January 19, 2026 • 46 mins
At the time of Jon Aujay’s disappearance, California is under siege by a meth epidemic and the Antelope Valley is the epicenter. So when investigators receive tips that Aujay was killed after stumbling upon a meth lab, it seems like a theory worth looking into. But LASD detectives are quick to dismiss the leads. Questioning why the cops are so dismissive, Betsy and Hayley discover there was one cop, Homicide Detective Larry Brandenburg, who bucked the company line and refused to let the Aujay trail go cold.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
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(00:43):
This series includes content that may not be suitable for
all listeners. Listener discretion is advised. Previously on Valley of Shadows.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
This was assigned to Homicide Bureau Missing Persons Unit. They
were the ones who had to make the decision that
this was a suicide.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
They said, well, we think he might have sat on
the edge of one of those minds and blown himself
into the mind. I think, okay, we are really stretching
now for an explanation as to why we can't find it.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
I would hope the Sheriff's department would investigate this.
Speaker 6 (01:22):
I just still want John to be found or his remains.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
They told our search teams on day one, John may
have stumbled into a meth lab by accident, and what
happened to that idea?
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Let's see Bato, Biker's Coffee, Black Beauty Blade Chalk. I
made this list from the Internet of all the names
that were used to describe crystal meth, chicken feed, crank.
Speaker 7 (02:06):
Christy, lengthy in handwritten by my boer.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Go fast, meth, Lee's quick, methless.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Meth Le's quick.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
That's cute, TikTok fan.
Speaker 7 (02:17):
There's a reason this almost eighty year old retired cop
is trying to expand his drug vocabulary.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
I began to understand that the world of trying to
find John A. J In balb crystal math. That's why
I made.
Speaker 7 (02:31):
This list, because Bauer keeps hearing whispers of foul play.
Speaker 8 (02:37):
The ruler around the drug scene was at a deputy
stumbled onto something he's shouldning of.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
The first thing I had heard was he had was
running in the punch bowl and came upon.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
A meth lamb, a meth lab, a meth lab.
Speaker 8 (02:54):
Then it was said he tried to be a hero
and that's when he was taken care of.
Speaker 7 (03:03):
When Deputy John aj disappeared in nineteen ninety eight, there
was a meth epidemic ravaging the Antelope Valley. It was
a vortex of addiction and crime.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
I think Neth has destroyed this community. I think they
need to take a bomb and blow it up. It's
that bad.
Speaker 7 (03:22):
Neth is a powerful stimulant that hijacks the central nervous
system and causes people to stay awake for days.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
On end after the euphoria.
Speaker 9 (03:31):
Experts said longtime users suffer mind twisting crashes, jagged nerves,
desperation to sleep, a spooky paranoia, and too often unpredictable rage,
often homicidal.
Speaker 7 (03:46):
The drug can trick the brain into thinking there's a
boogeyman around every corner.
Speaker 10 (03:51):
I've had a patient come back to me after two
years of not using it, saying that he was sorry
that he hit his wife so hard, but he still
convinced that she was having an affair with the extraterrestrials.
Speaker 7 (04:03):
Maybe that's how the meth lab rumors got started as
a drug fueled conspiracy theory, and there were a lot
of conspiracy theories following Auja's disappearance, that he was kidnapped
by the CIA, and another that he'd started a new
life in Alaska. While the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
dismisses the leads as rumors spread by a hopped up
(04:25):
game of telephone, but we discover a small detail buried
in the missing person's report that suggests the rumors have
more weight than that. Following Auja's disappearance, multiple informants came
forward with information about a deputy who was murdered while
jogging in the Devil's Punch Bowl. Missing Persons detectives said
these informants can't be trusted, and they opted not to
(04:47):
follow up on the leads because the meth lab story
was just smoke and mirrors. But where there's smoke, there
is sometimes fire. Bower tells us about a homicide detective
who followed the rumors to their source to find out
if there was anything to them, and he says, we
need to hear this story straight from the horses mouth.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
You should go have a drink with Larry Brandenberg at
his bar and ask him what do you think?
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Larry?
Speaker 3 (05:17):
I have a few questions for you and see what
he says.
Speaker 7 (05:21):
And that's exactly what we do. We don't often get
to do interviews in people's home bars, such a cool space,
and we ask him what do you think, Larry about
those tips that came in from local drug informants?
Speaker 1 (05:38):
You're not going to get a boy scout or a girl
scout that's gonna have information about the murder of a
Deathy Shah. How would they know? So you got to
talk to these people, and then it's your job to
figure out who's telling the truth who's lying.
Speaker 7 (05:51):
So we try to figure out who is telling the
truth and who's lying.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I'm Betsy Shepherd, I'm Haley Fox and miss His Valley
of Shadows, Episode three, Tweaker Talk.
Speaker 7 (06:17):
Okay, let's see what you got here, mister Brandenburg.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Do you go by detected?
Speaker 8 (06:23):
Okay?
Speaker 7 (06:23):
Can you come show us some of your sheriff's men Rebulia.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Betsy and I are at the home of retired lasd
homicide detective Larry Brandenburg, poking around his basement bar that
doubles as a type of trophy room.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Well, that was a bag one of my old partners.
You got me?
Speaker 7 (06:42):
What does it say on there?
Speaker 1 (06:43):
I think it says the best partner a copkitab or
something like that.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Brandenburg's humility stands in contrast to his career highlights displayed
on the wall. There's his Marine Corps uniform, A photo
from an appearance on the TV show forty eight hours
an LASD Service Award, and nearby there's a jukebox, a
big screen TV, and a pool table with the giant
logo of his Sheriff's badge on it.
Speaker 7 (07:09):
Do you have a name for this room?
Speaker 1 (07:12):
We just call it the Brandonburg Family Game Room. I
try to get the kids go over games, and we're
all Dodger fans, so revetsed the Dodgers.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Brandenburg is a grampa. Now goes by Papa, and he
has a shock of gray hair to prove it, but
he still looks a bit like a detective with his
slicked back hair and steely gaze. For more than twenty years,
Brandenburg was a bulldog. That was the nickname given to
investigators at the LASD Homicide Bureau.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
It was a La Tanji course said, yeah. The Sheriff's
onmicide detectors are like bulltoks. Once they put their teeth
to something and they never let go. Name stuck.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department oversees crime in the
unincorporated areas of LA County. It's a massive space, four
thousand square miles, which is about the size of Connecticut,
covering that much ground. Requires a huge workforce. With its
eighteen thousand employees, LASD is the largest sheriff's department in
(08:15):
the country. Homicide cops like Larry Brandenburg work out of
a bureau located near downtown La, so when they catch
a case, they hoof it to whatever part of the county.
