Four days after Crystal Rogers’ disappearance, police interviewed her boyfriend Brooks Houck. His brother Nick, who at the time was a local police officer, interrupted the interview, telling Brooks to leave, via WHAS 11.
Later, Brooks Houck’s family farm was searched and his brother Nick was ordered to answer questions for investigators. Among the questions asked was why he had bodily fluids in the trunk of his car. Nick said he didn’t know how they got there. Police would later fire him for failing a polygraph. Three months after Rogers was last seen alive, police named Brooks Houck the main suspect in her disappearance. He has never been charged.
In 2021, the Rogers family received new hope in the case. FBI agents dug up a driveway in a subdivision where Brooks Houck had built several homes, via WLKY. Agents hauled away what they called “items of interest” to be examined in a Virginia lab, via the Courier Journal. To date, the latest search hasn’t solved any mysteries for Rogers’ family.
“The items they found, it was a very uplifting, exciting moment for everyone because we thought this is the answers,” Ballard told WLKY, adding she now doesn’t think the search would bring what she’d been hoping for. In addition to the investigations by law enforcement, Ballard says she’s conducted more than 200 searches on her own with the help of family, friends, and volunteers.
