Dateline NBC - A verdict in Kentucky's "trial of the decade." Snapchat messages on the stand. Plus, Josh Mankiewicz drops by.

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

In Kentucky, emotions ran high as the jury returned a verdict in the Crystal Rogers murder case a decade after she disappeared. In Iowa, Snapchat messages take center stage at the trial of a woman accused of murdering her husband. Closing arguments in the murder trial of MLB pitcher Dan Serafini and a sentencing date for Sean Diddy Combs. Plus, Josh Mankiewicz tells us what it was like reporting on the missing person’s case of someone he might actually have met. Find out more about the cases covered each week here: www.datelinetruecrimeweekly.com Learn more about the Nancy Snow case and Season 4 of Missing in America: https://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/cold-case-spotlight/nancy-snow-mysterious-annapolis-disappearance-rcna178477

Good morning. It's the start of another workday for the Dateline team. He was somewhere else, so he's been totally cleared. Our producers are catching up on breaking crime news around the country. We spoke to the prosecution this weekend. They're going to have a determination later today. He fails a polygraph, which is, you know, never great. He wanted to walk out of the courthouse.

Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's July 10th, and here's what's on our docket. In Iowa, Snapchat messages take center stage at the trial of a woman accused of murdering her husband. She wishes that he would get hit by a semi truck at one point. In Dateline Roundup, a pretrial twist for a Colorado dentist, closing arguments in the murder trial of former Major League Baseball player Dan Serafini. And when will Sean Diddy Combs learn his fate?

In a joint letter, both the prosecution and the defense have agreed to the judge's proposed sentencing date. Plus, Josh Mankiewicz will be here to tell us what it was like reporting on a missing persons case involving someone he might actually know. It was a walk down memory lane, trying to look through my old notebooks, trying to find out whether I'd written down Nancy Snow's name somewhere. Before all that, we're heading to a Kentucky courtroom

where emotions were running high this week as a jury decided the fate of two men accused in the murder of missing mom of five, Crystal Rogers. Crystal Rogers went missing a decade ago just before the Fourth of July. Within days of her disappearance, her car was found abandoned on the Bluegrass Parkway with the keys in the ignition and her phone in person side. Her body has never been found. Eight years later, Crystal's former boyfriend, Brooks Hauk, was arrested for her murder and accused of trying to cover it up with the help of one of his employees, a man by the

name of Joseph Lawson. According to investigators, it was Lawson who dumped Crystal's car on the parkway, and he was criminally charged too, with conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with evidence. Both men pleaded not guilty and over the past three weeks, they stood trial together. Their defense was a simple one without a body. Where's the proof a crime even occurred? On Tuesday, the jury got the case. Dateline producer Rachel White was on verdict watch in the Bowling Green courthouse and is here to tell us all about what happened. Rachel, welcome back to the podcast.

Thanks, Andrea. So Rachel, I know you've spent a lot of time there. What was the atmosphere like in the courtroom as the case was winding down? Of course, this trial was a long time coming for many people. Yeah, the courtroom was completely full. By the time we got to closing arguments, people were being turned away. And on that day, we also saw one of the key players that we haven't seen in court before, Brooks' mother, Rosemary. And as we've talked about on the podcast,

prosecutors have called her an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. She had not been in the courtroom for the trial up to that point, so it was noticed that she showed up that day. Let's talk about closing arguments, Rachel. The defense was up first. And this case was uncommon in that the defendants were being tried at the same time.

So each had their own attorney give a closing argument. How did that go and what did they say? Yeah. So Joseph Lawson's lawyer was up first and he called him collateral damage in this case and said that he was only brought into it because he's the only possible link between Brooks Halk and Steve Lawson. Steve Lawson is Joseph's father, who if you remember was found guilty in May of conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with evidence in Crystal's disappearance. Joseph's attorney argued in his closing argument

that Brooks, who he called a, quote, sophisticated businessman, wouldn't have trusted Joseph and his father with this important job of moving Crystal's car because both Steve Lawson and Joseph Lawson were known to have substance abuse issues. Okay. And Brooks' house defense attorney also gave his closing argument. Did it differ a lot from Lawson's? It did because Brooks's attorney, Brian Butler, really kind of went point by point throughout his closing argument

