Bardstown- Part 2

However, Brooks was the only person in Crystal’s orbit to suggest that Crystal was this wild woman.  In fact, everyone else said, absolutely not.  She was shy, she wouldn’t go out partying all night, she wouldn’t leave her kids for an entire day, and most of her friends also had kids they wouldn’t leave to go party.  Sabrina said that Crystal never came to her house to spend the night from a fight.  She was only ever there for an hour or 2 depending on the level of the argument.  During the questioning, Brooks is asked about the July 3rd text that Crystal sent to her friend saying they were having a “child-free” night.  Brooks doesn’t know about this and doesn’t know why Crystal would tell this friend that she had a babysitter because they didn’t.

Apparently Brooks had been having “no response” to pretty much everything since Crystal disappeared.  Friends and family said that he has had a bad attitude since the 3rd and hasn’t done much, if anything, to help find Crystal.  They also said that he didn’t seem upset or anything.  Brooks said that he did try to call her on the 4th, but he couldn’t remember when he called or where he was when he made the call.  Brooks was interviewed on July 8th by Detective Snow.  This one was recorded.

During the interview, Snow comes in and says, let me read over this statement (it’s like 8 pages long).  Brooks is quick to explain his statement to the detective.  He seems uncomfortable and seems to feel like he has to fill the silences.  With every question Snow asks, Brooks seems to have an extended answer that kind of dances around the question.  Snow tried to get a better handle on the type of relationship that Brooks and Crystal had.  He also wanted to know about Crystal’s habits and Brooks’ professional life, but Brooks just brushed everything off and played the victim card and he’s such a busy man so he has so much to do….

Brooks also talks about Crystal in the past tense throughout the interview and at one point he asks how her family found the car and who, specifically, in her family found the car.  At one point, the detective asks Brooks to put a number in his phone to see who it belongs to and when they do that, Brooks calls the other man and starts making plans with him for some work he needs the guy to do!  In the middle of an interview with a detective!  Otherwise, the interview was pretty unhelpful for the first hour and a half.  Despite being willing to talk to the police at all, Brooks wasn’t really giving them much information.  The only interesting thing to happen was when Brooks got a call from his brother at almost exactly 7 pm.

Brooks’ brother, Nick was a Bardstown police officer and seems upset at Brooks for being at the police station.  Brooks answers the phone with, “I know you didn’t know I was here.”  Not, “Hello.” “Sup.” “Yo.” “WAZZUUUUP?!”  Nothing.  Brooks seems to be getting yelled at by Nick based on the way he is responding.  He’s almost yelling and saying things like, “If you’re telling me to leave, I’ll get up and leave!”  After Brooks got off the call with Nick, he says, “He thinks y’all are gonna fuck me.”  And after this, Brooks just quit talking to the detective altogether.

Then, after leaving the station, Brooks and Nick immediately rendezvous at the family farm and spend hours there.  The security cameras on the property reveal that they got to the farm together, seemingly coming directly from the police station, and then recorded them leaving together just before 11:30 pm.  Weirdly, neither brother remembers what they did there during those hours and Nick insists that they just happened to end up there at the same time.  By July 9th, Crystal’s disappearance is national news and good old Nancy Grace has the story and an interview with Sherry and Tommy as well.  Brooks calls into Nancy Grace and it is unfortunate and unhelpful.  Brooks insists that he is innocent and being “100% honest.”  While Brooks calls Nancy Grace, Nick is called to come in and interview with the police and his police cruiser is confiscated and searched.  When asked to come in, Nick flat out refuses to testify saying, “I have nothing to tell you.”

So his boss, Police Chief Rick McCubbin meets with him and says, bruh…it’s in your best interest to cooperate.  McCubbin gives Nick a “direct order” to assist in the investigation.  Nick remains wary of cooperating and tells McCubbin that if he knew anything, he’d have told them already.  Nick agrees to meet with the investigators, but not before negotiating the time and date to death for a week!  On July 15th, Nick finally sat down with the Kentucky State Police for an interview.  He’s asked about his relationship with his brother and what he knows about Crystal and Brooks’ relationship.  Nick brushes this off saying that he doesn’t talk to his brother about relationship stuff.