The homicide occurred in. The Antelope Valley or AV as
it's sometimes called, was a particularly distant outpost. That's because
(08:35):
it's cut off from the city by a mountain range,
and Brandenburg thinks that's part of why the Auja case
was handled so poorly.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
I think some of it was lack of interest motivation.
I can't explain any other way.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Because the AV was quite the hall from the homicide
bureau hour and a half drive time.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Nobody from down in La one to come up here
at work because they didn't live up here. Hey see
why the drive sucks.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
LA deputies didn't want to move to the desert either,
so the department had to recruit lovocals to run their
AV stations, and that created a schism within the LASD.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
They thought they could do their own thing and they
didn't need anybody from down in LA tell them what
to do. Hey, this is our valley. We know everybody
up here, we grew up here, we live here, will
handle this shit. But at the same time, department never
dedicated the resources to this valley that they should have.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Brandenburg has two sons who are now LASD deputies in
the Annelo Valley, and it's become a running joke in
the family.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
You know, I say, ah, you freaking deputies work up here.
You guys are stupid, he'd laugh. You guys from down
Belore a bunch of assholes. You come up here and
think you know everything. But that was for a long
time kind of the feeling.
Speaker 7 (09:56):
Brandenburg had heard that Auj went missing, but he didn't
know him or the specifics of what happened, and it
wasn't a murder investigation. It was a missing person's case,
so it was outside his domain. But then a colleague
from the Anela Valley reaches out with an especially persuasive tip.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
He said, Hey, Larry, I'm hearing shit on the street man,
and Auj wasn't. He didn't commit suicide. He was murdered.
He came across a math lab and you know, he
tried to be a hero. He goes, I'm hearing from
more than one person.
Speaker 7 (10:26):
And there are other details about the Auj case that
don't sit right with him. How many years were you
a homicide detective?
Speaker 1 (10:33):
A little over twenty.
Speaker 7 (10:35):
In not twenty years? Did you ever have a case
like this.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Where nobody a suicide? Never think about how would you
do that?
Speaker 7 (10:46):
So Brandenburg asks to review the Auj case file.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
I went to the Captain Frank Merriman, who was the
lieutenant in charge of Missing persons who handled the initial investigation,
and I said, hey, Frank, I'm getting some information about
Auja that you know we need to follow up on.
He's what, He goes, that's a suicide. You're wasting your time.
Speaker 7 (11:07):
But Brandenburg continues to press this. He's a bulldog, after all,
and his persistence pays off. In early two thousand, he
gets permission to look through the missing person's report and
finds out new details about the deputy's disappearance from a
year and a half earlier. He discovers that the department
had received numerous tips that Auja was murdered, and that
(11:29):
some of those tips came in just three days after
the deputy went missing, while searchers were still out looking
for him. And potential evidence was still fresh. If there
is some suggestion of possible foul play, multiple people are
claiming there's a murder, what typically would happen.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
It would be assigned to a murder team, people that
are on call for new murders.
Speaker 7 (11:54):
But that didn't happen because the missing person's team dismissed
the tips. What would you say is the main difference
between a missing person's investigator and a murder team or
homicide detective.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Well, missing persons they handle a large volume. I mean,
there are so many people report of missing La County
every day, let alone every month every year, so they're
making phone calls, try to find relatives. So they're busy
doing that stuff. But a lot of it is handled
at their desk, on the phone. Or you don't handle
a murder like that, at least, I ope not.
Speaker 7 (12:32):
Brander Murg thinks these detectives drop the ball big time,
and he's not the only one. Internal documents from the
LASD show that one lieutenant discussed the AJ case in
terms of Murphy's law, which basically means anything that can
go wrong will go wrong. We've reached out to the
missing person's team, but they declined to talk to us.
(12:55):
So all we know about their decision to not refer
the case to a homicide detective is the one sentence
explanation in their report. The reads, due to inconsistencies in
their statements, it was determined they were not credible and
otherly were pursued.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Well, shouldn't you maybe looked into that a little more?
I mean, that's just my thought, and that's why I
started looking at it.
Speaker 7 (13:19):
Brandenburg does what he thinks should have happened back in
nineteen ninety eight. He treats Aujay's disappearance like a homicide case,
and he starts by tracking down two of the names
in the missing person's report so he can reinterview the informants.
To protect their identities, we're going to call them Sue
and Mike. At the time, Sue was in custody on
(13:41):
burglary charges, so Brandenburg and his partner head to the
jail where she's being held. Sue tells them that after
Aujay disappeared, her boyfriend Mike, went to score drugs from
a guy living near the Devil's Punch Bowl, a local
dealer named Tom Hinkle. What was he known for in
the area?
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Miss doing it? Or he did it, he sold it,
he cooked it, and he did all of it.
Speaker 7 (14:08):
Everyone in the area. Hinkle he was the Kevin Bacon
and his community's six degrees of separation. He was only
in his fifties when a J disappeared, but Hinkl was
already known around town as old man. He had wild
gray facial hair and was described by a local sheriff's
deputy as bearded meta clause. He lived in a large
(14:29):
a frame house up on a hill six miles from
the punch bowl, and his property was a hive of
drug activity. Sue, the informant, tells Brandon Burg that when
Mike arrived at Hinkle's home, he led him into a
back room where Hinkle kept his knife collection.
Speaker 6 (14:46):
Heinkel was showing him knife collection two miles beyond, kind
of like showing off a little bit.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
You know.
Speaker 7 (14:52):
This is an actual recording of Sue's conversation with Brandenburg.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
I'll bendy bring it up the hop gath Henkler, Yeah, Okay, Tom,
Heinkel brings it up to My boyfriend tells them basically
what happened to.
Speaker 6 (15:07):
The man that RJ was on a job, ran across
that picking shit. That ran across and he had to
be taken care of, meaning she was killed.
Speaker 7 (15:19):
Sue goes on to say that, according to Hinkle, Auj
stumbled on a meth lab and tried to be a
hero with slight variations. The story is repeated by Mike
in a separate interview and then in second hand accounts
from a handful of other informants that Hinkle and or
one of his associates had Auj taken care of. According
to Sue and Mike, Hinkle pantomimed what he meant by
(15:42):
taking care of.
Speaker 6 (15:44):
He made the motion like this.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
He made a hand gesture like a gun with his
finger out, and then opened his hand like he was dropped.
Speaker 7 (15:55):
The moment plays like a movie scene in my head.