to talk about the evidence that was presented. And he argued that police were giving marching orders to get Brooks Hauck years ago. And he argued that there was no forensic evidence, no DNA evidence that pointed to Brooks killing Crystal at all. The defense had an explanation for inconsistencies in Halk's story, which the prosecution had really hammered on. So during the first week of the trial, the prosecution called witnesses to help disprove what Brooks Halk wrote in his statement to police about his whereabouts the day that Crystal went missing. Some of the businesses that he had reported dealing with that day were actually closed due to it being the 4th of July holiday weekend, and so those people denied seeing him

that day. So prosecutors said that Brooks was actually at his family farm where they believed that Crystal was killed for the majority of that day and that he minimized that in his statement to police. During the closing argument, Brian Butler, Brooks' attorney, also said that Brooks was listing people he needed to meet with instead of people that he actually met with. So that was him trying to clear that up. And then Butler also pointed out that if Brooks was doing something nefarious on his family farm, they've never found any

evidence to support that. And the farm has been searched over and over again over the years. The prosecution went second in this case, delivering their closing arguments. What did they want to leave with the jury? The prosecutor Shane Young started off by arguing that the main evidence against Brook Halk were his own words. And just as in the prosecution's opening statement, there was some focus on Brooks' mother and brother, both of whom have never been charged in this case. Brooks' mother, Rosemary, had made statements about wanting to get rid of Crystal,

according to one witness, and his brother is a former police officer who, the prosecution pointed out, was trained in crime scenes and evidence collection. And that's the elephant in the room, right? Crystal's disappearance, her body has never been found, which always makes things harder for the prosecution to prove murder. Did they address that in their closing argument? Yes.

Shane Young spoke about Brooks' behavior after Crystal's disappearance. He pointed out that he only called her twice and did not try to find her. He was saying that it was because Brooks knew that there was no sense in looking for Crystal. He also said that he ignored texts from her children who were asking him where their mom was. And Young said that if Crystal did not come home from the Halk family farm that night in July 2015, then Brooks Halk was guilty of her murder. This case went to the jury on Tuesday morning and just after lunch that afternoon, there was a verdict. Rachel, give it to us.

Both guilty. It was about four hours of deliberation, so relatively fast when you have two defendants on trial. Crystal's family was in tears leaving the courtroom. The judge did ask everyone to not react in the moment. So I think that there was a lot of effort going into that to keep the courtroom silent and respect the jury's decision. But I did look over and see her mother bless herself. I think that she was really emotional in that moment.

Yeah. The detective who led the investigation got emotional too, right? He did. These people have been working on this case since 2015, we're in 2025. It has been a long time that they have been thinking about Crystal, looking for Crystal, investigating her disappearance. She had five children that she left behind.

So I think there were just a lot of people who really wanted to get some answers for her children. Yeah, I'm sure a lot of healing to do in the years to come. After the verdict, the jury also recommended what the sentence should be for both men. Rachel, what did they decide? So they recommended the maximum sentence, life in prison for Brooks Hauck, and they

recommended 20 years in prison for Joseph Lawson for his conspiring to commit murder charge and lesser sentences for both men with the tampering of physical evidence. And the final sentencing will happen later this summer, August 21st. Thank you so much, Rachel. Thank you. Coming up, the Snapchat messages between a farmer's widow and the man investigators say was her lover. Do they prove she was a killer too? In the early hours of June 18th, 2021,

Karina Cooper called 911 in hysterics. She said she'd found her husband Ryan dead in the living room of their Iowa farmhouse. Sheriff's deputies raced to the scene and found Karina on top of Ryan's body covered in his blood. He'd been shot execution style, but there was no sign of a gun, just one shell casing on the living room floor. After she calmed down, Karina told investigators she'd heard loud noises in the night and suspected an intruder had murdered Ryan.

Years went by with no arrest. Then in 2024, investigators got what they considered a huge break in the case. They recovered Snapchat messages between Karina and a man named Houston Danker, evidence they believe of a murder plot. They arrested Karina for her husband's murder and this week she is standing trial in a Cedar Rapids courtroom She has pleaded not guilty here to bring us up to speed and give us more details on the contents of those Snapchats is Dateline producer Keith Greenberg. Hey Keith. Hey Andrea. So you're in Iowa

You've been following this give us some background on Karina and her husband Ryan Cooper, what do we know about them and their relationship? Well, they've been together about 15 years and Ryan comes from a very well-respected family in the area. The family's been farming for generations. Likewise, Karina comes from a lovely family. On the surface, they seem like a dream match. And so to many, this seemed

to truly come out of nowhere. Take us into the courtroom for the prosecution's opening statement. Why did they think she killed Ryan? What was her motive, did they say? Well, prosecutors contend she had this much younger boyfriend, Houston Danker. And there was also a $500,000 insurance policy. Apparently, Karina was in some debt and if the prosecution is to be believed, this would be a way for her to discard debt and discard a husband she was no longer happy with.

