Starring: Ann Gotlib, Crystal Rogers, Trent Di Giuro.
Their Kentucky cases are just a few that have been the subject of true crime podcasts and television shows for years. Thousands of people across the country are wondering if they will ever know the whole story or if those responsible will ever be held accountable — or in some cases, how the perpetrators could go free.
Some of Kentucky’s most notorious crimes made national headlines and even had a lasting impact, resulting in new laws to help future victims.
Here are some of Kentucky’s most infamous criminal cases:
The Ann Gotlib case is one of Kentucky’s greatest mysteries.
Ann was just 12 years old when she disappeared from Bashford Manor Mall in 1983, her bicycle found leaning against a wall of the Bacon’s department store. She was believed to have been abducted, but her body has never been found and no one has been charged with her murder, The Courier Journal previously reported.
Over the years, there has been speculation about the reason behind her disappearance, including that she may have run away. Several strong suspects were named in the case, but no one was ever charged.
To this day, her case remains unsolved, but her disappearance has had a national impact. In 1984, the case helped members of Congress pass the Missing Children’s Assistance Act, which expanded the level of assistance the FBI can provide in the case of a missing child.
The Crystal Rogers case is more recent, but still infamous within the state.
Rogers, 35, disappeared from Bardstown in 2015. The mother of five, the FBI said, was known for never going anywhere without them.
Her car was found abandoned on the Bluegrass Parkway, with her keys, phone and purse inside.
Brooks Houck, 42, her boyfriend and father of the youngest child, was identified as “the only suspect in her disappearance” in October 2015, according to the Nelson County Gazette.
Years later, Joseph Lawson, the first person arrested in connection with the case, was charged with conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with physical evidence, according to court records. He has pleaded not guilty. His father was also later arrested in connection with the case and has denied the charges.
The FBI, which took over the investigation in 2020, announced Houck’s arrest a few weeks later. He has now also pleaded his innocence.
Their trials are scheduled for next year, nearly a decade after Rogers was reported missing.
More: Crystal Rogers Update: Brooks Houck, Lawson’s Murder Case to Move Out of Nelson County
In this case, the perpetrator is more infamous than his victims.
Donald Harvey, who died in 2017 after being attacked in his prison cell, was known as the ‘Angel of Death’.
In 1987, Harvey pleaded guilty to the murders of 37 people, mostly while he worked as a nursing assistant at hospitals in Cincinnati and London, Kentucky. He also took responsibility for the deaths of 18 other people while working at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Cincinnati, the Associated Press reported.
More: Serial Killer Donald Harvey: ‘You Think I Played God, And I Did’
More: Serial killer Donald Harvey | Enquirer historical front pages from August 19
Mel Ignatow, who died in 2008, was in prison in connection with the 1988 murder of his girlfriend Brenda Sue Schaeffer, though he was never convicted of the murder itself, according to Murderpedia.
After Ignatow’s trial, footage linking him to the crime was discovered, but due to double jeopardy – a legal term meaning a person cannot be prosecuted twice for the same crime – he could not be retried for the murder.
His time in prison was served for perjury committed during his testimony before the grand jury.
Trent DiGiuro, an Oldham County native and University of Kentucky football player, was found shot to death on the porch of his Lexington home on July 17, 1994, The Courier Journal previously reported.
In 2000, a woman named Aimee Lloyd came forward and said her ex-boyfriend, Shane Ragland, was responsible for his death.
At the time, prosecutors argued that Ragland committed the crime because he believed DiGiuro was the reason he was banned from a British fraternity.
Ragland was sentenced to 30 years in prison for DiGiuro’s murder, but the Kentucky Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 2005 when it was discovered that an FBI bullet analyst lied during a preliminary investigation.
Ragland was released in 2007 after pleading guilty to amended manslaughter charges. He was also ordered to pay DiGiuro’s family $63.4 million in a wrongful death lawsuit.
Victor D. Taylor is currently on death row for the 1984 kidnapping and murder of two Trinity High School students, Scott Christopher Nelson and Richard David Stephenson. They got lost on the way to a football game, according to data from the Kentucky Department of Corrections.
According to the website, Nelson and Stephenson were taken to a vacant lot, robbed and shot to death.
George Ellis Wade, the co-defendant in the case, received a life sentence, The Courier Journal previously reported.
More: Death row inmate Victor Taylor’s conviction was upheld in 1984 for the murders of Trinity High students
This article originally appeared in the Louisville Courier Journal: True crime cases: 6 notorious murder cases in Kentucky
