January 11, 2026 • 46 mins
Deputy Jon Aujay is former military, an ultramarathon runner, and a part of the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department’s elite SWAT unit, so when he fails to return home from a run in Antelope Valley’s Devil’s Punchbowl…no one knows what to think. The sheriff’s department launches a widespread search for him, but finds no trace. Theories of accident, suicide, and desertion swirl, but Aujay’s former boss — retired CaptainMike Bauer — is convinced there’s something darker at play.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
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Speaker 3 (00:51):
So it's okay, yeah, I'll.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
Turn it down just a little bit, because sometimes you
get animated.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I get pissed off, pissed off old cop.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
This pissed off old cop is Mike Bauer.
Speaker 5 (01:02):
Okay, my name is Mike Bauer, retired Captain LA Sheriff.
I retired in two thousand and two. My last assignment
was Major Crimes Bureau, Detective Division, LA Sheriff.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
Bower spent thirty three years climbing the ranks of the
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and he looks the part
of a retired captain. His white hair and mustache are
neatly groomed, and his eyes were permanently fixed and a
look that says, do not fuck up on my watch.
And he's pissed off because of something that happened to
one of his guys on his squad back in the
(01:34):
summer of nineteen ninety eight. June eleventh started off like
a normal day in Los Angeles, June gloom and bad traffic.
Speaker 5 (01:45):
I got up early out of Long Beach and headed
up the six zero five and into East La. Our
office in East LA.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
Bauer was doing paperwork when a call came into the
front desk. The receptionist answered.
Speaker 5 (01:58):
Then she hung up and she comes down to get
a cup of coffee across the hall, and I said, hey,
who was that? It was? John Aujay.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
John auj was a t eight year old canine cop
and he was calling to inquire about an upcoming job assignment.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
I said, well, I've been trying to get hold him,
and she says, oh, well, maybe he'll call back.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
He never called back.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
John aj was working for the unit Bower headed up
at the time, the Special Enforcement Bureau or SEB for short.
Speaker 5 (02:34):
Which consists of seven or eight SWAT teams, and the
SWAT teams were involved in tactical responses to high risk
situations in the field.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Seb handled things like active shooter situations, hostage negotiations, search
and rescue. It was a job that attracted adrenaline junkies
like Aj. He was an Army paratrooper and a survivalist,
and those military skills, along with his buzz cut and
square build, made him a shoe in for the Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
He was in the Army in Special Forces. He was
working at the elite unit of the department. I have
to call him a loaner, but he was an elite
loaner because the guy was doing fifty mile runs. He
was an animal.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Auj got his kicks by going on long runs through
California's back country. He'd go out deep into the wilderness
to conquer the only obstacle course that still challenged him.
And that's how Auj was spending his day off. On
June eleventh, nineteen ninety eight, he woke up, put on
his running gear and drove to one of his favorite parks,
(03:46):
the Devil's Punch Bowl. It's a rugged canyon where the
Angelus National Forest, the San Gabriel Mountains, and the Mojave
Desert all converge. Auj entered the park just before noon,
used a payphone to call into the Sheriff's department, and
then he took off running. Never listen to any music,
(04:11):
just the sounds of nature as he jogged along a
maze of switchbacks and up a nearly ten thousand foot mountain.
By early evening, he looped back towards the parking lot,
but as the sun began to set, the shadows of
trees and rocks grew until night engulfed the park.
Speaker 5 (04:37):
That evening, I got a phone call saying that Wog
is missing, that he didn't come back to his vehicle,
and that they were going to start some more extensive
searching for him.
Speaker 6 (04:52):
It's an all out manhunt for John Aujay. Every search
and rescue team in La County has been called in
to help the thirty eight year old when hiking Thursday
in a rugged section of the Angelos National Forest known
as Double Punch Bowls Park. It's a beautiful but dangerous area,
an area where it may be extremely difficult to find
all Jay.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
It's a pretty unique situation. The Sheriff's department is called
in to look for a missing hiker who's one of
their own, So the search and rescue team sent out
to look for Auj consists of his friends and colleagues.
Speaker 7 (05:25):
We took our teams out and deployed in two man
teams over the edges of the trails, into the little
nooks and crannies and the gullies that he could have
slipped and fallen into.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
But searchers find no trace of Aj. It was as
if he just vanished into thin air. And now, nearly
thirty years later, the deputy is still missing.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
I guess I'll open a box.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
All that remains from Auj's life is packed into five
cardboard boxes. The items are wrapped in plastic and Bauer
wears gloves as he combs through them.
Speaker 5 (06:07):
This is John's work jacket, and it's an SEB jacket
with his name embroidered on it. And Bossco his.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
Dog now bowers preserving Auja's belongings for future developments in
the case.
Speaker 5 (06:21):
Okay, so here's his running shoes with his name on
the back. Those should have some DNA in him.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
The artifacts also tell us who Auja was. There's a
photocollage full of happy memories him and his high school
sweetheart Dub on their wedding day, a birthday party for
their daughter, Chloe, who was just five when he disappeared,
and puppy picks of Bosco. Auj's department issued K nine
And next to these snapshots of domestic life, there's a
(06:51):
steel ballistics helmet intended to stop rifle rounds, trophies for marksmanship,
army fatigues, you know, tough guys stuff. Auj moved at
a fast clip, trying to balance the competing demands of
home and work, but his life came to an abrupt
and puzzling end.
Speaker 5 (07:12):
A death certificate says cause a death unknown manner, a
death unknown no body.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
The deputy's body has never been found, which raises a
lot of questions for Mike Bauer and a survivalist getting
lost in the woods another big question mark. Over time,
the mystery of it all has turned into something else,
deep and unsettling, suspicion about the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
Only law enforcement agency in this country that I know of,
and I've looked around who has a missing deputy sheriff
and doesn't seem to care. What the hell happened? What's
the answer? Who's motivated to find.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
The answer, And that's Mike cue. When Mike Bauer first
told me about Auja, I thought an unsolved disappearance involving
a cop, that's unusual. But when he started talking about
the Sheriff's Department, his department, that's when I locked in.
Because you'd expect the La County Sheriff's Department to turn
(08:18):
over every stone to find their guy. So the claim
that the LASD may have an interest in not solving
the case, now that's a story. So I called up
my friend Hayley Fox. Like me, she's an investigative journalist,
and she knows a lot about the Sheriff's department because
she's reported on it for many years. Hey, Betsy, Hey.
Speaker 5 (08:41):
Do I'm good?
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I'm ready.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Yeah, I go to do this.
Speaker 8 (08:46):
It's about time.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I'm a little road trip adventure.
Speaker 9 (08:50):
All right, let's do it.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
We've teamed up on stories before and decided to get
the band back together to find answers about this missing
deputy and to take on the largest sheriff's department in
the country.
Speaker 10 (09:04):
There's a code of silence in law enforcement. You break
that code of silence, you're done.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Hey, if don't fucking kill a Copponberry's what are you
gonna do to me.
Speaker 5 (09:12):
It's an obstruction of justice of a very large scale.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
I'm Betsy Shepherd, I'm Haley Fox, and this is Valley
of Shadows, a show about crime and corruption in California's
High Desert. Episode one, the Devil's Punch Bowl. Betsy and
(09:44):
I are making the trek from downtown Los Angeles to
the Antelope Valley, that's the desert area north of La
where Deputy auj disappeared. The drives about sixty miles but
takes an hour and a half to two hours because
of the mountainous.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
Terrain, so you actually have to take We gotta go north.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, we're gonna go north, but this is La Dude.
We gotta go south. One in south five north fourteen
and then I think there's a one thirty eighth throat
in there, but nothing's a street shot.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Spoken like a true Angelino.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
I was born and raised in La County, Go Dodgers,
but this part of it feels worlds away. The Antelope Valley,
or the av as it's sometimes called, is a three
thousand square mile stretch of the Mojave, But this part
of the High Desert doesn't have the same allure and
vibingess as places like Joshua Tree. Instead, the avy is
(10:41):
mostly empty space, dotted with defence plants, bedroom communities, and
tumbleweed towns.
Speaker 11 (10:48):
So a lot of just like.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
Trailers kind of just park down in the desert.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yeah, I mean power lines and scrubbrush. Our story takes
place in and around Pair Blossom, California. It has a
population of fifteen hundred and it's where the Devil's Punch
Bowl located. Driving through it, Betsy gets a case of
deja vu.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
I had anxiety coming to places like this because it
reminds me of like a town that I grew up
and there's just just like I feel, the oppressive weight
of boredom. Oh really. I moved to La several years
ago from South Louisiana. I had never been to Anelo
Valley before, but it was immediately familiar to me because
(11:35):
if you were to replace desert with swamp, this region
would look a lot like the small town I'm from.