Meta clause is surrounded by a bloom of meth smoke
and sharp shiny knives. He mentions the missing deputy with
a knowing look. He draws his hand into a finger
gun and then releases his fingers, displaying them out, And
just like that, John A. J. Disappears down a mind
(16:17):
shaft or some other hole out in the desert where
people go to bury their secrets.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
We're back at the Devil's punch Bowl. And this time
we've come for a hike. Oh I love these. This
is where you write your name and the time that
you leave, so that in case you go missing, people
know that we should do that. So dat, Betsy and
I write our names down on a sign and sheet
at the main trailhead and enter the park.
Speaker 7 (17:16):
Why why are we doing Why are we doing this again?
Speaker 2 (17:20):
I honestly, I just really had to get eyes on
the punch bowl. I am having a really hard time
seeing how someone could set up a meth lab in
La County Park.
Speaker 7 (17:30):
It just feels implausible to you.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah, I mean, it just seems like you would be
kind of asking to get.
Speaker 7 (17:37):
Caught, not to mention, like meth labs are like not discreen, discreet.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, all right, let's let's check it out.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Let's check it out. As we start to descend down
into the center of the punch bowl, Betsy loses her
footing on the steep dusty trail. Okay, do you want
me to go in front of you or hold your backpack.
Speaker 7 (17:59):
So you can break my fall? Yeah? Holding my backpack
like I'm a child method is a working freak.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Yeah, here, I got you. But we keep moving, snaking
through the switchbacks in a slow zigzag motion.
Speaker 7 (18:15):
How hot do you think it is right now? So
one hundred? Did it break one hundreds today?
Speaker 1 (18:19):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
It's definitely close. It's pushing one hundred for sure. Being
out here, we realize this public park is much less
public than most.
Speaker 7 (18:32):
It feels like we are on another planet and we
are like the last living human beings. So I mean
in terms of discreetness, like it's open, but it's also
like out.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
In the middle of nowhere. It's on the fringes.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
We don't see any other hikers or rangers, and I
find myself playing out the lab scenario in my head.
You know, we know that Jonathan oj saw uh Classic
kids on a field trip here, but then we also
know that he went totally off trail and off roading,
and to me, that would be the place where he
(19:15):
could stumble upon the meth lab because there is all
this land that is not accessible by trail. As we
wind our way down the gorge with our phones on
SOS mode, the idea of shady things happening out here
seems like a real possibility. Hey, dude, I think I
(19:35):
feel like maybe we shouldn't hit it. It's We're getting
like pretty far out in the middle of nowhere here,
and no one knows we're out here.
Speaker 7 (19:43):
I was thinking, I didn't want to say anything. I
didn't want to be the weaning of the group. Let's
les let go, Let's not beat around the bush, let's
get out of the bush. The second Haley gives me
an out, I pretty much take off running because I'm
always thinking of worst case scenarios, falling off a cliff,
(20:04):
getting attacked by a bear. Now I have to worry
about stumbling on a meth lab. I don't have to,
but I will, because that's just who I am. A
firm believer in Murphy's law. That's why I didn't have
any trouble buying into the whole meth lab scenario. What
I want to know is how this area became a
(20:24):
meth hotspot in the first place. We don't have stats
specific to the Analov Valley, but here in the early
two thousands, a large scale drug syndicate was busted. Nearly
three hundred people were arrested, most classified as career criminals.
I grew up in a rural area where there was
a lot of drug activity hiding in plain sight, so
(20:47):
I know the av's remoteness is a factor, but it
turns out so are its big open skies. Since the
nineteen thirties, the US government and military contractors have been
testing planes, rockets, and explosives over the Annalov Valley. The
Edwards Air Force Base was built, defense plants moved in,
(21:11):
and it turned the area into an aeronautical frontier.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
In October nineteen forty seven, at Nila Desert Test Center
in California, history is made by this aircraft and its pilot, Captain.
Speaker 7 (21:26):
Vieger, and it was over this part of the Anilo
Valley where Air Force pilot Chuck Yaeger pushed his plane
up to seven hundred miles per hour and broke the
sound barrier.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
For at time a man has blown an airplane. Not
there than the fiel of God.
Speaker 7 (21:45):
These military experiments over the AV are actually where the
principle of Murphy's law comes from. Because these space cowboys
got so banged up while pushing their bodies to the
limit resisting the forces of gravity and physics that an
engineer on the project, a guy named Edward Murphy, said
something along the lines of anything that can go wrong
(22:07):
will go wrong. It be long before things would start
to go wrong across the Antelote Valley. The av had
a legacy of record breaking speed, and its residents developed
an appetite for the drug version of rocket fuel meth anthetamine.
Meth just made life easier out there. Factory workers took
(22:29):
the drug to power through long shifts at defense contractor plants.
Construction workers used it to keep up with the area's
housing boom, and commuters relied on meth to stay awake
during the brutal drive to and from Los Angeles. But
moderate matthews turned into a full blown epidemic in the
early nineties as the Cold War came to an abrupt end.
Speaker 9 (22:52):
The aerospace cutback soon created a domino effect across the
Antalope Valley, and the munce thriving economy began to evaporate, like.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
So much water in the hot desert sun.
Speaker 7 (23:03):
The meth trade became an easy option for unemployed residents
to make some cash.
Speaker 8 (23:09):
At the time, the Anlope Valley was a sesspool. It
was a desert. It was known for manufacturing met the amphetamine,
so people were getting busted left and right.
Speaker 7 (23:18):
This is Chris Turk.
Speaker 8 (23:20):
My dad calls me Christine when I'm in trouble, but
most couldn't call me Chris.
Speaker 7 (23:25):
Chris Turk is originally from Massachusetts, but she got stationed
in the Antelope Valley while working for the US Army.
She left the military after a few years, had a family,
and then found work with a local attorney. Because when
Matthew skyrocketed, so did the need for criminal defense. What
was your position with him?
Speaker 8 (23:44):
At first it was just apparently ago, and then it
was investigative. I would go out on the streets and
I would talk to the people. I would talk to
some cops. I would join Everett to defend the client.
Speaker 7 (23:56):
Turk discovered she had a real knack for it.
Speaker 8 (23:58):
All the lawyers started asking my boss if I could
work on some of their cases.
Speaker 7 (24:04):
She was good at getting people to open up me.
Speaker 8 (24:07):
I was more on their level. They would all talk
to me. My ex husband is the half brother of
these other two guys that were involved in a lot
of the drug scene.
Speaker 7 (24:18):
And she had a last name that carried weight with
drug users.
Speaker 8 (24:21):
Even though it was your marriage. A lot of them
would just assume I was part of that family. They
were really easy to get information, sometimes too easy.
