Dateline NBC - The Crystal Rogers case at trial. Karen Read prosecution wrapping up. And a lawyer on objections.

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Almost a decade after Kentucky mom of five Crystal Rogers went missing, the first of three men charged in connection with her death goes to trial. The prosecution in the Karen Read case calls their final witness -- an accident reconstructionist. Updates on former MLB pitcher Dan Serafini and "Rust" movie armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed. Plus, NBC News Legal Analyst Danny Cevallos breaks down when lawyers can -- and can't -- object in court.Find out more about the cases covered each week here: www.datelinetruecrimeweekly.com

Good morning. You're listening in to Dateline's morning meeting here at 30 Rockefeller Center. This is a curtain raiser for that other child. Our producers are catching up on breaking crime news around the country, swapping tips and story ideas. I was going to ask if we had any boots on the ground. Is this one in Mississippi? Yes.

With the gold bars? Yes. Silver bars? Okay. Welcome to gold bars? Yes. Silver bars? Okay. Welcome to Dateline True Crime Weekly. I'm Andrea Canning. It's May 29th and here's what's on our docket. In Detah, Massachusetts, the prosecution calls on a final witness to close out its case

against Karen Reed. This is the man who's dealing with the heart of the whole case. Did that Lexus hit John O'Keefe? In Dateline Roundup, we've got updates on the murder trial of former Major League Baseball pitcher Dan Serafini and the case of a crypto king now facing charges of torturing a man to get his Bitcoin password. And a postscript to the fatal shooting on the set of Alec Baldwin's movie Rust. According to the New Mexico Corrections Department, she will be on parole in the manslaughter case for a year. Plus, it's a word you've probably been hearing a lot at the Karen Reed retrial, objection.

But what does it actually mean? And when can you say it? NBC News legal analyst and defense attorney Danny Savalos gives us the lowdown. If you don't get that objection in fast enough, the judge may not allow you to even make that objection. But before that, we're heading to Kentucky where a grieving family may finally get some answers in a 10-year-old murder mystery. In July 2015, the Nelson County Sheriff's Office got word about a car left abandoned on the side of the Bluegrass Parkway. The maroon Chevy sedan belonged to 35-year-old Crystal Rogers, a mother of five who'd been reported missing by her family. Crystal's purse and phone were still inside the car, but there was no sign of Crystal. Her body has never been found. Three months after she vanished, the local sheriff announced that Crystal was most likely

dead and named her boyfriend, Brooks Hauck, as a suspect in her disappearance. But months soon turned into years and no arrests were made. Crystal's family organized vigils, put up billboards around town, and tried to keep her name in the news. Finally, in 2023, eight years after Crystal first went missing, three men were arrested in connection with her murder. Her boyfriend, Brooks Hauck, and a father and son named Steve and Joseph Lawson.

All three of the men have pleaded not guilty. This week, Steve Lawson was the first to go to trial. Dateline producer Rachel White has been in the courtroom. We asked her to help us understand the long journey that led to this moment. Hey, Rachel, thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. Rachel, before we get into what happened in court,

let's just remind people where this all started. Back in 2015, Crystal's family jumped into action pretty quickly when they didn't hear from her. Why were they so concerned that something had happened to her that quickly? Yeah, so Crystal wasn't responding to text messages, and she was a very devoted mom. She had five kids, and she was always, you know, very responsive and there for them. Crystal was supposed to be spending the July 4th holiday with her boyfriend and their baby son when she went missing. Rachel, in your reporting on the case, what did you learn about Crystal's relationship

with Brooks Haug? They got together back in 2012. Brooks Haug owned a construction company and a rental house company. And Crystal eventually went to work for him and helped manage some of those rental properties. So not only were they romantically involved, but they also became intertwined with their working lives. Brooks was the father of Crystal's youngest child. But just before she disappeared, Crystal told her sister that their relationship was going downhill, that it was at a breaking point. What did investigators find out about Crystal's final hours? There was surveillance video of Crystal at Walmart

at 4.30 PM on Friday, July 3. And that's the last time that she's seen on video. Two days later, her car was found on the side of Bluegrass Parkway. Her credit cards hadn't been used. Her cell phone, purse, and the keys were found in her car. So there were a lot of red flags for investigators right away.

