166. Smells Like Crystal Rogers And Will Cierzan Updates
This Thanksgiving week Melissa updates a couple of unsolved missing person cases – one we’ve not yet covered but which has been covered extensively and one we’ve covered extensively and almost no one else has…and as with all unsolved cases, it’s a mixed bag. The first update has to do with the 2015 disappearance of Crystal Rogers, the then 35 year-old mother of five from Bardstown Kentucky who went missing during the Independence Day holiday. The last person to see Crystal was her live-in boyfriend, Brooks Houck, who claims that Crystal was playing video games on her phone when he went to bed on the evening of July 2, 2015, only to find Crystal and her car gone the next morning. Two days later, Crystal’s Chevrolet was found with a flat tire, abandoned off the side of the Bluegrass Parkway – its keys in the ignition and her purse and phone left behind. The case has been analyzed in detail by several podcasts, most notably the serial Bardstown. In this episode of JUST THE TIP-STERS, Melissa updates the Rogers case and the recent news stories regarding remains found in July 2020 near where Crystal’s car was found, and the FBI investigation into those remains. The other update concerns the case that most significantly caused Melissa to start this podcast – the 2017 disappearance of Will Cierzan here in Melissa’s current home town of Santa Clarita, California. Melissa has covered the case and its progress in Episodes 4, 64, 120 and 149. Will’s wife Linda Cierzan came home from work on the evening of January 26, 2017 to find the chicken Will had made for dinner out of the oven; his car keys, cell phone and wallet on the kitchen counter – and Will gone. In a case so frustrating as to be unbelievable, the police investigation took more than three-and-a-half years to arrest the only obvious suspect in the case, Will’s nephew Daniel. Daniel had admitted to being at his uncle’s house early in the day to watch a golf tournament on TV, but claimed to have left for home by 1:30 pm (a claim backed by Daniel’s dad – Will’s brother Chuck Cierzan. Father and son were both proven to be lying when a neighbor’s time-stamped security camera caught Daniel leaving Will’s house, then backing his SUV into Will’s driveway right around 5 pm, loading something into the back of the vehicle and then driving off in the opposite direction from his home. Both Daniel and Chuck have been under suspicion ever since, but not until August of 2020 did police believe they had enough evidence – and then against only one of the two – Daniel. Chuck is still a free man. On this episode’s update of the Will Cierzan case, Melissa describes her attendance at a recent preliminary hearing in Daniel Cierzan’s murder trial, her introduction to the kick-butt Assistant District Attorney who will be prosecuting the case, and the new hope that is floating in the air that we may be closer to a conclusion to this matter and some relief to Linda Cierzan and the rest of Will’s family, who only want to know where he is so he can come home.