May 14, 2026 · 57 min · 20 segments
Tommy Ballard refused to let his daughter’s disappearance fade away. After Crystal Rogers vanished in 2015, Ballard became the face of the search. He organized volunteers, worked with investigators…
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It was the second Saturday of Kentucky's deer season in 2016, and John Snow expected to spend it in his tree stand.
The sergeant in charge of investigations at the Nelson County Sheriff's Office had gotten up before dawn with his son, and the pair were just settling into their perch in the tree when he heard a familiar ringing.
When the dispatch called that early in the morning, I knew it probably was not gonna be a good phone call.
The dispatcher said a 54-year-old man named Tommy Ballard had been walking to his own tree stand with his grandson when he was shot in the chest.
Obviously, I think most everyone assumed, or at the very least had a very heavy feeling that it was related to the Rogers case.
For the previous 16 months, Tommy had been frantically searching for his daughter.
Her car had been found the next day, abandoned along the Bluegrass Parkway, the same highway that ran beside the property where Tommy was hunting.
His search efforts were the subject of regular news reports, and he'd recruited an army of volunteers to help him find his missing daughter.
He was very, very passionate about finding his daughter and finding who was responsible for it, or proving who was responsible for it, I should say.
Tommy believed he knew who was responsible for his daughter's disappearance, and he wasn't shy about telling anyone who would listen.
That landed him, maybe literally, in the crosshairs of some very dangerous people.
He was very much aware that some of the things that he was doing to try to find her would put him in danger.
The 12-year-old boy had gotten up with his grandpa, and the pair had donned their camo and driven out to the 18-acre family property two miles south of Bardstown, Kentucky.
They'd parked near the edge of a field and were walking across it to a patch of forest on the other side.
And then he heard a gunshot and sees that his grandpa is laying on the ground.
Outside of law enforcement, she knows more about Tommy's case than anyone, and she spoke with Tommy's wife, Sherry, in the aftermath of this incident.
Sherry gets that call, and her heart just drops because the guys had just left the house not 30 minutes earlier, and she feared something was wrong.
And on the other end of the phone, her grandson told her, "Papa has been shot, and I don't know what to do."
It was the second Saturday of Kentucky's deer season in 2016, and John Snow expected to spend it in his tree stand.
The sergeant in charge of investigations at the Nelson County Sheriff's Office had gotten up before dawn with his son, and the pair were just settling into their perch in the tree when he heard a familiar ringing.
When the dispatch called that early in the morning, I knew it probably was not gonna be a good phone call.
The dispatcher said a 54-year-old man named Tommy Ballard had been walking to his own tree stand with his grandson when he was shot in the chest.
Obviously, I think most everyone assumed, or at the very least had a very heavy feeling that it was related to the Rogers case.
For the previous 16 months, Tommy had been frantically searching for his daughter.
Her car had been found the next day, abandoned along the Bluegrass Parkway, the same highway that ran beside the property where Tommy was hunting.
His search efforts were the subject of regular news reports, and he'd recruited an army of volunteers to help him find his missing daughter.
He was very, very passionate about finding his daughter and finding who was responsible for it, or proving who was responsible for it, I should say.
Tommy believed he knew who was responsible for his daughter's disappearance, and he wasn't shy about telling anyone who would listen.
That landed him, maybe literally, in the crosshairs of some very dangerous people.
He was very much aware that some of the things that he was doing to try to find her would put him in danger.
The 12-year-old boy had gotten up with his grandpa, and the pair had donned their camo and driven out to the 18-acre family property two miles south of Bardstown, Kentucky.
They'd parked near the edge of a field and were walking across it to a patch of forest on the other side.
And then he heard a gunshot and sees that his grandpa is laying on the ground.
Outside of law enforcement, she knows more about Tommy's case than anyone, and she spoke with Tommy's wife, Sherry, in the aftermath of this incident.
Sherry gets that call, and her heart just drops because the guys had just left the house not 30 minutes earlier, and she feared something was wrong.
And on the other end of the phone, her grandson told her, "Papa has been shot, and I don't know what to do."
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