:22
the sheriff told reporters that he believed Crystal wasn't coming home. She has vanished from Earth.
00:33:29
And I think it's safe to say that she's dead. And he went public with police suspicions.
00:33:35
I would label Brooks Houck a suspect, yes. What about Nick? He has knowledge of what has happened.
00:33:44
huge huge news in this community something that everyone was waiting for not only that
00:33:52
brooks and nick's police interviews were released to the press you can only imagine how his life changes in that instant of being publicly named and as far as
00:34:06
Because we could tell, the media, the whole family withdrew. And while they were still very much participants in the town doing business, living their lives, they weren't coming out to things where we might be.
00:34:21
They weren't interested in being recorded on camera. On the other side, Crystal's family was just as vocal as ever about their suspicions.
00:34:29
I've always thought he's been a prime suspect Just that someone else acknowledges it
00:34:35
Is huge to me Sherry had been telling investigators to look at Brooks from the start
00:34:42
There's something about Brooks I didn't like the way he treated my daughter The relationship was not where it should have been
00:34:49
While Brooks seemed to have made Crystal happy at first Sherry says it didn't last
00:34:53
In part because of how he acted towards Crystal's kids We went out to eat with them one time, and he would not pay for the other kids' meals.
00:35:03
He only paid for his and Eli's. At home, Ashley says Brooks would sometimes shut down the utility so the kids wouldn't run up the bill.
00:35:11
He just started, like, turning the water off at the house and, like, just little mean things.
00:35:20
Sherry says an added strain to the relationship was Brooks' close relationship to his mother, Rosemary.
00:35:26
When Crystal saw the kind of control Rosemary had over Brooks, that's when it started going downhill.
00:35:35
Sherry got the distinct sense that Rosemary thought neither she nor Crystal were good enough for her son.
00:35:41
One time, Crystal come over, and she was kind of upset, and she's like, Mom, she said, Rosemary just dropped in one day, and there was toys everywhere, and she's like,
00:35:50
This house is a mess And she said I hate to see how your mother keeps her house Ouch You know I like how rude You know she never been to my home More than anything Crystal family just didn trust Brooks He was a silver devil
00:36:05
Sometimes Tommy and Cherry, after we would have family get-togethers, we would play Texas Hold'em.
00:36:12
And most Texas Hold'em games, you can get a feel as well. You couldn't read this guy.
00:36:16
He had zero emotion. Of course, none of that was proof that Brooks was responsible for Crystal's disappearance.
00:36:24
As October turned to November with no break in the investigation, Sherry kept up the heat.
00:36:30
I reached out to anybody that would listen to me. I begged. I pretty much begged people to listen to me because I just felt like I was getting nowhere with the sheriff's department.
00:36:42
Crystal's father, Tommy, was fed up, too. He went a step further and launched his own investigation.
00:36:47
Tommy, who was a home builder by trade, had no police or investigative experience, was
00:36:56
determined to find his daughter. And he made it his life's mission. Here are some tips that we had in.
00:37:04
We had a big whiteboard that we wrote a timeline on from the beginning of when Crystal went
00:37:11
missing to all the vehicles we saw on every, all the tapes that we watched. You just see so clearly the love that Sherry and Tommy had for Crystal.
00:37:21
She was their everything. And when she went missing, their lives revolved around finding her.
00:37:27
About nine months after Crystal disappeared, Tommy's hard work seemed to pay off.
00:37:32
He got a tip that on the night Crystal disappeared, hunters saw a suspiciously parked car near the Houck farm, a white Buick.
00:37:40
He told detectives about it. The white Buick is important because it's in that area.
00:37:45
It's odd that it's there. There's no reason for it to be parked in the woods there.
00:37:50
Tommy posted a message on Facebook hoping someone would recognize the car. Just a few days later, lo and behold, he gets some information back that Brooks's grandmother, Anna Whitesides, owns a white Buick.
00:38:05
So we're like, oh, this is very interesting. Did you find the white Buick? Well, we did. Right after the Facebook post was posted, Nick and Anna Whitesides, his grandmother, go to Louisville trying to get rid of the vehicle.
00:38:21
Here are images of Nick trying to sell the car at a dealership. After it was sold, Detective Snow seized it and had the trunk tested.
00:38:29
There were some hairs found in the vehicle that they could say could have been a match.
00:38:36
To Crystal. Physically, not DNA-wise, but physically a match to Crystal. The quality wasn't good enough to get a DNA profile.
00:38:44
No proof that Crystal had ever been in the car. It was a major letdown for Tommy and Sherry, but the setback only fueled them more.
00:38:53
We just had to go hope every day a new tip came in that would take us where we needed to be.
00:39:00
Tommy was relentless. He did more interviews, kept following leads, not caring whose toes he stepped on.