So Brooks Hauck has always maintained his innocence. He cooperated with the sheriff's office. He agreed to a polygraph. What did he tell investigators in those early days about where he was when Crystal disappeared? He said that Crystal was home when he went to sleep, and then when he woke up, she was gone. The FBI eventually comes into this and starts working on the case.

They zero in on Steve and Joseph Lawson. Steve is the one who's on trial right now. Who are Steve and Joseph, and how do they fit in? Steven Lawson is the father. Joseph Lawson is his son. Brooks and Steve Lawson and Joseph Lawson fit together because Brooks worked in construction and so he would hire contractors often to do work

and that's how he met the Lawsons. They both did work on and off for Brooks Hauck over the years. Are the prosecutors alleging that Brooks enlisted the help of these two to kill Crystal or help dispose of the body? Yeah, so that's exactly what they're doing. Steve Lawson is facing a conspiracy to commit murder charge as well as tampering with physical evidence. So they are alleging that he was involved in the planning of the murder as well as cleaning up after the fact. Prosecutors alleged that Joseph Lawson was the one driving Crystal Rogers' car to the spot where it was found on the side of Bluegrass Parkway. They also said that Steve Lawson is the one who picked up Joseph Lawson from that spot

where the car was left. And investigators say that Steve Lawson placed a phone call to Brooks Hauck around midnight the night that Crystal disappeared. Steve Lawson doesn't dispute that he picked up his son from the parkway or that he called Brooks Hauck that night. He does, however, deny having anything to do with Crystal's murder. – All right. So take us into the courtroom for the beginning of Steve Lawson's trial. The first witness for the prosecution was Crystal's mother, Sherry. It was super emotional. I mean, she, you know, was tearing up before she was even asked the first question. And then, you know, it just really, your heart breaks for her.

And what was her role for the prosecution being up there? What were they trying to establish with Crystal's mom? So Sherry was the person who ultimately reported Crystal missing. And what I learned is that when Sherry was on her way to the police department to report Crystal missing, she actually passed Brooks. And so she met up with him at a gas station on her way there. And you know, all he said to her was that it was a good idea to report her missing that he thought

that she should. And she said what stuck out to her about that interaction with Brooks was that Crystal and Brooks' son was in the backseat of his truck. And she said, knowing her daughter, that baby was always with her. So it really stuck out to her that something was wrong because she didn't have her son. The trial seems to be moving along pretty quickly. Yeah, the attorneys have said they estimate the case will be in the jury's hands by the end of this week or Monday latest, so we'll see what they decide. Okay, Brooks Hauck and Joseph Lawson are scheduled to go to trial together in June.

We'll check back in for updates. Thanks so much, Rachel. Thank you. Coming up, the prosecution's final witness in the Karen Reed retrial says the evidence speaks for itself. ["The Last Supper"] It was a quiet few days in Dedham, Massachusetts as Karen Reed's retrial paused for the Memorial Day holiday.

Reed is accused of hitting her Boston police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe, with her SUV after a night of drinking in early 2022. She says she's innocent and her defense says she is being framed by law enforcement. Tuesday morning, the case was back in front of the jury. Prosecutors called their final witness. My name is Judson Welcher. Sir, what do you do for a profession? I'm an accident reconstructionist

and biomechanical engineer. Dr. Welcher's testimony stretched over three days. The prosecution wanted to use his insight to wrap up its case for the jury. But the defense wasn't backing down without a fight. Here now with the latest is Dateline producer, Sue Simpson. Welcome back to the podcast, Sue. Hello, Andrea. Hello. Yes. I'm not going to ask you. I know you won the lottery this week. Tell us how court

started off after the holiday weekend. Well, Andrea, it was a really slow start on Tuesday. There was a long sidebar and then the court got going eventually. But Karen's defense attorney Robert Olesi was speaking at this sidebar very passionately to the judge and the other attorneys there. You know, I couldn't hear his words, of course, but his voice and his demeanor were intense. And we know why. The next witness would be asked the question at the very heart of this case, did Karen Reed's Lexus strike John O'Keefe or not?

