As Nelson County prepares to dedicate a bridge to her daughter and husband, Sherry Ballard reflects on the investigators who moved from adversaries- or strangers- to the people she trusts most.

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Not even a minute from Sherry Ballard's front door, the small bridge on Woodlawn Road will soon carry two new signs. Drive toward town, and you'll pass beneath the name of her daughter, Crystal Rogers. Drive home, and it will be her husband, Tommy Ballard's, name that greets you. Or maybe it's the other way around- even Sherry isn't sure yet which sign goes where. What she does know is that she'll be driving past both of them, every single day, for as long as she lives in the house Tommy built for their family on the land she asked him to buy so their kids would always know where home was.

Sherry said she wasn't sold when lawmakers first brought the idea to her.

"I had to think about it, because I'm gonna look at this going to town, and I'm gonna look at it coming home," Sherry said. "But I put my feelings aside and thought- this is not for me. It's for them."

The bridge on Woodlawn Road, over the Bluegrass Parkway

The Tommy Ballard Memorial Bridge and the Crystal Rogers Memorial Bridge will be officially dedicated on September 15 at the Nelson County Courthouse, capping a process that started with a phone call from state Rep. Candy Massaroni and Sen. Jimmy Higdon, and ended with a local resolution passed by the Nelson County Fiscal Court.

"Their story is very well known, and it's just a great way to honor that family and what they've been through," Massaroni told me.

The road department will unveil the signs at the courthouse before installing them on the bridge itself, which sits too close to a live roadway to safely host a crowd. Higdon will serve as master of ceremonies. But when it came to who would actually stand up and speak about Crystal and Tommy, Massaroni left that decision to one person.

"I'm letting Sherry pick out who she wants to speak," Massaroni said.

Sherry didn't choose herself, or clergy, or a politician. She chose investigators- three of them, each attached to a different chapter of an investigation that has spanned more than a decade, survived a trial, and is still, in Tommy's case, unresolved.

"I've asked Detective Jamie Brooks. I have asked Steve Keary, and I have asked Jon Snow," Sherry told me. She also asked her brother-in-law, Boo Roby, to speak on behalf of the family.

FBI Special Agent Steve Keary, Detective Jamie Brooks and Detective Jon Snow

But I had to ask more about the three investigators. Three men who, in Sherry's telling, represent three distinct eras of a case that has tested- and, in her words, eventually rebuilt- her trust in law enforcement.