Trial begins Tuesday in Bowling Green for Brooks Houck, Joseph Lawson
By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette / WBRT Radio
Monday, June 23, 2025 — The trials of Crystal Rogers defendants Brooks Houck, the man accused of the 2015 murder of Crystal Rogers, and Joseph Lawson, a Houck employee who is charged with complicity to murder and tampering with physical evidence, begins Tuesday morning at the Warren County Justice Center in Bowling Green.
Video updates about the trial will be posted on the Nelson County Gazette Facebook page, and daily live reports about the trial will be carried on WBRT radio as they are available.
Jury selection is set to begin Tuesday, June 24th. Due to the high profile nature of the trial, additional security will be on site during the trial.
Last month, jury selection in the trial of Joseph Lawson’s father, Stephen Lawson, was completed in the first day of the trial. With the extensive coverage of Stephen Lawson’s trial by Bowling Green media, there’s been speculation that the exposure may increase the difficulty of seating a jury for the combined trial of Houck and Joseph Lawson.
Nelson Circuit Judge Charles Simms III will preside over the court proceedings.
The media have requested the courts to provide copies of the Stephen Lawson trial records, but Simms has sealed the documents from that trial until the Brooks Houck and Joseph Lawson trial has concluded.
Houck is the last person believed to have seen his girlfriend, Crystal Rogers, alive on July 3, 2015. Rogers’ mother, Sherry Ballard, reported her daughter missing on July 5, 2025.
The same day, her car was spotted near the 14 mile marker westbound on the Bluegrass Parkway with a flat tire.
Stephen Lawson, Joseph Lawson’s father, was convicted earlier this month on charges of complicity to murder and tampering with physical evidence for his role in Rogers’ disappearance and presumed murder.
Stephen Lawson and his son allegedly moved Crystal Rogers’ car the night she disappeared. First it was taken to a location on Thompson Hill Road in northwestern Nelson County before Joseph Lawson moved the car from that location. Just after midnight on July 4, 2015, the car developed a flat tire while Joseph Lawson was driving west on the Bluegrass Parkway.
Lawson’s called his father to come pick him up from the parkway, where the car was abandoned.
Stephen Lawson was offered a deal to avoid prosecution if he told investigators everything he knew about the murder. That deal was taken off the table after investigators determined Lawson was withholding information about the crime.
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