The investigators ask him about his multiple calls to Brooks during Brooks’ interview.  Nick admits that he called and that he was making sure that Brooks, who’s a “cooperative guy,” isn’t too cooperative, because you want to help, but you want to protect yourself.  Nick said that he was concerned too that Snow was doing the questioning because, as Nick claims, he “openly admitted that he lies in court.”  When asked about the polygraph that Brooks took, Nick said he knew that they weren’t going to pass Brooks no matter what.  It doesn’t matter what Brooks does right then, he looks like the bad guy and everyone is pointing the finger at him.  One of the officers explains that the polygraphers were an independent agency that didn’t have any interest in the case so Brooks’ “inconclusive” didn’t have anything to do with the police.

The investigators ask Nick about the family farm that’s 250-300 acres.  He tells the officers that they kind of run into each other out there, and that they’ve been out there in the past couple weeks after Crystal went missing.  He doesn’t remember what day specifically.  They pass each other because they are both super busy.  Then the officers ask Nick about his cruiser and if he drives that out to the farm.  Nick says he drives that all the time because the chief wants them to drive them off duty for a police presence, so yes.  They point out that Nick’s cruiser was taken and ask him what’s in the trunk of the cruiser.  He goes through everything that’s in his car altogether and it’s just basic cop things.

When the police department took the car, what was in there?  He said that other than all the things he mentioned there was a blanket from moving furniture in the trunk that he had thrown in his trunk to return to the farm.  Then they ask if he went to the farm on July 8th after Brooks’ interview.  Nick can’t remember specifically, but the police said that the cameras show that he followed Brooks.  They point out the difference in the statement that he never met Brooks there.  Nick said it wasn’t intentional that they went there together, and he doesn’t remember anything they did or when they left.  The officers point out that the cameras at the farm house show that he and Brooks arrived at the farm together on the 8th, which isn’t just a coincidence as he claims and that they left around 11:30ish.  Nick doesn’t remember these details.  Nick also had trouble remembering his schedule for work and if he was working on the 8th.  

Detectives found it interesting that Nick’s memory of his movements and activities was so vague, because Nick is a police officer and his memory of events is often relied upon heavily in court when he testifies as a cop.  One of the officers even points out that this was a week ago and this is a situation that is very unique.  He [the officer interviewing Nick] could remember a conversation with his brother from a week ago.  Which he later admits was the last time he was at that farm with his brother.  The other officer asks about if there would be a reason there would be blood in the trunk of his cruiser and when he last transported “biological evidence” in there.  Nick said that had been a long time ago, and he can guarantee that there was no blood or anything in his trunk or even on that blanket.  No way.

After leaving him alone for 15 minutes, the officers return to the room and start asking about what Nick’s neighbors had witnessed him moving from the trunk of his police cruiser to the trunk of his grandmother’s car?  A few neighbors had seen him move something, but Nick doesn’t know what they would have seen.

They also asked to see Nick’s phone.  He left it at home.  He does agree to let them copy the contacts and stuff, but whether or not he did so….  BUT THEN!  They circle back to the fact that his cruiser was taken and searched.  Forensics looked at it and used Luminol to look for bodily fluids and blood.  They want to know why the trunk and that blanket lit up like “Chernobyl”?  Why would that be, Nicky boy?  He has no explanation for that even though, during this interview, he was the one that admitted to being the only one in the car and the one that put the blanket in the trunk.  Nick is adamant that Crystal’s DNA will not show up in his trunk.

Did your brother call you and say he’d done something to Crystal? No.  You never helped him move a body? No.  You never helped him get rid of any evidence? No.

The officers start coming at him harder by putting the pieces together and implying that he’s lying when he says he can’t remember things.  They say they don’t believe in coincidences or amnesia.  They say they aren’t asking hard questions.  This is a big thing happening in his life, they do not believe that he can’t remember details about a week ago.  The officers ask him about what he thinks happened.  Nick doesn’t have any theories.  He’s a police officer…who has no theories about this case?  So they come at him with their theory:  

Brooks is a good guy, but something just happened, like finding out that someone else was hitting on or getting with Crystal.  Maybe he confronted her and went too far.  When he realized what he had done, he reached out to Nick.  Now, maybe Nick has blocked it out because he is ashamed of what he did.  They also bring up that he said he goes out to the farm to ride the 4-wheeler “religiously” (which he says means about 2-3 times a week), but the cameras don’t show him out there for 2-3 weeks before Crystal’s disappearance.  He says, Well I don’t go out there every week.  The officer says, religiously means you do it consistently and frequently.

