Crime Weekly - S3 Ep154: Crystal Rogers: A Family Affair? (Part 1)

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

On July 3rd, 2015, 35 year-old mother of five Crystal Rogers disappeared from her hometown of Bardstown, Kentucky. At the time of her disappearance, Crystal was living with her children and her boyfriend, local businessman Brooks Houck, who also happens to be the last person who saw her before she vanished, never to be seen again. On July 5th, Crystal’s maroon 2007 Chevy Impala was found abandoned at mile marker 14 on the Bluegrass Parkway. The keys were in the ignition, Crystal’s cell phone and purse were still in the car, and there did not appear to be any signs of a struggle, but no one who knew Crystal could understand why she would just get out of her car instead of using her phone to call for help, and the situation became more suspicious when Crystal’s family discovered that even though her boyfriend Brooks had not heard from her over night, he had not called to report Crystal missing, and he didn’t seem concerned about her whereabouts at all. What would follow was an investigation that uncovered some shady activities hiding beneath the idyllic small town appeal of Bardstown, Kentucky, and two more deaths that had many people wondering if it was all connected back to Crystal Rogers.  Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. Stitch Fix Try today at StitchFix.com/CRIMEWEEKLY and you’ll get 25% off when you keep everything in your Fix. 2. Embrace Pet Insurance Don't wait for the unexpected to happen— join the massive community of pet owners who trust Embrace Pet Insurance to protect their pet. Head to EmbracePetInsurance.com/CRIMEWEEKLY and sign up for pet insurance today. 3. Skims SKIMS reinvented underwear for women, and they are now doing it for men - also available at SKIMS.com. After you place your order, select "podcast" in the survey and select our show in the dropdown menu that follows. 4. HelloFresh Go to HelloFresh.com/50crimeweekly and use code 50crimeweekly for 50% off plus free shipping! 5. Liquid I.V. Grab your Liquid I.V. Hydration Multiplier Sugar-Free in bulk nationwide at Costco or you can get 20% off when you go to LIQUIDIV.COM and use code CRIMEWEEKLY at checkout.

On July 3rd, 2015, 35-year-old mother of five Crystal Rogers disappeared from her hometown of Bardstown, Kentucky. At the time of her disappearance, Crystal was living with her children and her boyfriend, local businessman Brooks Houck, who also happens to be the last person who saw her before she vanished, never to be seen again. On July 5th, Crystal's maroon 2007 Chevy Impala was found abandoned at mile marker 14 on the Bluegrass Parkway. The keys were in the ignition, Crystal's cell phone and purse were still in the car, and there did not appear to be any signs of a struggle. But no one who knew Crystal could understand why she would just get out of her car instead of using her phone to call for help. And the situation became more suspicious when Crystal's family discovered that even though her boyfriend Brooks had not heard from her overnight, he had not called to report Crystal missing, and he didn't seem concerned about her whereabouts at all. What would follow was an

investigation that uncovered some shady activities hiding beneath the idyllic small-town appeal of Bardstown, Kentucky, and two more deaths that had many people wondering if it was all connected back to Crystal Rogers. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we are diving into a case that you actually told me about when we were recording Crime Weekly last week. And I was like, yeah, I'll look into it. And,

you know, maybe we'll cover it for for Crime Weekly like soon or whatever. And since we have next week off from, by the way, we have next week off. We're closed. We're shut down. We didn't even know we were off. Yeah, and I didn't. Crime Weekly is closed for business next week. Apparently, we get two weeks off a year. Oh, that's it.

What other week did we pick? December, the Christmas week or whatever we picked. So we picked the Halloween week and we picked the Christmas week, which let's be honest, those are the two most important holidays anyways. Yeah, so we can So go trick or treating all that good stuff. Yeah. Because we would normally record on Halloween night. So that is why we chose to not do that because our kids would probably never speak to us again. Not be happy with us. So we're not going to be here. So I didn't want to start a multi-parter right before we were off. But then I realized like, when have I ever, when have we ever not

done a multi-parter? Like, I think we did that back in the day. We did like a one-off, but it's very hard to do. So at least they have to be like two parts. And then I started looking into this case that you told me about Crystal Rogers. And I was like, holy shit, I am obsessed. I can't stop reading about it. I can't stop watching these interrogations. And I mean, these interrogations are hours long, but I'm over here like engrossed because the people involved in these interrogations keep them keep them coming. You know, like they they do. They're not boring interrogatees. They're not they're not people who are boring in a police interrogation. So it was an incredibly just like, I was enraptured. And then we didn't talk a lot this week, mainly because I was really engrossed

in this case. And then we talked, I think yesterday, and I was like, okay, we're doing Crystal Rogers. And you're like, it's a great case, right? And I'm like, oh my God. And I started talking and I was like, I better save it for tomorrow. So this is a crazy case. And I started talking and I was like, I better save it for tomorrow. So this is a crazy case. And I didn't expect it to go in all the directions that it ends up going. And I'm ready to dive in. And you actually know something about this case. So it's not going to be our typical format where you're coming in completely blind. You're familiar with this. Why?

Yeah. So Crime Feed. Crime Feed doing the show on ID now once a week. And we cover different cases every week. And Crystal Rogers was one of the cases we covered. So I was like the law enforcement expert on the panel. I have to look into these cases before we get up there. So if Nancy throws some weird questions at me, I can answer them and I don't look like an idiot. So yeah, I was the same way as you. I started looking

at it and I was like, wow. The first thing I said, I was like, Stephanie would really like this case because it's got a lot of twists and turns and corruption. And you got police officers involved. Interesting characters. Yeah. And the situation just it seems very apparent what happened here or at least the general idea of what happened here. But then there's what a lot of people believe in assassination, a murder of another person who is potentially on the tracks of solving this case. And even another police officer

yeah it's it's really i said to you on on in the hotel last night when i was talking to you not with you with me but on the phone i was saying you get it derek yeah we get it um i said to you about i was like kind of reminds me of like yellowstone the duttons you're like this is not the duttons yeah i was like never be there never there will never be the duttons. Yeah, I was like, they'll never be the Duttons. I'm like, okay. I said, yo, these freaking people wish they were the Duttons. They think they're the Duttons.

Okay. They're more like the Dukes of Hazzard, kind of like those kinds of people. No, the case is, I thought it was just going to be a missing persons case where it seems like,

you know, one person did it or whatever. There's a lot more going on here. So yeah, we should dive right into it. And that's why I think it's taken so long, because like you said, from the get, it kind of seemed pretty obvious and like, yes, it was circumstantial. You need evidence. This isn't that. But then because of all of these other people and all these other cases that were

sort of possibly connected and I believe definitely connected, honestly. I think it took them a while to build this case, but Brooks Houck, who was Crystal Rogers' boyfriend, the police believe she is no longer alive at this point, he was recently arrested. So success. He was. Him and another guy. A guy basically, well, we won't get too deep into it, but there's a connection there.

So yeah, I'm looking forward to it. It will be a little different because even though I haven't read this specific script i do know where this is going this case so it'll be a little different for you guys but i think it'll still you'll get a lot out of the case covered in on crime feed with nancy grace every time i hear you say crime feed i want to go crime feed crime feed crime feed i don't it's just what happens in my head i I'm so sorry. Hey, we're going to make it the new theme song.

It's the intrusive thoughts, but let's dive in. Let's do it. Crystal Maria Rogers was born on April 4th, 1980 to her parents, Tommy and Sherry Ballard in Bardstown, Kentucky. Now, Bardstown has always kind of been one of those like small, charming towns that can transport you back to simpler times before cell phones and cars when life was slower and more peaceful. They're known as the bourbon capital of the world, and they've been named the most beautiful small town in America by USA Today multiple years running. The locals love it just as much as the tourists because they feel a sense of community and support. And Crystal was the oldest of her siblings. She was very close to her family,

but everyone knew that if Crystal ever really needed anything, she would turn to her father, Tommy. She loved her parents equally as much, but Tommy Ballard was always there for her, as fathers usually are for their daughters, if they're good dads. Before dating Brooks Houck, Crystal had been married to a man named Keith Rogers, and they'd had four children together. But when their relationship went south, the couple legally separated, but they stayed married and Crystal

kept Keith's last name. Not long after the separation, Crystal began seeing Brooks, and they had one child together, a son named Eli, who was about two and a half when she went missing. Crystal was known to be blunt and unafraid to say something without sugarcoating it, and when it came to the people she cared about, she always had their best interests at heart. She wanted to help everyone, and she never asked for anything in return, and anyone who could call her a friend felt that Crystal was probably the best friend anyone could ask for. But mostly, Crystal was known for her dedication to her five children, who were always her top priority, no matter what else she had going on in her life. She was a good mother, loving and laid back, and at times, she'd had to work more than one job at a time in order to support her kids.

But she never minded. She never complained. At the time of her disappearance, Crystal was living on Glenview Drive in Bardstown with her boyfriend Brooks and her five children, and Brooks claimed that he, Crystal, and their son Eli had spent the day of her disappearance on his family farm feeding cows and going for a late-night stroll. He claimed that when they'd gotten home, he had gone right to bed, and the last time he'd seen Crystal, she was still awake, playing a game on her cell phone. When he woke up the next morning, he found their son Eli sleeping next to him in bed, but Crystal was nowhere to be found. Brooks went about his day as usual, getting up and getting dressed, attending 4th of July festivities with his family, and coming home to put his son to bed. But he did not seem to wonder where his girlfriend was, even though he hadn't heard from her in 24 hours.

Crystal's mother, Sherry Ballard, remembered that on July 3rd, she'd received a text from her granddaughter, who was Crystal's daughter, Kylie. And Kylie asked Sherry if she'd seen her mother. So Sherry texted Crystal, telling her that Kylie was looking for her. And then she put down her phone, thinking nothing about it. But when Sherry got another text from Kylie later that night saying her mother had still not returned home or contacted her, Sherry became worried.

It was unlike Crystal to ignore her family. It was unlike Crystal especially to ignore her children, even if she was out of the house and busy. And it was very unusual for Crystal to be out of contact with her family for an extended period of time. They were very close, they spoke often, and Crystal would never purposely ignore a text from her mother. Sherry began calling around asking if anyone had seen Crystal or knew where she was,

and it was around this time that the Ballard family began talking to each other, and they realized that no one had heard from Crystal in a few days. Tommy Ballard, Crystal's father, knew in his gut that something was wrong, so he, Sherry, and their son Casey went to the police station to file a report, and they were there when Tommy received a call from the son of Crystal's estranged husband, Keith Rogers. Keith's son told Tommy that he'd been driving down the Bluegrass Parkway, and he thought he'd seen Crystal's car pulled over on the side of the road. Casey and Tommy drove over to the highway and confirmed

that the car pulled over to the side was Crystal's. And it's often reported that the Chevy had a flat tire, but according to the Ballards, that was not necessarily true. The back passenger tire was not completely flat, but it was low to the point where they could see black marks on the road from each side of the tire. But it wasn't so low that Crystal wouldn't have driven the car. And in fact, Crystal had driven her car with a low tire plenty of times in the past, as I have. Due to this and to other details seen in the car, Crystal's family does not believe she was the one

who drove her Chevy Impala to that location. Her brother Casey said that when Crystal drove, she would have her seat slid up closer to the steering wheel, but the back of the seat would be leaned back. When he found the car, the seat was slid back from the steering wheel and the seat back was pulled up. Additionally, the location where the car was found was not a safe or ideal place to pull over, even if you were having car trouble or had a flat tire. And if Crystal had gotten out of her car, why wouldn't she bring her cell phone so she could call for help or get a ride?

Right. And I think, I don't know if you said, did you say, I don't know if you said it in this section right here, but you definitely said it in the teaser. Just a reminder, cell phone, purse, keys still in the cell phone, purse in the car, keys in the ignition. Okay. Cellphone purse, keys still in the cell phone purse in the car, keys in the ignition. Okay. So like you just said, not to beat a dead horse here. If she was in a situation where let's say she pulls over because for some reason she does felt the tire was too flat and she didn't want to drive it anymore.

She would have used her phone. She would have used something to get a hold of either her father or boyfriend or someone to say, hey, listen, I'm over on the side of the road. I need some help or even call AAA or the police, whatever. She would have called someone. And as you mentioned, and we don't want to infer too much here because some of you already know this story, the seat was not in the position that it would be in if Crystal had been driving the car. It appeared that someone who was a little bit larger in stature might have slid the seat back so that they could drive the car. Obviously, a lot of you are very astute. You already know where we're going with this. You're going to think, oh, was Brooks driving the car? I don't necessarily know if it was Brooks and why I think

that will become more clear as we dive into this case, which makes it so crazy because on the surface, you're thinking, yep, last person to steer alive, it's got to be the boyfriend or the husband, right? That's usually the case. It appears there might've been other people involved with this whole situation. He had help. And that's what makes this case really dynamic because I will tell you this, if he in fact did it, which he's still innocent at this point, if he had done it alone, we probably wouldn't be here with an arrest, right? The fact that he involved other people, you always, and I said this on Crime Feed actually, you want to go after the person with the least involvement, but the most to lose, right? The person who is not as heavily involved in the crime itself, but still is charged

as equally as the person who committed the murder. And therefore they're going to be more willing to roll on the person who actually killed the individual. So that might be the saving grace in this case. But yeah, Tommy found the car with the rest of the family. And the fact that he found the car, as far as you were going to learn more about Tommy, I think in this script, he was on a mission, this guy, for his daughter. He was not letting this go. And this was just the start of things for Tommy Ballard, which is going to bring up another very interesting and unfortunate twist in the story. Yeah. And that's kind of what I wanted to touch on. Also, it's weird to me when you would commit

a murder and you would bring in other people to help you. You would give other people that kind of information, which, let's be honest, can and will destroy you if it ever gets out. I never really got that. But at the same time, somebody like Brooks Houck and the people he runs with, if they've already shown, and this is just alleged because none of this has been proven, if they've already shown that they're not afraid to kind of, two can keep a secret if one of them is dead you, then there may be a lot of fear too. Like I don't want to become another victim, so I'm going to keep this secret. But then after, I mean, it's been over a decade now, correct? Yeah, this happened in 2015. So yeah.

