UPDATE: Defense teams present closing statements in trial for Crystal Rogers case

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – On Monday, July 7, the defense for Brooks Houck and Joseph Lawson presented their closing statements in the trial regarding the disappearance of Crystal Rogers.

The ongoing trial in Bowling Green entered its second week today.

Rogers disappeared from Bardstown in 2015, and her body has never been found. Both men face multiple charges in connection with the case.

Robert Boyd, Joseph Lawson’s attorney, said Bardstown became a rumor mill that up-ended and ruined many lives after Rogers disappeared.

He suggested law enforcement was desperate to satisfy an “edict” from the Kentucky governor at the time, Matt Bevin, and then Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron to solve the case.

Boyd also declared the jury should consider the cell tower information presented by the defense that they say proves Joseph Lawson was on Boston Road rather than the Bluegrass Parkway as the prosecution maintains should be the “North star” that guides them to an innocent verdict.

He also remarked on how little Joseph Lawson had actually been mentioned throughout the trial’s testimony.

Boyd went through five of the state’s witnesses and either called them unreliable or pointed out inconsistencies in their testimony. He ended by suggesting the jury send Joseph Lawson home.

Brian Butler, the defense attorney for Houck, also delivered his closing statement.

Butler characterized the state’s case as the government trying to take your child away and called it a witch trial.

Playing back recorded excerpts from the trial’s testimony, the defense attorney claimed the prosecution’s case was built on too many guesses, speculation and possibilities rather than facts and evidence.

Special prosecutor Shane Young wove a tapestry of the day Rogers disappeared and the few days afterward using cell phone information that gave locations of Houck and Joseph Lawson, as well as testimony from witnesses that overheard incriminating statements from members of the Houck and Lawson families.

The prosecution began and ended their closing with the following statement:

“If Crystal Rogers did not come home on the night of July 3, 2015, then Brooks Houck is guilty of murder.”

Houck made the statement in multiple law enforcement interviews that Rogers had come home with him that night and was awake on her phone when he went to sleep. He has stated he only discovered her missing the next morning.

Prosecutors say the information from Rogers’ phone conflicts with his story. The data puts her at the Houck family farm and not at the house she shared with Houck. The phone also lost power and only restarted briefly at times before Houck said she was home playing a game on it.

The trial finished for the day around 5 p.m.

The prosecution presented its closing into the afternoon, with the case expected to go to the jury Tuesday morning. The jury will begin deliberations on whether Houck and Joseph Lawson could be found guilty or innocent in connection with the murder of Rogers and tampering with physical evidence.