The prosecution in the trial of Steven Lawson rested its case Thursday morning after playing jurors a series of recordings of the defendant pulled from police interviews, grand jury testimony and recorded jailhouse calls.

Lawson is charged with conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with physical evidence in connection with the disappearance and presumed death of Crystal Rogers, a 35-year-old Bardstown resident who went missing in 2015 and has not been seen since.

Lawson, his son, Joseph Lawson, and Rogers’ former boyfriend, Brooks Houck, are all charged in connection with her disappearance.

Steven Lawson’s attorney, Darren Wolff, has admitted to Lawson’s role in tampering with evidence but denies involvement in any conspiracy.

The trials for all co-defendants have been moved to Warren County due to pretrial publicity in Nelson County.

Special prosecutor Shane Young called a series of witnesses Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning to play recording of Lawson discussing the case in various settings.

Jurors heard testimony that Lawson gave to a special grand jury on three separate occasions in 2023, once before he was indicted.

Lawson appeared to acknowledge his role in moving Rogers’ car to where it was ultimately found abandoned with Rogers’ purse and cell phone inside on the Bluegrass Parkway on July 5, 2015, two days after Rogers was last seen alive.

During a June 14, 2023, special grand jury proceeding, his second time appearing before the grand jury, Lawson discussed a phone call he placed to Houck shortly after midnight on July 4, 2015, testifying that the call concerned moving the car.

“I said the job was done and Brooks said ‘OK,’ ” Lawson said in the recording.

Lawson provided more detail to the grand jury on Sept. 20, 2023, testifying that Houck approached him and said that “he wanted his wife gone.”

“To me, in my opinion, that means he wanted her deceased,” Lawson said in the recording. “I told him he’s looking at the wrong person and he said can you point me in a direction.”

Lawson said he recommended Charlie Girdley, who like Lawson worked on job sites building rental homes for Houck.

Girdley reportedly laughed off any potential involvement, and testified at trial that he heard Lawson talk about burying Rogers with a skid-steer loader, but also acknowledged at trial that he was likely under the influence of drugs at the time of the conversation with Lawson and provided authorities with the information only after being arrested for absconding from probation and parole in 2023.

During his third grand jury appearance, Lawson also said that he and his son picked up Rogers’ car, with Joseph Lawson driving it to the Bluegrass Parkway, where he abandoned it after getting a flat tire.

Steven Lawson said he picked up his son and then moved up the driver’s seat in Rogers’ car.

“Crystal wasn’t a tall lady,” Steven Lawson said in the grand jury recording.

Mike Shafer, an FBI task force agent, testified Thursday about an interview he conducted with Steven Lawson in 2020 at the Nelson County Sheriff’s Office.

A 20-minute clip of the interview was played for jurors, with much of the recording focusing on questioning about the late-night phone call between Lawson and Houck.

Shafer testified that Lawson said at the time that he called Houck to ask about a rental property for his step-daughter, Laurin Hardin Bell, who at trial denied any interest in renting a property or talking to Lawson about doing so.

Shafer also said he had knowledge of cell phone analysis that showed Lawson’s cell phone hitting off towers near the Bluegrass Parkway late July 3, 2015, and early July 4, 2015, traveling west of Bardstown and back east into the city.

The phone is then present at a location on Thompson Hill Road where law enforcement has focused previous attempts to locate Rogers.

Shafer also testified about interviewing Houck’s brother, Nick Houck, a former Bardstown Police Department officer, who denied involvement in the disappearance and underwent a polygraph examination.

Nick and the Houcks’ mother, Rosemary Houck, have been named by the prosecution as unidentified co-conspirators.

Through cross-examination by Lawson’s attorney Darren Wolff, Shafer acknowledged that the phone data speaks only to the location of the phone, not the person to whom the phone belongs.

Melissa Dover, a crime and intelligence analyst with the Elizabethtown Police Department, brought cell phone records to her testimony Wednesday that involved records of text messages between Steven and Joseph Lawson during the month of July, 2015, including a message from Steven to his son on July 4, 2015, in which he said he was “sitting around having a bad day.”

Dover’s records also documented a number of calls between the two Lawsons in the late hours of July 3, 2015, into the early hours of the following day.

Jail calls shed more light

Nelson County Jailer Justin Hall was the final witness called by the prosecution Thursday.

It was through Hall that jurors heard two recorded phone calls made by an incarcerated Lawson on Jan. 5, 2024, and Jan. 9, 2024.

The first call, made to Lawson’s mother, featured her saying that somebody has to know what happened to Rogers’ body, with Lawson saying “I don’t disagree” but denying any involvement in her disappearance beyond taking Joseph Lawson to move her car and picking him up afterward.

Lawson’s mother asked him why he took Joseph Lawson to move the car.

“I honestly don’t (expletive)  know, how’s that?” Lawson said in the call.

Lawson’s mother tells her son he should have gone to police as soon as he knew about what was happening, and Lawson repeatedly said “you’re right.”

The second call, from Jan. 9, 2024, was made to an unknown man, who said to Lawson “you could’ve saved that girl’s life” and that “you had eight (expletive) years” to share what he knew.

Lawson again denied involvement in causing Rogers’ presumed death.

“There was no premeditation on my end, I’m telling you, I don’t care what anybody says,” Lawson said in the phone call.

Nelson Circuit Judge Charles Simms denied a motion from Wolff for an acquittal, and the defense planned to present its case Thursday afternoon.