Tommy Ballard started a search group to find his missing daughter. Sixteen months later he was shot dead on family land with his 12-year-old grandson beside him. A decade on, that case is still open — and the rifle that may connect the two was bought under a false name.
A search that got someone killed
Crystal Rogers, 35, disappeared from Bardstown, Kentucky on 3 July 2015. Her car was found on the Bluegrass Parkway with her keys, purse and phone still inside. She has never been found. Source: Source ↗
Her father did what families in these cases do when the official search stalls. Tommy Ballard, 54, founded Team Crystal, a community search group, and worked the case in public — organizing searches, posting leads, naming things he had noticed.
On 19 November 2016 he was shot in the chest on family land while preparing for a hunting trip with his 12-year-old grandson. He died instantly. Police ruled out suicide and cleared the boy. Source: Source ↗
The FBI maintains a Seeking Information poster for him and offers a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to an arrest. Source: Source ↗
Nobody has been charged.
The daughter's case closed. The father's did not.
In 2025 a jury convicted three men in Crystal Rogers's murder. Her boyfriend Brooks Houck was convicted and sentenced to life; Steve Lawson received 17 years and Joseph Lawson 25.
Prosecutors then said publicly what the family had believed for years. Commonwealth's Attorney Shane Young: "We are investigating the murder of Tommy Ballard that could potentially be related."
The evidence behind that sentence is a rifle. Prosecutors disclosed that a rifle purchased under a false name by Nick Houck, Brooks Houck's brother and a former Bardstown police officer, matched the caliber of the weapon used to kill Ballard and satisfied four of five comparison criteria under examination. Testing was pending when that was reported. Four of five criteria is not a match. Nick Houck has not been charged in Ballard's death.
Source: Source ↗
Why this case is the shape of a category
Most missing-person coverage treats each name as its own file. This section exists because of what that misses.
A person disappears. A relative takes up the search, because someone has to, because the official one has gone quiet. Then the relative is dead, and the second death arrives in the press with none of the context of the first.
Sometimes the two are connected. Here, investigators say they may be, and there is a rifle bought under a false name sitting between them.
Sometimes they are not connected at all, and saying so plainly is just as much of the job. On the other pages in this section you will find cases where a second family member vanished and no investigator has ever linked the two events, and cases where the second death had nothing whatever to do with the first. We say which is which in every entry.
More of them at Second Disappearance
What families take from it
Tommy Ballard was killed doing the thing families are effectively required to do — run the search themselves, in public, under their own name.
That is worth stating without drama, because the practical guidance families are given assumes it. The Justice Department's family guide tells families to designate someone other than a parent as media coordinator and someone other than a parent as volunteer coordinator, to background-check volunteers, and never to put a personal phone number or email address on a missing poster. Source: Source ↗
Those instructions exist because the search is not a neutral act. It puts a name and a face in front of whoever is responsible.
If you know something
Tommy Ballard's killing is an open FBI case with a reward of up to $10,000. Call 1-800-225-5324 or submit at Source ↗ — the Seeking Information page is at Source ↗
Crystal Rogers has never been found. If you know where she is, that information goes to the FBI and to the Nelson County Sheriff's Office.