It's rural and kind of run down. There's more landscape
than real estate, lots of pickup trucks in town. Life
seems like a thing of the past.
Speaker 9 (11:50):
We got.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
An abandoned motel.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
What's this oh, like an abandoned old restaurant and rec
hall and people getting gas to presumably be all their way.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Yeah, I mean, I think the three stations in a
road tell the story.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
But the closer we get to the Devil's Punch Bowl
where auj was last spotted, and other worldly landscape appears,
full of spiky joshua trees and sandstone columns.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
It's actually really beautiful out here.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
It's not expected to lay.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Are you looking at these huge rocks jutting out of
the ground and like they're making all those crazy shadows?
For seeing anything like them, I haven't either.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
I feel like I've been an old Western movie, you know,
like we're just got this like wide epic landscape shots.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Total endless horizons, totally endless horizons.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
I can see why John aj likes to come out here.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, it's pretty pretty umpig.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Okay, we are pulling into the Devil's Punch Bowl County
Park parking lot.
Speaker 9 (13:06):
Here we are.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
We've come here to retrace John Aujay's last known steps
and to meet with ranger Jack Farley. He was working
on the punch Bowl the day the deputy disappeared.
Speaker 12 (13:24):
Hi are you?
Speaker 13 (13:26):
But are you Jack?
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Farley by chance, I am. This is my reporting partner, Haley, nice.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Too, Thank you for meeting us out here. Yes, Jack
Farley's retired now, but for thirty five years he was
assigned to work the punch Bowl.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
What a cool job.
Speaker 13 (13:45):
Great for me, Yeah, it was awesome, good job.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
It was Farley's job to keep an eye on things,
to tend the grounds and patrol the area. So he
noticed when auj became a regular at the punch Bowl,
and he clocked Aujay's regular parking space the one closest
to the trailhead.
Speaker 13 (14:03):
So I can remember seeing him sitting in the back
of his truck when you get done with a run
in the mountains. So when I'd walk out into the
parking lot, I'd see him sitting out there and ask
him about his run.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Farley remembers that the day all Jay disappeared, his white
Ford F one fifty truck was parked in that very
same spot, surrounded on all sides by wilderness.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
One thing that impresses us so much about this area
is that you have a desert landscape on one side,
you have mountains and forests on the other, and then
in between it's these really cool rock formations.
Speaker 13 (14:41):
Right, it's all uplifted from earthquake activity. Oh wow, that's
a punch bowl fault and that runs parallel with the mountains.
And then when you came up to here, you cross
the San Andreas Fault, which of course the big one
that runs through California, several faults in the area. It
took all this sand that was laid down flat by
streams and tilted up into vertical relief.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
And it creates a bowl shape.
Speaker 13 (15:07):
You can see a definite bowl shape coming around like this. Well,
that's where it got the punch bowl name.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
We're not totally sure about the devil part of it, though.
According to local lore, early homesteaders saw grinning devil in
the rock formations. We didn't see satan in the rock face,
but we did see something else thanks to a county
park employee named Dave Numar.
Speaker 9 (15:32):
See this right where the shadow ends, there's that big
rock kind of all by itself. If you look, it's
like a forehead is facing us and there's a nose
pointing street.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
It looks like George Washington.
Speaker 9 (15:43):
Yeah, it's a natural not reshmre cool. So there's all
kinds of faces out here because it's like oh, our
brains are programmed to see patterns.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Pattern recognition is why we see gods and goddesses in
the stars and the man in the moon. It's also
a key part of criminal investigations, a way to turn
information into a story. And that's why we've come to
the Devil's punch bowl see if we can make sense
of what happened on June eleventh, nineteen ninety eight. So
(16:15):
we pull out a map we printed from the internet
because we're prepared journalists and elder millennials, and we present
it to Ranger farltly.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
Let me show you what it looks like.
Speaker 13 (16:27):
Yeah, line will definitely better.
Speaker 9 (16:29):
It's definitely get us lost in the wilderness.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Good God. Farley proves his outdoor prowess by whipping out
some real maps of the area to help orient us
to our surroundings.
Speaker 13 (16:41):
Okay, here's the Devil's Point.
Speaker 14 (16:44):
Okay, and there's Burkharp tree all right.
Speaker 13 (16:49):
There goes over toward Devil's Chairs, so that'd be just
to the east, goes to south Fork.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
One witness reported seeing auj near the picnic tables at
the main trailhead sometime before noon. This witness was a
local teacher there on a field trip with a bunch
of elementary school kids, Auj stopped to talk to him.
He pointed to a jaggon mountain in the distance, Mount
Baden Powell, and said that's where he was headed.
Speaker 13 (17:18):
So the high mountain behind the telephone poll over there. Yeah,
that's Baden Powell and that's where he would go sometimes.
How tall of the mountain, jeez, that is one of
the higher ones. Let me think ten thousand ten, I
mean in this range.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
And he would run from here to that mountain all
the way over there and then run up it.
Speaker 13 (17:38):
Yeah, he'd run over there, and then there're sitchbacks all
the way to the top of that mountain.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Auj was spotted again later in the day, when multiple
witnesses say they saw him jogging through a campground just
north of the mountain in the direction of the punch
Bowl parking lot. But when Farley left his post at
five PM, Auj's truck was still parked in the lot,
and it stayed parked there as the evening bloomed over
(18:04):
the desert, and then close to midnight, Auj's wife hold
the sheriff station to report him missing.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
As June eleventh, nineteen ninety eight years its end. Debbie
Auja becomes increasingly panicked because her husband, Deputy John Auj,
told her he'd be home around dark and by now
he's several hours late. So she dials up one of
the shriff stations where Auja worked.
Speaker 11 (18:57):
The call comes into the desk and it's from Debbie
and it says, hey, my husband, who's a deputy, he
went for a run and he didn't come home.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
Vince Burton was a sergeant in the Antelope Valley. He
was also Auj's colleague and friend. So he gets on
the phone with Debbie.
Speaker 11 (19:16):
She was just upset. She was crying. She was obviously
very concerned.
Speaker 8 (19:23):
I just I said, Okay, Debbie, we're sending people up there,
you know, keep you posted.
Speaker 4 (19:29):
Patrol deputies high tail it to the punch Bowl, where
they find Auj's truck, but no Auj. They think maybe
he got injured, slipped and fell for how to run
in with some wildlife. So Burton dispatches Search and Rescue
to the site and he calls in their coordinator, Dave Soer,
to discuss Auj's likely route.
Speaker 11 (19:49):
And Dave comes in and we pull up a map
of the area.
Speaker 8 (19:54):
And I told him at that time, I said, you know,
John's a runner, and he goes yeah, and I said no,
he's a long distance run and he's an ultra marathoner.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
He's like what.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Ultra marathoners are running extremists who power through long distances.
In fact, Auj was scheduled to compete in a one
hundred mile run the week after he went missing. So
responders have a hard time wrapping their heads around the
scale of the search.
Speaker 12 (20:24):
I gave them the best information I could give them.
You know, don't start your grid pattern so small.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
This is Randy Meggerdley. He was a patrol deputy for
the Sheriff's Department and one of Auj's running buddies. He
reiterates to the command post that Auj was a beast.
Speaker 12 (20:42):
You're running goat trails is basically what I categorize them as.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
What do you mean by that goat trails?
Speaker 12 (20:47):
Well, they're just megshift trails. Sometimes they'll be covered with snow,
sometimes they'll be covered with mud, crossing rivers. I mean,
it's crazy what kind of stuff that we were doing.
There was one that we did. It was hand over
foot trying to get up this mountain.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
Wow, and so part of the activity was figuring out
how to get to the end of it.
Speaker 12 (21:14):
Yeah, and one piece.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
Hearing Meggridly talk about ultra marathoners, it sounds like they
have no off switch. So maybe Auj just overdid it.
Speaker 12 (21:27):
Your brain does some wonky stuff when you're dehydrated, and
they thought maybe he got on the trail and he
was doing the forest gump just kept running.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
That's a theory that Auj was doing the forest Gump
and just kept running and got himself into a tailspin
of dehydration. Responders take note and fan out across the
search grid.
Speaker 13 (21:51):
I was nice to him, I said, do you know
I know the area pretty well if you guys want help?
Speaker 4 (21:55):
Ranger Jack Farley again, and the guy.
Speaker 13 (21:58):
Goes, no, we're search and rescue. We pretty much know
what we're doing, you know. So I go okay, okay.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
But it doesn't take long for the pros realize they're
in over their heads.
Speaker 13 (22:10):
So then they're going, hey, are you the guy that
knows the area? You know, maybe you could give us
a little help.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
So Farley leads a few groups of deputies and bloodhounds
down the local trails.