Karina's defense had their turn with their opening statement. What did they want to get across to the jury? Well, one of the defense lawyers, she kept the opening extremely succinct, less than two minutes long. Houston Danker killed Ryan Cooper. Houston Danker shot Ryan Cooper in the face. The defense claims that Karina never intended to kill Ryan, that she was unhappy and griped

to Houston, and Karina was caught up in this dream world that, to use a cliché, turned into a nightmare. They also addressed the insurance, the life insurance payout in the opening statement? Yes, they did. The defense claims that that payout goes into a trust for the children, and there was no financial gain that she would have from this. All right, so the prosecution called a witness who is a digital forensic investigator to talk about these Snapchat messages that we mentioned. They're really important to the prosecution's case, right, Keith?

I mean, the prosecution's case hinges on it, I believe. These Snapchat messages tell a story. There's a lot of complaining about Ryan. She wishes that he would get hit by a semi truck at one point. Karina fantasizes about Euston Danker, essentially just filling in for Ryan and becoming a father to their children. And Keith, as we know, Snapchat is one of those apps, the messages are supposed to disappear once the person reads them. But as we know from working at Dateline, just because it says they're going to disappear doesn't mean they're going to truly disappear. Right.

They disappear on the screen. And you know, there were a number of Google searches in which Karina is asking, will my messages truly be deleted? No. Yeah, no. The answer is no. So one of the biggest revelations, Keith, that came out was that Houston and Karina were messaging before Karina called 911. Houston

banker sent an additional message. What was the time of that message? At 3 31 55 in the morning. What message did he send to Karina Cooper? Remember those casings. Remember those. No ifs and or buts. She responded 14 seconds later. What did she say? Absolutely. 100%. Danker sends this message to remember to pick up the shell casings. As fate would have it, pick up the shell casings. As fate would have it, one shell casing was left behind and the investigators found it. Who else has testified for the prosecution so far? I'd say the strongest witnesses on a human level so far

have been the friends of the couple. Ryan's best friend said he loved Karina as a sister, but mentioned that Karina had a very bad temper, especially when alcohol was involved. Will Karina be mean to Ryan Cooper? She would be upset with him at times, yes. Do you recall some threads that she made when you were there? I hate you. I wish you were dead. Obviously the big one you're thinking of is we were

in his shop one night and she said I could shoot you in the face, which was surprising. Some people talk in exaggerated ways, but the way he died, it puts that comment in a different light. Keith, let's circle back to Houston Danker. Karina denies having an affair with him. He has denied the affair as well. He is also charged with Ryan Cooper's murder and he has his own trial scheduled in mid-August. He has pleaded not guilty. What do prosecutors allege was his role in the murder versus Karina's role?

It's believed that Houston Danker is the one who pulled the trigger. Word got back to the investigators after a while that Houston Danker had given a.22 to a buddy not long after the murder. And it was pretty easy to track that friend down. And the friend handed over the gun. And when they brought it to the firing range, lo and behold, the match the shell casing found on the ground. Houston also made quite an incriminating search on his phone according to the prosecution. It read, how to positively get away with murder. Do you believe that the defense is going to say that Carina was somehow under Houston's

spell and that it was all his idea? Yeah, that's exactly what I think the defense is. And I'm curious to see which witnesses they call. All right, Keith, thank you so much for bringing us your insight into this trial and what's been going on. We very much appreciate it. Thank you, Andrea. Up next, it's time for Dateline Roundup. A house catches fire on the eve of a Colorado dentist's murder trial, while former Major League Baseball player Dan Serafini's trial comes to a close. And Sean Diddy Combs gets a sentencing date.