Prosecutors put that witness, Dr. Judson Welcher, on the stand before his testimony started for a brief voir dire, and we should point out Welcher is a new expert. He did not testify at the first trial. The defense subjected to some parts of his testimony saying they were outside his area of expertise, and they also wanted to know if Dr. Welcher made changes to his presentation in the past two weeks after talking to prosecutors. In other words, did the prosecution exert last-minute influence on his testimony? There were some tense exchanges. Who did you have discussions with from the Commonwealth about the topics in your PowerPoint presentation?

Mr. Brannon and Mr. Lally. Describe those conversations and how many you had, including the first one that you had. Well, I originally submitted my presentation with my original report way back, I believe, in January. Right. I'm asking for conversations within the last two weeks. Okay. Your question wasn't clear. The defense was questioning Welcher about whether he updated a slide to match testimony from a previous witness shortly after jurors came into the courtroom and the trial proceeded.

So Sue, as the prosecution's questioning got underway, what did they ask him about? Well, he started out by explaining his background, which is in both accident reconstruction and also biomechanical engineering, explaining how accidents impact the body. When I'm trying to explain to somebody what I do, I say, hey, it's like a civil engineer who's designing a bridge. So many trucks and cars on the bridge. Are that going to cause the beams in the bridge to fail?

So a human body is governed by the same laws of physics, just like the bridge. In a human body, my beams are bones. My cables are the muscles and ligaments. Like the expert we heard from last week, this witness walked us through the data he collected and reviewed. And it seemed like he looked at quite a bit of data. What did he highlight? Yeah, there was a lot there, Andrea.

First, he gave a long list of things that he'd reviewed in the case. The police reports and witness statements, ring camera video from John O'Keefe's house, other surveillance video from the bars that John and Karen had been to that night. He looked at photos and videos from the scene, cell phone data, GPS data, weather reports, and the media interviews that Karen did, including her interview with Dateline. He also told jurors that he went to the front line. He lives in California and he traveled to the front lawn in Canton, Massachusetts, where John O'Keefe's body was found. He took

photographs there and he made measurements and he came up with a computer model. He even bought the same type of SUV that Karen was driving that night to do some testing. Wait, so he actually bought an SUV? He did. He did. He bought an SUV. Yes, indeed. You know, all of which is to say if the prosecution was hoping to show jurors that this guy did his homework, he did everything to persuade them that he deserved an A. Sue, much of his testimony was quite technical. How did the prosecution's expert do making sense of it all for the jury?

Yeah, he had a huge amount of data to get through and simplify for them. So he began to walk through the timeline he created of what happened that night. He showed a computer model he made using data he collected about how Karen Reed's car moved. He then tested the data with the car he bought that matched Karen's SUV and he tried to explain why John O'Keefe might have had the injuries he had. Welcher is himself a similar height and similar weight to O'Keefe so he said that he acted as him in testing and we could see videos of him actually standing in front of that SUV doing some of the testing, wearing clothes similar to what John O'Keefe

was wearing that night right down to the same make of sneakers. And he covered the tail light in paint and then he kind of swiveled into it trying to show where the injuries would be on John O'Keefe's arm. He had a driver back the car into a crash dummy later to show what might have happened, you know, if the car did hit John O'Keefe. And of course, he dealt separately with the lacerations at the back of John O'Keefe's head because the prosecution said that John O'Keefe fell over into hard ground. He did point out, of course, that it's really hard to exactly model what would have happened when O'Keefe was hit by the car.