00:39:07
People were talking to Tommy and people were getting nervous. I told him I said, I'll be careful.
00:39:12
There is a massive twist coming in this case that will just shake this community to its core.
00:39:18
Yeah, it will literally tear Bardstown apart. On the one-year anniversary of Crystal Rogers' disappearance,
00:39:39
her parents and children gathered with supporters to release balloons. Her father, Tommy, couldn't believe how much time had passed.
00:39:46
I figured I'd find her in four or five days. I never dreamed. Can't it be a year and we still don't know where she's at?
00:39:54
During that time, Sherry says she'd sometimes have awkward run-ins with Brooks in town,
00:39:59
Every encounter only adding to her frustration. Do you say to the police again and again,
00:40:05
we know who did this? I made it very clear who we thought did this. Very clear. There was no doubt in their mind at all
00:40:14
how me and Tommy felt. Zero doubt. They were so sure they bought this billboard reminding everyone that Brooks was the main suspect
00:40:24
in Crystal's disappearance. You put that billboard up. Yes, ma'am. We wanted to be very blunt because we knew in our hearts he knows where my daughter is.
00:40:35
The billboard was also near the sheriff's department. A not-so-subtle reminder to law enforcement that the case was far from over.
00:40:43
I just want to bring Crystal home. I remember looking at him. He was sitting there, and I was like, he's totally exhausted.
00:40:55
he's killing himself you know trying to solve the disappearance of his daughter exhausted and on edge tommy thought someone was following him to work and i was real nervous about
00:41:12
that and one time he had a job to do and he had to go back this big long wooded area and i wouldn't
00:41:21
let him go by himself. I said, I'm going with you. You're not going by yourself. And he said,
00:41:25
Sherry, I have to work. You know, that's my job. He said, I have a gun in the truck.
00:41:30
On top of all that, Tommy and Sherry were also looking after four of Crystal's five kids.
00:41:36
Brooks had custody of the youngest, Eli. Tell us about your grandpa, Tommy. Well, I looked up to him. Like anytime like he was home, even if he was working, like I would get
00:41:49
up early in the mornings, go to work with him for a few hours. Like he taught all of us how to be a role model in life Tommy tried to keep their spirits up with family outings That what he was doing on November 19 2016
00:42:07
In the early morning hours, he set out on a hunting trip with Crystal's 11-year-old son.
00:42:12
I told him I said, y'all be careful. Sherry was still in bed when her phone rang 30 minutes later.
00:42:19
It was her grandson. He was hysterical. And he told me Tommy had been shot. I just panicked.
00:42:29
And I said, I'm coming. Police and an ambulance were already on the scene when she got there.
00:42:37
And I'd jump out of the car and, you know, I don't know. I didn't know. And I just sat there and I shook Tommy.
00:42:48
And I told him, I said, please get up. And I kept shaking him. and I kept telling him to get up.
00:42:57
Could you see where it had happened? No. He had no blood on him at all. Nothing.
00:43:03
Just like he was just laying there, but... He wasn't waking up? No, and his eyes were open,
00:43:10
but I didn't know. I was just begging him to get up. Um, but he was gone when I got there.
00:43:21
Tommy had been shot in the chest. He died within minutes. Sherry, this is too much for one person to bear.
00:43:29
It was very hard. My whole life was laying there. They had him covered up with like a white sheet.
00:43:43
For you to have to see that. That was very, very hard for me. And I still didn't feel like it was real.
00:43:51
your grandfather was so special to you oh yeah it took a lot to actually come to terms with like
00:44:00
it actually being him like i just wanted it not to be him it seemed like all of bardstown came out for tommy's funeral
00:44:10
there was a lot of people running the streets you see how much he was loved when you get a
00:44:19
turn out like that. Right. Sherry says at first, investigators suggested Tommy's death could have
00:44:25
been a hunting accident. I thought over my dead body, are you going to tell me this is a hunting
00:44:30
accident? You know it's not. Tommy's sister Barbara and her husband Tom agreed. This is no hunting
00:44:37
accident. No, I knew right off the bat. I said, there's no way there's a hunting accident. This
00:44:41
is murder. Yes. Tom, a retired captain with the Bardstown PD, went back to the field to survey
00:44:47
the scene himself. Tell us what was happening that morning and how this all unfolded. Well,
00:44:53
Tommy and his grandson were going to hunt the family farm. He believes the shooter was lying
00:44:58
in wait when Tommy arrived. I think someone was dropped off the Bluegrass Parkway from the east
00:45:04
bound lane, got out of the vehicle and just staged right in the wood line and waited. Tom says he
00:45:10
later searched the area and found a clue that he believes backs up his theory. And then right there
00:45:15
of that tree were a small notch out of the bark. It looked like someone, to me, just was braced
00:45:22
right there, and they fired a weapon, and just a little bit of recoil just took a chunk of the bark
00:45:27
off, and it was a dead 100% straight line to where Tommy was killed. And they took their shot,
00:45:33
and they made it. Yes. Tommy was a target. Absolutely. This was obviously premeditated.