Speaker 13 (22:21):
At one time thought they caught a scent and it
went up on the trail going toward the Burckhart Trail,
and we had talked about someone saying they heard a gunshot.
You can't see the house from here, but it's like
a half mile below the trail up there where the
people lived that said.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
They heard that the dogs pick up a scent. Possibly
Auja is on a trail that's near a local resident.
That guy reported to searchers that he heard a single
gunshot at sunset the day Auj vanished. It's a detail
the Sheriff's department registers as a potential clue.
Speaker 13 (22:56):
So I took a group of deputies over there and
we went that really rugged wooded canyon.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
They didn't find anything, but searchers do spot some footprints
on the mountain where Auj told people he was going.
So Auja's captain, Mike Bauer, takes to the skies to
see where they lead.
Speaker 5 (23:16):
And that was the first time I ever stepped out
of a huge helicopter on the side of a mountain
with one skid touching, and then that helicopter flew off
while we examined the openings a big horn mine to
see whether or not it had been broken into.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Bighorn is a mine on top of the mountain leftover
from the gold rush days. Its entrance has been welded
shut to keep out hikers, and when the helicopter lands,
nineties action movie style Bowers crew finds no signs of
a break in. Aujay's reported missing late Thursday night. By
the end of the day Sunday, the Sheriff's Department kicks
(23:56):
things into high gear. They call in the US Army
and Air Force along with the LASD heavy hitters. It's
a specialized squad called Emergency Services Detail or ESD.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
They do search and rescue, underwater search and recovery, and
they support the special Weapons team with medical skills.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
Dave Rathman was one of the ESD members sent out
to search for.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Auj and the adrenaline that you get from ESD is
different from any other adrenaline.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
ESD deputies are equips to handle all types of emergency scenarios.
But it wasn't just the rocky ledges and wild animals
they had to worry about here. The area was full
of all kinds of criminal activity.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
One of the things they told our search teams on
day one was John may have stumbled into a meth
lab by accident. So that was told to us when
we were out searching. And the reason they told us
is they recommend it we take weapons.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
Rathman and his team of searchers come to the punch
Bowl armed and ready for action because maybe Auj isn't
lost or injured or running for the hills. Maybe he's
the victim of foul play. The command post doesn't expand
on why they thought Auj may have been taken out
by meth related violence, but to Rathbun this theory doesn't
(25:28):
sound too far fetched because the Anelo Valley is isolated
outlawsh and on account of its size, difficult to police.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
There are a lot of people who just don't want
to be around other human beings out there, which makes
them sometimes dangerous. There's people cooking meth. Ah. It was
a little bit like the Old West in a way.
I mean, this is a very unusual, strange place.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
And remember that abandoned mind searcher scoped out. Well, it
turns out they're everywhere and they are a prime location
for body dumbing.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
One of the things ESD did was recover dead bodies
from mines.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
And it wasn't just the mines. Corpses turn up all
over these parts.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
You know, if all the dead bodies that were up
there from being deliberately disposed of, stood up and once
they'd be shoulder to shoulder.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
It's a chilling image of the area's darker side. Auj
would jog from the Devil's Punch Bowl into the Angelus
National Forest, which has been called the most dangerous national
forest in America. Around the time of Auji's disappearance, it's
estimated that two to three dozen corpses turned up in
the forest every year, and those were just the ones
(26:50):
that were found. So Rathman understands the danger he faces,
but pushes on in search of footprints.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
You have to look at the ground and look at
bushes that have been pushed in. We walked and walked
and walked and walked and walked and walked, and we
generally don't give up until it's just ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
The search is taxing for Rathban physically and emotionally, because
he and Auj were friends, and back in the early
nineties they were even partners.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
If it was me that needed cover, he'd be there.
I didn't even think about it. Someone you could definitely
depend on.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Rathbin and Auj spent a lot of time driving around together,
but they didn't sit around riffing like partners in a
buddy cop movie.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
He was laconic, didn't have a lot to say unless
you worked on him, and he was always kind of
severe serious.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Auj was hardly two dimensional, though he used his dead
pan personality to mess with people.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
He had this secret sense of humor, but it was
really hard to tell which card he was playing, the
funny card or the I'm John and I'm dead serious card.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
One time, Rathbin and Auj had to chase down a suspect.
Rathbn was driving and he ends up reversing down a
one way street. They got the guy, but Auj.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Looked pissed, and he added that Dave, I need to
talk to you.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Rathven's gotten pretty good at impersonating John Auj's baritone voice.
He says he sounded a lot like Lurch from the
Adams Family.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
What you just did was a violation of California state law,
and if you do something like that again, I'll have
to write you up.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
John.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
We were chasing a suspect and we are law enforcement officers,
and so we get exemptions during those things that may
be true, but it was illegal. Is this John being funny?
You would not know, and he will never let you know.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Auj was hard to read. In fact, there's even confusion
over the pronunciation of his last name. His family says Oj,
but to his friends.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
It was Auj, and he never corrected us. And he's
not very bashful.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
We'll never know why he didn't tell people how to
pronounce his name, but it seems fitting for someone who
remains a mystery to so many. Auj was an enigma
to just about everyone around him, so when he disappeared,
he became an easy target for conspiracy theories. Stories began
to circulate that Auj's alive and well, living in Alaska.
(29:44):
Others say Mexico. Some say he was recruited by a
mercenary group or join the CIA. These theories were fueled
by weird comments Aj had made to friends like Dave rathmun.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
Dave, Yes, you guys think you can find people with
your searches, and you think you're pretty good at it.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
Right.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
I could go on the mountain and you'd never find me.
And I said, there are people who want to be
found that we can't find. So I'm not really impressed
with your with your declaration there, if you don't want
to be found, pretty sure I wouldn't be able to
find you.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
So I agree, And of course that conversation takes on
extra meaning a searchers keep coming up empty handed.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
I participated in that search until my feet were bloody,
as did several of my peers. But day six they said,
well shut it down. What do you mean, shut it down?
Who said that? Who gave that order? And shut this
thing down? What are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Day six, the Sheriff's department folds the search after six
days and gives a statement to the press. Sergeant Sower,
one of the deputies overseeing the operation, says, quote, A
good analogy would be someone coming up to you and
giving you two to three pieces of a five one
hundred piece puzzle and asking you to guess what the
picture is. Throw into that a few pieces of an
(31:15):
entirely different puzzle, and that is what we work with.
We might never get it right. End quote.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
You want to trust the department that they're doing the
right thing, But no one asked us if we should
shut it down. If I'm the search and rescue guy,
and my partners are search and rescue guys, and the
helicopter pilots have been on hundreds of searches. Why are
we asking them what they think and their input?
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Rathman says searches for missing hikers typically last seven to
fourteen days, depending on the viability of the person. Paul
Jay was not your typical hiker, and given his personal
and professional connection to the Sheriff's Department, it seems like
the LASD would go the extra mile to find it.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
So it's six days you cancel or search for somebody
who can run fifty or one hundred miles in the wilderness,
really knows the wilderness is good or better than anybody
in ESD. They set it down. Why are you shutting
it down?
Speaker 2 (32:17):
The Sheriff's Department tells the public that Auj disappeared without
a trace and that they're ending the search because they're
just spinning their wheels. But behind the scenes, they're telling
a very different story.
Speaker 15 (32:30):
Well, they say that they decided he committed suicide.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
Internal LASD reports planing that Auj was distraught over his
failing marriage and took his own life in the punch bowl.
That gunshot. The area resident heard that could have been
the sound of auj just putting an end to it all,
But the Sheriff's department makes that determination without a body.
They don't find any remains, blood, bullets, or a suicide note.
Speaker 5 (33:23):
Nothing.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
The only thing they think they may have found of
Aujay's was an energy bar wrapper left on one of
the trails. From what we can tell, there's not a
lot pointing to suicide, so we reach out to Aujay's
colleagues and friends to get their thoughts.
Speaker 14 (33:39):
He was obviously down, he was obviously upset, but was
it enough to commit suicide?
Speaker 4 (33:45):
Sergeant Vince Burden is still on the fence. On the
one hand, Aj did appear torn up over his marital problems.
On the other he seemed to be coping.
Speaker 14 (33:55):
Would you be telling me about your ultra marathon if
you were just going to end it all? Would you
even be planning to go run at the punch Bowl,
which is an ugly area anyway?
Speaker 4 (34:06):
For fact checking purposes, we want to make clear is
not ugly.
Speaker 14 (34:11):
But go on, Vince, None of that made sense to me.
With the suicide.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
Frady's running buddy Randy Meggerley, there's no question.
Speaker 12 (34:21):
Plain and simple.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
I think he killed himself.
Speaker 12 (34:23):
That's the only way I can explain it.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
Because he says Auj was acting strangely, even more strangely
than usual in the weeks before his disappearance.