Plus, Josh will be here with details of his latest reporting for Dateline Missing in America, the disappearance 45 years ago of campaign worker Nancy Snow. Welcome back, everyone. Joining me for this week's roundup is Dateline producer Mike Nardi. Welcome back, Mike. Hi, Andrea. Thanks for having me. For our first story, we're off to Colorado and the murder trial of dentist James Craig,

who was accused of killing his wife, Angela, in 2023 by putting poison in her protein shakes. Jury selection is expected to start soon, but Mike, earlier this week, we weren't sure that would happen after a big twist in this case that really none of us saw coming. That's right, Andrea. One of his attorneys, Robert Working, was arrested last week on suspicion of arson. According to the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office, Working was found sitting on the porch

outside his Centennial Colorado home as it burned to the ground behind him. Two days after his arrest, Working withdrew from Craig's case. It's so bizarre. So what's wild about this, Mike, is that this wasn't the first time one of Craig's attorneys has withdrawn from the case at a critical moment. That's right, that's right. Back in November,

Craig's previous attorney also withdrew. He did that on the day jury selection was set to begin. That attorney claimed that new information revealed in discovery left him no choice but to withdraw. Craig's trial was delayed, which brought us to this week. And we should say James Craig has pleaded not guilty. And we will certainly be keeping a close eye on this. Our coverage of the trial will begin next week, assuming there are no more surprises. Up next, closing arguments got underway earlier this week in the murder trial of former Major League Baseball pitcher Dan Serafini.

He is the man accused of attacking his in-laws at their Lake Tahoe home, killing his father-in-law, Gary Spore, and seriously injuring his mother-in-law, Wendy Wood. Mike, talk us through those closing arguments. What did the prosecution hit on? So the prosecution began by showing photos of the bloody crime scene before walking through the events in the day prior and the day of the attack. The prosecutor then showed security camera footage of who they claimed to be Dan Serafini walking into the home. As we saw the prosecution lay out their case these past several weeks, they alleged that

Serafini's motive for killing his in-laws was long-standing family tension and big financial troubles. Did that come up during the closing argument? It did. It did. Some of those profanity-laced emails written by Serafini to his in-laws were read aloud. Then the prosecutor looked at Serafini, pointed his finger at him, and called him a murderer. Of course, the defense got their turn to give their closing arguments. Mike, what did they

have to say? Well, they pointed towards some of what they considered to be indisputable evidence of Serafini's innocence. The defense said Serafini, who was 6'3", couldn't be the same person in the video because an FBI agent said the person was 6'2". He also brought up Samantha Scott's testimony on the stand, his alleged accomplice saying she gave a made-up testimony to get a plea deal. The case is now in the hands of the jury, so we'll be watching for the outcome of their deliberations.

And finally, we have music mogul Sean Combs. He had a remote hearing scheduled for this week. It comes after his federal trial came to an end last week with a split verdict. The jury acquitted him of the most serious charges, racketeering and sex trafficking, but convicted him on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. So Mike, that hearing never happened? It did not happen. They were supposed to talk about the sentencing date, but in a joint letter, both the prosecution and the defense have agreed to the judge's

proposed sentencing date, which is October 3rd, 2025. So Sean Combs now faces a maximum sentence of 20 years, though federal sentencing guidelines indicate could be a shorter sentence. Right. Typically, federal judges don't assign the maximum sentence. But based on preliminary calculations, prosecutors say a penalty range of four to five years is likely. But that doesn't stop them from asking for more time. According to Combs' defense team, their calculations bring the sentence range closer to two years.

And Mike Combs will remain behind bars until the sentencing hearing, I'm assuming? Yeah. The trial judge has denied his release on bail, partly because of his own admissions of domestic violence during the trial. Okay, big week. Thanks for all this information, Mike. Good to talk to you. Yeah. Thanks, Andrea. Thanks for having me. For our final story, we're heading back in time to 1980. The year Ronald Reagan was elected president and 44-year-old campaign worker Nancy Snow suddenly vanished. 1980 was also the year Josh Mankiewicz was an up-and-coming reporter in Washington, D.C.

And he believes he may have crossed paths with Nancy at some point. I had a strong sense when I heard her name that I had met your mom. Wow. People talk a lot about six degrees of separation. It turned out there are fewer than that between Nancy Snow and myself. I'm Josh Mankiewicz and this is Missing in America, a podcast from Dateline. Josh and his team decided to dig into the decades-long mystery of what happened to Nancy for his latest season of Dateline Missing in America.

And he is here now to tell us what they found out. Welcome back to the show, Josh. Hi, Andrea. So take us back to November 1980. This was the last time Nancy was seen. Yeah, it was election day and the day right after. Nancy worked for the Republican National Committee and she had been assigned to a Senate race in Missouri. They didn't win that race,

but the Senate tipped over that year and went from Democrat to Republican, and also Reagan beat Jimmy Carter. So it was a huge victory for Republicans nationally. There was a big party election night at a hotel outside Baltimore that she apparently was in attendance at. And then that next morning is when it happens. She leaves the hotel and there was this guy she knew who had, she dated a little bit named Paul Collins and he had been house sitting for her in her apartment in Annapolis. And he picked her up.