Ultimately, the prosecutor asked what all of the testing and reviewing of the data led Welcher to conclude. Based on all the evidence you considered, could you share with the jury what your opinion is to a reasonable degree of engineering certainty about whether the defendant's Lexus struck Mr. O'Keeffe on January 29th, 2022, around 12.32 a.m.? Sure, Your Honor.

Going to another. I can answer this? 29th, 2022, around 1232 a.m. Objection, Your Honor. Going to and over. I can answer this? Yes. Based on the totality of the evidence, DNA, everything I've talked about, that is consistent with that happening. With a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, that is what happened. Objection moved to straight.

So this is no surprise, Sue, that Welcher believes that Karen Reid hit John O'Keefe with her SUV. He is the prosecution's witness after all. He is. He is the prosecution's closer. So he is the witness that the prosecution wants the jury to remember the most. This is the man who's dealing with the heart of the whole case. Did that Lexus hit John O'Keefe? And so that's why, you know, he's so critically important. The defense cross-examined Dr. Welcher and really hit back against his testimony. So the defense was spirited when he was testifying and they were just as spirited when it came time for them to do their own cross-examination.

It's your position that on every autopsy, there should be an x-ray of every bone before a conclusion can be drawn that there's no fracture to a bone in the body of the deceased. Is that your testimony? Absolutely not. I'm an engineer. You're asking me about proof.

And so proof is somebody looked at it, somebody took an X-ray, somebody found a commutative fracture. So we're talking about proof. Sir, I didn't use proof for my question. Ask me about the opinion of a medical examiner. I'm not a medical- Just one, only one person at a time.

Mr. Leslie, let him finish and then you can ask the question. I can't finish my question. Okay, then finish your question, Dr. Welch. Wait for the question. Then let Dr. Welch respond. It's a nightmare. The prosecution is expected to rest soon. So looking ahead now to the defense, what do we know about their strategy? What witnesses they're planning to call? Well, Andrea, you know, I am sure they have a few surprises planned. Karen has said they're planning on calling more witnesses this time, and Karen says they also they have a more robust case this

time around than they did in the first trial. And ultimately I think, you know, this case is going to come down to the battle of the accident reconstructionists, you know, experts on both sides who offered their view of what happened that night. And it's going to come down to, of course, what argument the jury finds most compelling. Thank you, as always, for being there in Dedham for us and bringing us all this critical information in this trial. Thanks, Andrea. Talk soon. Up next, it's time for Dateline Roundup. We've got updates on a bizarre case out of New York involving cryptocurrency and allegations

of torture. And the latest from the prosecution's case against former Major League Baseball pitcher Dan Serafini, who's accused of gunning down his in-laws at their home in Lake Tahoe. Plus, NBC News legal analyst and defense attorney, Danny Savalos, gives us his brief on objections in the courtroom. ["Dreams of a New World"] ["Dreams of a New World"]

Welcome back. Joining us for this week's roundup is Dateline digital producer Veronica Mazzeca. Hey, Veronica. Hi, Andrea. Let's get started. Our first story takes us to New York City. It involves a defendant who is a big deal in the world of cryptocurrency. Veronica, break it down for us. Yeah. So the defendant at the center of this story is 37-year-old crypto investor John Woltz.

He is accused of kidnapping and torturing an Italian businessman for weeks inside of a Manhattan townhouse. He was actually arrested on Friday and arraigned on charges of kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment, assault, among other charges. And he has currently entered a plea of not guilty. SONIA DARA-MURPHY Veronica, this is a wild story. And now police are saying a second man has been charged in connection to the alleged crime. VIRGINIA LUNCH-CRAFT That is correct. Officials are saying that William Du Plessis is a business

partner of Woltz, and he turned himself in alongside his lawyers on Tuesday. He is facing the same charges as Woltz, but there's no plea as of yet. What do we know about the alleged victim? He is a 28-year-old Italian citizen. He was actually another business partner of Woltz and Du Plessis, which is coming from law enforcement. Investigators believe that the three men had a rocky past,

but things really took a turn for the worse when the victim arrived in New York City earlier this month. And according to the police, this was all over cryptocurrency. Yeah, exactly. So Wolfson De Plessy allegedly demanded that the victim give them his Bitcoin password. And when the victim refused, the police said that that's when the torture began. This man managed to escape. Yeah, against all odds.