Speaker 7 (24:30):
The attorney Turk worked for had a meth habit of
his own, so his law firm was well connected with
the drug scene, and over time Turk learned a lot
about the criminal ecosystem in the valley, who the big
dealers were, where their laps were located, and which cops
were making the busts. And she started to notice a
trend that it was just the low level offenders who
(24:52):
were getting picked up over and over again, but none
of the heavyweights who were supplying the drugs, people like
Tom Hinkle. Hinkle spent decades working in a manufacturing and
testing site for explosives. Just a few years before Auj
went missing, a woman was killed in the desert by
a homemade bomb near Hinkle's house. According to LSD reports,
(25:17):
tire tracks led directly from the explosion to Hinkle's place,
yet he was never arrested or charged in the case.
This would become a theme for Hinkle. He seemed untouchable.
Speaker 8 (25:29):
He would have been one of the first people I invested,
yet he ever was ever that one's never even touched.
Speaker 7 (25:36):
By the late nineties, Hinkle had a day job working
at a gas station a long pair Blossom Highway near
the punch Bowl that's where he'd meet with a range
of characters, including local sheriff's deputies.
Speaker 8 (25:49):
He became the guy on the hill, and he became idolized.
Speaker 7 (25:55):
And then something seemed to elevate Hinkle from a dealer
to something more mythic.
Speaker 8 (26:01):
Everybody would call him God because he had that power.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Before Aj, he was just Hinkle.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Jay.
Speaker 8 (26:09):
He was God.
Speaker 7 (26:11):
He didn't start calling himself God until after the aj disappearance.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Yep, yep.
Speaker 7 (26:22):
There are plenty of people with a God complex, but
few are so brazen to actually call themselves God. So
when Hinkle takes on the title, Turk is floored. And
then she hears about Hinkle's possible connection to Auji's disappearance.
She hears it from Sue and Mike, who were clients
of the lawyer she worked for.
Speaker 6 (26:44):
Tom Hinkl's the one who told all the information about
the cop who ran across something.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
He shouldn't have.
Speaker 6 (26:50):
Everybody called them God. He untouchable.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Turk notifies the authorities because this isn't a low level
drug offense, this is a possible homicide, and she goes
straight to the top, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which
has a field office in the area.
Speaker 8 (27:09):
And I talked to these two federal agents about what
was going on.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Turk offers to introduce the FBI agents to Mike, but
she says the meeting didn't go so well because when
she and one of the agents show up to talk
to Mike, he's hitting a meth pipe.
Speaker 8 (27:28):
I mean, I'm talking a clouded smoke when we opened
the door and the FBI agent and I just looked
at each other.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
We reached out to the FBI to ask about their
involvement in the AUJ case, but they give us their
standard line that they can neither confirm nor deny the
existence of an investigation. So we don't know what came
of Turk's tip to the Feds, but the info eventually
makes its way to homicide Detective Larry Brandenburg, who does
follow up on it.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Chris Turk was involved in the whole myth drug culture world,
so I'd talked to her. If I could get information
from her, I'll take it, you know, And if it's oh, crap,
I just discarded.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Determining the credibility of informant statements is a complicated art.
There are plenty of reasons that Sue and Mike and
others related to the Aujay case may be untrustworthy. Informants
are often longtime drug users with fuzzy memories, lengthy criminal histories,
and ulterior motives, so Brandenburg says you have to listen
(28:31):
to them and suss out their claims accordingly.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
If you just just treaded everybody and you don't follow
up on none of it, you're gonna buy anything out.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Brandenburg was skeptical going into his interviews with Sue and Mike,
but by the end he believed the couple because they
had little to gain. Sue already had a release date
for her burglary charge and a lot to lose. Brandenburg
says it would be incredibly shortsighted for them to lie
about a man who had a reputation for being a
cold hearted killer.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
That's a pretty dangerous thing to do if you just
make it up stories. I mean, that's really dumb. I
was sure wouldn't consider doing it because if it gets
back that you're snitching, or even if you're making this
shit up, you're going to pay for it.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
He also says that Sue and Mike and others would
go on to tell the story many times, and the
stories were similar and remained largely consistent.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
The little details might change, but the main theme of
it shouldn't if you're telling the truth.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
And one hyper specific detail that never varied was the
description of Hinkle's hand gesture, the one where he made
a finger gun. That detail sticks with Brandenburg because there'd
been talk of a gunshot from another source. In June
nineteen ninety eight, a witness reported to Missing Persons detectives
that he heard the sound of a firearm discharged around
(29:57):
sunset the night au Jay disappeared.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
We had talked about someone saying they heard a gunshot.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Devil's punch Bowl Park ranger Jack Farley remembers hearing this
detail during to search for auj You.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
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 they.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Heard that, And paralegal Chris Turk says the gunshot was
discussed around town.
Speaker 8 (30:25):
There was one shot like that, one witness said, because
that's when I heard on the street.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Brandenburg tries to track down the witness using the name
listed in the Missing Person's book.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
That guy wouldn't talk to me. I tried more than
once to go talk to him. I think he worked
at the punch bowl or he lived right by it.
So the gunshots heard near the punch bowl a single gunshot.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
These details keep adding up, and Brandenburg starts to see
how the scenario might have played out. Auj was running
past one of Hinkle's meth labs.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
He saw a bunch of streakers hanging out there, and
then they're all sitting there with their hands in the
cookie jard. Oh what the fuck we do now? Gee,
we can't let this guy leave. He never left.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Brandenburg decides it's time to send the information up the
flagpole to the homicide captain. Tell him what he's hearing
from informants. But the captain blows him off.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Oh that's just tweaker talk. Tweaker talk, that's all it is.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Brandenburg says that term tweaker talk was used to discredit
informants like Sue and Mike and undermine the theory that
Aujy was murdered.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Well, tweakers do talks best e when they get high,
they talk amongst each other. Yeah, some of it's embellis,
some of it's changed. But if you had a main theme,
it's keep getting repeated. There could be something to that.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Tweaker talk is a term Chris Turk is also familiar
with because it was used to discredit many of the
clients she worked with. She doesn't deny that meth users
are often sleep deprived and paranoid, but that doesn't mean
they don't have valuable information, especially when it comes to
a subject they know.
Speaker 8 (32:09):
The same tweakers that they said were not reliable. You
couldn't get information from him, well, the same ones that
they used information forwards to bust other people. So you
can't listen to him on one hand and not listen
to him on the other hand.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
When an informant provides leads that pan out for law enforcement,
their status changes to a confidential, reliable informant, and one
of the best ways for investigators to determine if these
leads are legit is to keep investigating see if the
intel can be corroborated.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
To me, that needs to be looked at real hard
and seriously. Not Ah, she's a freaking tweaker. I don't
believe the things she says, especially when it's already coming
from some other sources.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
But Brandenburg says he couldn't really do that because his
captain undermined him at every turn, called him names, and
tried to strong arm him into folding his investigation.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
And I told him this bullshit. I don't agree with it.