Speaker 12 (34:33):
He says, you know, there's a bunch of caves and
stuff out here, you can pretty much disappear I think
was the word that he used, and nobody would ever
find you.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
Auj said similar things to Dave Rathman, but he didn't
put a lot of stock into any of the statements
because he says, Aujay is just a weird guy.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Our unit was next to a big, giant duck pond,
and one of the ways we used to make jokes
about each other is kind of like, where do you
fit in the duck pond? John was an I don't
malign him, but he was one of the oddest ducks
in the punt, which is good, right. You need him,
You don't want everybody swim in the same.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
Initially, Rathbin was open to the possibility of suicide, but
he's become increasingly skeptical over time because if Aoja had
killed himself, he thinks his body or some trace of
him would have turned up by now, so Auji's colleagues
are divided on what happened to him. It's kind of
like those faces seen in the rocks at the Devil's
(35:37):
Punch Bowl. Same details, but interpreted in different ways. And
that makes sense because we feel conflicted about it too.
Auja did say some eerie things about disappearing, but this
disappearing act would be pretty hard to pull off. I mean,
how could he have buried himself and stay buried for
almost three decades. Rathbin asked the Sheriff's department to explain
(36:03):
that one.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
Okay, so well, we think he might have sat on
the edge of one of those mines and blowing himself
into the mind thinking, okay, we are really stretching now
for an explanation as to whine we can't find him.
Speaker 5 (36:21):
I didn't accept it. Just common sense told me you
probably ought to see whether there's any evidence of self infliction.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Pissed off Old copp. Mike Bauer is evangelical in his
belief that the suicide theory is bullshit, because he says
the Sheriff's Department didn't arrive at this conclusion, they led
with it, and that poisoned the investigation. From the start.
Bower says that as early as day three, an LASD
(36:52):
official was pushing the suicide narrative during search team briefings.
To Bauer, this was equivalent to telling searchers to let up.
Speaker 5 (37:02):
I took that person outside, and I said, what and
the hell did you say that for? How could you
possibly know that at this point? How could you possibly
discourage them to search for somebody that worked for you?
Speaker 2 (37:17):
The Sheriff's department was even sharing this theory with the press.
Speaker 7 (37:21):
We haven't ruled out the possibility of suicide, but we
don't have any evidence to support that.
Speaker 11 (37:26):
That's what he came here to do.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Bow are things that's irresponsible to promote the suicide theory
without a high degree of certainty. So he prodded the
department to keep investigating.
Speaker 5 (37:37):
I kept contacting homicide and saying something's wrong. I'm telling
you there's a problem.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
But he says, the department ignored the case to such
an extent that he began to question their motives.
Speaker 5 (37:50):
Nobody was in charge of it, and nobody wanted any
of it once they saw how stinky it was getting.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
Randy meggerdly represents the other end of the spectrum, so
we ask him what he thinks about the possibility of
foul play.
Speaker 12 (38:09):
I refer to myself as a mushroom. They just feed
me a little bit of poop every once in a while.
I wasn't in the know on that whole thing.
Speaker 4 (38:17):
I've never heard the mushroom poop bataphor before.
Speaker 12 (38:19):
Yeah, yeah, you seed you a little bit of poopy,
you grow a little bit.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
At first, the mushroom poop analogy went way over my head.
It sounded like a Southern expression. My mom just forgot
to teach me. But then it clicked while I was
watching The Departed, the Martin Scorsese movie about corruption within
the Boston Police Department.
Speaker 10 (38:41):
My theory Unfeeds is they're like mushrooms, feed them shit
and keep in the dock.
Speaker 4 (38:47):
I think what Meggerdley is saying is that he doesn't
ask a lot of questions because he prefers to be
kept in the dark about things that don't concern him.
And who can really blame him? I mean, law enforcement
agencies are not exactly known for their culture of transparency.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
That file, you'd have to get special, special permission to
touch that file.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
Dave Rathman Audi's former partner says, the Sheriff's department is
unusually protective of the AUJ case file and they don't.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
Even like to hear you talking about it. Well, to me,
that's what you would call a red flag.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
So Rafman asked his buddy, a retired detective working cold
cases for the Sheriff's apartment, to review the AUJ case.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
Could you maybe grab that case file? And he went,
oh no. I said, what do you mean, no, No,
Why wouldn't you want to take a look at it?
He said, no, that's a hot potato. No one's allowed
to touch that. If I start poking around that case,
they'd let me go. I said, well, that's interesting. Why
it's a suicide. He said, I don't know. I just
(40:00):
know that that case can't be touched.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
Those red flags are another reason Rathbin and others just
can't get behind the party line.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
As my father would say, God bless him, there's something
rotten in the woodpile and it stinks and I can.
Speaker 4 (40:19):
Smell it, and that brings us back to the poop mushroom.
It might thrive in darkness, but to me, that's not
an ideal environment for policing. I mean the whole concept
behind law enforcement isn't watchfulized deter crime, right, but who
is watching the police? There's very little oversight of law
(40:41):
enforcement agencies, and it's hard to hold them accountable since
they control the collection and release of information about internal problems.
Speaker 5 (40:49):
The philosophy of the Sheriff's department is to hide it,
and the philosophy of government in a lot of respects
is that way. Now, with the terrible way they handle
public records requests and stuff, they just basically stonewall. They
give you the middle finger. If you're asking for something
that the public has a right to know.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Tell me about it, Bauer, we tried with those public
records requests and got the proverbial middle finger. Without access
to the information, it's hard for us to know how
the Sheriff's department handled the Auj case, and we'd remain
in the dark if it weren't for Mike Bauer and
other deputies coming forward. Bauer retired in two thousand and
(41:32):
two and has spent the better part of his retirement
investigating Auj's disappearance, and he's uncovered what looks like some
pretty damning information about the Sheriff's department.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
They lied to me. They lied to me.
Speaker 5 (41:45):
As a fucking captain of the fucking Sheriff's department with
thirty three years on the job, they fucking lie to
me while I'm in charge of Sheriff's intelligence. They're fucking
lying to me about what they're doing in homicide to
shut this thing up. They don't want me involved in it.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Oh imagine that's.
Speaker 5 (42:02):
How fancy that is.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
We know that law enforcement has its problems, but they're
not usually laid out for us by dyed in the
wool cops, people who know this world from the inside
and can show us where the bodies are buried. Figuratively speaking,
we tell Bauer we want to do a deep dive
on the Aujy case, beginning with his investigation.
Speaker 5 (42:27):
You guys have stumbled into a cluster of shit.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
But he's not as encouraging as we expect him to be,
and for good reason.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
Do you have any advice for us while looking into
this disappearance.
Speaker 5 (42:43):
I wouldn't do it alone. In the event somebody did
decide that you were getting too close to something, you
will not be found killed. You will simply disappear.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
This season on Valley of Shadows.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
Early on I let the suicide theory sit at fifty
to fifty. As I've learned more and more, I'm at
about ninety five murder, five to ten percent suicide.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
They rumor around the drug scene was that a deputy
stumbled onto something he shouldn't have and he was taken
care of.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
I'm here, it's shit on the street minute, bugie. He
didn't get suicide. He was murdered. I'm hearing for more
than one person that.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
I started hearing some rumors that there was a.
Speaker 8 (43:38):
Gun, and yet there's no indication that gun was ever
booked into evidence.
Speaker 10 (43:44):
If you're at it or they thought you were gonna
rat it wasn't. Hey, don't do that ever again, you're done.
They got rid of you. So that's where the murders
came in.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
He was describing with his hands and his arms and
his whole body where this cap was buried at.
Speaker 5 (44:00):
In other words, it's not safe not because of criminals,
it's not safe because of law enforcement. And there's nothing
worse than that.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Hey, dude, we're getting like far out in the middle
of nowhere and no one knows we're out here.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
You've got to be careful where you go and who
you talk to.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
If you have any information or tips related to the
disappearance of John Aujay, please call two one three two
six two nine eight eight nine or email Shadows at
pushkin dot Fm. Valley of Shadows is reported, written and
produced by us Haley Fox and Betsy Sheppard. Our editor
(44:58):
is Dianne Hodson. Our executive producers are Jacob Smith and
Alexandra Garreton. Original music by Jake Gorski, Ray Lynch, Mike
Jersich and Hayden Guard. Sound designed by Jake Gorski, fact
checking by Aica Robbins. Additional production support by Sonia Gerwick
(45:18):
and our show art was designed by Sean Carney and
Betsy Shepherd. Special thanks to Nick White for show art photography.
Additional thanks to Jeremy Tao. Valley of Shadows is a
production of Pushkin Industries. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(45:40):
to podcasts from Type two fun. We're Haley and Betsy.