00:45:39
You believe that Tommy's investigation into Crystal's disappearance cost him his life?
00:45:46
Yes. He was invested. This is his family. This is his blood. A lot of people may not want to talk
00:45:52
to law enforcement, you know, but people were talking to Tommy and people were getting nervous.
00:45:57
There was chatter. There was, you know, rumor mill was crazy. The shooters were more concerned
00:46:01
about Tommy getting them than law enforcement at that particular time. This hit hard. It scared
00:46:08
the community. Because this wasn't just about Tommy or Crystal. They were just the latest
00:46:14
victims in a string of unsolved killings, plaguing this once peaceful town. And now,
00:46:20
the whispers, the fear, the suspicion were all about to boil over. Five murders in four years.
00:46:27
In a really small town. Tommy Ballard's killing had upended Bardstown. In the town of just 14,000 people, his was the fifth unsolved murder.
00:46:54
The pressure was on law enforcement. We were just as frustrated as the community.
00:46:59
I think it only added to the distrust that these things weren't getting solved. Almost a year before Crystal's disappearance, Kathy Netherland, a special education teacher, and her 16-year-old daughter Samantha were murdered.
00:47:15
Their killer never caught. That seemed like an isolated incident to investigators.
00:47:21
But a year before that, there was a crime that was similar to Tommy's. A targeted shooting under the cover of darkness.
00:47:29
The victim's name was Jason Ellis. What was Jason's personality like? Larger than life.
00:47:35
He was always the life of the party. He always was up for an adventure. Lacey Young and Kelly Eastman are Jason's sisters.
00:47:44
Jason was always, even from a young age, very, very family oriented. Family. There was nothing more important to Jason. Close second? The game he lived to play.
00:47:57
He was an incredible baseball player. Mm-hmm. He loved it for the game. Jason played in the minor leagues for the Cincinnati Reds.
00:48:05
But after learning his first son was going to be born with special needs, Jason's mom, Pam, says Jason shifted his priorities.
00:48:13
They found out Hunter was going to be Down syndrome. He changed his career so he can be with his family.
00:48:19
So he gave up baseball to be the best dad he could be. He traded his days with the Reds for a new team,
00:48:27
the Bardstown Police Department. I always called him a chief's cop. Rick McCubbin was Jason's boss.
00:48:36
He enjoyed policing. He loved his career. Never got a complaint on him from any citizens.
00:48:40
You know, he's living the dream, right? He's got the job as the police officer. He's got two little boys, a great wife.
00:48:47
Did everything just seem great? Yeah. Yeah, there was no reason to believe that there was anything else going on.
00:48:53
I mean, they were making plans to come and camp. Then came May 25th, 2013, Memorial Day weekend, a quiet night, a full moon.
00:49:05
You're at home and you get a very disturbing call that something has happened to one of your officers.
00:49:10
I did. They called me just before 3 a.m. And, you know, when I looked at my phone at that time, it said Nelson County Dispatch.
00:49:19
the officer was found on an exit ramp and there were trees around the officer was jason he had
00:49:32
just signed off for the night when chief mccubbin got there he saw him lying in a pool of blood
00:49:38
i just remember lifting up the police tape and walking up to uh officer ellis and i just thought
00:49:46
What in the hell? Jason had been shot. It appeared he had been clearing some debris.
00:49:52
How was he positioned on the road? What did you see? He was on his back. His right knee was up.
00:49:58
And in his left hand, he had a large tree branch. Oh, wow. And because I remember I knelt down beside him,
00:50:04
and I remember I said a prayer and just thought, you know, I wish you could tell me what happened, Jason.
00:50:11
Jason's sisters were two hours away when they got the news. And he goes, Jason was just shot and he's dead.
00:50:18
And I just remember screaming. And I'm like, what? And like he repeated it. And I was like, I need to get to Lacey.
00:50:26
Kelly's at my front door and she's just screaming, he's dead, he's dead, he's dead.
00:50:31
It's like you almost have like an outer body experience. Like you're hearing it, but you're not believing it.
00:50:38
Just like Crystal's family, Jason's was desperate for answers. Chief McCubbin spoke to the press after the shooting.
00:50:47
We won't give up on this person until we have him either in custody or in the front side of one of our weapons.
00:50:54
And I personally hope the latter is the choice. Bardstown gathered together to say goodbye to Officer Ellis.
00:51:01
The question that lingered over every salute, every tear. How could this have happened?
00:51:07
Investigators determined Jason had pulled over to clear the tree limbs. Debris they believed was intentionally placed there by the killer.