Speaker 5 (33:06):
We heard from you.
Speaker 7 (33:07):
Why you're so passionate about it?
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Why do you think he had such reaction?
Speaker 1 (33:10):
I don't know. That's the question I can't answer.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Brandenburg is taken aback by homicide Captain Frank Merryman's aggressive
attempts to put the AUJ matter to bed, especially after
he finds a note in the missing person's file from
Merryman which shows that Captain may have had his own
doubts about the case.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
I found a little posted when I was looking through
the original file. When I first got it, yell will
post it, and it was Frank's handwriting and his initials,
and it said should this go to a murder team?
Speaker 2 (33:45):
To me, this feels like a no brainer. It should
have gone to a murder team to thoroughly vet the tips,
to prove or disprove them. That should have happened three
days after Auj went missing, when the tips first started
coming in. If not, then it should have happened as
more and more informants came forward, and it definitely should
(34:08):
have been investigated in May of nineteen ninety nine, when
a large scale meth lab was discovered near the punch
Bowl where AUJ disappeared.
Speaker 7 (34:38):
A few weeks into Detective Brandenburg's investigation, he gets a
new lead from an LSD sergeant working narcotics in the
Annealo Valley. He tells Brandenburg about a property they searched
the year before, a meth lab that was located right
down the road from the Devil's Punch Bowl.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Okay, let me get him a barry to this, Matt.
Here's the punch bowl right here. This is how close
it was, and hinkled it right over here too.
Speaker 7 (35:07):
There was a meth lab near where AUJ disappeared. It
wasn't in the punch Bowl technically, but it was close by,
just two miles up the road that leads to the
Punch Bowl parking lot.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
The searcht was served at Devil's punch Bowl Road, Para Blossom, California,
a forty acre parcel land located immediately northwest of Devil's
punch Bowl County Park. During the search warrant, a major
myth ampatami lab was discovered.
Speaker 7 (35:34):
Brandenburg's reading the search warrant from May of nineteen ninety nine.
That's when the LASD and other law enforcement agencies busted
the lab. Brandenburg connects it to the AUJ case in
early two thousand and So were you the first person
to make the connection between what some of these informants
were reporting and the lab that was found near the
(35:58):
punch Bowl?
Speaker 1 (36:00):
I think so, because I don't read any of it
in these reports earlier on about that.
Speaker 7 (36:07):
For Brandenburg, this was outside conference that the informant statements
weren't just.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Tweak or talk.
Speaker 7 (36:13):
The lab was located down the road from the Devil's
Punch Bowl, a straight shot from the park.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
But that's not all.
Speaker 7 (36:20):
It was owned by a good friend of Tom Hankles,
a guy named Rick Carroll. Carroll operated the lab on
his property and he let other people cook there. It
was a kind of meth making co op and a
hangout spot for all sorts of local drug users. The
lab had already been dismantled by the time Brandenburg enters
(36:42):
the scene, but he sets out to learn everything he
can from reports. The day of the lab bust, about
two dozen law enforcement officers fan out across the property.
They're led by an LA County Sheriff's deputy who lives
and works in Pair Blossom, where the punch bowl and
the lab are located.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Rick ingkles it was a resident deputy. I will sorry
the area he lived in. He knew this area probably
better than anybody.
Speaker 7 (37:09):
Deputy Angles also knows the players in the drug scene
and how to navigate the desert terrain. So as he
and others search the Carroll property, they discover an assortment
of trailers, cars, and storage containers. Law enforcement uses the
steel probe to check the ground for buried objects because
meth users are known to get creative when hiding their stash.
(37:33):
In this case, searchers find something much bigger. The probe
strikes metal, and law enforcement uncovers a hatch that opens
up into an underground room.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
It was extensive at underground tunnels. They had underground rooms,
They had all the hardware, the glassware. These is a
pretty big operation.
Speaker 7 (37:54):
There is all sorts of stuff down there, a propane stove, flasks,
and telltale blood like stains created by red phosphorus, one
of the major chemicals used to make meth. Something deputies
didn't find was meth. It appears to have been cleared
out before the raid, but the lab likely would have
been active in nineteen ninety eight when Aujy disappeared.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
The lab equipment recovered was capable of producing hundreds of
pounds of mess amfetamine. In addition, there was an operational
back hole on the property also recovered as one shot
got along with hundreds of additional pieces of evidence.
Speaker 7 (38:29):
And there was another notable discovery at the compound.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
The southeast portion of the meth lab, which have been
on this side of it, drops right down into the
punch bowl and that's where the shooting range was that
they had, and they had silhouettes of cops at that
shooting range. Can you say that again?
Speaker 7 (38:47):
There were silhouettes of cops that the people that were
at this math lab would.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Take shots at yeah, target practice, So these guys don't
want like cops too much.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Brandenburg wants to better understand the proximity of the lab
to the punch bowl, something best seen from an aerial view,
so he calls up a colleague who flies helicopters for
the Sheriff's Department. He's a pilot from the Special Enforcement Bureau,
the same bureau auj worked for. They take off and
circle over the Carroll property.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
You see right over here is this property and you
can see the outbuildings and the trailers where the meth
lab was, and all these trails.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Then the pilot makes an offhand comment about Auja that
causes things to click into place.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
For Brandenburg, he goes, yeah, I used to run some
of those trails right there with.
Speaker 7 (39:40):
Aujiy oh wow, So he knew some of the routes
that he would take.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
So this lab was located right next to a trail
that auj had run before, and it was just two
miles from Raje's truck was discovered, which is almost the
finish line in ultra marathon terms. At this point, a
lot begins to gel for Brandenburg. He's more convinced than
ever by what the informants have told him.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
All that stuff just started adding up all the time
of the investigator. I tell people this, even younger guys,
This cop stuff is not like TV. You go with
what makes common sense. Everything looks like this. Well usually
if it looks like that, that's what it is.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
So we go to see what it looks like for ourselves.
As we approached the property where the Carroll lab was located,
it looks a lot like I imagined it did back
in nineteen ninety nine. It's sprawling, dotted with structures and
shipping containers, and has a fence around the perimeter.
Speaker 7 (40:47):
Seeing how close we are to where Aujay's truck was found,
and that there is like a little road here that
leads up to the mountains, it certainly seems possible that
he could have stumbled on this like as he was
trying to return to the park.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Yeah, that theory is starting to hold the more water
to me. It's after we leave the property that we
discover a new detail about the care Carrel lab that
it's close to another key location, in this case, driving
away from the Carroll property, we just happened to spot
a mailbox with an address of someone we've been trying
to reach for months. It turns out the witness who
(41:24):
reported hearing a gun shot at sunset the day All
Day went missing was Rick Carroll's closest neighbor. After coming
forward with the information, this witness stopped cooperating with law enforcement.