Eventually, Nick gets defensive and poses the question, who would do these things with a city issued cruiser?  The officers say, what better vehicle?  No one is going to question a police car behind a car with a flat tire on the side of the road or a police car driving at all different hours.  Nick agreed to take a polygraph on Monday, July 20th, but he didn’t show up.  When he skipped the appointment the FBI contacted him to ask him to come in.  Nick was off duty at the time and flat out refused.  So on July 24th, when Nick was back at work and in uniform, he was forced to take it by his boss.  The polygrapher expressed “grave concerns” with the results of Nick’s polygraph and that he exhibited deception when asked questions about Crystal.  Nick got very defensive when he’s questioned about the results.

In the meantime, police continue to focus on Brooks since he’s the last person to have seen Crystal alive.  They look over the security camera footage from the farm and see that on July 3rd, Crystal and Brooks show up to the farm alone.  Eli is not with them as Brooks previously stated.  The footage also contradicts other parts of Brooks’ statement to police.  Not only did the footage show him leaving close to midnight instead of in the early evening like he said, but most importantly, it shows Brooks leaving the farm alone.  Crystal went with him, but she doesn’t appear to have left with him or at all.  Over the following months, nothing new comes up, but search efforts continue.  Crystal still hasn’t been found.

On September 9, 2015, Nick was suspended from the police department for 5 weeks.  Chief McCubbin made a statement that he had given Nick a verbal command to cooperate with the lead investigator, and that Nick was impeding and stonewalling the investigation.  He called this “conduct unbecoming of an officer.”  Then on October 16, 2015, Nick was fired from the department for interfering with a police investigation.  During the same announcement, Chief McCubbin officially named Brooks as a suspect in Crystal’s disappearance, and that she is now “presumed dead.”

Crystal’s parents became the guardians of 3 out of 5 of Crystal’s kids while also continuing to search for Crystal and justice.  Sherry was often the one talking to the press while Tommy was leading the search efforts.  During the end of 2015, Tommy and Sherry got wrapped up in a custody battle over Eli because they were worried that Brooks was going to run off with Eli.  Brooks was selling off property for almost nothing, but his lawyer just says that just a day in the life of Brooks.  But the Ballards don’t believe it.  They have thought that Brooks was guilty from the beginning and they file a legal motion to keep him from bolting.

In December 2015, a man named Danny Singleton was arrested in reference to this case.  The 53-year-old was considered Brooks’ right-hand-man and was arrested on December 16th for perjury.  38 counts of perjury to the grand jury during his testimony.  He’s the only one who’s been arrested so far.  Singleton pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 8 months in jail and the rest of this time was spent on parole.

In June of 2016, Nick and Brooks’ 82-year-old grandmother, Anna Whitesides was subpoenaed to testify in front of the grand jury in regards to the white Buick she owned at the time of Crystal’s disappearance.  This car was the one that witnesses say they saw Nick move something from his police cruiser and into this car.  After Crystal disappeared and this incident was witnessed, Tommy tried to locate the Buick.  He made a post on Facebook, but it turned out that Nick sold the car.  The car was located and taken into police custody for forensic testing.  When she was brought into the grand jury to testify about the car and why they sold it, Whitesides pleaded the fifth and refused to talk.  Another hearing was held to see if she could do that, and her right not to speak was upheld.  

In August of 2016 a search warrant was executed on Whitesides’ property and another on Nick’s house and property.  We don’t know exactly what they were looking for and it’s unknown if they found anything, but they led to 2 more searches that were conducted later that month.  A huge search was done on Rosemary Houck’s (Nick and Brooks’ mother) farm and the farm next to theirs.  This search utilized 3 dozen officials (Louisville Metro Police Dive Team, Kentucky State Police, Nelson and Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, and the FBI) and 18 cadaver dogs over the almost 300 acres.  Unfortunately, no real evidence was found.

Between July 2015 and December 2016, this was the only case that Detective Jon Snow worked on. He has served over 70 search warrants in this case and they have catalogued almost 200 pieces of evidence.  However, he is now a Captain in Nelson County so this is no longer his main focus.  The case is still an active investigation, but he is less involved now.  Otherwise, Sherry has resigned herself to the fact that Crystal is not coming home.  Tommy continued to search and document everything he saw, heard, overheard, etc.

For Tommy, this was kind of like deja vu.  See, in 1979, Tommy’s older sister disappeared in eerily similar circumstances…