About almost 10 years. Almost a decade, yeah. So about nine years. If you've had multiple people involved within a legal activity and especially a murder and you can get them to be quiet about it for this many years, you're living on borrowed time at that point because it's only going to be a matter of time before law enforcement, the FBI gets to these people and they scare them more than you could. Right. So I think that's that's where we're at. Plus, there's also I mean, you're going to see when we when we go over the interrogations of Brooks and his brother, Nick Houck. I mean, these guys, they don't know what they're doing. They think something's off. They think they're like this. They think they're the Duttons. They wish they were the Duttons.

But yeah, John Dutton would never do this question. Did you mention the dynamic, the situation between Brooks and Crystal? I can't remember if you did, but if you didn't, if you did, I apologize. But Crystal had five children. I know you said that. Only one of those children belongs to Brooks. Eli, yes, the youngest. Did you mention that in the beginning? I apologize. Okay. And I believe it's Eli. Eli. And I believe it's Eli, but I think there's discrepancy. Again, I feel like I've heard this already, so I don't know what was said, what wasn't, but I feel like there's discrepancies in Brooks's account of Eli being there that night. Because I feel like I remember in the interrogation where they were saying that he wasn't there

and Brooks is like, I don't know why someone would say that because he was with us all day or he was with us all night. Yeah, we were talking about that last night. Yeah, we were talking about it as well. So I think that was a discrepancy as well, but we'll get all into it because that would be the window, right? If we're to believe that Brooks is somehow involved, it obviously happened that night before he went to bed. This is how this all transpired. And you would think if it had happened and it was violent, Eli would either be sleeping or wasn't at the home or he would have heard or

seen something. Well, we're going to see that Detective John Snow, which I can never forget his name because- Yeah, you love it. You say his full name every time. Detective John Snow. Every time. You said it last night too. When he's interviewing Brooks, he's asking this, and we're going to talk about that, but he's asking. He's like late you know was was your son up at this point because what kind of and then brooks is like oh yeah he he loves to stay like we're gonna go in there he loves to stay up late he always stays up late you know so was the kid there he could have been he could have been there at the time of the murder he was young enough where yeah he could have been sleeping in the car he could have you know he could have even seen something and not really known what he saw so he wouldn't know how to even verbalize that

because he's two and a half right he was young yeah very young so yeah uh there's there's a lot of unknowns but i will say i believe the police know exactly what happened but they've been very very closed-lipped about it since day one. We don't even know what they found in her car, right? Her car, there's driveways in play, there's surgeries that they did. Yeah, there's a lot to go into. And I got to keep reminding myself not to go too far ahead of you here. We got a whole script, but yeah, there's a lot. All right. We are going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. Stitch Fix totally gets me. Yes, I have a stylist. She's a

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used Stitch Fix before and I would like the male perspective. What do you think? I love Stitch Fix. I'm someone who's very busy. I don't have a lot of time to go out and shop. And frankly, I don't have a lot of style. So going on there, being able to take the quiz and kind of get a visual representation of what they offer, go through, mix and match. And like you said, you can order some things. They send you your package. And if you don't like something inside the package, I believe you have three days or you can even ask for an extension to send it back. There's no charge to you. It comes with a prepaid bag to ship it back. And if you want, they'll send you new items to replace and try to match with the stuff you have. So first off, I'd like to say thanks to Stitch Fix. They get me. I think they'll get you too. Try Stitch Fix today

by going to stitchfix.com slash crimeweekly, and you'll get 25% off when you keep everything in your fix. One more time, that's stitchfix.com slash crimeweekly. One more time, if you didn't hear it the first few times, stitchfix.com slash crimeweekly. Once Crystal's car had been located, law enforcement began a search using bloodhounds and air support to comb the fields near the Bluegrass Parkway. The search would eventually be expanded out and bodies of water such as Beach Fork River and Melody Lake were searched because for some reason, cadaver dogs kept hitting on Melody Lake, but no sign of Crystal would ever be found.

After a few days of searching, Sheriff Ed Mattingly gave a press conference to update the community on what was happening in the case. But outside the sheriff's office, Sherry and Tommy Ballard spoke to reporters. They voiced their distrust of their daughter's boyfriend, Brooks Houck, and Sherry said that when she'd seen Brooks on Sunday, the day she reported Crystal missing, she'd asked him if he and Crystal had gotten into a fight, and he responded no. Inside the press conference, when asked about Brooks Houck, Sheriff Mattingly answered, quote, I want everyone to know he has been completely cooperative with this investigation and has tried to assist us in any

way he can. End quote. Mattingly said that the Ballard family was doing their own investigation and it was clear that they did not like Brooks, but that law enforcement didn't have any reason to suspect him more than anyone else. And even though the family thought Brooks did it, the police didn't have any evidence. But that would change rapidly with a lot of activity happening in the case over the next few weeks. I mean, honestly, just even over the next few days, stuff started moving real fast here because Sherry and Tommy Ballard, they were not going to go quiet. They were not going to be quiet about it. They were talking to anybody. From the get-go, Sherry and Tommy Ballard knew Brooks Houck was involved or

thought he was because allegedly he hasn't been charged yet or he hasn't been convicted yet. He's definitely been arrested. He's been arrested for it, though. Yeah. Conspiracy to commit murder. I mean, he's in prison right now for I mean, he's in jail. We'll get into the whole bail stuff and all that because Brooks got some money. Yes, he does. He's got some money.

He is very well off. We'll put it that way. But but yeah, no, Tommy, specifically, Tommy was really on a mission. He was vocal about what he was doing and he was doing searches every day on his own. He was, as a father should, he had dedicated his life to finding his daughter at this point. And he was a man on a mission and individuals who may or may not have been connected to her disappearance and or murder and knew that. And he knew that if anyone was going to figure this out, it was going to be Tommy.

All right. You're trying to give too much away. I'm just saying. I know I'm struggling. You're setting the scene? I'm saying. I'm just saying. All right. This is why I don't know the cases ahead of time, guys. I know.

This is why. This is terrible. You're like the person who buys somebody a Christmas present, and then for like 71 days- Oh, I'm definitely a person. 71 days, like, oh my God, wait till you see what I got you. It's round. It's about five pounds. Do you want to know what it is? Do you want it now? Do you want it now? Why don't you pick it what i got you it's round it's about five pounds do you want to know what it is do you want it you want it now do you want it now why don't you pick it up do you want to pick it up oh yeah that's that's 1000% fake it take a guess yeah that is definitely

me guilty i can keep a secret to the grave dude i mean it was this is just different for you right because usually you got me sitting over here like a bumpkin, not knowing what's going on. That's how I like you. You love it. You love it. You love it. You're like, no, Derek, actually, that's not what happened. Yeah, because you keep giving teasers. How's it feel to have the shoe on the other foot?

I mean, the shoe's not on the other foot because I know about the case, so I know what you're doing. But listen, we're about to talk about something really cool. Really interesting. I don't know about. playing fields we're about to talk about something really cool really interesting so on july 8th brooks hauck was interviewed by detective john snow of the nelson county sheriff's office so bardstown is going like a lot of places you know what this kind of reminded me of at first uh what was the case we did with the i forget her name now because i it's you know late and i'm tired on the side of the road. Her car was found. She was dead in the side of the road. Michelle Lawless. Michelle Lawless kind of reminded me of that because there's like a police there's like a police force. And then there's the sheriff's office. Right. And they're going to they're going to sort of handle different things. And they have their own jurisdiction. Like they're expected to work together and cooperate with each other. But when when the sheriff's office has a case, the police department isn't really getting involved unless they're asked to help. So the sheriff's office was in charge of this case. And this interview with Detective John Snow and Brooks Houck lasted for about two hours.

And some bizarre things happened during it. Detective Snow had a written statement from Brooks in front of him and he told Brooks, listen, you've already given me your written statement. I talked to you on the day that your girlfriend was reported missing. But right now, I just want to kind of sit you down, go over your written statement and get a really clear timeline of July 3rd. So Brooks said that during the timeline of July 3rd. So Brooks said that during the day of July 3rd, he was working on a new construction in the Woodlawn subdivision

to add to his already extensive list of rental properties already under his belt. So what it looks like Brooks Houck did was not only did he build houses and he would do this building himself, like he was very hands-on. He could build a house from the ground up. He had a team that worked for him. He did the construction and then he would,

you know, rent these new builds out. So this is where his money's coming from, right? Yeah. That's what a lot of contractors do, right? If they're handy and they have subcontractors already on their staff, they can get the work done super cheap. So you buy these houses that are dilapidated and need a lot of work. You bring your people in, you fix it up, and then you rent it for a ton of money or you sell it. And that's exactly what he was doing. But I would like this to be kept in mind. At the time of Crystal's disappearance, Brooks was working on three new builds in this woodlawn subdivision.

Three new builds. Why are you foreshadowing? Why are you foreshadowing? And these houses are going to come under scrutiny, obviously. Oh, here we go. See? Look at you. You want to get in front of that one.

Oh, so that's why you were mad. I mentioned the driveway earlier. There's lots more driveways. There's tons of driveways. Everyone has a driveway. Yeah. Lots of driveways, okay, in Bardstown. So after he left work, Brooks said he drove home.

He arrived there a little bit after 5 p.m., but he claims he didn't go right inside. And Kylie was there? I didn't go in the house at that time. Oh, you didn't? No, I knew that whenever she was coming behind me, I knew that she was going to be there shortly. So what I did was I jumped on that little tracker. I knew I had a little bit of time, and I wanted to go up there and fill it up full of fuel, do all that kind of stuff, get my fuel levels right so that I didn't have to stop. As you can tell when you look at that list, I've got so much stuff to do.

I don't have any unaccounted for time. I'm wide open. If I stop for a few minutes, I i go backwards and i don't have time to do that so just so you didn't go inside so you don't know if she was there when you arrived i don't know if she was there she was riding with crystal i do not know and when you got back from gassing up the tractor uh they were all there her and eli and chris all four yes okay and so all four of you were there so during that time they were the neighbor says she got home around 515 for her tape you know sir so from 515 and I think I mentioned to you that I see on the video that you

all go past circle K you go well you go past the storage place and circle k all within a minute or so about five minutes after seven thereabouts give or take a minute all right um so so let's say you left the house around seven o'clock all right there's gonna be a little bit of time but i'm just generalizing so she gets home about 5 15 you get back from the store. You all are there from, let's say, 5.30 to 7 o'clock together, the four of you. You ate dinner at home, I think you told me last time. Yeah, we didn't fix anything. I don't know what we ate. We didn't fix nothing fancy.

Right, sandwiches. Whatever we did. You guys leave to go to the farm, but Kylie does not go with you. That's correct. She stays there waiting on Kathy. Her memaw, Kathy, her father's mother. Yeah, Kathy Fenwick. Yes. So she stays there, you don't know what time she gets picked up but she's there when you all leave. Yes. Because that was one of the things, I think she got confused, Kylie not Kathy, Kylie got confused

about the time frames when I was talking to her. I can't speak on their behalf. That's fine with me. I'm just trying to make sure I'm not confused. Alright. That's fine. What you said is my understanding of it. So you guys leave. You go, presumably you go out Bloomfield Road to Guthrie because you go past Circle K and not turn on Woodlawn Road. So you go out there and then the next time I see you is when you pass Caddyshack, the little restaurant there on 49. You go past there, and it's about the right amount of time for you to be traveling. And then you get to the farm around, best I can figure out by the time frame on the video,

is about 19 minutes after 7. So you're actually there, you know, roughly about 7.20. So. Okay. Okay. So what you hear is Detective John Snow. He's asking Brooks to explain, okay, you got home from work and then you, Eli and Crystal left right around seven to go to the family farm. They were the only ones who are going. He's talking about Kylie. Now, this is Crystal's oldest daughter. Kylie got picked up by her grandmother that night, so she wasn't home. And he's asking questions. And, you know, you've taught me this. He's doing this because he wants to nail down a timeline for- Locking them in.

And he's already got, Detective Jon Snow already has surveillance footage. You're going to call him Jon Snow through the whole episode? I'm going to, yes. Detective Jon Snow already has surveillance footage from restaurants and stores along the route that they would take from the house to the family farm that Brooks' family owns. And he's saying, well, okay, so you passed this place around this time and you passed this place around this time. And so would you say, and Brooks is doing a strange thing. He's kind of like, okay, okay. He's not saying like, yeah, that makes sense.