He won't return any of our calls either, and we
can't door knock him because his house is behind a
large security fence. But just seeing where he lived is
(41:47):
helpful because his home is just about a half mile
from the Carrol Lab in the direction of the punch bowl,
and that would be well within earshot of a gun going.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Off, which is Perry Mason.
Speaker 4 (41:59):
This shit.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
This changes my whole way of thinking about that theory.
Speaker 7 (42:05):
How had the Sheriff's department not made any of these
connections before? For why when the Carol Lab was rated
in nineteen ninety nine, didn't someone think, huh, this seems
like a pretty big coincidence given all the rumors we've
heard about auj being killed. And that brings us back
to Murphy's law, which has come to mean that anything
(42:27):
that can go wrong will, But it's important to note
that's a slight mischaracterization of what space engineer Edward Murphy
actually said about the flight tests over the Antelope Valley.
What he said was, if there's anything they can do wrong,
they will. It's a small but important difference. The engineer
(42:49):
wasn't saying the world is powerless against the forces of
chaos and disaster. He was saying that humans are error prone,
and he said it as a way of explaining why
organizations need to have rigorous safeguards to catch their mistakes
due diligence, oversight, quality control so that the things that
(43:09):
can go wrong don't. In the Sheriff's Department's handling of
the AUJ case, it seems like a lot went wrong,
a series of system wide failures and a breakdown of
accountability with.
Speaker 8 (43:23):
The AUJ thing that was too much of the same
thing being said, how many times do you have to
share it and not investigate with There's something more going
on here.
Speaker 7 (43:37):
Brandenburg keeps investigating, but it's hard working in a vacuum,
and the Sheriff's Department isn't making things any easier for him.
The detective pushes on, though, and he discovers Auj's disappearance
may be connected to a bigger criminal enterprise, and as
the scope of his investigation expands, so does the pool
(44:01):
of suspects.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
So the more I looked, you know, the more I
started document shit. It in a short time started snowballing,
and then the DEA got involved to try to tackle
this massive meth amphetamine problem in Animal Valley, you know,
the mostly white bikers that were cooking this stuff.
Speaker 7 (44:29):
Next time on Valley of Shadows, the.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Outlaw bikers were big out there. If you crossed them,
there was a guaranteed death that was going to be murdered.
She said that there was a guy in the Bottles
motorcycle gang and she said he was involved in this
burder for the deputy and that she had been shown
where he was buried.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
A body was found out in the remote.
Speaker 4 (44:52):
Area, duct taped, bloodied. You could see it like that
imprint of a boot, a motorcycle boot on his face.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
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
(45:50):
is Diane Hodson. Our executive producers are Jacob Smith and
Alexandra Garreton. Original music by Jake Gorsky, Ray Lynch, Mike Jersich,
and Hayden Gardner. Sound designed by Jake Gorsky, fact checking
by Onica Robbins. Additional production support by Sonya girl Away
(46:10):
and Our show art was designed by Sean Carney and
Betsy Shepherd. Special thanks to Nick White for show art photography.
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 to podcasts. From type to Fun,
(46:31):
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
get bonus episodes, full audiobooks, and early ad free listening
from your favorite Pushkin hosts and authors. Find Pushkin Plus
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(00:43):
This series includes content that may not be suitable for
all listeners. Listener discretion is advised. Previously on Valley of Shadows.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
This was assigned to Homicide Bureau Missing Persons Unit. They
were the ones who had to make the decision that
this was a suicide.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
They said, well, we think he might have sat on
the edge of one of those minds and blown himself
into the mind. I think, okay, we are really stretching
now for an explanation as to why we can't find it.
Speaker 5 (01:18):
I would hope the Sheriff's department would investigate this.
Speaker 6 (01:22):
I just still want John to be found or his remains.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
They told our search teams on day one, John may
have stumbled into a meth lab by accident, and what
happened to that idea?
Speaker 3 (01:49):
Let's see Bato, Biker's Coffee, Black Beauty Blade Chalk. I
made this list from the Internet of all the names
that were used to describe crystal meth, chicken feed, crank.
Speaker 7 (02:06):
Christy, lengthy in handwritten by my boer.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Go fast, meth, Lee's quick, methless.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Meth Le's quick.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
That's cute, TikTok fan.
Speaker 7 (02:17):
There's a reason this almost eighty year old retired cop
is trying to expand his drug vocabulary.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
I began to understand that the world of trying to
find John A. J In balb crystal math. That's why
I made.
Speaker 7 (02:31):
This list, because Bauer keeps hearing whispers of foul play.
Speaker 8 (02:37):
The ruler around the drug scene was at a deputy
stumbled onto something he's shouldning of.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
The first thing I had heard was he had was
running in the punch bowl and came upon.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
A meth lamb, a meth lab, a meth lab.
Speaker 8 (02:54):
Then it was said he tried to be a hero
and that's when he was taken care of.
Speaker 7 (03:03):
When Deputy John aj disappeared in nineteen ninety eight, there
was a meth epidemic ravaging the Antelope Valley. It was
a vortex of addiction and crime.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
I think Neth has destroyed this community. I think they
need to take a bomb and blow it up. It's
that bad.
Speaker 7 (03:22):
Neth is a powerful stimulant that hijacks the central nervous
system and causes people to stay awake for days.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
On end after the euphoria.
Speaker 9 (03:31):
Experts said longtime users suffer mind twisting crashes, jagged nerves,
desperation to sleep, a spooky paranoia, and too often unpredictable rage,
often homicidal.
Speaker 7 (03:46):
The drug can trick the brain into thinking there's a
boogeyman around every corner.
Speaker 10 (03:51):
I've had a patient come back to me after two
years of not using it, saying that he was sorry
that he hit his wife so hard, but he still
convinced that she was having an affair with the extraterrestrials.
Speaker 7 (04:03):
Maybe that's how the meth lab rumors got started as
a drug fueled conspiracy theory, and there were a lot
of conspiracy theories following Auja's disappearance, that he was kidnapped
by the CIA, and another that he'd started a new
life in Alaska. While the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
dismisses the leads as rumors spread by a hopped up
(04:25):
game of telephone, but we discover a small detail buried
in the missing person's report that suggests the rumors have
more weight than that. Following Auja's disappearance, multiple informants came
forward with information about a deputy who was murdered while
jogging in the Devil's Punch Bowl. Missing Persons detectives said
these informants can't be trusted, and they opted not to
(04:47):
follow up on the leads because the meth lab story
was just smoke and mirrors. But where there's smoke, there
is sometimes fire. Bower tells us about a homicide detective
who followed the rumors to their source to find out
if there was anything to them, and he says, we
need to hear this story straight from the horses mouth.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
You should go have a drink with Larry Brandenberg at
his bar and ask him what do you think?
