Commonwealth rests its case in trial of Brooks Houck, Joseph Lawson

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WAVE) - The trial of Brooks Houck and Joseph Lawson, charged in connection to the disappearance of Crystal Rogers in July 2015, entered its fifth day of testimony Tuesday.

Houck is charged with complicity to murder, while Lawson is facing charges of conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with physical evidence.

Full prior coverage: Crystal Rogers Disappearance

2:45 p.m.

The Commonwealth has rested its case against Brooks Houck and Joseph Lawson. Judge Charles Simms dismissed the jury for the rest of the day.

The defense will present its case beginning Wednesday at 8:30 a.m.

Prior to its dismissal, Rebecca Greer testified for the defense that her daughter had been in a relationship with and had a child with Joey Lawson. Rebecca also dated Steven Lawson at one point.

In 2019, Greer told the jury that she overheard a conversation between her daughter and Joey in which he claimed to have gotten $50,000 for moving a car. He didn’t elaborate on anything else.

Greer said Steven and Joey once got into a physical fight, and Joey threatened to let everyone know about his involvement with the car.

The Commonwealth also called Stacy Kramer, a former employee of Houck’s, who said Steven also told her that Brooks had “a woman with five kids who needed taken care of.”

Kramer asked if he meant that the woman needed rehab and she said Steve Lawson replied, “I wish that was the case.”

Kramer phoned in tips but says she never received calls back from local law enforcement. She attempted to record Steve Lawson for the FBI, but Steve claimed that remark was about one of Joey’s girlfriends and not Crystal.

Also called by the Commonwealth was Barbara Coulter, Steve Lawson’s mother and Joey Lawson’s grandmother. She remembered a conversation in 2022, in which Joey was high on methamphetamines and told her that Steve killed Crystal. Steve was living with his mother at the time.

After the Commonwealth rested, the Defense made a motion for a direct verdict, with Houck’s attorney arguing the Commonwealth had no case without a body and without being able to prove there was a murder or what the motive would have been. He argued Kentucky law required three things for a jury to reach a verdict, a body, a crime scene or a confession, but the Commonwealth had presented none of them.

The Commonwealth redirects, saying they have a witness, Brooks Houck, who lied to police about his locations when Crystal Rogers was last seen. They also said that with enough time to prepare for a murder, you can hide evidence.

The Commonwealth said they proved Crystal was murdered, but Houck’s attorney responded, saying none of what the Commonwealth brought up is a confession. The Commonwealth said there was a confession.

The judge sided with the Commonwealth, citing the white Buick was in the woods that night, and when Tommy Ballard put the post up about the white car, it was sold days after, and a dog alerted to a deceased body in that car, with a hair found in the trunk that was similar to Crystal’s.

The judge gave a rundown of all the evidence the Commonwealth had brought up over the last five days of testimony. He said the jury could believe a murder happened on the farm. Sherry Ballard was crying while the judge was saying this.

Lawson’s attorney introduced a motion challenging the conspiracy to murder charge, saying the statute requires an agreement and that is not present in this case. He also said intention is missing that is shared with the accomplice, claiming there is a conspiracy within the Houck family. Lawson’s attorney then asked for a direct verdict acquittal.

The Commonwealth brought up Steve Lawson called Brooks Houck after Joey called him. Joey also reportedly talked about burying the car.

The Commonwealth also mentioned how someone had overheard Joey saying they needed to pull her teeth and shave her hair because that’s what the hogs couldn’t eat.

The judge denied his motion as well.

12:20 p.m.

After issues with technology popped up, Detective Jamie Brooks came back to the stand to play audio recordings taken by the Houck family.

One was a conversation between Jamie Brooks and Brooks Houck about window tinting. He also played one of Rosemary and Brooks visiting a lawyer and Brooks and his sister talking ahead of Grand Jury testimony.

Grand Jurys are supposed to be secret.

The defense asked Det. Jamie Brooks if there was a portion of the recording with his sister where he noted that he “had nothing to hide.” He was unable to say and said he would go back and look for that portion of the recording.

The court broke for lunch.

11:54 a.m.

Joshua Hickman, a digital forensic expert, testified to Crystal’s activity on her phone on July 3 and 4, 2015.

Hickman testified that at 7:39:41 p.m., Crystal was playing the Cookie Jam game on her phone. At 7:41 p.m., Crystal stopped playing the game and switched to the Facebook Messenger app. She switched back to her game until 7:52 p.m. when she replied “Ok, sounds good.” to a person.

