BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (Scripps News Lexington) — The trial of two men charged in the disappearance and murder of Crystal Rogers is underway in Kentucky.
Opening statements were delivered June 25 in the trial of Brooks Houck and Joseph Lawson. On June 24, 12 jurors and three alternates were sworn in to hear the case.
FILE – (L) Crystal Rogers, (R, Top) Joseph Lawson, (R, Bottom) Brooks Houck.
Houck, the father of Rogers’ youngest child, is charged with complicity to murder and complicity to tampering with physical evidence.
Prosecutors allege Houck enlisted Steven and Joseph Lawson to help carry out Rogers’ murder on July 3, 2015, the night she disappeared from the Houck family farm.
“I’ve got all the hope in the world – but now I’m a single parent it appears to me,” Houck said shortly after Rogers’ disappearance.
MORE | Prosecutors: Crystal Rogers went on ‘surprise date’ before disappearing
Earlier this month, Steven Lawson was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with evidence after admitting during his trial that he participated in abandoning Rogers’ car on the Bluegrass Parkway.
His son Joseph faces the same charges as he stands trial alongside Houck.
While prosecutors have not publicly released a motive, Rogers’ mother, Sherry Ballard, has consistently suspected Houck was involved in both her daughter’s death and her husband Tommy’s murder a year and a half later. Tommy Ballard was shot while hunting with his grandson.
MORE | Defense challenges witness credibility in Crystal Rogers murder trial
“100 percent, I believe there’s a connection. I believe the same people that murdered my daughter murdered my husband. I think they did that to get my husband out of the way so we couldn’t search for my daughter anymore,” Ballard said.
Despite years of intensive searches at the Houck family farm and on Thompson Hill Road — where Steven Lawson told detectives his son and another man were digging and burning near an abandoned trailer — Rogers’ body has never been found.
The trial may reveal new information about what happened to Rogers or provide details about prosecutors’ claims that Houck’s brother and mother were co-conspirators, though neither has been charged.
No cameras are allowed in the courtroom.
This story was originally published by Scripps News Lexington, an E.W. Scripps Company.