According to law enforcement, the victim told Woltz that he would finally give up his Bitcoin password. And then when Woltz went to go get the victim's laptop, he saw an opportunity to flee and flag down a nearby officer for help. Up next, we are checking in on the trial of former Major League baseball pitcher Dan Serafini at the historic Auburn Courthouse in Placer County, California. Remember last week we first talked about this case? Serafini is accused of the murder of his father-in-law, Gary Spore, and the attempted murder of his mother-in-law, Wendy. This happened back in 2021. Serafini has pleaded not guilty. What is the latest going on in court, Veronica? So we're still in the prosecution phase of the trial. At this point, the jury is pretty familiar with the details of the crime. They've seen photos of the crime

scene and surveillance video of the masked man prosecutors say is Serafini walking down the driveway towards the home. All right. So the prosecutor called people who know Serafini to the stand to weigh in on the video, to weigh in on the man in the video, in the mask. Yeah. So a friend of the family actually testified that they believed that the man in the video walked just like Serafini, but Serafini's older brother said that the person in the video was not similar to his brother. So the prosecutor also asked witnesses whether they'd heard Serafini threaten his in-laws. Yeah. So Serafini's older brother said that they had joked several times about killing

his in-laws, but he insisted it was just a joke. Serafini's old boss had a disturbing story to share. He testified that he had overheard Serafini arguing on the phone with somebody. And when the call ended, he said Serafini threw his phone at the dashboard and said, quote, I want to kill my mother-effing in-laws. And this was about three months before the shooting. And a young bartender who once worked at Serafini's bar told the prosecutor that she was scared to testify as she looked at him sitting at the defendant's table.

Yeah, that's a lot. That's some damning testimony for Serafini. Any news on Samantha Scott? So she is the woman that prosecutors say Serafini was having an affair with, and they say that she drove him to and from the crime scene. What is happening with her, Veronica? So she's the big witness that everyone is waiting to hear from. Right now, court is in recess until next week, so we'll be keeping an eye out for when she takes the stand.

OK. For our final story, we are heading to New Mexico where Hollywood armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reid was released from prison Friday morning. Veronica, remind us what happened in that case involving, of course, Alec Baldwin. Yes. So Hannah Gutierrez Reid was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting on the set of the movie Rust. She was the one responsible for firearms used on set and what happened was actor Alec Baldwin was holding a prop revolver but it ended up firing a live round, killing cinematographer Helena Hutchins in 2021. So after Gutierrez Reed was convicted in March of last year, she was sentenced to the maximum penalty of 18 months.

She didn't quite finish the 18 months. No, she did not serve her full sentence. Spokesperson for the New Mexico Corrections Department said Gutierrez-Reed was only required to serve 85% of her sentence because she wasn't convicted of a, quote, serious violent offense per New Mexico law. That and she had credits for things like time served and good behavior. Do we know what is next for her?

Legally speaking, she was released in Arizona with dual supervision under probation and parole authorities. According to the New Mexico Corrections Department, she will be on parole in the manslaughter case for a year. Okay, thank you, Veronica, for all these updates. Of course, thank you. Anyone who has been tuning into the Karen Reed retrial over the past few weeks will have seen court stopped in its tracks by something we've all heard many times. Objection. Objection.

Sustained, you can ask it differently. Objection. I'm going to see you at sidebar in this, please. Are you aware of objection. Objection. Sustained, you can ask it differently. Objection. I'm gonna see you at Sidebar in this, please. Are you aware of that? Objection. Sustained. And just a few weeks before that,

who could forget the storm of objections at the Lori Vallow Daybell trial? It was a very calm scene that day. Objection asked and answered. Sustained. Is it possible he could have been in shock? Objection speculation. Sustained. Did Alex tell you that he got hit in the head with a shock? Objection speculation. Sustained.