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Larry?
Speaker 3 (05:17):
I have a few questions for you and see what
he says.
Speaker 7 (05:21):
And that's exactly what we do. We don't often get
to do interviews in people's home bars, such a cool space,
and we ask him what do you think, Larry about
those tips that came in from local drug informants?
Speaker 1 (05:38):
You're not going to get a boy scout or a girl
scout that's gonna have information about the murder of a
Deathy Shah. How would they know? So you got to
talk to these people, and then it's your job to
figure out who's telling the truth who's lying.
Speaker 7 (05:51):
So we try to figure out who is telling the
truth and who's lying.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I'm Betsy Shepherd, I'm Haley Fox and miss His Valley
of Shadows, Episode three, Tweaker Talk.
Speaker 7 (06:17):
Okay, let's see what you got here, mister Brandenburg.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Do you go by detected?
Speaker 8 (06:23):
Okay?
Speaker 7 (06:23):
Can you come show us some of your sheriff's men Rebulia.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Betsy and I are at the home of retired lasd
homicide detective Larry Brandenburg, poking around his basement bar that
doubles as a type of trophy room.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Well, that was a bag one of my old partners.
You got me?
Speaker 7 (06:42):
What does it say on there?
Speaker 1 (06:43):
I think it says the best partner a copkitab or
something like that.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Brandenburg's humility stands in contrast to his career highlights displayed
on the wall. There's his Marine Corps uniform, A photo
from an appearance on the TV show forty eight hours
an LASD Service Award, and nearby there's a jukebox, a
big screen TV, and a pool table with the giant
logo of his Sheriff's badge on it.
Speaker 7 (07:09):
Do you have a name for this room?
Speaker 1 (07:12):
We just call it the Brandonburg Family Game Room. I
try to get the kids go over games, and we're
all Dodger fans, so revetsed the Dodgers.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Brandenburg is a grampa. Now goes by Papa, and he
has a shock of gray hair to prove it, but
he still looks a bit like a detective with his
slicked back hair and steely gaze. For more than twenty years,
Brandenburg was a bulldog. That was the nickname given to
investigators at the LASD Homicide Bureau.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
It was a La Tanji course said, yeah. The Sheriff's
onmicide detectors are like bulltoks. Once they put their teeth
to something and they never let go. Name stuck.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department oversees crime in the
unincorporated areas of LA County. It's a massive space, four
thousand square miles, which is about the size of Connecticut,
covering that much ground. Requires a huge workforce. With its
eighteen thousand employees, LASD is the largest sheriff's department in
(08:15):
the country. Homicide cops like Larry Brandenburg work out of
a bureau located near downtown La, so when they catch
a case, they hoof it to whatever part of the county.
The homicide occurred in. The Antelope Valley or AV as
it's sometimes called, was a particularly distant outpost. That's because
(08:35):
it's cut off from the city by a mountain range,
and Brandenburg thinks that's part of why the Auja case
was handled so poorly.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
I think some of it was lack of interest motivation.
I can't explain any other way.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Because the AV was quite the hall from the homicide
bureau hour and a half drive time.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Nobody from down in La one to come up here
at work because they didn't live up here. Hey see
why the drive sucks.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
LA deputies didn't want to move to the desert either,
so the department had to recruit lovocals to run their
AV stations, and that created a schism within the LASD.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
They thought they could do their own thing and they
didn't need anybody from down in LA tell them what
to do. Hey, this is our valley. We know everybody
up here, we grew up here, we live here, will
handle this shit. But at the same time, department never
dedicated the resources to this valley that they should have.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Brandenburg has two sons who are now LASD deputies in
the Annelo Valley, and it's become a running joke in
the family.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
You know, I say, ah, you freaking deputies work up here.
You guys are stupid, he'd laugh. You guys from down
Belore a bunch of assholes. You come up here and
think you know everything. But that was for a long
time kind of the feeling.
Speaker 7 (09:56):
Brandenburg had heard that Auj went missing, but he didn't
know him or the specifics of what happened, and it
wasn't a murder investigation. It was a missing person's case,
so it was outside his domain. But then a colleague
from the Anela Valley reaches out with an especially persuasive tip.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
He said, Hey, Larry, I'm hearing shit on the street man,
and Auj wasn't. He didn't commit suicide. He was murdered.
He came across a math lab and you know, he
tried to be a hero. He goes, I'm hearing from
more than one person.
Speaker 7 (10:26):
And there are other details about the Auj case that
don't sit right with him. How many years were you
a homicide detective?
Speaker 1 (10:33):
A little over twenty.
Speaker 7 (10:35):
In not twenty years? Did you ever have a case
like this.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Where nobody a suicide? Never think about how would you
do that?
Speaker 7 (10:46):
So Brandenburg asks to review the Auj case file.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
I went to the Captain Frank Merriman, who was the
lieutenant in charge of Missing persons who handled the initial investigation,
and I said, hey, Frank, I'm getting some information about
Auja that you know we need to follow up on.
He's what, He goes, that's a suicide. You're wasting your time.
Speaker 7 (11:07):
But Brandenburg continues to press this. He's a bulldog, after all,
and his persistence pays off. In early two thousand, he
gets permission to look through the missing person's report and
finds out new details about the deputy's disappearance from a
year and a half earlier. He discovers that the department
had received numerous tips that Auja was murdered, and that
(11:29):
some of those tips came in just three days after
the deputy went missing, while searchers were still out looking
for him. And potential evidence was still fresh. If there
is some suggestion of possible foul play, multiple people are
claiming there's a murder, what typically would happen.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
It would be assigned to a murder team, people that
are on call for new murders.
Speaker 7 (11:54):
But that didn't happen because the missing person's team dismissed
the tips. What would you say is the main difference
between a missing person's investigator and a murder team or
homicide detective.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Well, missing persons they handle a large volume. I mean,
there are so many people report of missing La County
every day, let alone every month every year, so they're
making phone calls, try to find relatives. So they're busy
doing that stuff. But a lot of it is handled
at their desk, on the phone. Or you don't handle
a murder like that, at least, I ope not.
Speaker 7 (12:32):
Brander Murg thinks these detectives drop the ball big time,
and he's not the only one. Internal documents from the
LASD show that one lieutenant discussed the AJ case in
terms of Murphy's law, which basically means anything that can
go wrong will go wrong. We've reached out to the
missing person's team, but they declined to talk to us.