00:51:16
Why were you thinking so quickly that someone placed these tree limbs in the road?
00:51:21
As opposed to, you know, just debris that the wind blew. Yeah, no, there were no trees along that ramp.
00:51:28
McCubbin says clues from the crime scene suggested the shooter was watching Jason from above when he struck him.
00:51:33
They found evidence at the top of that rock wall where someone had obviously been there waiting.
00:51:40
Grass had already been growing, so it was kind of mashed down where somebody had sat there, laid there.
00:51:45
The killer was lying in wait. Yes. The case was still unsolved when Tommy was shot three and a half years later.
00:51:53
Also in the dark, by someone from a distance, Jason was on the Bluegrass Parkway,
00:51:58
and now Tommy was shot adjacent to the Bluegrass Parkway. Yes. Common denominators, the Bluegrass Parkway.
00:52:06
Also where Crystal's car was found, that stretch of blacktop would soon yield a big clue, another name, someone who was there the night Crystal vanished.
00:52:18
They said, hey, you're never going to believe this. He's on the Bluegrass Parkway.
00:52:36
The Ballard and Ellis families didn't know each other, but they were living the same nightmare.
00:52:41
Their loved ones murdered. Rumors rippled through Bardstown. People started asking, how does this happen?
00:52:49
And people started trying to make connections. There was a connection between the victims.
00:52:54
Brooks' brother, Nick Houck. Jason Ellis and Nick worked together at the Bardstown PD.
00:53:00
No one knew what, if anything, to make of that. No evidence has been shared linking the two cases.
00:53:06
But Sherry was convinced that Brooks and Nick were involved in Crystal's and Tommy's murders,
00:53:12
though neither had been charged. She worried for her family. You had to think to yourself, who's next?
00:53:19
It made me nervous a little bit, you know, but it didn't make me not want to fight for my daughter.
00:53:27
It made me mad, you know, hurt, devastated. Did it make you want to fight even harder?
00:53:35
Yes, you know Tommy was... I always thought I could never live without that man.
00:53:44
You kept marching on and you were a lot stronger than you thought. I think you just do what you have to do for your family.
00:53:52
As for the Houck brothers they stayed put in town What were Brooks and Nick doing They stayed visible They stayed doing business And Brooks got more and more successful
00:54:05
Brooks had done phenomenally well with his rental properties and building homes.
00:54:09
A self-made multi-millionaire. And he got a new girlfriend, also named Crystal. Crystal Maupin.
00:54:18
She starts managing rental properties, much like Crystal did. She even kind of looked like Crystal.
00:54:24
She's a beautiful blonde woman, just like Crystal Rogers. And this Crystal stood firmly behind the house, so much so that she was arrested for taking down one of those lawn signs in support of Crystal.
00:54:38
A judge ordered her to apologize to Sherry. I knew somebody had personally took those down on purpose.
00:54:46
It didn't really surprise me when I found out who did it. Over the years, Brooks remained largely silent about Crystal's disappearance.
00:54:55
But he did talk to someone. Hey, Brooks, Forrest Berkshire here from the Kentucky Standard.
00:55:00
Forrest Berkshire heard Brooks might be selling some of his rental properties, so he called him.
00:55:05
But as far as me going anywhere or shutting business about, my business has never been strong.
00:55:11
Okay, cool. They never spoke directly about Crystal. But when Forrest said Brooks had been under some pressure lately, Brooks had this to say.
00:55:19
You're right. I do have a lot of pressure, but whenever the pressure gets up, it excites me.
00:55:25
I get spanked up. I love it. I love the pressure. I operate well under it. People told me before that he was a little cocky, and it seemed like some of that cockiness came through.
00:55:36
If Brooks liked pressure, he was about to get a whole lot more. In 2019, Detective Snow retired, and the FBI, which had helped with the investigation since the beginning, was now put in charge.
00:55:49
So when we took over the case, I had said, I'm not going to focus on finding the body.
00:55:54
I'm going to focus on the elements of the crime and proving the crime. FBI agent Steve Keery knew the community was fed up and scared.
00:56:02
There had been five murders over, you know, a couple of years and not a single person was handcuffed.
00:56:10
So there was just this massive distrust and people were afraid. After reviewing the cases, Agent Keery believed Crystal's, Tommy's, and Jason Ellis' murders were connected.
00:56:23
Seeking justice for all was the inspiration behind the operation's name. The operation was OJR, Operation Justice Rising, because not only were we bringing justice to the Ballard family,
00:56:34
the goal of this case was that this would turn into a snowball that would gain momentum,
00:56:41
and that we'd get justice for Jason, justice for Tommy. Kiri worked the case with everything he had.
00:56:48
When we got involved, I wanted to utilize the full 800-pound gorilla of the FBI, right?
