Crystal Rogers update today: Timeline of KY disappearance | Lexington Herald Leader

A third major arrest has been made in the disappearance and presumed death of Crystal Rogers, a 35-year-old Kentucky mother who has been missing since 2015.

Steven Eugene Lawson, along with Joseph Lawson and Brooks Houck, faces charges in connection to the case, multiple news outlets reported Friday.

Previously in the case, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Houck, Rogers’ boyfriend, in late September on a charge of murder and tampering with evidence. Houck, who has maintained his innocence, entered a plea of not guilty in an October court appearance.

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His arrest was the second made in the case in less than a month after 32-year-old Nelson County man Joseph Lawson was previously indicted on charges of conspiracy to murder and complicity to tampering with physical evidence, court records show.

Rogers’ case, along with the subsequent and still unsolved homicide of her father, Tommy Ballard, have drawn national attention. Their deaths are part of a string of killings that have been unsolved since 2013, when a police officer was ambushed while removing tree limbs from a Bluegrass Parkway exit.

We’ve compiled this timeline of previous Herald-Leader coverage of Crystal Rogers’ disappearance, including a look at the Federal Bureau and Investigation’s ongoing involvement in the case, which began in July 2020.

A timeline of the case

July 5, 2015 – Rogers, a mother of five children, is first reported missing by her mother, Sherry Ballard, according to the FBI. She’d disappeared two days earlier and hadn’t been seen or heard from since.

Houck, Rogers’ boyfriend, is believed to be the last person to have seen her on July 3, 2015. From early on in the case, law enforcement viewed Houck as a suspect, though he has never been charged in connection to Rogers’ disappearance.

The day she was reported missing, Rogers’ Chevrolet Malibu turns up abandoned along the desolate Bluegrass Parkway with a flat tire. Her keys, phone and purse are discovered inside, according to the FBI.

Aug. 11, 2016 – Nick Houck, a fired Bardstown police officer and the brother of Brooks Houck, is served a search warrant in connection to Crystal Rogers, according to an archived clipping of the Kentucky Standard that ran in the Herald-Leader.

Nick Houck was fired from the Bardstown Police Department for interfering with the investigation, the Kentucky Standard reported. Nick Houck reportedly called his brother when he knew Brooks was being questioned by local law enforcement.

The local sheriff’s office served the search warrant at the home of Houck’s grandmother, Anna Whitesides. Nick Houck, along with his mother, who was at the home at the time, reportedly offered no resistance when the warrant was served.

Nov. 19, 2016 – Tommy Ballard, 54, Rogers’ father, is shot by an unknown assailant while preparing for a hunting trip with his 12-year-old grandson on family property next to the Bluegrass Parkway. Ballard is hit in the chest and dies instantly, according to his FBI homicide victim profile.

After his daughter first went missing 16 months earlier, Ballard created Team Crystal – a group of Bardstown locals dedicated to finding the missing woman and bringing her home.

Ballard’s murder is the latest in a string of unsolved Bardstown killings, according to an archived Herald-Leader report.

Before his death and Rogers’ disappearance, Bardstown officer Jason Ellis was ambushed and killed in 2013, and Kathy Netherland and her daughter Samantha were murdered in 2014.

Aug. 18, 2019 – A partially built home owned by Brooks Houck, a suspect in the 2015 disappearance of Rogers, is destroyed in a fire, according to an archived Herald-Leader report citing the Bardstown Fire Department.

The fire department investigates the sudden blaze as a case of arson.

Although he owned several rental properties and at the time was building the Wheeling Avenue home, Brooks Houck is not a suspect, Fire Chief Billy Mattingly reportedly said at the time. Only the framing of the home was complete when the fire occurred.

July 24, 2020 – The Nelson County Sheriff’s Department calls in federal agents to help retrieve possible human remains – leading some in the community to believe they could belong to Crystal Rogers.

The remains are shipped to the FBI’s lab in Quantico, Va., for testing. Ultimately, the remains are found not to be those of Rogers, per a Herald-Leader report at the time. They remain unidentified.

August 2020 – The FBI officially takes the reins of the investigation into the disappearance of Crystal Rogers. As they do, the agency executes search warrants at various properties owned by her boyfriend and his family members.