He's saying, okay, because honestly, I don't even think he knows what the timeline actually is specifically enough to agree with this. No, I also think he knows that the timeline actually is specifically enough to agree with this. He's just. I also think he knows that the cops setting them up. Well, he knows that he's being led into establishing a timeline. If the detective's just willing to round around, like he's like, well, this round is seven. And he's like, sure.

He's like, okay. If you're willing to give me this much leeway, you're locking me into a very small, tight window at the end of all this. So I'm just going to set it. Not me. So there you go. You said it. it not me i was just agreeing with you yeah and let me say this you can tell through this that brooks had some prep work going into this he was anticipating this interrogation and it seems like he may have planned for this scenario and how he was going to answer. Like someone told him how to act. Like he was coached a little bit.

Yes. Well, coached to an extent, but you can't help the nervousness that naturally will come out in somebody. You can't change the facts. And what Brooks does, and you saw it at the beginning of this clip, he babbles a lot. You know, I'm really busy. I don't have time. I don't have time to stop and look at the clock. I don't have time to see what time it is. If I go back, I go forward. I go

forward. I go back. He seems nervous right off the bat, in my opinion. And so I agree. Yeah, I would agree with that, especially if he has something to be nervous about. Right. Like, I mean, either way, even if he was innocent, being brought in there is not a good thing. Right. You know, everyone knows that the husband or boyfriend's gonna be the first person that's looked at as a potential suspect. But if you did do something wrong, the last thing you want to do is being interrogated by someone because it's going to only open yourself up to an opportunity where you slip up and say something that gets you in trouble.

So the Houck family land was a 245 acre farm located on Pascal Ballard Lane, nine miles south of downtown Bardstown. 245 acres. That's a lot of land, a lot of wide open spaces there. By the time Detective John Snow spoke to Brooks, he'd already gained access to and viewed surveillance footage. And this shows the street that the farm is on. So it's not necessarily security footage from the farm, but it shows you who's coming and going to and from the farm and what time this is happening. Thank God for that, by the way. The Houck family farm is officially known as the last place Crystal Rogers was seen alive, and it has been the location of multiple searches over the years, and we're going to see why. So Detective John Snow is going

to ask Brooks if he and Crystal were having relationship problems. Were they talking about splitting up before she'd gone missing? And this is the standard question to ask. Obviously, it's usually the person who's dating or in a relationship with the victim that law enforcement is going to focus on first and foremost. And yes, you want to know, was there trouble in paradise? Were there issues? Were there things happening? Tension, you know? Right. And we're going to hear Brooke's response in a minute. But first, we're going to take a quick break. We also have a hedgehog, a couple bunnies, we have a lizard, a bunch of chickens. Shout out Oreo. It's Oreo, right?

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Remember that Detective Jon Snow is asking Brooks, were he and Crystal having any relationship issues or talking about splitting up? Had you and Crystal ever talked about breaking up? I mean, obviously we have fought just like any other couple, but in the last several years, I mean, it's came up, but we've always found ourselves together moving forward. So it's mentioned, but it's never happened, and we've always found ourselves together moving

forward you said you all had you know talk about splitting up had that been more recently or was that before elon was born or had that been i don't remember the exact exact dates but if you'll remember recall back in a couple days ago we had talked whenever usually that had came up she had always went to like sabrina's house or she went out with brooke or to her parents uh for a short period of time a day day and a half and uh after she cooled off and we had a chance to talk a little bit we always found ourselves back together but there it has been at times of stress relationship I'm not here telling you anything other than that that is the truth and that's accurate that has been discussed but we've always

found ourselves together we loved each other very much and that right there's the bottom bottom end of it well the reason i ask is because uh there are some people that she's associated with that are telling us that she had made some tentative plans to leave uh like looking at an apartment at that store above the department above the store i'm just trying to figure out if that was something that was ancient history or if that was something that was more recent well that's that that's news to me I don't know anything about that so when you all the let's say let's say the last time you all had discussed splitting up she didn't discuss any specifics with you about moving to an apartment or anything

like that just that you all were having some issues and you resolved it say all that again yeah break your question break them down the last time that you all were having some issues and you resolved it? Say all that again. Break your question. Break them down. The last time that you all had that type of a disagreement, the last time that there was the possibility that you might split up, did she specifically talk to you about moving out somewhere? No, not anything.

She's never had an isolated point saying, hey, I'm moving here, moving there. I don't recall anything like that. That was my question. Just if she had... Well, sometimes I, and I know that you all do this for a little bit, sometimes I feel like when you ask me a question, you put so many things, and I'm thinking, we need to dissect it a little bit so I can answer each part specifically rather than put so and I'm not saying that to you put so much stuff in one I want to break it down in a simplified direct question rather than put so much information into one question try to come answer one and have a bunch of parts in one no that's fine that's fine what you did right there is just fine all right ask it a different way.

Because I want you helping me. That's fine. Okay, so you heard Detective Snow, Detective John Snow, ask if Crystal had ever specifically told Brooks that she was moving out or looking for an apartment to live in, since that was the information that he'd gotten from a friend of Crystal's. But Brooks claims to have no knowledge of this plan, which could be true. You know, if maybe she was wanting to move out because she was scared of him, she didn't want him to know,

she didn't want him to do something to try to stop her. This could absolutely be true. And that element could be. Yeah. And he sounds he sounds calm. He sounds steady. He's like, I have no knowledge of it. Like she'd never mentioned. He sounds like he's telling the truth. But then he addresses this, it may have indicated a level of nervousness in him. And also maybe he was trying to buy some time, you know, kind of like ask that again and slow it down and break it up because it wasn't a complicated question. He said, did you ever hear that she had wanted to get an apartment? And he's like, hold on, slow it down. I think sometimes you cops phrase things in a certain way because you do this every day. You know, you talk to people every day.

But me, I need a little bit more time to formulate my answer. Yeah. I mean, there's a couple of things going on here. First off, you're right. He may not have known that Crystal was saying those things. But the reason behind her saying those things, he would be aware of. Clearly, if she's making comments like that,

there's something not right in the relationship. So if Brooks tries to paint their relationship as anything but, you know, it was a perfect relationship before she disappeared and he wouldn't know why something would happen to her or why she would leave or anything like that, that would be a lie. Well, he didn't say that. He said, we've had our share of issues like many couples have,

but we've always worked through them and we've always found our way back to each other. Yeah. But that's, again, Crystal's not here to confirm or deny that, right? It's his word against nobody right now. So it's easy for him to say that. All you can really go off of is some of the last words of the victim, which is like, I need to get out of here. I need to go. It also seems like a safe answer, right? Because no relationship is perfect. So if you tried to make it seem like it was perfect, that might seem like we never fought. We never fought. No, we loved each other so much. Perfect. It's always been perfect. That may seem suspicious, whereas saying, well, you know how it is, Detective John Snow, you know, women be doing

women things and sometimes you got to calm them down, but we always found our way back to each other. That's a legitimate response that doesn't seem too extreme in one way or the other. Yeah. The other thing about your boy, Jon Snow, and he's doing a good job, but he's not doing a great job. And I don't ever Monday morning, or I try not to Monday morning quarterback other detectives work, you know, cause everyone has their own way to doing it. But one thing I was very good at was interrogations and had a lot of training in it. And I will tell you that you can tell in this for someone who's trained in doing this, I can tell how excited Detective Snow is. He feels like Brooks is good for something.

And he's leading a little too much. He's telegraphing his playbook. Like it's very obvious to Brooks that John's trying to get it all out. He's trying to get it all out. He's just trying to set him up really fast. He's not, you got to slow play. It's a dance, right? It's a marathon, not a sprint. He's trying. So you guys were perfect, right?

Or he's, and Brooks is like, whoa, slow down, partner. You're trying to get it all out at once. You're trying to lock me into a statement all in one sentence. Let's break it down. So one criticism I would say is it doesn't take a hardened criminal to know that Jon Snow, like we're saying, just listening to it, you can hear that he's trying to set him up. He's setting up. It's a chessboard, and he's telling him his moves with his behavior. I always talk about the person that you're interrogating and how you're reading their verbal and nonverbal cues. Well, Brooks is sitting in the other chair reading Detective

Snow's nonverbal cues and his positioning of his body and all this and how excited he is and how quick he's moving on to the next question and how he's lumping a lot of different things into one phrase, you know, one sentence. So I feel like Brooks is saying indirectly like, oh, slow down for a second. I can see what you're doing here. I'm going to pretend like I don't know, but just relax, break it down one by one so I can pick apart what you're trying to do because clearly you're trying to get me. I can see what you're doing here. So that's the one thing I would say about this interrogation. Yeah. Brooks Houck is clearly more intelligent than he tries to portray himself in this interview. He's trying to seem like this good old down home boy. I just love farming and building houses and I don't even look at the clock, but he is far more intelligent than he's

making it appear that he is. And he does this a lot throughout the interview when he's asked certain questions. For instance, when he's asked a question about Crystal being on the farm on the evening of July 3rd, he sort of goes off on a tangent about feeding cows and how you feed them differently in the winter than you would in the summer. And it feels like he keeps trying to reroute the conversation to things he can say that he knows, things that he doesn't have to lie about, things he can talk confidently about that isn't going to trip him up, basically. He don't really want to talk about timelines. He doesn't want to talk about specifics or facts, but he will talk for five full minutes about feeding cows. Right. Yeah. That's a pivot, right? We do it in television too, where if you're talking about a topic and you don't really know the answer to it, you give a quick statement about that, but then you pivot to something, a part of the case that you're very familiar with. And yeah, he's comfortable talking about things that aren't incriminating, right? Anything that's not going to tie him up into a statement that can be used against him

later. And so that's why he's really trying to dissect, statement that can be used against him later. And so that's why he's really trying to dissect, which he said, I want to dice. He literally spontaneously just said it. I want to dissect what you're saying. What are you saying without saying, what do you really, what's your actual agenda behind your questioning? I need you to slow down because I know what your agenda is. I just got to figure out the line of questioning and why you're asking those questions because I know what really happened. So I got to see where you're taking this. And he knows what happened allegedly. And he wants to make sure he doesn't accidentally. That's right. Reveal something. Slow down. Slow down, Jon Snow. You're not

solving this case today, buddy. Relax. That's what he's saying. According to the security footage, Brooks, Crystal, and Eli arrived at the farm around 7.20 p.m. and Detective Jon Snow asked Brooks if they had seen anyone else while they were there, considering that Brooks' mother, Rosemary, lived in a home on the property. And when you got to the farm, do you know if anybody was there other than your mom? I don't know. Did you see your mom when you came in? No, we didn't. We didn't stop up there. We went straight down there to we were going there to take the cows. Right, well yeah, but the barn's within eye shot of the house. But sometimes sometimes she might park inside, sometimes she might not.

So I don't know if- I think your mom told me she had been mowing grass do you know if she was mowing when you got there or she's always outside doing such she's a more of an outside person than inside but she likes to mow grass sometimes she'll mow it whenever you don't even need to be mowed so but no I don't believe I don't recall her mowing if she was mowing but you know there's a't recall her mowing if she was mowing. But there's a lot of area there that if she was mowing that I could have pulled in and not seen her. But I don't believe she was mowing. So what did we determine here?

That he doesn't like to answer questions directly. We don't know if she was mowing or not. Yeah, I thought it was so funny when Detective John Snow asked if Rosemary was mowing when Brooks got there and he started talking about how his mom loves to mow, only to end it with the statement finally that he didn't believe she was mowing. And why would she be mowing the lawn at 730 at night? It doesn't make any sense, but she just loves to. Sometimes she even doesn't. It doesn't need to be mowed. She loves to mow. She just runs over the grass. She didn't even turn the lawnmower on sometimes she just likes to ride around and walks around with it yeah so uh brooks claims they were only there at the farm for about 15 or 20

minutes when he realized he needed to get more cow feed and so he left to go to the tractor supply store but then he turned around when he realized the store was probably closed and this is then when he goes on the several minute tutorial about how and what to feed cows, which to me, this signifies a lot. He's trying to distract from the question and the fact that he got there and then about 20 minutes later left and then came back at some point. They haven't really released that exact timeline yet. Why was he leaving 15 to 20 minutes after they got there? That's going to be a big question that's going to come into play. Absolutely.

And just to reiterate, to qualify here a little bit, because this is an affluent family with a lot of money, Brooks is innocent right now, right? He's definitely, he's innocent. It's Stephanie and I's opinion. I think I can speak for Stephanie here where we don't think he's telling the truth. That's our opinion. But as far as at this point,

for everyone out there, this case hasn't even gone to trial yet. They were actually saying, I don't want to get, we'll get to it at the end if you don't hit it, but there's a lot more to still develop from this case. Investigators are working it as we speak. So just keep that in mind. We're not going to go out there and do anything with Brooks or his family. He couldn't end up walking away from this scot-free. This isn't a slam dunk case by any means. But we'll continue on. That would be crazy. If he walked away from the scot-free, that would be crazy. I mean, Casey Anthony is out dancing in Florida right now. That's different. That's different. She was a little innocent looking girl that nobody could imagine she would purposely kill her child. And they all wanted to believe it was an accident. And what

people want to believe is far stronger than what's actually in front of them. You look at somebody like Brooks and see the details. I mean, he did. I mean, Casey was saying she worked at like Disney World or some shit like that. I mean, she was really, she was pushing it too.