Did Alex tell you that he got hit in the head with a bat? Objection, Your Honor. You're safe. Prior ruling. Yeah, it's sustained. It's undeniable that watching attorneys go toe to toe over evidence and testimony can turn a trial into something akin to a theatrical performance. But according to my next guest, NBC News legal analyst Danny Savalos, objections are a serious

and vital part of the trial process. Welcome back, Danny. Thank you. So let's start at square one. What exactly is an objection? Why do we need them? They are the opposing attorney's way to try and argue against the admissibility of a question or an answer or evidence in general in real time.

And if you don't get that objection in fast enough before the answer comes, the judge may not allow you to even make that objection. And if you don't make that objection on the record, you may not be able to raise it on appeal. We all watch these courtroom dramas on television, so we hear the different kinds of objections that will be yelled out in a courtroom. Take us through some of them, just the names of them. Well, a lot of times there are objections really to forms of questions.

It could be leading. You hear that a lot. You have hearsay. You have relevance, which is always an objection. Even if the evidence is relevant, it might be really prejudicial and that prejudice outweighs the relevance. You'll hear that objection a lot. So there are rules about how and when you can make an objection.

Yes, the way it works is you say objection and depending on the judge's practice, ordinarily you will state the basis for your objection. But some judges don't want you to do that because they don't want you to sort of argue in front of the jury. But the attorney who objects should always be ready with the rule of evidence on which the objection is based. And after an objection, a judge almost always follows it up with the phrase either sustained or overruled.

Right. So sustained means you won. You won your objection. You were right. If it's overruled, it means your objection is no good and the questioning can continue. And also, I just have a question about jurors. You know, when the judge tells them to disregard, you know, after an objection, if it's accepted, you know, by the judge, it's like the genie's out of the bottle. They already heard it.

That's very detrimental to the person on trial. So there are a couple of fixes for this. You ask for a jury instruction and the judge may even admonish the jury. Hey, that was inappropriate, disregard it. But attorneys take calculated risks like this all the time. They will ask a question if they really think they need to get a message across because they know once the jurors hear it, you really can't unring that bell. So sometimes attorneys even ask questions that are close to the line, knowing they'll

be objected to, knowing they'll be sustained. But the point is, they got it out in front of the jury. Do you feel like sometimes objections can be almost part of courtroom theater by certain attorneys? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a strategy in objecting. And by the way, sometimes the questions can be objectionable, but you make a choice to let them go. You have to pick and choose

your battles because number one, if you make a lot of them and you start losing, then you don't look good to the jury. But even if you make a lot of them and you win, and it looks like you're trying to hide something, the jury is aware of that too. Yeah. And sometimes you can hear in the voice of the attorney, I object. It's getting more and more frustrated, stronger if the attorney feels they need to keep objecting to things because maybe the other side is not playing by the rules. Yeah, and sometimes you won't object because you like the direction that the other side is going and you want them to get all that in and you want the jury to see this witness for who they are. And by the way, you're likely gonna be able

to cross examine or redirect at some point. You're gonna have your chance to get up there and ask questions. So you use your objections wisely, because like you said, it's all theater. All right, well now I feel like I need to go watch you in court, Danny. You'll be underwhelmed.

I need to see how you do these objections. We appreciate your time so much. 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, we've got a classic episode from Josh Mankiewicz. In October of 2020, 49-year-old Jamie Faith was shot and killed in broad daylight while on a walk with his wife in their Dallas neighborhood.

An investigation revealed a perfect marriage gone awry. Here she is living a double life. But it was really a triple or quadruple life, wasn't it? It was. Watch Josh's episode, Losing Faith, this Friday on NBC at 9-8 Central. 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 Kim Flores Gaynor. 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 Kula's senior executive producer of Dateline. Have a good day everybody. Okay, bye.