Around 8:06 p.m., Crystal played another game on her phone off and on until 9:23 p.m. when the phone lost power.

At 11:57:09 p.m., the phone was powered back on, and someone opened her text messages as well as a shopping app. The phone also pinged in Louisville, which investigators say isn’t accurate.

Her phone was manually powered off at 11:57:39 p.m. Brooks had previously told police that Crystal had been playing on her phone after midnight when he went to sleep.

Investigators opened up the phone again on July 6 after her car was found on the side of the Bluegrass Parkway.

Hickman also had access to Brooks’ phone at this time, and noted that his phone connected to a Belkin WIFI router from 6 p.m. - 8 p.m. on July 3 and from midnight to 2 a.m. on July 4.

Another witness for the Commonwealth, Lon Spalding, who lived on Thompson Hill Road, mentioned that on the night of July 3, 2015, he believed he saw a fire at a man named Jeremy Thompson’s residence on Cox Creek and stated that Thompson ran an illegal dump at the residence. He said the digging and burning went on for two weeks after July 3.

Thompson died in 2022 and was never charged in the case.

There was also a brief line of questions with Kim Edelen, a neighbor to the Houck farm. She was asked about a Wi-Fi network on her property.

The prosecution asked if she had a Wi-Fi booster that would extend the signal from her house. She said she didn’t.

The defense introduced a July 26, 2019, interview report with the FBI that she did where they inspected her Wi-Fi. They not she had a booster on her house, but she emphasized she would know if there was one that she paid for.

10:45 a.m.

Tim O’Daniel, an LMPD digital forensics expert, was recalled to the stand. He testified that Joseph Lawson had a Q-link phone plan that would not have pinged off AT&T towers. The prosecution points out that Steve Lawson’s phone calls show up on his call detail records, but not on tower dumps.

The defense has argued that since Joseph Lawson’s phone records are not on a tower dump from the Bluegrass Parkway from July 3 at 11 p.m to July 4 at 1 a.m., then he was not on the parkway that night.

O’Daniel testified that best practice is to get tower dump records within a month of when a call was made or else they can be incomplete. These records were obtained years later.

There was also testimony from a deposition done prior with Terry Benjamin, who trains canines and owns a Lonestar Search and Rescue out of Texas. He was at a conference in Louisville in May 2016 and met Jamie Brooks, the detective who found Anna Whiteside‘s car at a dealership and located a hair similar to Crystal Rogers in the trunk.

Brooks recruited him for help on the case, bringing him to the parking lot where Whiteside’s car was being stored. Brooks did not give the dog nor Terry any information about the case or even what they were searching for. The dog did a search of the parking lot and landed on the passenger rear by the trunk of Whiteside’s car, giving a signal that he had located human remains.

The defense tried to discredit the dog because they had no record of his training. It had been lost in a move in 2017. He also tried to say that, because the dog was cross-trained to locate living humans and human remains, which is not necessarily best practice, he could’ve been prone to error, thus suggesting the search was inaccurate. Only a report was generated from the search. It was not recorded by Detective Brooks or Terry Benjamin.

How we got here:

Another day of testimony in the trial of the men charged with the death and disappearance of Crystal Rogers has come and gone. The court heard about the discovery of even more recording devices and a hair investigators found in the Houck’s grandmother’s car.

We also heard two more women connect the dots on where Brooks Houck’s brother, Nick, was in the hours after Rogers vanished.

Amber Bowman was dating Nick Houck in July 2015 when they were moving houses. She testified that Nick left in the middle of packing to help Brooks with a rental property. Over the next 24 hours, she said her 15 calls went to voicemail with no sign of Nick until the next day and no real answer to where he went.

Charlie Girdley, a man who worked for Brooks Houck and with Steve and Joseph Lawson doing construction, also took the stand. He had previously testified in Steve Lawson’s trial in May. He told more than five different versions of what happened and who was involved the night Rogers disappeared in a 2023 Kentucky State Police interview.

Houck’s defense seized on those inconsistencies.

The prosecution lastly called Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office Detective Jamie Brooks, who shared a search warrant for a white Buick belonging to Anna Whiteside, the Houck brothers’ grandmother. Inside, LMPD forensics lab analysts found that a hair from the trunk was similar, but not a DNA match, to Rogers’ hair. The detective also said a security video showed Nick and Whiteside trying to sell the Buick at a dealership.

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