See you next week.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Subscribe to Pushkin Plus to hear the entire season of
Valley of Shadows ad free starting January twelfth. You'll also
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on the Valley of Shadows show page on Apple podcast
or at pushkin dot fm, slash plus and thanks for
(00:41):
your support. This series includes content that may not be
suitable for all listeners. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
So it's okay, yeah, I'll.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
Turn it down just a little bit, because sometimes you
get animated.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I get pissed off, pissed off old cop.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
This pissed off old cop is Mike Bauer.
Speaker 5 (01:02):
Okay, my name is Mike Bauer, retired Captain LA Sheriff.
I retired in two thousand and two. My last assignment
was Major Crimes Bureau, Detective Division, LA Sheriff.
Speaker 4 (01:13):
Bower spent thirty three years climbing the ranks of the
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and he looks the part
of a retired captain. His white hair and mustache are
neatly groomed, and his eyes were permanently fixed and a
look that says, do not fuck up on my watch.
And he's pissed off because of something that happened to
one of his guys on his squad back in the
(01:34):
summer of nineteen ninety eight. June eleventh started off like
a normal day in Los Angeles, June gloom and bad traffic.
Speaker 5 (01:45):
I got up early out of Long Beach and headed
up the six zero five and into East La. Our
office in East LA.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
Bauer was doing paperwork when a call came into the
front desk. The receptionist answered.
Speaker 5 (01:58):
Then she hung up and she comes down to get
a cup of coffee across the hall, and I said, hey,
who was that? It was? John Aujay.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
John auj was a t eight year old canine cop
and he was calling to inquire about an upcoming job assignment.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
I said, well, I've been trying to get hold him,
and she says, oh, well, maybe he'll call back.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
He never called back.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
John aj was working for the unit Bower headed up
at the time, the Special Enforcement Bureau or SEB for short.
Speaker 5 (02:34):
Which consists of seven or eight SWAT teams, and the
SWAT teams were involved in tactical responses to high risk
situations in the field.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Seb handled things like active shooter situations, hostage negotiations, search
and rescue. It was a job that attracted adrenaline junkies
like Aj. He was an Army paratrooper and a survivalist,
and those military skills, along with his buzz cut and
square build, made him a shoe in for the Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 5 (03:07):
He was in the Army in Special Forces. He was
working at the elite unit of the department. I have
to call him a loaner, but he was an elite
loaner because the guy was doing fifty mile runs. He
was an animal.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Auj got his kicks by going on long runs through
California's back country. He'd go out deep into the wilderness
to conquer the only obstacle course that still challenged him.
And that's how Auj was spending his day off. On
June eleventh, nineteen ninety eight, he woke up, put on
his running gear and drove to one of his favorite parks,
(03:46):
the Devil's Punch Bowl. It's a rugged canyon where the
Angelus National Forest, the San Gabriel Mountains, and the Mojave
Desert all converge. Auj entered the park just before noon,
used a payphone to call into the Sheriff's department, and
then he took off running. Never listen to any music,
(04:11):
just the sounds of nature as he jogged along a
maze of switchbacks and up a nearly ten thousand foot mountain.
By early evening, he looped back towards the parking lot,
but as the sun began to set, the shadows of
trees and rocks grew until night engulfed the park.
Speaker 5 (04:37):
That evening, I got a phone call saying that Wog
is missing, that he didn't come back to his vehicle,
and that they were going to start some more extensive
searching for him.
Speaker 6 (04:52):
It's an all out manhunt for John Aujay. Every search
and rescue team in La County has been called in
to help the thirty eight year old when hiking Thursday
in a rugged section of the Angelos National Forest known
as Double Punch Bowls Park. It's a beautiful but dangerous area,
an area where it may be extremely difficult to find
all Jay.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
It's a pretty unique situation. The Sheriff's department is called
in to look for a missing hiker who's one of
their own, So the search and rescue team sent out
to look for Auj consists of his friends and colleagues.
Speaker 7 (05:25):
We took our teams out and deployed in two man
teams over the edges of the trails, into the little
nooks and crannies and the gullies that he could have
slipped and fallen into.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
But searchers find no trace of Aj. It was as
if he just vanished into thin air. And now, nearly
thirty years later, the deputy is still missing.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
I guess I'll open a box.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
All that remains from Auj's life is packed into five
cardboard boxes. The items are wrapped in plastic and Bauer
wears gloves as he combs through them.
Speaker 5 (06:07):
This is John's work jacket, and it's an SEB jacket
with his name embroidered on it. And Bossco his.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
Dog now bowers preserving Auja's belongings for future developments in
the case.
Speaker 5 (06:21):
Okay, so here's his running shoes with his name on
the back. Those should have some DNA in him.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
The artifacts also tell us who Auja was. There's a
photocollage full of happy memories him and his high school
sweetheart Dub on their wedding day, a birthday party for
their daughter, Chloe, who was just five when he disappeared,
and puppy picks of Bosco. Auj's department issued K nine
And next to these snapshots of domestic life, there's a
(06:51):
steel ballistics helmet intended to stop rifle rounds, trophies for marksmanship,
army fatigues, you know, tough guys stuff. Auj moved at
a fast clip, trying to balance the competing demands of
home and work, but his life came to an abrupt
and puzzling end.
Speaker 5 (07:12):
A death certificate says cause a death unknown manner, a
death unknown no body.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
The deputy's body has never been found, which raises a
lot of questions for Mike Bauer and a survivalist getting
lost in the woods another big question mark. Over time,
the mystery of it all has turned into something else,
deep and unsettling, suspicion about the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
Only law enforcement agency in this country that I know of,
and I've looked around who has a missing deputy sheriff
and doesn't seem to care. What the hell happened? What's
the answer? Who's motivated to find.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
The answer, And that's Mike cue. When Mike Bauer first
told me about Auja, I thought an unsolved disappearance involving
a cop, that's unusual. But when he started talking about
the Sheriff's Department, his department, that's when I locked in.
Because you'd expect the La County Sheriff's Department to turn
(08:18):
over every stone to find their guy. So the claim
that the LASD may have an interest in not solving
the case, now that's a story. So I called up
my friend Hayley Fox. Like me, she's an investigative journalist,
and she knows a lot about the Sheriff's department because
she's reported on it for many years. Hey, Betsy, Hey.
Speaker 5 (08:41):
Do I'm good?
Speaker 2 (08:44):
I'm ready.
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Yeah, I go to do this.
Speaker 8 (08:46):
It's about time.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I'm a little road trip adventure.
Speaker 9 (08:50):
All right, let's do it.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
We've teamed up on stories before and decided to get
the band back together to find answers about this missing
deputy and to take on the largest sheriff's department in
the country.
Speaker 10 (09:04):
There's a code of silence in law enforcement. You break
that code of silence, you're done.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Hey, if don't fucking kill a Copponberry's what are you
gonna do to me.
Speaker 5 (09:12):
It's an obstruction of justice of a very large scale.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
I'm Betsy Shepherd, I'm Haley Fox, and this is Valley
of Shadows, a show about crime and corruption in California's
High Desert. Episode one, the Devil's Punch Bowl. Betsy and
(09:44):
I are making the trek from downtown Los Angeles to
the Antelope Valley, that's the desert area north of La
where Deputy auj disappeared. The drives about sixty miles but
takes an hour and a half to two hours because
of the mountainous.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
Terrain, so you actually have to take We gotta go north.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, we're gonna go north, but this is La Dude.
We gotta go south. One in south five north fourteen
and then I think there's a one thirty eighth throat
in there, but nothing's a street shot.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Spoken like a true Angelino.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
I was born and raised in La County, Go Dodgers,
but this part of it feels worlds away. The Antelope Valley,
or the av as it's sometimes called, is a three
thousand square mile stretch of the Mojave, But this part
of the High Desert doesn't have the same allure and
vibingess as places like Joshua Tree. Instead, the avy is
(10:41):
mostly empty space, dotted with defence plants, bedroom communities, and
tumbleweed towns.
Speaker 11 (10:48):
So a lot of just like.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
Trailers kind of just park down in the desert.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yeah, I mean power lines and scrubbrush. Our story takes
place in and around Pair Blossom, California. It has a
population of fifteen hundred and it's where the Devil's Punch
Bowl located. Driving through it, Betsy gets a case of
deja vu.
Speaker 4 (11:14):
I had anxiety coming to places like this because it
reminds me of like a town that I grew up
and there's just just like I feel, the oppressive weight
of boredom. Oh really. I moved to La several years
ago from South Louisiana. I had never been to Anelo
Valley before, but it was immediately familiar to me because
(11:35):
if you were to replace desert with swamp, this region
would look a lot like the small town I'm from.
It's rural and kind of run down. There's more landscape
than real estate, lots of pickup trucks in town. Life
seems like a thing of the past.
