The latest filing in the case of the men charged in Crystal Rogers’ death is an episode of Nancy Grace filmed the week after Rogers disappeared in Bardstown.
The episode was entered by prosecutors. They haven’t revealed the episode's significance in the case.
The episode was entered in all three defendants’ files – Rogers’ former boyfriend Brooks Houck, and Steven and Joseph Lawson. Steven Lawson and his son, Joseph, did work for Houck.
Houck is charged with murder and tampering with evidence. Steven and Joseph Lawson are charged with conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with evidence.
Houck was interviewed in the July 9, 2015, episode in question of Nancy Grace on HLN. In it, Grace asks Houck why he didn’t report Rogers missing when he realized she was gone.
Houck answered that he wasn’t alarmed in “any way, shape or form.” He told Grace that it wasn’t uncommon for Rogers to go to her cousin’s house when there were issues in their relationship.
“We have had a stressed relationship at times and one of the ways Crystal has always chosen to cope or to deal with that is by going to a young woman's, named Sabrina. That is her cousin,” Houck said in the Nancy Grace interview.
That’s also what he told a detective in a recorded police interview a day early. But during the Nancy Grace episode Rogers’ father, Tommy Ballard, said he knew of only one instance where Rogers had gone to her cousin’s house like Houck described.
In the same episode, Grace asked Houck about people who’d said he wasn’t involved enough in the search for Rogers.
“All of my efforts in searching for her have been done behind the scenes with the Nelson County Sheriff's Office,” Houck said.
Rogers’ family has said all along that Houck never helped them search for Rogers, and that they were suspicious of his story from the start. It was Rogers’ mother who reported her missing.
Houck has always maintained his innocence and remains in jail awaiting his trial set for next February.