She wasn't. Universal Studios. Universal. I apologize. I stand corrected. But yeah, I just wanted to put that qualifier out there. We like this show. We don't want to get sued and lose everything.

So yeah, there you go. Brooks, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Yep, sure. So Brooks said that he, Crystal, and Eli fed the cows and watched them eat for a bit before walking for a while down a gravel path on the land. And then he draws a map for Detective John Snow and shows where he went. Snow then asked Brooks about a bulldozer he'd seen in the driveway when he'd been at the property earlier because Detective John Snow already done been at the Houck family farm. And Brooks said he'd moved it Saturday. So Saturday would have been the day after Crystal went missing. They went out to the family farm Friday night. And he said he did this because there was some trash on the property that his mother would complain about if he didn't get

cleaned up. So he would usually gather it all up with the dozer and then start a fire and burn it as opposed to driving it to the county dump and having to pay the dump fees. And then Detective John Snow asked Brooks, hey, did you burn anything Friday night? And Brooks said, yes, I did, actually. And it's not uncommon for me to do that because I don't want stuff piling up to the moon. You had a little fire. When was that? After you took your walk or before you took your walk? I lit it. I don't know if I lit it right before we took off walking. I know we fed the cows first because I want to do that as quickly while we had still plenty of daylight. I don't know if I lit the fire before we walked back here or right when I back i could have done it either way i don't remember so you lit the fire i'm assuming

then you probably don't leave until the fire burns out would you leave it burning i don't know i generally don't like to walk yeah but if it if it's just a bad kind of little story i mean it's not like yeah yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't leave if I thought there was any danger not when I especially I got all this right stuff right there but I mean if it's died down and it's just a big bed of cuddles I'm I'm not too worried about it you know especially if it's not in August or September when everything's just perfectly dry it wasn't a plenty of, the ground's wet and dew's on. Yeah, it's not a big deal to me. I'm not a firefighter, so. But you definitely moved the

dozer on Saturday. Yeah, I moved the dozer on Saturday. So this becomes a pattern with Brooks. He says something happened, but he can't remember exactly how or when it happened. And at this point, it's only been four days since the events he's describing. And it seems that his memory's very foggy considering the short amount of time that has passed. This happens again when Detective John Snow asks Brooke what time he got back to the farm the following day. And he says, well, I don't know. Before lunch? Well, before lunch. It was morning time, but not early morning or late morning. Mid-morning. Snow tells Brooks that according to the security cameras, it looks as if he, Crystal, and Eli

didn't leave the farm until five minutes before midnight, and that seemed kind of late for a two-and-a-half-year-old to be up. All right, so you guys, you've taken your walk. The fire is down, maybe not out, but it's down and up, you're leaving and it looks again looking at the video looks like it's about five minutes till midnight. Alright. That's a to me and I've got a couple of kids you know but everybody parents a little differently to me it seems a little late to be out on the farm with a two and a half year old. Where is he at at midnight? Has he been asleep in the car for a while? Is he still wide awake?

No, he's still wide open. And he'll, any night, he's so used to sleeping so later in the morning, his normal day, that's his 7, 8 o'clock in the evening. Really? Cuz she sleeps much later in the morning, she stays up. So yeah, it's always been that way. He's wide open. Now, correct me if I'm wrong,

but this is actually a pretty easy statement to disprove if it wasn't true, right? Because there would be enough people like grandparents and things like that who would know whether five minutes to midnight was like seven to eight p.m in the evening for little eli who's yeah did he normally take his bath at seven or eight p.m like like brooks was stating well no what he's saying is detective john snow's like why is this kid up at midnight so it seems kind of late and brooks is like no actually because crystal goes to bed super late and she sleeps in really late in the morning. So for Eli, this is normal because he goes to sleep with her. So he usually goes to sleep with her like at midnight or later. This

is like seven to eight at night for him. So wouldn't other people know, did Eli stay up till midnight every night? Like wouldn't his siblings know that? People who live in the house with them? This feels like it would be pretty easy to disprove. And Brooks could have easily said, yeah, actually, by that time, Eli was asleep in the car. So, you know, is there some truth to it? I'm not sure. But it does kind of paint Crystal in a negative light, kind of in a passive-aggressive way, right? She stays up really late with our son, and she sleeps in late in the morning. I have to get up and go to work super

early. I got to get up at six, but she stays up and wakes up at her leisure. And that's why our kids' hours are all off. Yeah. And I think either way, just to go back to what I was saying, Brooks is picking up what Eli said, what Jon Snow saying here, where he's trying to put out like, you know, was your son awake? Was he even with you guys at that? Like he's trying to put all, Brooks knows where he's trying to lead him. So instead of saying, yeah, it's possible, he's going to be, he's going to counter it. No, actually not. Actually, it's the exact opposite of what you're suggesting, even though you're trying to paint it as like, you're my friend and you have kids and you can relate to me. I see what you're doing. And just because you're trying to take me there, I'm going to go the exact opposite direction

and say what you're saying. Although it's true for your kids, it's exactly the opposite for mine. So that point, that angle where you were going, that journey you were taking me on, I'm not going there with you. Yeah. Like you don't know what you're talking about. That's it. Like, oh, where you were trying to lead me because it's super innocent. I'm going to go the exact opposite. How about about that where are we going now john snow yeah and like what the hell are they doing on this farm at night in the dark for all this time they get there around 7 30 let's say they don't leave till five minutes till midnight that's like almost five hours what is detective snow saying without saying here what is he telling you that he believes happened at this

point let's just take a guess take a little gander what do you think he's telling us or was he telling brooks what's he telling us what's he what's he he's telling us he doesn't believe this yeah he doesn't believe that what does he think that this camera footage might represent might represent brooks bringing crystal there to murder her and dispose of her body burning yeah he's talking about the burning that's weird he's like oh you're burning stuff and then five minutes before midnight you're leaving the farm that's awful late your kid would have been so he's saying like this is not something that a detective is putting together brooks is putting down picking up what he's putting down

you're saying i'm out there burning stuff really late. You're saying I'm leaving the farm late. I know what you're insinuating. So that's what we know what Eli, we know what Jon Snow's thinking. He's thinking, I think you murdered your girlfriend out there. You burned up whatever you had for evidence. And then you were there a lot later than you wanted to be because you were trying to clean up the crime scene. That's what he's saying. What Brooks said they did while they were there would not fill up no five hours exactly and that's what that's what john snow is trying to paint right here he's trying to paint that narrative and obviously brooks knows that and so that's why anytime even a small concession like oh you would admit it's kind of late to have your kids up no actually i won't admit that i think you're wrong on that too. Yeah, you wouldn't leave a fire blazing on the farm, would you?

No, but I'm not a firefighter. I absolutely would do that, but I'm not a firefighter. Yeah, I would absolutely do that. You actually do it all the time. Every time Jon Snow brings up something that seems suspicious, Brooks is like, this is not suspicious. This is completely normal for us. You don't know us. You're just looking at your own experiences. Jon's trying to get small wins. Like, hey, we can agree on this part, right? This is insignificant. This isn't incriminating. Yeah. No, actually, we can't agree on that either, John. And that's what, he's not going to give him any angle here. No inch. No. Nope. Nope. We are going to take a quick break. We'll be right back. So I've been wearing skims for a while now.

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I was just in it the other day, the other night, and my husband was like, did you put that on for me? And I was like, no, man, I put it on for me, but I'm glad you enjoy it. So anyways, Derek is going to tell you how you can try them out for yourselves right now. Okay. But leave the hype. Skims has over 100,000 five-star reviews for a reason. The cotton collection and more is available now at Skims.com. Plus, get free shipping on orders over $75. If you haven't yet, be sure to let them know that we sent you. After you place your order, select podcast in the survey and select our show in

the drop down menu that follows. And if you missed the big news, Skims reinvented underwear for women and now they're doing it for men as well. Shout out Nick Bosa. That's also available at Skims.com. Okay, so they get home. Brooks says they drove right from the farm. They got right home. He went right to bed, but he said Crystal stayed up playing a game on her phone, and since Eli normally went to bed with his mother, he stayed up with her. They move on to the next morning, Saturday, July 4th. Brooks said he woke up between 6 and 7 a.m. and he saw Eli sleeping next to him, but Crystal was not there. However, Brooks claims he was not concerned about this because Crystal did this sometimes. And so when you wake up, he's there, but Crystal's not.

She's not. Okay. And so did you try to call her? Yes, I noticed that she wasn't there. I didn't know exactly what to think. I don't know what time I called her. Yes, I called her that morning. I mean, did you call her before you left the house to go to the farm?

I don't remember what time I called her. But do you remember where you were at? Were you left the house to go to the farm? I don't remember what time I called her. But do you remember where you were at? Were you at home or were you at the farm? Or you were on the way to the farm? I don't know. Somewhere in between. I don't recall. I don't know.

That's fair enough. I'll be honest with you. I have been all along. Will continue to be. If I woke up on a Saturday morning and my wife wasn't with me in the bed as is normal, which might not be normal for you, I don't know, but for me it would be normal, particularly if my wife's a late sleeper, which mine is as well on Saturdays, for her to be there in the bed when I get up.

So if she were not not probably the first thing I would do would be to call her to find out where she was but what's your what you're not aware what you're missing is a lot of times that her and Brooke or sister or Sabrina a lot of these girls that they do all these they go out and do stuff sometimes I do these uh this is gonna be embarrassing for me to talk to you about that I'm wanting to get everything cleared up as quickly as i can they do these uh fantasy parties and all these girls get together they talk about and do whatever and it's not uncommon for them when they go out and party they stay out the better part of the night if not the whole night so

um and of course I always have the children you know they're not they don't take the kids to that matter if I got take care some of their other children why they're the ones going it's not uncommon for because I know I don't get into all that stuff and they know that I'm a man don't get me wrong understand that a white-blooded American male and there's no sense I'm not telling you anything different but they they do all these parties and order all this stuff well who gets the kids I'm good enough to get the kids for all this and I'm good enough person to do that and then where everybody sees a little bit of

distress they're gonna throw me under the bus you know they need to re-examine all these other actions how you know And I can understand the family wanting to vent and stress, and it makes perfect sense to me. But these people know me better than what's going on. And before this is all over and done with, you all are too. But it really bothers me because not only have I been a victim, I can't even, my mind's not even where it should be because I'm trying to protect Eli from this,

and I'm trying to, he's the most important person that I'm trying to protect. I don't care about them dragging my name through the mud right now because I'm going to keep the main focus and emphasis on bringing her back safely and as quickly as possible. But it really bothers me what's being done in the method that everybody's pursuing and doing, because what's going to happen is I don't want their apology. I don't want nothing from them. But then after this is all said and done,

they're going to sleep it under the rug, and then they're just going to forget about what they've done to me in the process. What I've got to be faced with now is, as good a mother as Crystal's been, now nobody's going to love you like a mother. Now Eli is in an atmosphere where I've got all the hope in the world, but now I'm a single parent, it appears to me, where she's been there 100% of the time for him to raise and rear him, where I know that he didn't have to go to a daycare or a babysitter, and I know that his mother is going to take care of him and now where am I at with without that love and support from her now I've got a little boy who's two

who's going to grow up his life if something's not done where she's not brought back safely now one of the very most important people in his life he's got to grow up without right do you see what i'm saying and i'm in here answering a bunch of that i'm doing the best that i can possibly do with but it's taken a lot of energy and effort away from the other efforts that could be out there trying to help and bring her back here safely i can't even go out on the side of the road without looking like a murderer or something like that. It's wrong. I've been extremely honest with you all, and now I'm up here doing all the...

They can have the house. Y'all take anything that you want. You don't need any of that paperwork or search warrants. And now I'm up here trying to get my head where I can be on the side of being able to protect myself and defend myself for my son whenever I'm the one that's I feel like has has the largest loss yeah so I'm gonna do what you got to do I'll do whatever I can but this is this is starting to get silly I don't need an attorney I haven't

asked for an attorney I don't think none of that. I'm innocent. I'm willing to talk to whoever. But this to me is really starting to get it's starting to get silly. So real quick, now that we're back from this, there was a lengthy video. I do like I criticized him a little earlier, but I do like what Detective Snow did here. I knew you would come around to Detective John Snow sooner or later. I'm not going to keep calling him Detective John Snow. You don't have to, but I knew you would come around to detective john snow sooner or later i'm not gonna keep calling him detective john snow you don't have to but i knew you would detective john snow i like what he's doing here which it's like just shut up just shut up and let him talk because there's moments where you can see brooks thinking about what he's saying before saying it and for the most part he does a very good job. He does say, you know, my priorities is bringing her home safely.

And when she does come home, everyone's going to just want to sweep this under the rug and forget everything they did to me. But then there was a moment where he's like, now my son's going to grow up without a mother or whatever. He says without, you know, without her. Without the love of a mother. And I'm a single parent. Yeah. And then he says, if I can't bring her home safely. And it's been four days, by the way.

Yeah. So he does a pretty good job in that. But when someone wants, he just, he was very cool, calm and collected, did the whole thing. He's getting frustrated now. He's been in this interrogation for a little bit. He's realizing what. Not even that long, but he's already breaking. He's realizing what Detective Snow is doing, like questioning some of his behaviors and seeing how outside people could see this as suspicious.