Speaker 9 (11:50):
We got.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
An abandoned motel.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
What's this oh, like an abandoned old restaurant and rec
hall and people getting gas to presumably be all their way.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Yeah, I mean, I think the three stations in a
road tell the story.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
But the closer we get to the Devil's Punch Bowl
where auj was last spotted, and other worldly landscape appears,
full of spiky joshua trees and sandstone columns.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
It's actually really beautiful out here.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
It's not expected to lay.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Are you looking at these huge rocks jutting out of
the ground and like they're making all those crazy shadows?
For seeing anything like them, I haven't either.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
I feel like I've been an old Western movie, you know,
like we're just got this like wide epic landscape shots.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Total endless horizons, totally endless horizons.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
I can see why John aj likes to come out here.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, it's pretty pretty umpig.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Okay, we are pulling into the Devil's Punch Bowl County
Park parking lot.
Speaker 9 (13:06):
Here we are.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
We've come here to retrace John Aujay's last known steps
and to meet with ranger Jack Farley. He was working
on the punch Bowl the day the deputy disappeared.
Speaker 12 (13:24):
Hi are you?
Speaker 13 (13:26):
But are you Jack?
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Farley by chance, I am. This is my reporting partner, Haley, nice.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Too, Thank you for meeting us out here. Yes, Jack
Farley's retired now, but for thirty five years he was
assigned to work the punch Bowl.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
What a cool job.
Speaker 13 (13:45):
Great for me, Yeah, it was awesome, good job.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
It was Farley's job to keep an eye on things,
to tend the grounds and patrol the area. So he
noticed when auj became a regular at the punch Bowl,
and he clocked Aujay's regular parking space the one closest
to the trailhead.
Speaker 13 (14:03):
So I can remember seeing him sitting in the back
of his truck when you get done with a run
in the mountains. So when I'd walk out into the
parking lot, I'd see him sitting out there and ask
him about his run.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Farley remembers that the day all Jay disappeared, his white
Ford F one fifty truck was parked in that very
same spot, surrounded on all sides by wilderness.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
One thing that impresses us so much about this area
is that you have a desert landscape on one side,
you have mountains and forests on the other, and then
in between it's these really cool rock formations.
Speaker 13 (14:41):
Right, it's all uplifted from earthquake activity. Oh wow, that's
a punch bowl fault and that runs parallel with the mountains.
And then when you came up to here, you cross
the San Andreas Fault, which of course the big one
that runs through California, several faults in the area. It
took all this sand that was laid down flat by
streams and tilted up into vertical relief.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
And it creates a bowl shape.
Speaker 13 (15:07):
You can see a definite bowl shape coming around like this. Well,
that's where it got the punch bowl name.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
We're not totally sure about the devil part of it, though.
According to local lore, early homesteaders saw grinning devil in
the rock formations. We didn't see satan in the rock face,
but we did see something else thanks to a county
park employee named Dave Numar.
Speaker 9 (15:32):
See this right where the shadow ends, there's that big
rock kind of all by itself. If you look, it's
like a forehead is facing us and there's a nose
pointing street.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
It looks like George Washington.
Speaker 9 (15:43):
Yeah, it's a natural not reshmre cool. So there's all
kinds of faces out here because it's like oh, our
brains are programmed to see patterns.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Pattern recognition is why we see gods and goddesses in
the stars and the man in the moon. It's also
a key part of criminal investigations, a way to turn
information into a story. And that's why we've come to
the Devil's punch bowl see if we can make sense
of what happened on June eleventh, nineteen ninety eight. So
(16:15):
we pull out a map we printed from the internet
because we're prepared journalists and elder millennials, and we present
it to Ranger farltly.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
Let me show you what it looks like.
Speaker 13 (16:27):
Yeah, line will definitely better.
Speaker 9 (16:29):
It's definitely get us lost in the wilderness.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Good God. Farley proves his outdoor prowess by whipping out
some real maps of the area to help orient us
to our surroundings.
Speaker 13 (16:41):
Okay, here's the Devil's Point.
Speaker 14 (16:44):
Okay, and there's Burkharp tree all right.
Speaker 13 (16:49):
There goes over toward Devil's Chairs, so that'd be just
to the east, goes to south Fork.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
One witness reported seeing auj near the picnic tables at
the main trailhead sometime before noon. This witness was a
local teacher there on a field trip with a bunch
of elementary school kids, Auj stopped to talk to him.
He pointed to a jaggon mountain in the distance, Mount
Baden Powell, and said that's where he was headed.
Speaker 13 (17:18):
So the high mountain behind the telephone poll over there. Yeah,
that's Baden Powell and that's where he would go sometimes.
How tall of the mountain, jeez, that is one of
the higher ones. Let me think ten thousand ten, I
mean in this range.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
And he would run from here to that mountain all
the way over there and then run up it.
Speaker 13 (17:38):
Yeah, he'd run over there, and then there're sitchbacks all
the way to the top of that mountain.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Auj was spotted again later in the day, when multiple
witnesses say they saw him jogging through a campground just
north of the mountain in the direction of the punch
Bowl parking lot. But when Farley left his post at
five PM, Auj's truck was still parked in the lot,
and it stayed parked there as the evening bloomed over
(18:04):
the desert, and then close to midnight, Auj's wife hold
the sheriff station to report him missing.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
As June eleventh, nineteen ninety eight years its end. Debbie
Auja becomes increasingly panicked because her husband, Deputy John Auj,
told her he'd be home around dark and by now
he's several hours late. So she dials up one of
the shriff stations where Auja worked.
Speaker 11 (18:57):
The call comes into the desk and it's from Debbie
and it says, hey, my husband, who's a deputy, he
went for a run and he didn't come home.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
Vince Burton was a sergeant in the Antelope Valley. He
was also Auj's colleague and friend. So he gets on
the phone with Debbie.
Speaker 11 (19:16):
She was just upset. She was crying. She was obviously
very concerned.
Speaker 8 (19:23):
I just I said, Okay, Debbie, we're sending people up there,
you know, keep you posted.
Speaker 4 (19:29):
Patrol deputies high tail it to the punch Bowl, where
they find Auj's truck, but no Auj. They think maybe
he got injured, slipped and fell for how to run
in with some wildlife. So Burton dispatches Search and Rescue
to the site and he calls in their coordinator, Dave Soer,
to discuss Auj's likely route.
Speaker 11 (19:49):
And Dave comes in and we pull up a map
of the area.
Speaker 8 (19:54):
And I told him at that time, I said, you know,
John's a runner, and he goes yeah, and I said no,
he's a long distance run and he's an ultra marathoner.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
He's like what.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Ultra marathoners are running extremists who power through long distances.
In fact, Auj was scheduled to compete in a one
hundred mile run the week after he went missing. So
responders have a hard time wrapping their heads around the
scale of the search.
Speaker 12 (20:24):
I gave them the best information I could give them.
You know, don't start your grid pattern so small.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
This is Randy Meggerdley. He was a patrol deputy for
the Sheriff's Department and one of Auj's running buddies. He
reiterates to the command post that Auj was a beast.
Speaker 12 (20:42):
You're running goat trails is basically what I categorize them as.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
What do you mean by that goat trails?
Speaker 12 (20:47):
Well, they're just megshift trails. Sometimes they'll be covered with snow,
sometimes they'll be covered with mud, crossing rivers. I mean,
it's crazy what kind of stuff that we were doing.
There was one that we did. It was hand over
foot trying to get up this mountain.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
Wow, and so part of the activity was figuring out
how to get to the end of it.
Speaker 12 (21:14):
Yeah, and one piece.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
Hearing Meggridly talk about ultra marathoners, it sounds like they
have no off switch. So maybe Auj just overdid it.
Speaker 12 (21:27):
Your brain does some wonky stuff when you're dehydrated, and
they thought maybe he got on the trail and he
was doing the forest gump just kept running.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
That's a theory that Auj was doing the forest Gump
and just kept running and got himself into a tailspin
of dehydration. Responders take note and fan out across the
search grid.
Speaker 13 (21:51):
I was nice to him, I said, do you know
I know the area pretty well if you guys want help?
Speaker 4 (21:55):
Ranger Jack Farley again, and the guy.
Speaker 13 (21:58):
Goes, no, we're search and rescue. We pretty much know
what we're doing, you know. So I go okay, okay.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
But it doesn't take long for the pros realize they're
in over their heads.
Speaker 13 (22:10):
So then they're going, hey, are you the guy that
knows the area? You know, maybe you could give us
a little help.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
So Farley leads a few groups of deputies and bloodhounds
down the local trails.
Speaker 13 (22:21):
At one time thought they caught a scent and it
went up on the trail going toward the Burckhart Trail,
and we had talked about someone saying they heard a gunshot.
