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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan

Bardstown Ky - Unsolved Murder Capital

Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan

CrimeOnline and iHeartPodcasts

True Crime

4.72.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2024

⏱️ 47 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Mother of five,  Crystal Rogers is last seen July 3 by her live-in boyfriend, Brooks Houck. Crystal Rogers mother, Sherry Ballard, reports her missing on July 5. Later that day, Crystal Rogers red Chevy Malibu is found abandoned on the Bluegrass Parkway. The car has a flat tire, but Rogers' keys, phone and purse are still inside. 16-months later, Crystal Rogers is still missing and her father, Sherry Ballard's husband, Tommy Ballard, is murdered in the early morning hours as he prepares to go hunting on his own property with his 12-year-old grandson.

Ballard is shot from an undetermined distance, but his property backs up against the Bluegrass Parkway. It's a fast getaway in either direction for a gunman. On this episode of Body Bags, Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack explore the disappearance of Crystal Rogers and the murder of her dad, Tommy Ballard.  Plus, Joseph Scott Morgan  explains how prosecutors can prove Crystal Rogers was murdered,  even though they haven't found her body.

 

 

 

Transcribe Highlights

00:12.12 Introduction of growing up with PaPaw Morgan
03:34.36 Discuss Crystal Rogers missing, her father Tommy Ballard murdered
06:15.27 Discussion of Bardstown Kentucky 
07:46.82 Discussion of why Brooks Houck didn't report Rogers missing
08:13.81 Talk about Crystal Rogers car found on Bluegrass parkway
15:45.34 Talk Rogers car found with flat tire, she is still missing
18:16.83 Discussion of Brooks Houck, suspect, brother is police officer
21:13.58 Discussion of police letting Houck talk to his brother on phone
26:27.16 Talk about tracking dogs pick up Crystal Rogers scent at farm, but not at her car
31:09.10. Discussion 16 months after Crystal Rogers vanishes, her dad, Tommy Ballard killed
34:36.43 Discussion of how bullet twists the skin
39:02.99 Discussion of Tommy Ballard hunting, murdered on his own property
40:52.53 Discussion of murder charges without a body
43:45.73 Conclusion - waiting for trial 

 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0

In the 90s, New York Detective Louis Scarcella locked up the worst criminals.

0:04.7

Putting bad guys away.

0:06.3

There's no feeling like it.

0:08.0

Then jailhouse lawyers took game led by Derek Hamilton.

0:11.5

Scracella took me to the precinct and alive.

0:14.3

20 men eventually walked free.

0:16.6

Now, in the Burden Podcast, after a decade of silence,

0:20.6

Louis Scarsella finally tells his story, and so does Derek Hamilton.

0:25.0

Listen to the burden on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. lasts.

0:42.0

with Joseph Scott Morgan. Look y'all, I know I talk about my childhood periodically on body bags and everybody has good and bad in their life.

0:57.0

Everybody doesn't matter who you are.

0:59.2

Nobody's immune to it.

1:00.8

But in my childhood, the good times stand out to me more so than the bad and I could

1:09.4

complain about the bad if I wanted to but at this point in my life I like to think about the good and

1:14.5

one of the really cool things about my childhood is that I spent a lot of time

1:19.6

with my maternal grandparents and my grandfather who I called Papa Morgan. I love that man. He's big man, real big man.

1:31.3

He still raised mules, if you can imagine that, for people that would,

1:37.0

there were actually a group of guys that would buy mules from him that wanted them to pull wagons and there was actually one old man

1:45.2

that still preferred a mule-drawn plow over a tractor but when I had free time with

1:51.6

my papa all morning one of the things that he would take me to do, too, actually, was to fish for Blue Gill.

1:59.0

That's brown, with a cane pole. And number two was to go hunting. Now the thing that

2:06.6

thing about this is that in my family everything my family did was for subsistence. They had a huge garden and it's not like it was a hobby. They had to have a garden and it was massive and they worked in it all the time. When they went hunting it was massive and they worked in it all the time.

...

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