And obviously by now he knows the Ballards are out there telling anybody who will listen that they think he knows something. Yeah. But good job with Detective Snow here, letting him talk and just sitting there and just crossing your arm, nodding your head. And the more he wants to say, it's all being recorded. So you can go back and watch it afterwards. Just let him speak. And so the clip I didn't include was right around, right after this, Brooks breaks down. He starts crying, but is he crying? His face is in his hands, you know, and he's like, he's like kind of sobbing. And then Detective John Snow is like, take a minute. You can take him. It's OK. And I mean, a lot happened in this clip. Let's we name the episode of white-blooded American man? He's a white-blooded American man. Dude, you just told on yourself.

What? Yeah. And he's like, listen, I don't go to these sex toy parties because that's what fantasy parties are. They're sex toy parties. And he's like, well, I'm not into that stuff. I don't go to that stuff because I'm a white-blooded American man. No one says that straight men are attending these parties. In fact, they usually don't go to that stuff because I'm a white-blooded American man. No one says that straight men are attending these parties. In fact, they usually don't. So chill out there, Brooks.

You don't need to qualify that. But he claims that Crystal and her sister and her friends, they often did these kinds of parties or they went out while he played Mr. Dad at home. You know, and he's like, that's when he starts to show some resentment, resentment that I think he tried to suppress until then. He's like, oh, I'm good enough to watch their kids. But, you know, now I'm a murderer. And it's like, well, what does one thing have to do with the other? Honestly. And then Crystal's sister, Brooke Ballard, responded. And when she heard this, because I think about a year later, this interview was made public and the family watched it. And Brooke said, no, he's lying. I only dragged Crystal to one of these parties months ago.

But other than that, you know, Crystal only went out once in a blue moon. And on those occasions, she always left early because she was busy with work. She had five kids. Like, five kids is freaking a lot. I'm not going to lie to you, OK? Five kids is a lot five kids. Like, five kids is freaking a lot. I'm not going to lie to you, okay? Five kids is a lot of kids. I can't imagine having the energy to do anything, much less be attending fantasy parties on the regular. And, him. Now he's a single parent. And he not only refers to Crystal in the past tense, she was a great mother, but he talks about her as if she's not coming back, as if it's a gone four days. Most people, most partners, loving partners who didn't know something that everyone else didn't know would still be holding on to some hope at this point. Maybe she was five kids is a lot, right? Maybe she took off and she just wanted to disappear for a while.

She was so burnt out and she'll be back. And then we'll have some talking to do and we'll have to talk about communication and, you know, like asking for help when you need it. But I'm not going to assume that she's not coming back. No, I'm with you. That's what I'm saying. You want to let him keep talking there and he's going to, you can go back and dissect that, that statement afterwards and find those little cues of where he slips up and maybe he says something. And that could also be just from the way he speaks or whatever, if you're giving them the benefit of the doubt. But yeah, there's a moment there where at this point, for all he knows, she just took off and wanted some time to herself. Maybe she's having some mental issues and she just wanted to get away.

She could even be having an affair. Like you don't know. Why is- There's a lot of variables, which by the way, in this case, I might be thinking about Suzanne Morphew because we just covered that where there was some signs of potential infidelity. Was there any indications that maybe you haven't got to it yet, of Crystal? No, just unhappy where she was thinking about moving out, but nothing more severe than that. Nothing that we know of yet. I mean, it's still an open investigation. Yeah. Nothing's come out. Yeah. Okay. But overall, I agree with what you're saying. At this point, we don't know what happened to Crystal, if you genuinely don't know. And I will say will say this if he's innocent i think it is reasonable that you or i would be frustrated with the fact that if you

knew you were innocent and you're being interrogated by these detectives in this manner where they're definitely not believing you where if you truly are innocent you would get frustrated and be like this is we would probably be saying more harsh things than what he's saying i mean i wouldn't and i don't think you would either because we know that this is normal. And even at the beginning of the interview, you've asked me this before. I said, I would, I think that's ridiculous. I, he, especially being a detective myself, I'd be like, what are you guys doing?

Why? You know that they need to make sure it's not you before they can even really consider something else. You were the last person with her. You were the last person to see her alive and you're her partner. So there's a difference between asking me what happened and where she was in her last known whereabouts and the way now maybe Brooks didn't pick up on this, but I think he did. The, the, the, the style of this questioning is not necessarily to get the most latest and greatest facts about Crystal's whereabouts,

the last known whereabouts. To me, it's very apparent that Jon Snow is going into this interview not believing Brooks. He thinks he's lying. To me, it's very apparent that Detective Jon Snow knows that the math ain't mathin'. The story's not adding up. And Derek, if you were sitting in there telling some disjointed unbelievable story and the detective wanted to clarify because it didn't make no sense i would hope you'd be patient with that because i mean at the end of the day like you just totally missed everything i said though no i didn't what i'm saying is if he is innocent which there is a world where he is right i could see how this would be frustrating. That's all I'm trying to say. I've already said what I think, but if he is innocent, right? We're all thinking he's guilty. Only he really knows if he's innocent or not. Now, again, he was just arrested for this. So I don't

think he was innocent. And I think there's a lot more to the story that makes him even look more guilty, but I'm just trying to play both sides here where I could, it's not completely like, oh my God, his response here with this monologue is just absolutely out of the ordinary for anyone to be frustrated with the fact that they're being accused of something they may not have done. That's all I was saying. I mean, Detective Jon Snow breaks it down for him within the first three minutes of the interview. He's like, listen. You're losing me every time you call him Detective Jon Snow. He's like, listen, he's like, listen, dude. He's a part of like a king's. We have to do this, right? I know you don't want to be here.

I know you said you have nothing to do with this. But if I don't ask you these questions, later there's going to be people who asked me why I didn't ask you these questions. That would be a better way to phrase it. That's what he said at the beginning of the interview, right off the bat. And he's like, so don't get like triggered or anything. Don't get upset. Like, this is protocol. It's what I have to do. We've got to check this.

Yeah. Right. He's checking it. So and you saw at the end there, Brooks was kind of staying calm and then he gets agitated. He calls the investigation. He's losing the composure. Yeah. It's like this is a little bit silly now.

But please, you're wasting time talking to me. You're taking away from what's important, looking for Crystal. And I have to take care of my son son Eli, et cetera, et cetera. And then during the interview, Detective John Snow questioned Brooks about some calls and texts he had received the night of July 3rd and the morning of July 4th. There, on the phone records, there appears to be a phone call around midnight. All right. On Friday night, Saturday morning. Alright. On your way home, basically.

Alright. Do you know who that person was that called you around midnight? Do you remember talking to you? Can you just

call the number back? I don't... I mean, I could. What's the phone number? Yeah, look at my phone, but I don't remember that. Do you remember getting a phone call on the way home?

Would it be unusual for you to get a phone call at midnight? I mean, it is for me, and I work for the sheriff's office. I get calls quite regularly. Some of the people that do the tile for me, I wouldn't put it past them to call me at any time. They lay brick through the day, and then they're tiling my houses. That night, the Thomases I rode on there, Derek and and his brother Tyler Thomas, they'll call me at any time. Even if it's just one day, I don't pay them people by the job. They got to get paid by the hour and then when they get done

with it, I pay them. That's just what we've agreed on. But yeah those folks they're calling me any you know any hour um it was a pretty short phone conversation is the only reason i asked kind of unusual to get a 13 second phone conversation at midnight you know it is for me it may not be for you all right well just so brooks is saying well just check it out check Right. And to me, this is a suggestion that whoever called him used a burner phone. And he knows that even if they check it out, they're not going to find out who actually made that call. Because what is a 13 second call at midnight when you're driving away from the farm that you were just at for like five hours when your girlfriend goes missing? What kind of what kind of call would you be getting? Yeah, no, it's not, it's not, I mean, you could get a call at midnight, but considering the other circumstances around it, I will say it's tough for me right now because I,

I have a pretty good idea of who called, which we haven't talked about yet, but it's, it's definitely something you want to make note of, right? As an investigator, you're absolutely going to ask them about it because you could look at it as if this is your co-conspirator this is them calling you to tell you things are taking care yeah exactly right that's that's the kind of like that's a quick call like it's done presumption yeah you know like it's all set it's all set okay thanks i mean what other conversation what was important enough for anybody else to call him at midnight that all they needed was 13 seconds to relay their message? Well, that's the problem too, right? Because he says, it could be like my tile guy or whatever, just time out 13 seconds. Even if they're like, hey, tile job's done. We're going to go back tomorrow morning. We're going to let

the thing set tonight. You're done, 13 seconds is gone already. We're going to put the grout on. Okay, I'm already past 13 seconds. seconds. So the tile guy calls and says, tile done. Hangs up. Come on. Well, it's a little longer than that. You could have sent a text at that time. And you probably would knowing the person you're calling has like a two-year-old and that they get up at 6 a.m. You probably just send a text, right? Right. And this is also something where he says, and I always talk about this, like when people say something, even though it might seem insignificant, once they say it on record, you can go back and corroborate that or discredit it. And this is an

opportunity where it's not the smoking gun, but you can go, he said, he said in this thing in passing, and he probably didn't even, he just said it, just splurted it out where he's like, oh, this happens all the time. You know, you get like a tile guy who will call late night. You know what I'm doing as the investigator, just so Just so that can't be used as a potential defense. Seeing how many calls he gets late night. How many times has he gotten a call past midnight? Yeah. And how many times has he answered that call past midnight?

He's somebody who says he goes to bed early. He's got to get up early. So I'd go back and I'd probably check his record for the last year and see how many times in the last year he's gotten a call after midnight and answered it. And has there ever been a case where he's gotten a similar call? And that is something that may be insignificant. It may be something. But when you write that in your report, you're going to say on this date, he said that it could have been a tile guy and that this happens time to time. It should be noted that I went back and looked at his phone records over the last year.

And during that time, I found no other calls after midnight, especially no other calls after midnight where he answered that phone call. And it was for that short of a duration. Now you're not, you're not really saying anything. You're just putting out the facts and people can, people can take what they want out of that. Yeah, it's building. But now that's something that he said in passing,

thinking it might not be a big deal. And what you're able to do is like I said, corroborate or discredit it, but also show how truthful he's being, which could play into a bigger role later. But it's also important to note that he doesn't say who called, right? It's only been four days, but he cannot remember who called that night. So he's not pinning himself down to anything specific. Right. He's not saying it was the tile guy could have been the tile guy and he does this a lot because so even if he gets calls at night midnight like that it's

it's so it's so abundant it's so often he can't even remember who it was which that again could be used against him that could be something that detective john snow can go and check yeah and with his x-ibur sword. Jon Snow didn't use an Excalibur sword. What did he have with sword? I love Game of Thrones, so I'm not hating. But he's not Jon Snow. That's my point. I'm offended.

For sure. But we can pretend. I'm offended. We can pretend. You're as offended as I was when you called the Houcks the Dons. Yeah, there you go. Fair. Touche. So Detective John Snow also asked about a phone

call that Brooks received early Saturday morning before 7 a.m. from a man named Danny Singleton. And this guy worked for Brooks. We're going to talk about him later. Once again, Brooks could not remember the details about this conversation, and he also couldn't remember when or how often he had called Crystal that day, even though she never came home. And even though he spent that night at a 4th of July party at his Uncle Fabian's house. And when Brooks is asked, like, well, how often did you call Crystal? And he's like, well, you know, I can't remember. You guys should look and see. And he's like, but I found when this happens in the past that me like blowing up her phone is not effective anyways. You know, it just like pushes her away. It's better to just give her her space when she does this. And he's not stupid. That's why I said like he's not stupid

because sometimes that is the best thing to do. And he could use that to say, well, she does this all the time and I'm not worried anymore. And I just give her her space. And, you know, if you love something, let it go. And if it comes back to you, it's yours. And if it doesn't, it never was kind of thing. Detective John Snow asked Brooks if he was sure that Eli was with himself and Crystal on the evening of the 3rd because Crystal had told her estranged husband, Keith, that she'd gotten a babysitter that night so that she and Brooks could have a kid-free evening. And she also sent a text to a friend and basically said, oh, we have no kids tonight. We're just going to, like, it's been a long time since we haven't had kids. And we have a kid-free evening. We got a sitter for Eli.

And Brooks responded to Detective John Snow, I don't know about that. I have no clue about that. Eli was with us the whole night. Are you familiar with a woman named Christina Holly? Yes, I know who you're talking about. There are some text messages between her and Crystal on Friday. And she's asking Crystal if they want, if she wants to go to Chuck E. Cheese, I think it was. Something to do with the kids. Do something with the kids. And she tells her the same thing. Well, we've got to sit her for the evening. It's our first time being kid-free for a while, so we don't want to, you know, we're kid-free.

We're going to enjoy ourselves. All right. Why would she lie to her about that? I don't know. I can't answer that question. Her and Christina close? Yeah, I mean, they've always been good friends. I know't answer that question. Are her and Christina close? Yeah, I mean they've always been good friends. I know exactly who you're talking about. Do they, I mean, close enough that they see each other on a regular basis every few days or talk on the phone? No, they talk on the phone, but I don't know if they see each other that often.