You can't see the house from here, but it's like
a half mile below the trail up there where the
people lived that said.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
They heard that the dogs pick up a scent. Possibly
Auja is on a trail that's near a local resident.
That guy reported to searchers that he heard a single
gunshot at sunset the day Auj vanished. It's a detail
the Sheriff's department registers as a potential clue.
Speaker 13 (22:56):
So I took a group of deputies over there and
we went that really rugged wooded canyon.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
They didn't find anything, but searchers do spot some footprints
on the mountain where Auj told people he was going.
So Auja's captain, Mike Bauer, takes to the skies to
see where they lead.
Speaker 5 (23:16):
And that was the first time I ever stepped out
of a huge helicopter on the side of a mountain
with one skid touching, and then that helicopter flew off
while we examined the openings a big horn mine to
see whether or not it had been broken into.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Bighorn is a mine on top of the mountain leftover
from the gold rush days. Its entrance has been welded
shut to keep out hikers, and when the helicopter lands,
nineties action movie style Bowers crew finds no signs of
a break in. Aujay's reported missing late Thursday night. By
the end of the day Sunday, the Sheriff's Department kicks
(23:56):
things into high gear. They call in the US Army
and Air Force along with the LASD heavy hitters. It's
a specialized squad called Emergency Services Detail or ESD.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
They do search and rescue, underwater search and recovery, and
they support the special Weapons team with medical skills.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
Dave Rathman was one of the ESD members sent out
to search for.
Speaker 3 (24:23):
Auj and the adrenaline that you get from ESD is
different from any other adrenaline.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
ESD deputies are equips to handle all types of emergency scenarios.
But it wasn't just the rocky ledges and wild animals
they had to worry about here. The area was full
of all kinds of criminal activity.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
One of the things they told our search teams on
day one was John may have stumbled into a meth
lab by accident. So that was told to us when
we were out searching. And the reason they told us
is they recommend it we take weapons.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
Rathman and his team of searchers come to the punch
Bowl armed and ready for action because maybe Auj isn't
lost or injured or running for the hills. Maybe he's
the victim of foul play. The command post doesn't expand
on why they thought Auj may have been taken out
by meth related violence, but to Rathbun this theory doesn't
(25:28):
sound too far fetched because the Anelo Valley is isolated
outlawsh and on account of its size, difficult to police.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
There are a lot of people who just don't want
to be around other human beings out there, which makes
them sometimes dangerous. There's people cooking meth. Ah. It was
a little bit like the Old West in a way.
I mean, this is a very unusual, strange place.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
And remember that abandoned mind searcher scoped out. Well, it
turns out they're everywhere and they are a prime location
for body dumbing.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
One of the things ESD did was recover dead bodies
from mines.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
And it wasn't just the mines. Corpses turn up all
over these parts.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
You know, if all the dead bodies that were up
there from being deliberately disposed of, stood up and once
they'd be shoulder to shoulder.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
It's a chilling image of the area's darker side. Auj
would jog from the Devil's Punch Bowl into the Angelus
National Forest, which has been called the most dangerous national
forest in America. Around the time of Auji's disappearance, it's
estimated that two to three dozen corpses turned up in
the forest every year, and those were just the ones
(26:50):
that were found. So Rathman understands the danger he faces,
but pushes on in search of footprints.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
You have to look at the ground and look at
bushes that have been pushed in. We walked and walked
and walked and walked and walked and walked, and we
generally don't give up until it's just ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
The search is taxing for Rathban physically and emotionally, because
he and Auj were friends, and back in the early
nineties they were even partners.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
If it was me that needed cover, he'd be there.
I didn't even think about it. Someone you could definitely
depend on.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Rathbin and Auj spent a lot of time driving around together,
but they didn't sit around riffing like partners in a
buddy cop movie.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
He was laconic, didn't have a lot to say unless
you worked on him, and he was always kind of
severe serious.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Auj was hardly two dimensional, though he used his dead
pan personality to mess with people.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
He had this secret sense of humor, but it was
really hard to tell which card he was playing, the
funny card or the I'm John and I'm dead serious card.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
One time, Rathbin and Auj had to chase down a suspect.
Rathbn was driving and he ends up reversing down a
one way street. They got the guy, but Auj.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Looked pissed, and he added that Dave, I need to
talk to you.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Rathven's gotten pretty good at impersonating John Auj's baritone voice.
He says he sounded a lot like Lurch from the
Adams Family.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
What you just did was a violation of California state law,
and if you do something like that again, I'll have
to write you up.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
John.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
We were chasing a suspect and we are law enforcement officers,
and so we get exemptions during those things that may
be true, but it was illegal. Is this John being funny?
You would not know, and he will never let you know.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Auj was hard to read. In fact, there's even confusion
over the pronunciation of his last name. His family says Oj,
but to his friends.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
It was Auj, and he never corrected us. And he's
not very bashful.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
We'll never know why he didn't tell people how to
pronounce his name, but it seems fitting for someone who
remains a mystery to so many. Auj was an enigma
to just about everyone around him, so when he disappeared,
he became an easy target for conspiracy theories. Stories began
to circulate that Auj's alive and well, living in Alaska.
(29:44):
Others say Mexico. Some say he was recruited by a
mercenary group or join the CIA. These theories were fueled
by weird comments Aj had made to friends like Dave rathmun.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
Dave, Yes, you guys think you can find people with
your searches, and you think you're pretty good at it.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
Right.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
I could go on the mountain and you'd never find me.
And I said, there are people who want to be
found that we can't find. So I'm not really impressed
with your with your declaration there, if you don't want
to be found, pretty sure I wouldn't be able to
find you.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
So I agree, And of course that conversation takes on
extra meaning a searchers keep coming up empty handed.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
I participated in that search until my feet were bloody,
as did several of my peers. But day six they said,
well shut it down. What do you mean, shut it down?
Who said that? Who gave that order? And shut this
thing down? What are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Day six, the Sheriff's department folds the search after six
days and gives a statement to the press. Sergeant Sower,
one of the deputies overseeing the operation, says, quote, A
good analogy would be someone coming up to you and
giving you two to three pieces of a five one
hundred piece puzzle and asking you to guess what the
picture is. Throw into that a few pieces of an
(31:15):
entirely different puzzle, and that is what we work with.
We might never get it right. End quote.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
You want to trust the department that they're doing the
right thing, But no one asked us if we should
shut it down. If I'm the search and rescue guy,
and my partners are search and rescue guys, and the
helicopter pilots have been on hundreds of searches. Why are
we asking them what they think and their input?
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Rathman says searches for missing hikers typically last seven to
fourteen days, depending on the viability of the person. Paul
Jay was not your typical hiker, and given his personal
and professional connection to the Sheriff's Department, it seems like
the LASD would go the extra mile to find it.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
So it's six days you cancel or search for somebody
who can run fifty or one hundred miles in the wilderness,
really knows the wilderness is good or better than anybody
in ESD. They set it down. Why are you shutting
it down?
Speaker 2 (32:17):
The Sheriff's Department tells the public that Auj disappeared without
a trace and that they're ending the search because they're
just spinning their wheels. But behind the scenes, they're telling
a very different story.
Speaker 15 (32:30):
Well, they say that they decided he committed suicide.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
Internal LASD reports planing that Auj was distraught over his
failing marriage and took his own life in the punch bowl.
That gunshot. The area resident heard that could have been
the sound of auj just putting an end to it all,
But the Sheriff's department makes that determination without a body.
They don't find any remains, blood, bullets, or a suicide note.
Speaker 5 (33:23):
Nothing.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
The only thing they think they may have found of
Aujay's was an energy bar wrapper left on one of
the trails. From what we can tell, there's not a
lot pointing to suicide, so we reach out to Aujay's
colleagues and friends to get their thoughts.
Speaker 14 (33:39):
He was obviously down, he was obviously upset, but was
it enough to commit suicide?
Speaker 4 (33:45):
Sergeant Vince Burden is still on the fence. On the
one hand, Aj did appear torn up over his marital problems.
On the other he seemed to be coping.
Speaker 14 (33:55):
Would you be telling me about your ultra marathon if
you were just going to end it all? Would you
even be planning to go run at the punch Bowl,
which is an ugly area anyway?
Speaker 4 (34:06):
For fact checking purposes, we want to make clear is
not ugly.
Speaker 14 (34:11):
But go on, Vince, None of that made sense to me.
With the suicide.
Speaker 4 (34:16):
Frady's running buddy Randy Meggerley, there's no question.
Speaker 12 (34:21):
Plain and simple.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
I think he killed himself.
Speaker 12 (34:23):
That's the only way I can explain it.
Speaker 4 (34:26):
Because he says Auj was acting strangely, even more strangely
than usual in the weeks before his disappearance.
