A car once owned by Brooks Houck’s grandmother has taken the spotlight in recent days at Houck’s criminal trial, with witnesses testifying that a hair found in the trunk was similar in characteristics to Houck’s missing then-girlfriend, Crystal Rogers, and that a cadaver dog alerted to the scent of human remains on the vehicle several months after Rogers’ disappearance.

Rogers was 35 when she was last seen on July 3, 2015, in Bardstown, and is presumed dead.

Houck, who dated Rogers at the time and has a child in common with her, emerged as a suspect in her disappearance and was indicted in 2023 on charges of complicity to murder and complicity to tampering with physical evidence.

Rogers’ abandoned maroon Chevrolet Impala was found on the Bluegrass Parkway two days after she was last seen. Her cell phone and other belongings were recovered from the car.

Houck is on trial in the Warren County Justice Center alongside Joseph Lawson, who is charged with conspiracy to commit murder and complicity to tampering with physical evidence.

Pretrial publicity in Nelson County, where the crimes were charged, forced the trial to be moved to Warren County.

Beginning Tuesday afternoon and continuing into Wednesday morning, prosecution witnesses testified about a white Buick LeSabre owned by Anna Whitesides, the grandmother of Brooks and Nick Houck, who prosecutors have characterized as an unindicted co-conspirator in Rogers’ disappearance and presumed death.

The car first emerged as a factor in the investigation when Ryan Cecil and Daniel Donohue noticed the car parked in the middle of the road when they were coon hunting on the night of July 3, 2015, near the Houck family farm, the last known place Rogers went.

Both men testified Tuesday afternoon that the car was an unusual sight for them during the competitive hunt.

They also said the car’s exterior appeared to be clean, despite the weather having been rainy throughout the day.

“I just thought it was odd that the car was there in the middle of the night in the middle of a rainstorm,” Donahue said.

That information was reported to police in July 2015, and revisited the next year after Rogers’ late father, Tommy Ballard, made a post on Facebook in which he asked about a white Buick.

Ballard contacted the Nelson County Sheriff’s Office on May 1, 2016, which led to detectives obtaining a search warrant for Whitesides’ home, according to testimony Tuesday from Detective Jamie Brooks of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.

Brooks testified that police arriving at the home on May 4, 2016, learned that the car had been sold and that another car in the garage was there with a temporary tag.

Brooks said that police learned the Buick had been sold to an auto dealership in Louisville on May 2, 2016, and investigators obtained surveillance footage showing Whitesides and Nick Houck at the dealership that day.

Police learned that Whitesides and Nick Houck first tried to trade in the car at Sternberg Automotive Group in Louisville.

Keith Stivers, sales manager at Sternberg, testified that Nick Houck came to the dealership and told him he was looking for a vehicle for his grandmother and wanted to trade in the Buick they drove there.

However, Stivers said that Houck did not want to turn over the keys so that Sternberg employees could get into the car and appraise its value.

“They tried to trade in the car, but they didn’t want to give us access to the car,” Stivers said, calling the behavior “very, very unusual.”

Brooks said police obtained the Buick from Town and Country dealership in Louisville and processed it.

A hair recovered from the trunk appeared similar in color and characteristics to hair from Rogers’ hairbrush, Brooks said.

Cross-examined by attorney Steve Schroering, representing Brooks Houck, Brooks testified that the hair recovered from the Buick was sent to an FBI lab for DNA analysis, but a DNA profile could not be recovered.

Brooks also testified that investigators found no signs of blood, tissue or body fluids from Rogers on or in the vehicle.

Nick Houck’s DNA was not found inside the vehicle by police, either, according to Brooks.

During his testimony Tuesday, Brooks spoke of meeting Terry Benjamin, a retired law enforcement officer who worked part-time training and handling dogs in Texas while working security at an NRA convention in Louisville in 2016.

When Brooks learned of Benjamin’s profession and training, he asked him to bring the dog to the Louisville Metro Police Department impound lot, where the Buick was being kept, to conduct a search.

Benjamin’s trial testimony was given via video deposition and played Wednesday morning for the jury.

In the testimony, Benjamin said that the dog, Ranger, was trained to alert to the presence of cadavers and live humans while conducting search and rescue/recovery operations, with the dog alerting to a cadaver by sitting and alerting to a live victim by placing its nose against the site of discovery.

Benjamin said he asked not to be informed about the nature of the search he and Ranger conducted that day in Louisville when they were brought to a lot containing about 10 vehicles.

As Ranger searched, the dog narrowed its focus on two vehicles parked next to one another, until Ranger alerted to the presence of human remains at the right rear corner of the Buick, Benjamin said.

Cross-examined by Schroering, Benjamin said this was the first criminal case in which he offered testimony regarding human remains detection and acknowledged losing nearly all documents relating to Ranger’s training and certification, adding that the dog had been certified in 2015 for human remains detection.

Schroering also brought out that the Buick had been thoroughly examined by law enforcement before Benjamin brought his dog there.

Jurors learn more about Rogers’ phone

To this point, jurors have been given information about activity on phones belonging to Rogers, Brooks Houck and Steven Lawson, who was convicted last month of conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with physical evidence.

Digital forensics expert Joshua Hickman brought more information Wednesday about Rogers’ phone, going into detail about how it was being used during the night of July 3, 2015.

Hickman analyzed a data extraction from Rogers’ phone at the request of prosecutors and found that the Cookiejam video game app was in use on the device at 7:39 p.m., July 3, 2015, the Facebook app was in use nine minutes later and then Cookiejam was reused at 7:52 p.m.

In that same moment, the message “ok sounds good” was sent from the device via Facebook Message, and Cookiejam and the Sugar Smash: Book of Lifeanother video game were in use intermittently until the device lost power and shut off at 9:23 p.m., Hickman said.

The device was powered on again at 11:57 p.m., July 3, 2015, before it was manually shut down 30 seconds later.

The phone would not be rebooted until July 6, 2015, by which time it was in police custody.