Jurors at the trial of Brooks Houck and Joseph Lawson heard more evidence about phone calls and other activities during the weekend surrounding Crystal Rogers’ disappearance.

Houck is charged with complicity to murder and complicity to tampering with physical evidence, while Lawson is charged with conspiracy to commit murder and complicity to tampering with physical evidence.

Rogers was 35 when she vanished on July 3, 2015, having traveled that evening to the family farm of her then-boyfriend Houck.

Rogers’ car was found two days later abandoned on the Bluegrass Parkway with some of her belongings inside, and authorities presume Rogers is dead.

The trial is taking place in Warren County due to pretrial publicity making it difficult for the defendants to receive a fair trial in Nelson County, where the crimes were charged.

Melissa Dover, a crime intelligence analyst with the Elizbethtown Police Department, brought in call detail records that were retrieved from her analysis of phones belonging to Rogers, Brooks Houck, his brother, Nick Houck, Steven Lawson and his then-wife, Tammy Lawson.

Dover said she had no records for Joseph Lawson.

Steven Lawson, Joseph’s father, was convicted last month of conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with physical evidence.

Dover testified that Joseph Lawson made three calls to his father at 11:06 p.m. and 11:54 p.m. July 3, 2015, and at 12:01 a.m. on July 4, 2015, that were not answered.

A call from Joseph Lawson to Steven Lawson at 12:03 a.m. lasted just less than three minutes, and two more short calls from Joseph to his father were made at 12:43 a.m. and 1:08 a.m., July 4, 2015.

Dover documented multiple calls and text messages to Houck from Rogers’ children that were not answered during the weekend that Rogers went missing.

Dover told jurors that Houck called Rogers’ phone on the morning of July 5, 2015, and got no response, followed by a text message to a relative of hers asking if they have seen her.

After the early morning phone call on July 5, 2015, Houck sent a text message that afternoon to Rogers’ phone that said “Everyone is worried sick, please call me back.”

Defense attorney Steve Schroering, during his cross-examination of Dover, called attention to calls that Steven Lawson made to Capitol One Financing late on July 3, 2015, into the early morning hours of the next day.

Capitol One financed a car that Lawson and a former girlfriend, Heather Snellen, bought together.

The car has come up at trial, with Snellen testifying to taking it from outside a bar on the night of July 3, 2015, and driving it to a Boston Road residence, only for it to have been taken back from her overnight.

The defense at this trial has argued that Steven Lawson and his son could not have been involved in the conspiracy by moving Rogers’ car, because Steven Lawson was traveling on Boston Road, which runs just north of the parkway in a somewhat parallel path.

Lawson’s co-worker testifies

Charlie Girdley, who worked as a carpenter for Houck alongside Steven and Joseph Lawson, took the witness stand late Friday morning.

Questioned by special prosecutor Shane Young, Girdley gave testimony that appeared to implicate Houck in the alleged conspiracy, relating about a day that Steven Lawson had a conversation with him at a job site.

“Steve came up to me and said something about Brooks wanting to get rid of his old lady and (Lawson) said he wasn’t the man for the job and that I was,” Girdley said, adding that he laughed it off.

At trial, Girdley said that Joseph Lawson picked him up from a house party and they went to a Bardstown bar to drink on July 3, 2015.

They met with Steve Lawson later that night, who gave Joseph Lawson the keys to Rogers’ car to work on it, Girdley said.

Later that night, Girdley got a call from Joseph Lawson to pick him up at the Bluegrass Parkway because the car had broken down, but Girdley testified that he had been drinking all night and was in no shape to drive.

Schroering attacked Girdley’s credibility during cross-examination, which was interrupted by the lunch break early Monday afternoon.

Girdley acknowledged telling the Nelson County Sheriff’s Office in 2016 and the FBI in 2021 that he had nothing to do with the case and had no information to give.

After being arrested in 2023 for absconding from probation, Girdley was brought to the Kentucky State Police for the first of multiple interviews.

Questioning from Schroering so far has focused on the first KSP interview, conducted on June 21, 2023, two weeks before Girdley testified before a grand jury that indicted Houck and Lawson.

Schroering pointed out inconsistencies in Girdley’s account of what happened on then night of July 3, 2023, regarding the moving of Rogers’ car.

Girdley initially told police that Houck asked him directly about picking up a car on the Bluegrass Parkway with a trailer while they were at Girdley’s cousin’s house, and then said he would ask someone else about getting the car after Girdley reportedly told Houck he had been drinking.

Questioned by Schroering, Girdley acknowledged that that conversation did not happen.

Girdley told KSP detectives two other accounts of how Rogers’ car keys ended up with Joseph Lawson through Houck, one story involving a meet-up at Houck’s home and another at a neighborhood where Houck was developing rental homes.

Schroering stressed his argument that KSP was not satisfied with Girdley’s information and that they were offering him a “once in a lifetime” opportunity to get out from under a probation violation for providing true information about Rogers’ disappearance, going so far as to bring Young into the interview room to emphasize the opportunity Girdley had to avoid prison for having his probation revoked.

It emerged Friday that Girdley did not have to go back to prison for violating probation, earning a 90-day sanction and work release.

Ex-girlfriend of Nick Houck testifies

Amber Bowman, a former long-term girlfriend of Nick Houck, took the stand for the prosecution.

A former Bardstown Police Department officer, Nick Houck has been named, along with his mother Rosemary Houck, as unindicted co-conspirators by the prosecution.

Bowman recalled plans to move with Nick Houck to a fixer-upper rental home on the weekend of July 3-5, 2015, only for Nick to leave her on July 3 to help his brother with fixing a different home.

Bowman and her father spent the day moving things over to her new home, and testified that she called Nick Houck’s phone 15 times during a 24-hour period, with no response from him.

“I tried to call him many times and the phone would just go to voicemail,” Bowman said.

On July 4, 2015, Bowman found her then-boyfriend’s home at the fixer-upper house, and the phone appeared to have been shut down or have a dead battery, Bowman said.

Bowman said it was not typical for Nick Houck to have his phone shut off for a long period of time, nor did he spend a lot of time on his phone.

Bowman testified that Nick Houck returned to their old house at some point on July 4, 2015, and did not give much information about where he had been, though his clothes did not appear to have any bloodstains or mud on them.

Also Monday, two IRS agents testified about executing a search warrant at Rosemary Houck’s home in 2020 and recovering three digital recording devices from a bedroom.

Prosecutors have mentioned that Brooks Houck and others secretly recorded their own police interviews and grand jury testimony.

Owen McKinney, who managed a Dollar General in Bardstown in 2015, testified about seeing a maroon car abandoned on the Bluegrass Parkway when he drove home from work on the night of July 3, 2015, with a white car pulled off about a mile ahead.

The maroon car was still on the side of the parkway when he drove into Bardstown the next morning, and McKinney said he shared that information with police.