That's his story. That moment appears to be the last time Nancy was seen alive. Josh, at that time, no one had cell phones. This is where you used landlines to call each other, but you found that Nancy was in constant communication with her daughters. She called them, she wrote them letters.

We have her letters. This was also the era of, you know, recording a cassette tape for somebody. You're too young for this, but we used to do that. And you know, you'd tell somebody what you'd been up to that summer and mail them the cassette tape and then they'd listen to it for a half hour. So you know, she did stuff like that. Nancy was not somebody who was out of touch for very long.

And so when she didn't call her family, that's what made people think something's wrong, because that was something she wouldn't do. Josh, you brought up the house sitter, this man named Paul Collins. One of the daughters says that he told them that Nancy had gone on a boat trip? Nancy had told people in the latter stages of the 1980 campaign that she wanted to change her life. And one of the things she talked about doing was maybe working on a sort of ocean-going yacht in the Caribbean, maybe being a cook on a boat for hire

or a crew member. Her friend, her house sitter, Paul Collins, said that she had been at a bar, she'd met this guy named Captain Jay, that's all he was known as, and he'd said, "'Oh yeah, I need somebody right now to work on this boat that I'm going to be getting on in Fort Lauderdale. And Paul Collins says, Nancy got into this van with some other people and off she went

to Fort Lauderdale to start this new life working on boats. Nancy So my dad did call and talk to Paul Collins, and he said that my mom had gone on this boat trip, and she'll be home by Christmas. Christmas came and went, and Nancy had not returned. Josh, this story was personal to you. Well, I mean, the interesting thing about this is that when I heard Nancy Snow's name,

when we were first talking about what stories to cover in season four of Missing in America, there was something about her name that seemed familiar to me and there was something about her photograph that seemed familiar to me. And in 1980, I was working for ABC as an off-air reporter and I was covering the House and Senate races. So it's extremely likely that Nancy Snow and I were in the same room at some time or at the same briefing, the same event. I'm not saying we knew each other, but did I meet her? It's possible that I did.

You've done four seasons of Missing in America now. How does it feel doing one where you go back in time personally, when you were just starting out? It was a walk down memory lane trying to look through my old scripts from back then and my old address book, my old notebooks trying to find out whether I'd written down Nancy Snow's name somewhere. She's not in it. But it was, look, it was, you know, it's a walk down memory lane is what it is.

Josh, this case is active. It has a detective assigned to it, Corporal William Noel, you interviewed him. This can't be easy looking into this all these years later. Look, you know, I mean, all of the sort of traditional methods of solving crimes that we now kind of take for granted weren't available then. So it's old fashioned shoe leather reporting, which involves finding witnesses and getting

their story on the record. And you know, that much time goes by, people's recollections fade. Even well-meaning people tell different stories over time or something else occurs to them. Sometimes time can be your friend as well as your enemy in those things. So at the beginning of every Missing in America episode, Josh, you ask our listeners to listen closely. What do you want to say to people listening about this case? First of all, the thing I want to say is if you know anything about this, this is the

time to talk about it because it's been 45 years and her family needs answers in this. So if anybody knows anything, this is a wonderful time to call an Apple police. Yeah. Do it for her family. Do it for her daughters. Thank you so much, Josh. What a fascinating story and to hear your personal perspective. For the full story, Josh's episode, The Cold Case of Nancy Snow is out wherever you get your podcasts. And we'll have a link in our episode description where you can learn more about Nancy's case. Thanks for joining us, Josh.

Thank you. That's it for this episode of Dateline True Crime Weekly. To get ad-free listening for all our podcasts, subscribe to Dateline Premium. And coming up this Friday on Dateline, you can watch my brand new episode on the trial of Shawn Combs. I'll be talking to insiders at the center of the case and the center of Combs' world about what they saw. He told me, like, if something happens, I'm gonna have to, like, you know, do something to you.

And what's next for the Music Mogul? Thanks for listening. Dateline True Crime Weekly is produced by Frannie Kelly and Katie Ferguson. Our associate producers are Carson Cummins and Caroline Casey. Our senior producer is Liz Brown-Kuruloff. Production and fact checking help by Terry Dickerson. Veronica Mazaka is our digital producer. Rick Kwan is our sound designer.

Original music by Jesse McGinty. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer of Dateline. Thank you, man.