00:56:54
It was the summer of 2020 when the FBI flooded Bardstown. The big guns are now here. They've come to Bardstown area.
00:57:02
I started getting calls and texts that people were seeing FBI vehicles in Bardstown.
00:57:09
Giant evidence trucks. What's that moment like when the FBI calls and you've just been hitting dead end after dead end and now you're getting...
00:57:18
I sat on the floor and cried. I'm like, finally. For five days, the FBI searched the Houck properties.
00:57:27
They used dogs and divers, collected boxes of evidence and spoke with neighbors.
00:57:33
And they combed the family farm again, the same property long whispered about in connection to Crystal's disappearance.
00:57:40
This time, investigators found something. Little Olympus digital recorders. They were found in the master bedroom, in the closet,
00:57:48
in a pair of Rosemary Houck's back pocket jeans, and then one was found in a drawer.
00:57:56
It seemed the Houcks had been recording something. Investigators seized the devices,
00:58:01
and when they searched Brooks' house, he was front and center. So interesting. But he put himself there, in front of the camera,
00:58:09
Most people would just be cowering in a corner, freaking out. He always acted like he had nothing to hide, like he wasn't involved.
00:58:18
Brooks remained front and center for Agent Curie, too. He had taken a deep dive into Brooks' cell phone data.
00:58:24
And that 13-second call Brooks got the night Crystal disappeared, the one from his employee, Steve Lawson.
00:58:31
Hey, Steve. Yeah. Police still had Steve's phone collected during the initial investigation.
00:58:38
Kiri sent it off for a new FBI analysis. Weeks later, he got the results. It was a game changer.
00:58:46
And they said, hey, you're never going to believe this. He's on the Bluegrass Parkway.
00:58:51
And I just never, like, I remember, what? Like, this is crazy. The Bluegrass Parkway, near the spot Crystal's car had been found,
00:58:59
on the same night she disappeared. And his cell phone records revealed more. Steve got calls from his adult son, Joey.
00:59:07
Joey tries calling Steve a few times, right? They're missed calls to Steve. And then Joey finally does get a hold of Steve,
00:59:14
and it's a little bit over a minute call. And right after that, Steve made that 13-second call to Brooks.
00:59:20
That paints a really good story of collaboration, right? It's like Joey needs his dad,
00:59:25
and then Dad immediately calls the next guy up the chain. It was time to turn up the heat on the Lawsons.
00:59:34
I mean, how much more do y'all want me to tell you? Everything. How many times did we have to tell you that?
00:59:52
The FBI had been methodically gathering everything they could in the case of Crystal Rogers for several years Then in 2022 the investigation got an even bigger boost I was approached by someone from the Attorney General office
01:00:08
Special Prosecutor Shane Young. They were looking for somebody to take over the Crystal Rogers case and a couple of other cases as well.
01:00:17
Tommy's case and Jason Ellis', the officer gunned down on the off-ramp of the Bluegrass Parkway.
01:00:24
Did you believe, once you started looking into everything, that all three of these murders could be connected?
01:00:31
We, no. I mean, we didn't close that door, but we looked at all three cases, figured out which one we believed that we could get in court the fastest,
01:00:42
and we decided that we were going to focus in on Crystal's case. He teamed up with fellow attorneys Teresa Young, his wife, and Jim Lasowski.
01:00:52
They poured over the evidence. What are your first impressions as you start digging in?
01:00:57
I was like, holy s**t. Because it was like four terabytes of stuff. The case file was more like an archive.
01:01:06
Thousands of pages. Years of investigation without a breakthrough. The prosecutors began building their case on a whiteboard.
01:01:13
What's on your whiteboard? It's basically, if we have no witnesses, okay, what do we have?
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and I knew we had phone evidence showing that Steve drove down to the Bluegrass Parkway.
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On the night Crystal was killed, they also knew Steve Lawson spoke to his son Joey that night.
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They talked and then Steve hangs up the phone and immediately calls Brooks out. Prosecutors developed a working theory.
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It was Joey who was driving Crystal's car and he called his dad Steve when he got the flat tire.
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When the FBI had questioned Steve, he had been evasive. So Prosecutor Young put him in front of a grand jury, under oath, and Steve admitted to something he'd always denied.
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Steve Lawson confirmed to us in the grand jury that he was on the bluegrass that night.
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That's all it took. They arrested him and brought him in for an interview. So the deal here is, you are in some serious trouble.
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Prosecutor Young enlisted the help of Kentucky State Police Detectives Tony Harden and Brian Luckett.
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They spoke to Steve and told him they believed he and Joey were involved in Crystal's disappearance.
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What they wanted to know, how did Crystal's car get to the parkway? I didn't put a car there.
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That's a fact. I'm going to ask you right now, Steve. Do you know who did? No, I don't.
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Be honest. No, sir, I swear to God, the only person who was in my car with me was my son.
