BARDSTOWN, Ky. (LEX 18) — Shortly after Crystal Rogers went missing on July 3, 2015, her boyfriend Brooks Houck was named by investigators as a suspect.
Now he’s being held in the Hardin County jail on charges of murder and tampering with evidence in her death. When he was arraigned last week on those charges, arguments against his motion to lower his $10 million bond brought up another name that had been mentioned early on – his brother’s.
While he was never named as a suspect, then-Bardstown police officer Nick Houck was questioned by police about Rogers’ disappearance and was eventually fired over allegations he wasn’t cooperating with the investigation.
Then last week, during Brooks Houck’s arraignment, special prosecutor Shane Young said that investigators had purchased the rifle they believe was used in the shooting death of Crystal Rogers’ father, Tommy Ballard. Young went on to say that they’d bought it from Nick Houck, who was using a fake name when he sold it.
Previous police interviews
Back in 2015, investigators released the two video recordings of police interviews with Nick Houck. In the July 24, 2015 interview, he was informed he’d failed a polygraph test.
"The questions you're having problems with are the questions about Crystal,” the investigator tells Nick Houck in the video. "And in particular the one about whether or not you know where she is right now."
Despite failing the polygraph, Houck repeatedly insisted that he was telling the truth when he said he knew nothing about Rogers’ disappearance.
"I mean I have been 100 percent honest with you,” Nick Houck can be heard saying in the video. “And surely to God you can understand with people showing up at my house with my family out there, taking cars, the neighbors are watching, man it's been screwed up."
As that interview went on, Nick Houck can be seen getting more defensive, accusing the investigator of calling him “a f****** liar.”
In another earlier interview on July 15, 2015, Nick Houck told investigators that he didn’t often speak with Brooks Houck and that no one in the family had told him about Crystal Rogers being missing.
“I mean this is for all intents and purposes your sister in law,” a detective says in that interview. “And she's missing. Do you and your brother just not talk to that extent that – I mean –”
"That's kind of bad of bad it'nt it?” Nick Houck answers.
Yet on July 8, 2015, in the middle of the earliest released police interview with Brooks Houck, Brooks Houck got a call.
It was Nick Houck – he’d later say that he’d called to tell his brother to cooperate but protect himself.
Just hours after the call that interrupted Brooks Houck’s interview, a camera caught the two brothers driving up to their family’s farm one after another, a detective said in Nick Houck’s interview.
The detectives in Nick Houck’s July 15, 2015 interview asked him multiple times whether the brothers had talked while at the farm, what they might have talked about and what they’d done while they were there. The detectives noted that it had only been a week prior. Each time Nick Houck said that he could not remember.
Nick Houck has not been charged with anything related to Crystal Rogers’ death or Tommy Ballard’s death.
Grand jury recording allegations
Brooks Houck’s motion to lower his $10 million bond was denied on Monday.
In the order, the judge mentioned both the allegation that Nick Houck had sold a gun possibly tied to Ballard’s death and another allegation that came up at last week’s arraignment involving grand jury proceedings.
During his arguments, Young alleged that multiple members of Brooks Houck’s family, including Nick Houck, had secretly recorded closed grand jury proceedings in the case.
The order by Judge Charles C. Simms, III, states that the court was provided the recording allegedly taken by Brooks Houcks’ sister.
The recording, which has not been released publicly, a woman can be heard expressing concern that the device would beep during the hearing, according to the order.
“It’s got brand new batteries in it,” a male can be heard saying. The woman, apparently still concerned, can later be heard saying, “you’re keeping it. Keep it out here,” according to the order. The male then replies, “no, we need to hear it.”
Prosecutors say they believe that the male voice on the recording was Brooks Houck, according to the order.