But I think we were also supposed to maybe go to the zoo or something too. She was going to tell you she's got a little girl that's really close to this, born in the same month, month apart. As Eli? Yeah, as Eli. I mean it's just curious to me, you know, these are the things that make me wonder. And in any other situation, they might not amount to nothing. Did she ever talk to the girl, Amanda? Mm-hmm. All right. She says there was no plans for her to babysit.

All right. But that doesn't necessarily mean that Crystal hadn't planned for someone else to watch him. I don't know that. I mean, you know that because you and Crystal have him together. But I don't know that because I don't know you guys. I don't know. Maybe sometimes she might use Crystal's phone. I don't know. I can't answer that. I do not know that. Okay. But as far as you know, you all did not have plans for a babysitter that time. No, actually, no. The plan was all along for you guys to go to the farm?

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a Bardstown police officer. We're still getting video from different places along that route. Can I get this? Sure, please. Hello? No. I'm up here. I know that you didn't know. I'm up here I know that you didn't know I'm up here in this interview with the detective Detective Snow I've been up here a good little while I'm filling out this statement here

and everything are you telling me that's what I need to do? I know I'm not. I know that. But the way that I look at it is I'm innocent. I ain't done nothing wrong. Well, you know,

I know you've told me innocent people have got jammed up, but if you're telling me to leave, I'll get up and leave. If you want me to... I know I'm going through a lot, but I'm trying telling me to leave, I'll get up and leave. If you want me to... I know I'm going through a lot, but I'm trying to get this guy to help me. I don't

think she's ran off with some other guy. I don't believe that. You can't make me think that. Yeah, I mean, so do I. I'll do exactly what you're telling me to do right now. Do you want me to get up and leave? I don't think these people

have got it vindictive just to skin me for no reason. Man, this is not their family. This is not... Alright, thank you. He thinks y'all are a little fuckers, what he thinks. I don't know who he is. Nick, my brother. You don't know him?

No, I know him? No, I know him, but I'm not... He just said to keep sitting up here, to give a statement, do an interview, whatever I gotta do, do it. But he said, no, I'm just letting them beat you to death over this right here. Just ask what you gotta ask. And you tell me. He knows more about this than I do.

And have I told you what I'm... I mean, he knows more about this than I do. You see... And have I... Listen, have I told you that I'm for you? Yes, you have. I said... What did I say? My job is to find Crystal. Right? That's right.

However that happens, my job is to find her. Whether I find her hopefully alive and well and safe somewhere or not, my job is to find her. If I don't find her alive and well, my job is to prosecute the person that did something wrong. That's right. If that turns out to be you, my job is to prosecute you. If that turns out to be someone else, my job is to prosecute them,

to gather evidence for a lawyer, a prosecutor to prosecute them. I don't know whether that person will be you or not. Did I not tell you when you come in here and sat down today that right now you're the main person of interest? Yes, that's right. And I explained to you the reason that you're the main person of interest, right? You're the last person to see her alive. Right?

And I went through your timeline with you and explained to you that there's gaps in your timeline. Right? Be it good, bad, or indifferent, you can't remember some things about Saturday. You can't remember some things about Saturday, you can't remember some things about Sunday. That's not a judgment against you. That's just a fact.

I am simply a fact finder. If you want to go, you may go at any time you wish to. I would never dream of stopping you, didn't tell you you had to stay. If you want to bring a lawyer in and answer questions with a lawyer, you're welcome to do that. I've been asking you the very same questions in front of your lawyer

that I asked you today. I have not given up hope of finding her alive. That being said, you know as well as I do, the longer this draws out, the less likely we are to find her alive unless she's run off somewhere. I mean, that's just a fact. That's right. That's just the facts as they are.

I am not for you. I am not for you. I am not against you. I am not for her family or against her family. Right now, my job is to work for Crystal. Plain and simple. It's just that simple. If that means that I have to interrogate you, then that's what I have to do.

You've been nothing but cooperative with me. I appreciate that. We've talked. This makes, number three? Third time? I don't know. Three times. Here, the first time.

At your house, the second time. And here, the third time again. Not counting the polygraph because I didn't ask any questions then. You've not asked for a lawyer. You're right. That's your right to do. You're entitled to do that.

If Nick thinks you should go and you want to take his advice, go ahead. It's fine. I'm not offended by that. I don't really have any more questions with you. I'm just going to tell you what we got, where we go next. All right. Yeah. Well, I'm wrapping up the attempt, what we're doing next. If it's over, maybe it's a little longer. So, yes, this is an interesting thing to happen because Nick, who's a Bardstown police officer, not part of the sheriff's office, but still part of local law enforcement, an entity that's supposed to be cooperative with the sheriff's office, is basically calling his brother Brooks. And you can hear his voice. Right. And he seems agitated. And he's like, you know, what are they doing? What are they asking you? And then Brooks gets off the phone. He's like, oh, he thinks I should,

you know, he thinks you guys are trying to trip me up, stuff like this. It seems a little rehearsed. When he's on the phone, it seems rehearsed. He's like, no, she didn't leave me for anybody else. And you can't convince me that she did. And nobody can convince me that she did. It seems like maybe this is something they planned. You know, like when you're a woman sometimes and you go out on a first date and you tell your friend like, okay, if I don't text you within an hour, then call me because I need an out from this date. I wonder, and Brooks was texting on his phone at points right before this during the interview. I wonder if he texted his brother and he was like, get me the F out of here or call me and get me out of here. That'd be pretty stupid because I'm sure they're tracking

his phone records, but yeah. Or maybe they had a code or something, you know, like he texted a pineapple, something. But if he texted the brother at all and then he called him, I'd be like, hey, we looked at your phone record. You literally text them five minutes before he called. Yeah. I mean, Nick could have called them and be like, are you still at the police station? And Brooks could have answered yes. And then Nick could have called called but they could i think i think the more if i'll let you finish they could have arranged that prior to this i guess you know because nick would have known brooks was going in for questioning and nick could have been like listen like they're gonna try to trip you up they're gonna try to get you to say something and i don't want you there too long

so let's arrange something so that you know there's there's a code that we know that I can call you and basically make it seem like it's not you that wants to leave. But your police officer brother is giving you advice that you should. Yeah. Well, it's right around. It's right around. If you look at the clock behind you, it's right around seven o'clock in this interview. Right. When this is happening. So there could have been something is a few different scenarios here. It could have been something where, like you said, just like a girlfriend or even a guy would do sometimes where it's like, Hey, um, check in with me in an hour. And you know, if, if I say something on the phone, you say that you have an emergency and you need me to come right away. Right. So they could have had like, don't leave me in there all day. I'm going to go in, but get me out of there. Also could be a scenario where Nick's at home

finds out from his mom or someone or sister that once again, Brooks is down at the police station talking and Nick's like, what is he doing? Because Nick may know more than the detective knows right now. He doesn't want to be implicated. He's going to get himself in trouble. He's trying to play the good guy. He's going to trip himself up. He's going to say too much and this whole thing is going to blow up.

So I got to get him out of there. And then the final scenario, which you might be, I don't know, actually we talk a lot. You might not be that surprised by this, but I will say this as a former police officer, if this were my brother and I believed he was innocent, I would still advise him to have a lawyer present because I know how it goes. So if I, if my brother was innocent for how somehow I knew, and he was in the situation and my mom said, yeah, Matt just went down to the police station. Cause he just wants to help. I probably would be like, dude, what are you doing?

Like you're the prime suspect, dude. You're the, you're the last person to see her alive. You're the guy. There are people who have gone to prison for crimes. They didn't commit. Trust me. It happens. Like you're not last person to see her alive. You're the guy. There are people who have gone to prison for crimes they didn't commit. Trust me, it happens. Like, you're not smarter than the police. Get a lawyer there.

Make sure everything's on the up and up. Just because you have a lawyer, it doesn't mean you're guilty. And that's what I would advise my brother. The problem that I have with this is the way in which it's done, right? Nick knows this is in the middle of an interrogation. Nick is not his attorney. Now, some may say, who cares? It's his brother.

He can do what he wants. But I have an issue with it from that perspective, where it's like you're impeding an active investigation as a police officer in a neighboring community. No, in the same community, basically. Well, same community, but they're not in the same police department. Exactly.

It's a different agency. But they're both the local law enforcement of Bardstown. Yeah, but you're a neighboring police department or a neighboring law enforcement agency. You probably work together on multiple investigations. There's a lot of MOUs probably in place, memorandum of understandings where you do like joint operations together. And you know what's going on right now, and you're impeding that investigation. Whatever you do behind closed doors with your brother and you talk to him about whatever advice you give him, fine. But this is not a good look. You got to stay impartial. You got to stay

objective as an active law enforcement officer within that agency, within that community. Well, the interview with Brooks Houck concluded at around 7 p.m. that evening. And afterwards, Brooks and Nick were coincidentally together at their family farm on Pascal Ballard Lane. They arrived together and they left together at 11.22 p.m. Security camera footage showed the two brothers pulling in and exiting one right after the other. And on July 9th, the following day, a lot happened. But the day started with Detective John Snow of the sheriff's office calling Nick Houck and asking him, hey, can you come in for a chat? But Nick flatly refused. He was like, I ain't got shit to tell you. That same day, Nick testified

before a grand jury and his police cruiser was confiscated. Also on July 9th, Crystal's case was featured on Nancy Grace and Sherry and Tommy Ballard told Nancy that they did not believe Brooks had taken Crystal's disappearance seriously enough, and it had been revealed that he'd taken a polygraph, which was ruled inconclusive. Brooks Houck also spoke to Nancy Grace that day, saying he was 100 percent innocent. Joining me right now, in addition to her parents, Tom and Sherry Ballard, her boyfriend that she lived with, they're in their three bedroom suburban home. Brooks Houck is with us. So Brooks, you go to bed and she's still playing games on her phone. The next morning around eight o'clock, you notice that she's missing. Did you report her missing?

No, ma'am. Why? That is a great question and one that I definitely want to hit the public and the media. I was not in the least little bit alarmed in any way, shape, or form. We have had a stress relationship at times, and one of the ways that Crystal has always chose to the culprit to deal with that is by going to a young woman's name Sabrina that is her cousin her dad's brother's daughter

whom she's very close to And she spent the night there on several occasions when When you say several, do you mean one, three, 20? In the neighborhood of four to six. Okay. Tom and Sherry Ballard, were you aware of that? Do you know who Sabrina is? Yes, ma'am. That's my niece.

Okay. Did you know that she doesn't spend the night over there when she's having an issue at home? I've known probably one time. Right. Okay. an issue at home? I've known probably one time. Right. Okay, I want to go back to Brooks Houck, who was the last person to see her alive. Brooks, did you go on to the July the 4th get-together that day? Yes, I did. Even though you didn't know where she was? I was expecting, I put in a phone call that morning and then around lunch.

And usually the maximum period of time that she has stayed gone has only been like a day to a day and a half at the most. And as a result of that, I thought that she would join us. Did you try to call her? I'm sorry, I didn't hear you, ma'am. Did you try to call her during that time? Not while I was there at the 4th. I called her prior to leaving to head in that direction, yes, ma'am. Some people have accused you of not being involved enough in the search efforts.

What's your response? That is a great question question and one I certainly appreciate you asking me and that is all of my efforts in searching for her have been done behind the scenes with the Nelson County Sheriff's Office. Like what? Detective Snow who's leading the investigation, and Jason Allison, who's a deputy there assisting him, along with the Kentucky State Police Agency Post Number 12. My question was what you had been doing with them, but let me ask you this. I know that you agreed to take a polygraph. Did you pass? They, because of the way that the lines or whatever were on the thing,

they determined it to be what's called inconclusive. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but they did tell me it does mean that I wasn't lying or I didn't pass it or I didn't sell it. They just ruled it inconclusive and that's exactly the way that it stands. I've been 100% completely honest with everyone. I've been 100% cooperative in everything that has been asked of me. I've not asked for any kind of legal advice or assistance or an attorney of any nature. I'm 100% completely innocent in this, and I have exhausted my efforts with the law enforcement agencies to

gather all the facts necessary to allow me to have a clean name again and that's very important to me I have not responded to a lot of the negativity and all this animosity because I want the emphasis to remain on Crystal safe return home and that's where I want it to I remain on Crystal's safe return home. And that's where I want it to stay focused in that area rather than dealing with any of the animosity. Nancy cracks me up, man, because you can tell from the get. She does not believe him.