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And that is the fact. Steve, do the right thing. We're here for a reason. Do the right thing.
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Do the right thing for you and your family. You're not a milder at me. I don't like that, sir.
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They interviewed him many times. Over months. It's exhausting. I guess it's probably a good word for it.
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Knowing that this person can help you and that this person knows more than what they are telling you.
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But yet, you know, we can't force it. We can't make them say anything at this point.
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So we had gone round and round in the interview room. And finally, he kind of had a breakthrough.
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All right. You're telling the truth. OK. Prosecutor Young came into the room. Joey calls you.
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Yes. Tells you what? Coming in. All right. Steve finally admitted that Joey had called him that night, asking to be picked up on the Bluegrass Parkway.
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And Steve picked him up. and that was the first time that he had ever admitted to that.
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And so then we knew, you know, that we were moving forward. Steve told them Crystal's car was there.
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He opened the driver's door and got in. I didn't drive the car. I'm going to tell you straight up I didn't drive.
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Okay, but why did you jump into the seat? I knew the seat was back too far. My son's tall.
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What do y'all want me to tell you now? Is that, well, I apologize. Does that not make you happy now?
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The seat is scooted all the way back because Joey was tall. He says that he scooted the seat forward to try to match her height.
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Steve said he was worried Joey was tied up with something bad, so he tried to cover it up.
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There were certain things that Steve just didn't want to hear himself say. There was a lot that even in his own mind and heart that Steve hadn't dealt with yet.
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Yeah, where was we at, sir? Now that he was talking, Steve didn't stop. He told investigators that before Crystal disappeared,
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Brooks confided in him that they were having problems. I think it's the exact word to it.
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Exact. Well, I just like to go. Well, to me, go means go. He admitted at that point that in Steve's mind, Brooks wanted her dead.
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It was a huge turning point in the case after seven years. And now prosecutors had a dilemma.
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You had no body, no crime scene, no weapon, no witness directly turning on any of these people.
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Were you concerned? Now, you know, I'm skeptical as anybody. I'm Mr. Downer. All right.
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I always think we're going to lose. But this time he felt armed with a mountain of circumstantial evidence.
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They were ready. So the call was made. Call was made. Let's. We're going to roll.
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It's go time. Yeah. They arrested Joey first. Then a few months later, Brooks. Where's Mr. Rogers?
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I mean, he was shocked. I think he knew that that day was coming and he had prepared somewhat for it But I don think that he actually ever thought it would come Brooks Houck was arrested for murder Best day of my life
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I sat at home and watched it on the TV, and oh my gosh, it was like a weight lifted off of me, you know.
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That's where you want a rewind button, right? You keep watching it over and over again.
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It's real. We wanted to arrest him in pink handcuffs, but they wouldn't let us. Their wait was finally over.
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Suspects arrested. Charges filed. Steve, Joey, and Brooks all pleaded not guilty.
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There would soon be a showdown in court about truth, loyalty, and two families divided.
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Sherry Ballard waited years for a shot at justice. You are a patient woman. It was not easy.
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Finally, in June 2025, Brooks Houck and Joey Lawson went on trial. Brooks on a murder charge, Joey on conspiracy and tampering with physical evidence charges.
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Sherry felt her whole life depended on the outcome. I can't live in this town if he's not convicted.
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there's no way I could look at him in this town. There was no avoiding Brooks at trial, though.
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Sherry sat just feet from him. Sometimes Brooks's family was there, too, including his mother,
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Rosemary. What was it like seeing the two families that just despise each other walking shoulder to
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shoulder? The courtroom was small. So this was two families who have done everything they can
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to avoid each other over the last decade being forced to be in this place together. And they were
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doing everything they could to not touch shoulders, to not make eye contact. This was a tough case for the state. They had no body, no crime scene, and no murder weapon.
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That's important. So they would have to rely on their circumstantial evidence. You told the jury this is about common sense.
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It is about common sense. What I'm going to tell you is if Crystal Rogers did not come home late July 3rd, early morning of July 4th, if she does not come home, this man is guilty of murder.
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Prosecutors argued that Brooks and Crystal were both unhappy in their relationship and Rosemary Houck wasn't helping. Crystal's friend Christina Hawley told the jury all about it.
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There was comments about Crystal's hair and how she's a mother, and Mama don't like that.
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Who said that? Brooks did. Sherry says shortly before Crystal disappeared, her daughter was ready to leave Brooks, but was scared.
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She says, Mom, I can't leave. She said, because he'll take Eli away from me. I said, Crystal, he can't do that.
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You're not an unfit mother. You're an excellent mother. The state believed it was actually Brooks who was terrified of losing custody of Eli.
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So he hatched a plan to murder Crystal. And they said he didn't do it alone. Prosecutors thought his mom, Rosemary, did a lot more than metal this time.
