"A lot of nerve": Nick Houck sits in front of Sherry Ballard as trial date is set in perjury case
Nick Houck will stand trial November 9. But the moment everyone in that Nelson County courtroom will remember happened before the judge said a word.
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Eleven years ago this weekend, Crystal Rogers vanished. On Thursday morning, her mother sat in a Nelson County courtroom- again- waiting for another hearing in another case connected to her daughter's death.
Then Nick Houck walked in and sat down directly in front of her.
"I don't even know how to react to that," Sherry Ballard told me outside the courtroom. "A lot of nerve he has to come and sit by me."
We'll get to everything that happened in front of Judge Charles Simms- and there was real news, including a November trial date and the first hints of a possible change of venue. But first, let's talk about what happened in the gallery.
Sherry and her family were already seated when Nick Houck, a former Bardstown police officer and brother of convicted murderer Brooks Houck, came in and took the seat right in front of them. His own family sat elsewhere in the courtroom.
Sherry got up and moved.
"I thought about not moving, because I don't want him to control what I do," she told me. "But at the same time, I'm not sitting behind my husband's murderer. I'm not going to do that. I have my limits too, and that's one of them."