Yeah, no, she pulls no punches. She's like, what have you been doing? She's like, have you been searching? He's like, I've been doing things. She's like, like what? So, yeah, his lie detector test was inconclusive. On July 15th, Brooks's brother, Nick Houck's home and vehicle were searched by FBI Kentucky State Police, who were suspicious of him for multiple reasons. Number one, the call to his brother on the 8th, as well as his refusal to cooperate with the Nelson County Sheriff's Office in regards to the investigation into Crystal

Rogers' disappearance, and then obviously meeting his brother at the family farm almost directly after the interview concluded on the 8th. So during this interview, Nick was asked if he knew anything about the relationship between Crystal and Brooks, and he claimed that he and his brother did not talk about stuff like that. But as far as he knew they had a good relationship, the only thing he could think that they would argue about is the fact that Crystal felt Brooks treated their child together better than he treated her children. When asked how well he knew Crystal, Nick said he had almost no interaction with her. Nick was then questioned about the call

he had made to Brooks during his interview with Detective John Snow. couple phone calls wasn't it and you know kind of got a little little spat on the phone or it seemed like that to some people what what why did you come out you know just basically i mean brooks is a really cooperative guy and you know obviously at this point you want to be cooperative but you also want to protect yourself and i think at a time like this right here i mean obviously you wouldn't be thinking exactly straight so i just wanted to make sure that he was kind of you know protecting himself why that he cooperated with law enforcement and so i didn't want him to i mean it's just easy to get things confused and stuff and you know so well i mean you know you said yourself he's a cooperative guy and you trust him and to know that he's not involved in this then what reservations would you have

about him talking well for one the guy that's interviewing him has openly admitted that he lies in court okay so i mean that kind of bothered me a little bit that john was doing it but you Damn. Coming after Detective John Snow. Oh, yeah. He came after Detective John Snow. Which I'm sure did not help relations between Nick and the sheriff's department. Now, by the time the state police are talking to Nick, they already know a lot about him. They know that he and Brooks went to the family farm after Brooks's police interview, and they know that he has been refusing to work with the Nelson County Sheriff's Office, which had caused some tension between Nick and his own supervisor at the Bardstown Police Department. When they asked him about the family farm and the night that he and his brother were there, Nick developed the same kind of memory loss that Brooks had experienced

when sitting across from Detective John Snow. When was the last time I guess you and him were out there together? We've been out there within the last couple weeks, you know. I mean we run into each other out there, you know. I mean he takes stuff out there. He's got a pile of stuff out there that you know from his building sites he'll pile it up out there instead of taking it to the landfill and I guess we're just too tight to pay the landfill bill, you know. But we run into each other but we're both so busy we just kind of pass, you know, but we run into each other, but we're both so busy we just kind of pass, you know. Well, you said within the last couple weeks, would it have been before or after Crystal went missing? I've seen him out there after. After? Yeah. Okay, was it,

do you specifically remember what day? I don't. Okay. There's a camera out there, I mean, you know, it can be checked. Okay. Do you drive your cruiser out there? Oh yeah. You said within the last couple of weeks, so we can specifically say in the last week. Today's the 15th and she was last seen on the 3rd, so between the 3rd and the 15th. Yeah. You've been out there with him. Did you go out there together?

Did you meet him out there? No, he was just having to be out there. Do you remember going out to the farm the evening of July 8th? I don't, but I very easily could have been out there. That was incidentally the same night that your brother was interviewed by police. I think back, was there a time that you all both went out there at the same time for a specific reason? Not that I recall. So it just would have been coincidence that your car was following right behind his truck when it passed by that camera going to the farm?

Yeah, that's happened before. So this night in particular, it would have been, you would have left after dark. You all came together and you would have left after dark. Do you remember that night? Easily could have. Okay. I mean, do you remember it? No, really I don't. Okay. Do you remember, did you all, were you all in the skid house? Were you at your mom's talking?

No, I mean I can't even remember what he was doing. I mean, it was the 8th, it's the 15th, I don't. Okay. I mean, do you remember being out there with him at the farm that evening? I think I remember seeing him out there. Okay, so you didn't, you're saying you didn't intentionally follow him out there and did you all leave... do you remember leaving together? Mm-mm. Why did he leave earlier, you leave earlier, do you remember?

I don't have any idea. Did you leave first or did he leave first? I don't know. But you remember, I mean, it's just been a week ago, driving down Pascoe Ballard, your car behind his truck. I mean, you got turned in the front of there. Do you remember? Can you go back and put that in your head, just driving down that road,

and you see your brother in front of you? What happened after that? I can't yeah so they're basically saying hey you guys got there at the same time you left there at the same time but you're telling us this was not pre-planned you just ran into each other the same day that he had his interview after you called him and told him to get out of there and you guys just happened to be at your family farm that night getting there together uh and leaving together and nick's like yep yep, sounds right.

Well, what happened during this, right? There's a definite change in demeanor where Nick realizes I'm not here to speak cop to cop. They're looking at me as a potential accomplice at this point. And you can tell by his answers, he's deliberately doing that yep nope even at the end was his last words nope it just he's telling them fuck you that's what he's saying

that's what he's saying he's like i'm not going to answer your questions now it's going to be i don't know i don't remember and if you got something on me then arrest me but i'm not giving you shit because clearly i know what you're doing and I'm not going for it. And he's clearly not telling them anything because they're asking very simple questions. It's only been a week. What were you there for? We're not talking a month ago. Yeah.

What did you guys talk about when you were there? What did you do last weekend? What did you do? Did you see your mom? Did you guys talk to your mom? He's like, I don't remember. I really just don't remember. Your brother's being interrogated for a potential murder.

It's a very significant time in your life. Yeah. You're going to remember what you were doing and where you are because this isn't just like go into the grocery store, what'd you buy? Yeah. Your brother was just interrogated for a murder that he's a main suspect and or a person of interest. You know why you were over there. And it's weird that they seem to know, Nick and Brooks seem to know that camera's there, but still they decided to show up and leave together.

I don't think they realized how closely law enforcement was monitoring that thing. I don't think they were given enough credit. Until that very moment when he's like, he said, well, what we saw you two is, would that be your truck that was following him behind, directly behind going up to the house? And he's like, he said, well, what we saw you too is, would that be your truck that was following him behind, directly behind going up to the house? And he's like, guess so.

Yep. So that's when he realized like, wow, you guys are really watching us. Like you really think we're all involved. Okay. Well, I'm shutting down now. Because at first when that interview started, that clip that we have, he's talking to him like, hey, listen, man, I don't really like Jon Snow. He's a corrupt cop. He lies in a court.

Like he's like thinking it's brother to brother. We're talking. can understand this yeah yeah you guys get it and then at the end he's like oh you guys think i'm involved okay well yeah you ain't getting just like i was telling my brother you ain't getting shit out of me either now and he does the same thing that brooks does right where they're like you were driving on the road together like right right by. Yeah, that happens all the time. That happens. That's happened before, you know? Yeah. But even Brooks at least was acting a little bit. At this point, at the end of the interview, being a cop, he's just shutting down. Nope, not saying anything. I'm not going to walk out on you. I'm not going to give you that. But I don't remember anything. I don't even remember my own birthday. I honestly don't think he can even help it, honestly. Yeah, no, he's an asshole at this point.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the state police officers also asked Nick about potential blood in the trunk of his police cruiser, right? They're asking about it and they're like, well, what would you have in your police cruiser? And would there be blood in your police cruiser? Would there be a reason your trunk of your police cruiser would be lighting up like Chernobyl? And Nick's like, no, there should be absolutely no reason why there would be blood in my car. And since law enforcement, like I said, has kept a lot about this case very close to the vest, we don't have information about whether or not blood was actually found in Nick's police cruiser.

But this could likely have been an interrogation technique, because honestly, Nick seems to be genuinely like surprised that they're suggesting bloods in his police cruiser. And he's like, absolutely not. There would be no blood in there. And I genuinely don't think that they found blood in the police cruiser because like I said, when the cops searched his house in his truck, the dogs that they brought with them seemed to really be interested in Nick's pickup truck. So if any vehicle was used to transport Crystal's body, allegedly, if that's what happened, I don't think he would have used his police cruiser. So the officers do go a little harder on Nick later in the interview,

basically telling him, hey, we feel you're involved with Crystal's disappearance. We think you're protecting your brother. What we need to know is why y'all both went down to the farm. I know it's going to be hard for you to remember a week ago, but I can remember a week ago if I'm thinking about a conversation I had with my brother and something like this going on. This doesn't go on all the time. So I mean, we're going to call it like it is. Is it you don't want to remember or can you remember? I can't remember. Okay. Because this is what's happened. You made a phone call. He was up here within two hours of him leaving here. Both of y'all were on the road on the way

to the farm. And the camera shows that time and date stamp, phone call, time and date stamp. You're out there. What went on while you're out there at the farm? Yeah, if I knew, I'd tell you. I mean, I wish I could give you a detailed written statement. I don't know. And I didn't put this clip in there, but like even further when he keeps saying, I don't know, I don't know. One of the guys, the guys who's sitting closest to the camera, he's like, you're a cop, dude. I'm a cop. It's kind of our job to like remember details. You know, it's kind of our job to do that.

And this wasn't just a regular day. This was the same day your brother got interviewed by the police police you were upset enough to call and yell at him on the phone we could all hear almost every word you were saying wouldn't this stick out in your head and then nick's like well i mean i'm really bad with details actually if you look at my police notebooks like i have to write everything down because i'll forget and so he's got kind of an answer for everything and then the guy closest to the camera, he's like, I don't believe in coincidences. And if you were like a real cop, you wouldn't either. Basically, like these all of these things happening and lining up this way are not a coincidence. And because you're a good guy, you might be like trying to protect your brother.

But because you're a good guy, you got like one chance, man, like this is the time now to tell us what happened because we don't think you did this, but we definitely think you helped or you know more than you're saying. And we're going to find out. But you might want to like help yourself right now. And Nick, he stayed to die on that hill. Here's what we think happened. We think that your brother is a good guy. And we think that he's probably a pretty good father to that boy.

I mean, he's probably a pretty good boyfriend to Crystal. But we all have times where something just happens. All right, he probably found out that some other police officer or some other person in the town was cracking Crystal. That very easily could have happened. And that very easily could have happened. Somebody may be around here, I don't know.

But we think that that's what happened and your brother found out about it and confronted Crystal about it. And when he did, he probably tried to maybe do something to her as far as, you know, making her understand that that wasn't going to fly with him. And then after that point, you know, maybe it went just a little bit too far. And when it went just a little bit too far, he couldn't turn back time. And when he couldn't turn back time, who's he going to reach out to? But the one person that he trusts and knows that would help him out, and that would be you.

And when he called you or he reached out to you, you heard that your brother was in a tough spot and you being the good family man that you are, the good person that you are, you thought, well, I know this is wrong, but it's also right to take care of my brother and to keep him from going to prison. I can see you looking things in a way, but I mean, that's no way at that point. I mean, I would have told you that, you know, well, at that point, Nick, you know, you talk to him

and he asks you to do something for him and you try to help him out with advice all that you can, but it finally comes to a point where advice isn't good enough anymore. He actually needed somebody to help him with something. And at that point, Nick, that's when you had to actually do something

that you're ashamed of and you're not proud of and you blocked it from your memory because you are ashamed of that. And because you're a good person and you actually have feelings, you block that out in your head. And when you block that out in your head, that's why you're having a problem remembering this stuff. But I know, you know, and Detective Vaughn here knows that something like that happened. And that's exactly what we think happened in this situation. Nick this is the time and place. This is it. This is your one chance. Now Nick, if we find out that this stuff comes back in your trunk or if we find a body, if a hunter finds that body pretty soon,

assuming you know that they do, it's going to be a different game. It's going to be a different ball game at that point, okay, this right now is the first inning. You know, once we find that out, that's closer to the ninth. We got less time to make up ground and change what's on the scoreboard. Because the scoreboard is going to be the same as it would be in the ninth inning, as it would be in the top or the bottom. It's not going to be what it was in the first. All right, we can change the score right now, but we can't later.

So, Nick, this is the only opportunity that we have to sit here and find out if you're the actual honest person that we think that you are I'm 100% honest I don't know that Nick but but you're not being honest with us about this okay whether it's not true and honest well then it's obviously you've got plenty of experience I mean you guys are squared away but I can tell you you, there's no way it happened the way you said it. It sounds logical. It's very logical. Yeah, because it's what happened.

But no, it didn't happen that way. So how do you think the Kentucky State Police are doing interviewing Nick? I like it. It's good. You can't give Nick an opportunity to—so they heated up in that room a little bit because they were giving him opportunities. They were slow playing him. And as I said a few minutes ago, Nick was indirectly telling them to go pound sand. So the state trooper changed it up a little bit, went with the more direct approach. And this is a technique that used to be used. You can't use it anymore. It's similar to what's called the read technique. And it's essentially, you don't give them an out. You tell them, I know you're a good person, but this is what happened. And essentially all I want to know is why you're not even giving them an opportunity to discredit it or, or make, give a dissenting opinion on it. It's this is what happened. And it, it might seem

to the outside people watching this, that it's a little aggressive. He he's stepping on them. Like every time, every time Nick tried to cut in and, and, and, and change the narrative or change the tone or change what was currently being said, the trooper kept pushing forward. No, that's not, this is what happened. You did this, you did that. And he just kept talking over him. And even when he had a point where like, I am an honest guy. No, you are an honest guy, but not right now. So it's a more aggressive approach, but

I think they know that the soft approach isn't working. They're coming at him, letting him know, Hey, listen, we're showing you our cards. We think your brother killed crystal. We think you helped him get away with it. And by the way, if you, if you're not with us, you're against us. So understand this is your one opportunity to get on the right side of this. If you make us do the legwork and we find out what happened to Crystal, don't come to us afterwards looking for a deal. So I like it. But Nick doesn't seem phased by it. I think he is.