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And they argued his brother, Nick, was involved, too. I believe he and their mother, Rosemary, were both involved as co-conspirators in this murder of this young one.
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You've called them unindicted co-conspirators publicly. Yes. And they said so in court.
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How did you come to be talking with Rosemary Howell? One of Brooks' former employees testified about a conversation he had with Rosemary days before Crystal disappeared.
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It was over at Crystal and wanting to find someone to help get rid of her. She asked me to do that?
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She didn't ask me to do it, but she asked me if I know any way of getting it done.
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As for Nick, his phone was off on Friday, July 3rd, and his former girlfriend testified that he said he needed to help Brooks with something.
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Later that night, the state said, Brooks lured Crystal out to the Halk property.
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She had told me that that night her and Brooks was going on a surprise date. Crystal's cousin, Amanda Greenwell, ran into Crystal earlier that day.
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She was very excited. Crystal is so excited because in a time where her relationship is crumbling, she's getting this little glimmer of hope that, no, wait, he's giving us another chance.
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But prosecutor Shane Young said that date night wasn't dinner and roses. It was a drive to the family farm with Eli at around 7.30 p.m.
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Crystal is killed, you believe, at the farm. Don't know. It could be. I mean, do I believe there's a good chance she was killed at the farm? Yes, I do.
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Then, he said, Crystal's body was somehow disposed of. It was almost the perfect crime.
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Perfect because there was no trace of Crystal left behind. And after the murder, prosecutors believed the Houck family orchestrated a cover-up.
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Remember those recorders investigators found on the farm? Prosecutors said the tapes revealed the family recorded their conversations.
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it's recording right now are you sure yeah it becomes kind of obvious to us that the recording
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is when you interact with the police so you remember what the heck you told them
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and then at 7 30 three of us crystal eli and myself i went to the farm and the cover-up might have worked said the state
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had brooks not made a pivotal mistake trusting steve and joey lawson to get rid I think the plan was to make it look like she left and just her car to disappear,
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whether they were going to drive the car into a lake or a river or whatever. But they got a flat tire.
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But they got a flat tire. That, said prosecutors, prompted Steve Lawson to make the 13-second call to Brooks.
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That phone call is what did it. This whole case, if they had not gotten a flat tire, we probably wouldn't have solved this case.
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If that phone call had not been made. While the Houks kept the murder secret, prosecutors argued, the Lawsons couldn't keep their mouths shut.
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They seemed to talk about the crime all over town, within earshot of Steve's ex-wife.
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I heard them talking about moving a car. And Steve's ex-girlfriend. I overheard them talking about moving a body at the Houk farm.
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After about a week, the prosecution rested. It was the defense's turn, and Brooks had an ace up his sleeve.
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Mr. Butler, proceed when you're ready. He'd hired this man, Brian Butler, one of the best defense attorneys in Kentucky.
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And he seemed to have an explanation for everything. It is time to find him not guilty.
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It's time to send him home to his son. Brooks Howe could listen to all the testimony against him.
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Prosecutors called him a practiced liar and a calculated killer. How was Brooks in the courtroom?
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He kept his head looking forward. You didn't get that air of confidence that we had in the years past.
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But in jailhouse calls, Brooks seemed hopeful. This is not the end of me. This is all going to work out.
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Brooks put his faith in his defense team, which included well-known attorney Brian Butler.
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Butler argued the state had knitted together a story of what happened to Crystal Rogers.
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But they were really just pulling at loose threads, starting with that theory about Brooks' family helping him.
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His mother didn't like her hair. So a very successful, well-off property developer, a retired daycare owner, a police officer, all get together, risk everything to kill somebody because they don't like her hair.
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The defense argued the Houks were a normal family whose actions were innocent Nick phone was off on July 3rd they said because he was fighting with his girlfriend
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Brooks and Crystal's relationship was great. They'd just gotten back from a trip to the beach.
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And police were the ones who told Brooks to avoid the searches for Crystal. Brooks's sister Rhonda said as far as she knew, there were no big problems between her mom and Crystal.
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I never witnessed like a huge blow up or anything of that sort. But everything changed the moment Crystal disappeared.
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They have gone from a normal, little class family to the villains of the entire community.
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I had switched my children's schools two times, but there continued to be threats, people following at me.
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The Houks only taped their conversations, the defense said, to keep their own record of what was going on because they were being unfairly targeted by police.
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How many times did they search the Houk farm? They searched Brooks's house and truck.
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Nothing. They searched Nick's house. Nothing. If it was there, if he did it, they would have found it.
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A lot of missing pieces. The defense laid out this incomplete case. no body, no murder weapon, no crime scene, no motive.
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The defense argued at some point investigators got desperate and leaned on witnesses to change their stories to fit a narrative.