Speaker 12 (34:33):
He says, you know, there's a bunch of caves and
stuff out here, you can pretty much disappear I think
was the word that he used, and nobody would ever
find you.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
Auj said similar things to Dave Rathman, but he didn't
put a lot of stock into any of the statements
because he says, Aujay is just a weird guy.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Our unit was next to a big, giant duck pond,
and one of the ways we used to make jokes
about each other is kind of like, where do you
fit in the duck pond? John was an I don't
malign him, but he was one of the oddest ducks
in the punt, which is good, right. You need him,
You don't want everybody swim in the same.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
Initially, Rathbin was open to the possibility of suicide, but
he's become increasingly skeptical over time because if Aoja had
killed himself, he thinks his body or some trace of
him would have turned up by now, so Auji's colleagues
are divided on what happened to him. It's kind of
like those faces seen in the rocks at the Devil's
(35:37):
Punch Bowl. Same details, but interpreted in different ways. And
that makes sense because we feel conflicted about it too.
Auja did say some eerie things about disappearing, but this
disappearing act would be pretty hard to pull off. I mean,
how could he have buried himself and stay buried for
almost three decades. Rathbin asked the Sheriff's department to explain
(36:03):
that one.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
Okay, so well, we think he might have sat on
the edge of one of those mines and blowing himself
into the mind thinking, okay, we are really stretching now
for an explanation as to whine we can't find him.
Speaker 5 (36:21):
I didn't accept it. Just common sense told me you
probably ought to see whether there's any evidence of self infliction.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Pissed off Old copp. Mike Bauer is evangelical in his
belief that the suicide theory is bullshit, because he says
the Sheriff's Department didn't arrive at this conclusion, they led
with it, and that poisoned the investigation. From the start.
Bower says that as early as day three, an LASD
(36:52):
official was pushing the suicide narrative during search team briefings.
To Bauer, this was equivalent to telling searchers to let up.
Speaker 5 (37:02):
I took that person outside, and I said, what and
the hell did you say that for? How could you
possibly know that at this point? How could you possibly
discourage them to search for somebody that worked for you?
Speaker 2 (37:17):
The Sheriff's department was even sharing this theory with the press.
Speaker 7 (37:21):
We haven't ruled out the possibility of suicide, but we
don't have any evidence to support that.
Speaker 11 (37:26):
That's what he came here to do.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
Bow are things that's irresponsible to promote the suicide theory
without a high degree of certainty. So he prodded the
department to keep investigating.
Speaker 5 (37:37):
I kept contacting homicide and saying something's wrong. I'm telling
you there's a problem.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
But he says, the department ignored the case to such
an extent that he began to question their motives.
Speaker 5 (37:50):
Nobody was in charge of it, and nobody wanted any
of it once they saw how stinky it was getting.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
Randy meggerdly represents the other end of the spectrum, so
we ask him what he thinks about the possibility of
foul play.
Speaker 12 (38:09):
I refer to myself as a mushroom. They just feed
me a little bit of poop every once in a while.
I wasn't in the know on that whole thing.
Speaker 4 (38:17):
I've never heard the mushroom poop bataphor before.
Speaker 12 (38:19):
Yeah, yeah, you seed you a little bit of poopy,
you grow a little bit.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
At first, the mushroom poop analogy went way over my head.
It sounded like a Southern expression. My mom just forgot
to teach me. But then it clicked while I was
watching The Departed, the Martin Scorsese movie about corruption within
the Boston Police Department.
Speaker 10 (38:41):
My theory Unfeeds is they're like mushrooms, feed them shit
and keep in the dock.
Speaker 4 (38:47):
I think what Meggerdley is saying is that he doesn't
ask a lot of questions because he prefers to be
kept in the dark about things that don't concern him.
And who can really blame him? I mean, law enforcement
agencies are not exactly known for their culture of transparency.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
That file, you'd have to get special, special permission to
touch that file.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
Dave Rathman Audi's former partner says, the Sheriff's department is
unusually protective of the AUJ case file and they don't.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
Even like to hear you talking about it. Well, to me,
that's what you would call a red flag.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
So Rafman asked his buddy, a retired detective working cold
cases for the Sheriff's apartment, to review the AUJ case.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
Could you maybe grab that case file? And he went,
oh no. I said, what do you mean, no, No,
Why wouldn't you want to take a look at it?
He said, no, that's a hot potato. No one's allowed
to touch that. If I start poking around that case,
they'd let me go. I said, well, that's interesting. Why
it's a suicide. He said, I don't know. I just
(40:00):
know that that case can't be touched.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
Those red flags are another reason Rathbin and others just
can't get behind the party line.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
As my father would say, God bless him, there's something
rotten in the woodpile and it stinks and I can.
Speaker 4 (40:19):
Smell it, and that brings us back to the poop mushroom.
It might thrive in darkness, but to me, that's not
an ideal environment for policing. I mean the whole concept
behind law enforcement isn't watchfulized deter crime, right, but who
is watching the police? There's very little oversight of law
(40:41):
enforcement agencies, and it's hard to hold them accountable since
they control the collection and release of information about internal problems.
Speaker 5 (40:49):
The philosophy of the Sheriff's department is to hide it,
and the philosophy of government in a lot of respects
is that way. Now, with the terrible way they handle
public records requests and stuff, they just basically stonewall. They
give you the middle finger. If you're asking for something
that the public has a right to know.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Tell me about it, Bauer, we tried with those public
records requests and got the proverbial middle finger. Without access
to the information, it's hard for us to know how
the Sheriff's department handled the Auj case, and we'd remain
in the dark if it weren't for Mike Bauer and
other deputies coming forward. Bauer retired in two thousand and
(41:32):
two and has spent the better part of his retirement
investigating Auj's disappearance, and he's uncovered what looks like some
pretty damning information about the Sheriff's department.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
They lied to me. They lied to me.
Speaker 5 (41:45):
As a fucking captain of the fucking Sheriff's department with
thirty three years on the job, they fucking lie to
me while I'm in charge of Sheriff's intelligence. They're fucking
lying to me about what they're doing in homicide to
shut this thing up. They don't want me involved in it.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
Oh imagine that's.
Speaker 5 (42:02):
How fancy that is.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
We know that law enforcement has its problems, but they're
not usually laid out for us by dyed in the
wool cops, people who know this world from the inside
and can show us where the bodies are buried. Figuratively speaking,
we tell Bauer we want to do a deep dive
on the Aujy case, beginning with his investigation.
Speaker 5 (42:27):
You guys have stumbled into a cluster of shit.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
But he's not as encouraging as we expect him to be,
and for good reason.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
Do you have any advice for us while looking into
this disappearance.
Speaker 5 (42:43):
I wouldn't do it alone. In the event somebody did
decide that you were getting too close to something, you
will not be found killed. You will simply disappear.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
This season on Valley of Shadows.
Speaker 3 (43:04):
Early on I let the suicide theory sit at fifty
to fifty. As I've learned more and more, I'm at
about ninety five murder, five to ten percent suicide.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
They rumor around the drug scene was that a deputy
stumbled onto something he shouldn't have and he was taken
care of.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
I'm here, it's shit on the street minute, bugie. He
didn't get suicide. He was murdered. I'm hearing for more
than one person that.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
I started hearing some rumors that there was a.
Speaker 8 (43:38):
Gun, and yet there's no indication that gun was ever
booked into evidence.
Speaker 10 (43:44):
If you're at it or they thought you were gonna
rat it wasn't. Hey, don't do that ever again, you're done.
They got rid of you. So that's where the murders
came in.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
He was describing with his hands and his arms and
his whole body where this cap was buried at.
Speaker 5 (44:00):
In other words, it's not safe not because of criminals,
it's not safe because of law enforcement. And there's nothing
worse than that.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Hey, dude, we're getting like far out in the middle
of nowhere and no one knows we're out here.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
You've got to be careful where you go and who
you talk to.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
If you have any information or tips related to the
disappearance of John Aujay, please call two one three two
six two nine eight eight nine or email Shadows at
pushkin dot Fm. Valley of Shadows is reported, written and
produced by us Haley Fox and Betsy Sheppard. Our editor
(44:58):
is Dianne Hodson. Our executive producers are Jacob Smith and
Alexandra Garreton. Original music by Jake Gorski, Ray Lynch, Mike
Jersich and Hayden Guard. Sound designed by Jake Gorski, fact
checking by Aica Robbins. Additional production support by Sonia Gerwick
(45:18):
and our show art was designed by Sean Carney and
Betsy Shepherd. Special thanks to Nick White for show art photography.
Additional thanks to Jeremy Tao. Valley of Shadows is a
production of Pushkin Industries. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(45:40):
to podcasts from Type two fun. We're Haley and Betsy.
See you next week.
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