You think he is? Oh, yeah. Or do you think he's like familiar with what they're doing and he kind of knows like. Well, he knows it's a tactic, but I think he also knows like there's a i i'm not saying this for just this podcast right i have had situations before where i think one thing it turns out that's not what happened even though that's the logical situation right so i'm not just saying it to qualify there is a world i'm less inclined to believe that there's a world that brooks't involved, right? But there is a world that the brother was less involved than we think. Now there's a lot more to this story

involving other people that may change the minds of people out there and may even have changed my mind, right? Because of what has been said publicly by prosecutors about Nick, but we're not there yet. Looking at it where we are right now, there is a world where maybe, maybe Brooks does this and doesn't tell his brother and his brother's genuinely trying to help him out and facilitate this whole situation. Because as far as he knows, even though he might think in the depths of his soul, I think my brother did this, but Brooks has never admitted it to him. So he's still trying to, he's still trying to help his brother out. Even though he has internal thoughts that suggest to him, Brooks is good for this because

he's a cop and he understands how it looks. So I think it's phasing him either way because he's looking at it two ways. One, he's involved and he's like, shit, this is not going to end well. I know this is a tactic, but it's also, there's some truth to it. Or he's thinking, man, I truly don't know what happened, but these guys think I'm good for it as well. And I'm, I, this could end up bad for me, even if just by, just by association. So, but I definitely think don't let it fool you. He's phased by this. Any human being would be because whether you're guilty or not, it doesn't really matter. These cops think you are.

Yeah, and they're accusing you now. Like straight out, right? That's not good. That's not good. You know what I mean? That's bad. Especially, even worse if you're innocent. Because they're telling you to your face, we think you're involved.

But listen, it gets worse for Nick. Oh yeah. Yes, it does. Yes, it does. On July 24th, the FBI administered a polygraph test to Nick Houck. You know who they are? The FBI. They're above the state police.

The things are getting real. They were like, local police couldn't do it. State police couldn't do it. Let's bring in the feds. Yeah. And he failed. He failed his polygraph. And so here's a clip of Nick Houck talking to a very cheeky polygraph examiner.

You love this guy, this polygrapher. I love this guy. And just real quick before we play it, this is where my brain was off. It was Nick who failed it and it was Brooks who came in because I thought someone failed it. I knew someone failed the poly. It was Nick. Nick failed it. But he's going through the stages of denial in this clip.

This is a good clip. All right. For a while, and I'm trying to be punny, but it's crystal clear, right, what happened here. Now, the details of who did what when, can I tell you exactly? No, but I can demonstrably point out through forensic evidence already that things that you told us about where you were at various times are demonstrably not true. We can prove in front of a jury today. You can deny, deny, deny, and that's fine. That's what people do.

That's what you've done at this point. It's human nature. You know, when people are asked questions about a matter such as this, they immediately circle the wagons and start to, well, self-preservation, we all do that. Let me just cut you off. I mean, do we need to take this any further? I would like to take it to the truth. That's the whole reason we're here.

I guess the cut is a test, though. I mean, you're talking crazy. I mean, you're talking crazy. Was that your rehearsed response to what was going to happen today? Because it sure sounds like it. I don't know what it sounds like. I'm just telling you. I'm telling you what it is. you're talking crazy. Was that your rehearsed response to what was going to happen today? Because it sure sounds like it. I don't know what it sounds like. I'm just telling you. I'm telling you what it is.

You're talking crazy. What's crazy about it? Explain to me. The accusations you're making. Yeah, I'm saying you're involved in this. Absolutely not. Well, you've already told me that. That's why we did the polygraph to find out.

Well, now we both know. I told you what now? You told me before you had nothing to do with it. Yes. Well now we're past that because I've already shown that you did have something to do with it. I don't know what the test is. I just showed you.

I just showed it to you. But I'm telling you I did have... And I'm telling you you're lying. I mean I can't make it any... I'm not trying to hurt your feelings with it. I'm just telling you the truth. That's what I'm doing to you. I'm telling you the truth.

No, you're not. We're past that. I've already shown you. I've taken the polygraph. do you have anything else for me because i'm not going to sit here and we're not going to go back and forth like this well you haven't been completely truthful about things not just kind of just kidding i haven't been completely true about a couple i've been 100 percent real listen what i'm saying you listen to what i'm saying i've been 100 percent true yeah i mean well because you're telling me i'm lying and i know

i'm not i know the truth you know and i've been 100 percent honest. What are you yelling at me? Well, because you're telling me I'm lying and I know I'm not. I know the truth, you know? And I've been 100% honest. You don't know the truth. With you, the grand jury, and everybody else I've spoken with. No, you haven't. Here's what I'm getting at. Yes, I have. No, you haven't.

I most definitely have. And if you don't want to believe it, that's your issue. It's not mine. It's not just me. I showed you. Dude, I don't give a goddamn what your fucking computer said, okay? I think you do. I'm telling you that I have been 100% honest with you. Dude, I don't give a goddamn what your fucking computer said. Okay? I think you do. I'm telling you that I have been 100% honest with you.

Is this how you act when you act this way towards Crystal? Is this how I act toward Crystal? I act toward people that accuse me of lying when I'm not lying. Did you hear that? No, I didn't know Crystal. Then why are you getting so angry? You would love this guy. I'm dying because he's like like i don't care what your goddamn

machine says he goes i think you do all like calm and stuff and it was funny because at the end which i didn't really notice until because i've seen this clip a million times but he says i didn't know crystal which is a weird thing to say about the girlfriend of your brother who they have a mother of your nephew. Yeah. And almost three year old child together. So she's at least been around you for three years. What do you mean you didn't know Crystal? You didn't know Crystal?

Awkward. But he's pissed. Right. And I mean, to be fair, me in his position, I'd be pissed at this dude this dude too because i feel like i've had conversations like this before yeah you better not be defending this polygrapher because you're the biggest proponent of like lie detectors are not good they're not great so you should all people should be like maybe nick's telling the truth i'm not defending him he's hilarious but you are saying that nick might be telling the truth here right no i don't think nick's telling the truth but is

it possible the polygraph machine could be wrong yes but i don't think nick's telling the truth here right no i don't think nick's telling the truth but is it possible the polygraph machine could be wrong yes but i don't think nick's telling the truth but i think it's hilarious because it's an interrogation tactic and that's what they're doing if he's trying to piss this dude off yeah and he did it very easily and very quickly yeah but nick at points is like are you not listen what is going on Like he's he goes from being like super confused to getting like slightly frustrated to just all out like he just wants to smack the guy. Real pissed. Yeah. Yeah. I think you do. It cracked me up. So he fails his polygraph. He's mad and he's going to get more mad because a few months later on September 9th, Bardstown police chief Rick McCubbin gave Nick Houck a suspension letter calling for his eventual termination from the police force.

A month later, on October 15th, a hearing was held in the mayor's office to determine if Nick should be fired. And during this hearing, both Detective John Snow and Chief McCubbin were questioned by representatives from the city and by Nick's attorneys. McCubbin said that when he'd heard about what happened with Nick's call to Brooks during his police interview and then Nick's refusal to cooperate with the sheriff's office, he'd called Nick into his office and basically was like, what are you doing, man? Like, work with them. He said he gave him basically a direct order to help with the investigation and talk to Detective John Snow. But Nick again refused, saying he had nothing that could help with the detectives and that it wasn't his place to even do so. McCubbin said, quote, we have to let that agency determine that because we don't know what they have and what they don't have, end quote. Basically saying, like, this is not our investigation. And even though we're all law enforcement,

we all work in the same area, the sheriff's office isn't telling us what evidence they have, what they've collected during their investigation. So if they need to talk to you and they feel that it's relevant to talk to you, that's not your decision whether or not they need to. The chief also said that police officers have an oath and a duty to cooperate, and he felt that Nick had an ultimate disregard for the NCSO investigation, stating, quote, it was almost as if they had to beg a police officer to cooperate. That's not acceptable, end quote. McCubbin requested that Nick Houck be fired,

claiming his actions had caused a stain of dishonor on himself, on the police department, and on the city as a whole. And he said, quote, Nick just does not need to be a police officer. He's violated everything we stand for in law enforcement, end quote. The mayor, John Royalty, agreed, and Nick was fired the following day with Royalty stating that Nick had displayed a troubling tendency when he claimed he couldn't remember details about questions he was being asked. On October 16th, Sheriff Ed Mattingly announced publicly for the first time that Brooks

Houck was a suspect in Crystal's disappearance, and his department believed that she was no longer alive. And although the search for Crystal would go on and multiple searches would be done on the Houck family farm, no progress was made in the investigation and no one was arrested or charged. But that would change in December of 2015. There you are. And there's a lot, there's still a lot more to go. Yeah, a lot. We're just scratching the surface. And because I already know where this is going, usually I'll give my thoughts on what I'm feeling at this moment.

Yeah. We covered a lot. It's a long episode. There's a lot of video and audio in there. So I'm ready to wrap it up. We're going to be off. We're going to get a, I like to call it a week off, a little vacation, but you and I both know that's not a vacation for us. We got a lot of other things that we still have to do, for everybody out there enjoy your halloween enjoy trick-or-treating with your family and friends and i highly suggest during our time off you guys can go on youtube and watch these interviews with both brooks with both brooks and nick hauck because there's a lot more like i couldn't obviously put itck because there's a lot more. Like I couldn't obviously put it out,

but there's a lot of gems in there. Yeah, there's a lot. Yeah. But back to what I was talking about, which is a lot more fun. Enjoy trick-or-treating. If you do that. And above all,

travel in groups, stay safe, well-lit areas, right? Don't be out too, too late. Make sure if you're a parent, you're checking your kid's candy before they eat it. How is this more fun, dude?

This is ominous. This is what we're about here. Making sure our viewers and listeners stay safe out there. That's what I'm concerned about. So that's all I got. I'm excited about getting back into this after our little break from this and keep it rolling. Yeah. And who knows? Because new information is coming out about this case every day since it is just basically unraveling as we speak. So by the time we're recording again,

there could just be tons more to talk about. There was a major announcement at the bail hearing, I believe. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There was the bail hearing. I'm not going to say it here. I have Google Alerts for it now, so I'm getting all the tea. Try not to look it up, but it was a bombshell and something that no one- He said try not to look it up, but it was a bombshell. It was.

It was because I've never seen someone do what they did. That's all I'm going to say. Now they're going to look it up, man. They were going to look it up anyways. This is not a great case, but a really fascinating case. Yeah, don't look it up. Don't look it up, but it They were going to look it up anyways. This is a great, this is not a great case, but a really fascinating case. Yeah. Don't look it up. Don't look it up.

But it's a good one. I hate a spoiler. I do. I like things to go my way. I hate a spoiler. I like things to go the way I see them going in my head. You know? That's my take.

I got to tell you, my takeaway from this episode is you do not like me knowing the case. No, that's not true. I like it. I like it because then we can talk about it off camera. And I'm like, I feel like because I like I like when I'm into these cases, I like to have somebody to chat about them with and nobody wants to do that with me. So when you know about the case, I can be like, oh, shit, and call you and then you can like contribute. But during the recording, when you're trying to like throw things in and throw a curveball in the linear story that I have created and spend a lot of time creating.

Yeah. Not my favorite thing. Yeah. I can see that. Control freak. Got it. Yeah. Okay.

Any final words from you? We're good. I think that's it. Happy Halloween, everybody. You got some Halloween episodes coming out when our week off? I have. Uh-huh. Yep.

I have a couple more coming out before the end of the month. Yep. So you guys, for those of you who aren't already following Stephanie, which I'm sure is not that many of you, but got other, you can have still, you can have detective perspective too. So you're going to have Halloween videos, a detective perspective episode. So plenty of content. We're just taking the week off from crime weekly and it's honestly. Are you doing a Halloween detective perspective? You know, I don't think I am. I think we're going to be doing a case on, we're going to be doing an indigenous women episode where we're going to cover multiple Indigenous women who the cases just haven't been covered a lot, been getting some suggestions for it.

So I'm going to put a couple of those in on one episode. Well, I accept this then. Okay, cool. I'm glad you accepted it. All right, guys, as always, we appreciate you joining us here on Crime Weekly. If you're not already, make sure you comment, like, subscribe to the channel. If you're listening on audio, leave a rating, leave a review. We'd like to check it out. That's the only way we're going to grow. If you're watching in silence and you're

not clicking those little buttons for some reason, the algorithm doesn't recommend it, doesn't suggest it to others, we can't grow and get this message out there. So we really appreciate it. And I will tell you this, and this is something I probably should have said at the top of the show. There has been announcement by Moxie Forensics, okay? Criminal Coffee. We started a very long time ago with the idea of Criminal Coffee was to fund cases and ultimately help solve them. Well, the first case that we decided to work on was Preble Penny. Without saying too much, there will be a press conference November 17th with an update on Preble Penny. And it's a big one. I'll tell you that. It's not just a, hey, here we are right now. It's a big update. You don't want to miss it. I'm working on

it right now to see if it's going to be live streamed. I may even be at the press conference. I don't know yet. I'm trying to work on it. But if I'm not there, we're going to be live streamed. I may even be at the press conference. I don't know yet. I'm trying to work on it. But if I'm not there, we're going to still live stream it if we can. Stephanie and I will probably hop on if we're available. We can watch it with you guys. But November 17th, mark your calendars.

Big announcement coming for Preble Penny. That's all I got. Everyone stay safe out there. We will see you soon. Bye.