More than 150 state and federal law enforcement officers execute nine federal search warrants. Those officers also conducted more than 50 interviews as part of the investigation, FBI officials said.

The search warrants pertained to three properties belonging to the Houck family. Law enforcement was authorized to search Brooks Houck’s home, his brother Nick’s home and a family farm.

No arrests were made when the FBI executed the search warrants, and the agency would not comment on what was retrieved from the properties. However, media reports from the scene report agents seized firearms from each of the homes, along with boxes and filing cabinets.

Also in August 2020, the FBI released new surveillance photos, asking for the public’s help in identifying the drivers of the vehicles in the photographs.

One photograph shows what appears to be a white SUV and a red SUV driving near My Old Kentucky Home campground, while a second photo taken at 3:45 a.m. July 4, 2015, shows an unidentified vehicle on Balltown Road close to the Paschal Ballard Road intersection.

Later that same month, the FBI conducted new searches in the Woodlawn Springs neighborhood.

About 15 of 290 homes in the Woodlawn Springs neighborhood were built by Houck Rentals LLC, records from the Nelson County Property Valuation Administrator’s office showed. The company is owned by Brooks Houck.

On the fourth day of the search, FBI agents discover an “item of interest” in the investigation of Rogers’ disappearance though agents don’t disclose what the item is, according to a Herald-Leader report at the time.

Oct. 17, 2022 – Federal agents are dispatched to Bardstown to conduct a search related to Rogers’ disappearance.

FBI agents conduct a search of a farm in the area possibly connected to Rogers’ disappearance. As Rogers’ mother, Sherry Ballard, waits for news, federal agents bring cadaver dogs and excavating equipment to the site of the search.

The search concludes five days later, and while the agents say little about what they found, they are hopeful it will lead to a resolution in the Rogers case.

“We hope that the evidence collected will move our investigation one step closer to holding accountable the individual(s) responsible for Crystal Rogers’ disappearance,” Jodi Cohen, the special agent in charge of the FBI Louisville Field Office, said in a statement posted to Twitter at the time. “FBI Louisville, and all of our law enforcement partners, are committed to successfully resolving this case and giving Crystal’s family peace, and more importantly justice.”

Sept. 8, 2023 – Court records and a report from WDRB in Louisville reveal a 32-year-old Nelson County man has been charged in connection to the disappearance and presumed death of Rogers.

Joseph Lawson is accused of conspiracy to murder and complicity to tampering with physical evidence, court records show, and Lawson’s attorney confirms to WDRB the charges are related to Rogers’ case.

Lawson was previously indicted on the complicity to tampering with physical evidence charge in June, and the conspiracy to murder charge came about a month later. Lawson has pleaded not guilty on both charges.

The commonwealth’s attorney in Hardin County has been appointed as special prosecutor in the case, and what’s more, an FBI agent and Kentucky State Police Detective have been listed as witnesses for the prosecution. The FBI is tight-lipped with a spokesperson declining to comment on Lawson’s indictment and whether more suspects have been arrested in the case.

Sept. 27, 2023 – Less than a month after the initial arrest, the FBI announced a second arrest in connection to the case. Houck was arrested “without incident,” according to a Sept. 27 announcement from the bureau.

The FBI said the indictment against him was sealed until an arraignment set for early October, but a copy obtained by the Herald-Leader shows charges stemming from murder and tampering with evidence.

Houck, “acting alone or in complicity with another, committed the offense of murder by intentionally or under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life wantonly causing the death of Crystal Rogers,” the indictment released by Nelson Circuit Court reads.

It also charges he “destroyed, mutilated, concealed, removed or altered the physical evidence which he believed was about to be produced or used in such official proceeding, with the intent to impair its verity or availability in the official proceeding.”

The Herald-Leader has requested more information about the arrest and the possibility of others, though the FBI has declined to comment further.

Dec. 8, 2023 – A third arrest is made in the case, with the suspect facing charges of conspiracy to commit murder and evidence tampering.

Steven Eugene Lawson, 53, of Chaplin, was detained in Indiana, according to media reports, but will make a first appearance in Nelson County.

Note: This article was updated at 1:05 p.m. Friday, Dec. 8 2023, with the latest news on a third arrest in connection to the Crystal Rogers’ case.

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This story was originally published October 17, 2022 3:11 PM.