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What do y'all want me to tell you now? Especially Steve Lawson, said his son Joey's attorneys, Kevin Coleman and Robert Boyd.
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Steve Lawson was interviewed somewhere between 20 and 30 hours, and I don't believe Steve knows anything about what happened.
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Some witnesses, like Steve Lawson's ex-girlfriend, were pushed to an emotional edge.
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At this point, I want to leave. Period. I don't know anything. An expert hired by Brooks' defense said none of this witness testimony could be trusted.
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These are some of the most coercive interrogation tactics, injury tactics that I've seen.
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I'm trying to know you. Why do I have to pull this out of you? The attorneys pointed out some of these witnesses already had run-ins with the law, making them
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especially vulnerable. It's like the Barstown Inquisition, right? Once you are under their microscope in that small town, you are bullied, pressured.
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The statements were good statements and they can talk about how they were coerced or not coerced or whatever but Steve Lawson come we released Steve Lawson that night He come back voluntary on his own But what we were able to do is take stuff he told us and go verify
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The defense teams argued, coerced or not, the Lawsons were the last people capable of carrying out the perfect murder.
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You've got Joey Lawson, who's severely addicted to methamphetamine, and he doesn't deposit one single item of trace evidence.
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He doesn't deposit any sweat or perspiration, doesn't even leave a fingerprint. And he was certainly no criminal mastermind of any sort.
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And they said investigators failed to follow up on other leads, ones that possibly pointed to an entirely different killer.
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There's a fingerprint that is on Crystal Rogers' phone that does not belong to Joey Lawson, doesn't belong to Steve Lawson,
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doesn't belong to Brooks, Howe, or anybody in their family or anybody related to this case.
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They also challenged the state's cell phone evidence. The data from Steve Lawson's phone,
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they said, actually showed him traveling on a road that ran parallel to the Bluegrass Parkway,
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not the parkway itself, where Crystal's car was found. Sounds like an alibi. It all amounted to a case so thin, they said, it wasn't worthy of a response.
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We were going to put Joey on the stand, and the only reason that we chose to not put him on the
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stand was because the evidence was so flimsy. I didn't believe any of it had landed with the jury.
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How's everyone feeling when the case goes to the jury? There was a lot of nerves.
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Deliberations continued for one hour, then two. That afternoon, everyone was called back to the
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courtroom. We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of murder principles. The jury saw what kind of
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person Brooks how really is did you feel like Tommy was with you when the verdict was being read
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me and my son held each other's hands and I wanted my kids beside me I know him and
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Crystal was up there together happy so Ashley who was now married with kids thought of her
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grandfather Tommy as the verdict was read he worked so hard fought so hard to get justice
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for your mom. He might not have been here for the justice to be served, but he was here within our hearts.
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Joey Lawson was sentenced to 25 years for conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with physical evidence.
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Those were the same charges his father Steve was convicted of at a separate trial.
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Steve was sentenced to 17 years. At Brooks Houck's sentencing hearing, Sherry called out his arrogance I guess you not as smart as you think you are He underestimated the love me and my husband had for our daughter and what we would go through to find justice for her
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He sure did. Brooks was sentenced to life in prison, but not before Sherry asked him one last question.
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Tell me where my daughter's at so we can find her and bring her home. You need that.
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Yes, my whole family needs that. It's so hard to heal without that. And hard to heal without answers in Tommy's case, too.
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The Ellis family is also waiting. Ultimately, truth will win out and good will win out.
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And we just have to wait it out. We just have to wait it out. Will there be charges brought in Jason Ellis' case?
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Don't know. Tommy Ballard? Don't know. We're working on them. Prosecutor Shane Young did offer this.
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something possibly linking Nick to Tommy's murder. Nick Houck had advertised a gun that we believed was very either close
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or the exact caliber that killed Tommy Ballard. And we bought it using an undercover officer.
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And we believed that to be the gun that killed Tommy. Nick Houck hasn't been charged in connection with any of these cases.
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And even though he and his mother were called unindicted co-conspirators by the prosecution.
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They haven't been arrested. Rosemary and Nick Houck declined to be interviewed for our broadcast.
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Is there an active investigation into the two of them? We haven't closed it. No, ma'am.
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We haven't closed it. Brooks also declined our request for an interview. He and the Lawsons have filed appeals.
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One thing is for sure, Sherry will keep fighting. She'll never give up on finding the truth.
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My biggest thing for my daughter and husband, I will do everything in my power to keep their
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name out there. It's a daily thing and it's very hard, but you can't give up on that.
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You're not done. No, I'm not done. And they know I'm not done. That's all for this edition of Dateline.
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And check out our Talking Dateline podcast, which will go behind the scenes of tonight's
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episode. Available Wednesday in the Dateline feed, wherever you get your podcasts.
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We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central. I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.