(12:55):
So all we know about their decision to not refer
the case to a homicide detective is the one sentence
explanation in their report. The reads, due to inconsistencies in
their statements, it was determined they were not credible and
otherly were pursued.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Well, shouldn't you maybe looked into that a little more?
I mean, that's just my thought, and that's why I
started looking at it.
Speaker 7 (13:19):
Brandenburg does what he thinks should have happened back in
nineteen ninety eight. He treats Aujay's disappearance like a homicide case,
and he starts by tracking down two of the names
in the missing person's report so he can reinterview the informants.
To protect their identities, we're going to call them Sue
and Mike. At the time, Sue was in custody on
(13:41):
burglary charges, so Brandenburg and his partner head to the
jail where she's being held. Sue tells them that after
Aujay disappeared, her boyfriend Mike, went to score drugs from
a guy living near the Devil's Punch Bowl, a local
dealer named Tom Hinkle. What was he known for in
the area?
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Miss doing it? Or he did it, he sold it,
he cooked it, and he did all of it.
Speaker 7 (14:08):
Everyone in the area. Hinkle he was the Kevin Bacon
and his community's six degrees of separation. He was only
in his fifties when a J disappeared, but Hinkl was
already known around town as old man. He had wild
gray facial hair and was described by a local sheriff's
deputy as bearded meta clause. He lived in a large
(14:29):
a frame house up on a hill six miles from
the punch bowl, and his property was a hive of
drug activity. Sue, the informant, tells Brandon Burg that when
Mike arrived at Hinkle's home, he led him into a
back room where Hinkle kept his knife collection.
Speaker 6 (14:46):
Heinkel was showing him knife collection two miles beyond, kind
of like showing off a little bit.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
You know.
Speaker 7 (14:52):
This is an actual recording of Sue's conversation with Brandenburg.
Speaker 5 (14:57):
I'll bendy bring it up the hop gath Henkler, Yeah, Okay, Tom,
Heinkel brings it up to My boyfriend tells them basically
what happened to.
Speaker 6 (15:07):
The man that RJ was on a job, ran across
that picking shit. That ran across and he had to
be taken care of, meaning she was killed.
Speaker 7 (15:19):
Sue goes on to say that, according to Hinkle, Auj
stumbled on a meth lab and tried to be a
hero with slight variations. The story is repeated by Mike
in a separate interview and then in second hand accounts
from a handful of other informants that Hinkle and or
one of his associates had Auj taken care of. According
to Sue and Mike, Hinkle pantomimed what he meant by
(15:42):
taking care of.
Speaker 6 (15:44):
He made the motion like this.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
He made a hand gesture like a gun with his
finger out, and then opened his hand like he was dropped.
Speaker 7 (15:55):
The moment plays like a movie scene in my head.
Meta clause is surrounded by a bloom of meth smoke
and sharp shiny knives. He mentions the missing deputy with
a knowing look. He draws his hand into a finger
gun and then releases his fingers, displaying them out, And
just like that, John A. J. Disappears down a mind
(16:17):
shaft or some other hole out in the desert where
people go to bury their secrets.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
We're back at the Devil's punch Bowl. And this time
we've come for a hike. Oh I love these. This
is where you write your name and the time that
you leave, so that in case you go missing, people
know that we should do that. So dat, Betsy and
I write our names down on a sign and sheet
at the main trailhead and enter the park.
Speaker 7 (17:16):
Why why are we doing Why are we doing this again?
Speaker 2 (17:20):
I honestly, I just really had to get eyes on
the punch bowl. I am having a really hard time
seeing how someone could set up a meth lab in
La County Park.
Speaker 7 (17:30):
It just feels implausible to you.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah, I mean, it just seems like you would be
kind of asking to get.
Speaker 7 (17:37):
Caught, not to mention, like meth labs are like not discreen, discreet.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, all right, let's let's check it out.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Let's check it out. As we start to descend down
into the center of the punch bowl, Betsy loses her
footing on the steep dusty trail. Okay, do you want
me to go in front of you or hold your backpack.
Speaker 7 (17:59):
So you can break my fall? Yeah? Holding my backpack
like I'm a child method is a working freak.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Yeah, here, I got you. But we keep moving, snaking
through the switchbacks in a slow zigzag motion.
Speaker 7 (18:15):
How hot do you think it is right now? So
one hundred? Did it break one hundreds today?
Speaker 1 (18:19):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
It's definitely close. It's pushing one hundred for sure. Being
out here, we realize this public park is much less
public than most.
Speaker 7 (18:32):
It feels like we are on another planet and we
are like the last living human beings. So I mean
in terms of discreetness, like it's open, but it's also
like out.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
In the middle of nowhere. It's on the fringes.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
We don't see any other hikers or rangers, and I
find myself playing out the lab scenario in my head.
You know, we know that Jonathan oj saw uh Classic
kids on a field trip here, but then we also
know that he went totally off trail and off roading,
and to me, that would be the place where he
(19:15):
could stumble upon the meth lab because there is all
this land that is not accessible by trail. As we
wind our way down the gorge with our phones on
SOS mode, the idea of shady things happening out here
seems like a real possibility. Hey, dude, I think I
(19:35):
feel like maybe we shouldn't hit it. It's We're getting
like pretty far out in the middle of nowhere here,
and no one knows we're out here.
Speaker 7 (19:43):
I was thinking, I didn't want to say anything. I
didn't want to be the weaning of the group. Let's
les let go, Let's not beat around the bush, let's
get out of the bush. The second Haley gives me
an out, I pretty much take off running because I'm
always thinking of worst case scenarios, falling off a cliff,
(20:04):
getting attacked by a bear. Now I have to worry
about stumbling on a meth lab. I don't have to,
but I will, because that's just who I am. A
firm believer in Murphy's law. That's why I didn't have
any trouble buying into the whole meth lab scenario. What
I want to know is how this area became a
(20:24):
meth hotspot in the first place. We don't have stats
specific to the Analov Valley, but here in the early
two thousands, a large scale drug syndicate was busted. Nearly
three hundred people were arrested, most classified as career criminals.
I grew up in a rural area where there was
a lot of drug activity hiding in plain sight, so
(20:47):
I know the av's remoteness is a factor, but it
turns out so are its big open skies. Since the
nineteen thirties, the US government and military contractors have been
testing planes, rockets, and explosives over the Annalov Valley. The
Edwards Air Force Base was built, defense plants moved in,
(21:11):
and it turned the area into an aeronautical frontier.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
In October nineteen forty seven, at Nila Desert Test Center
in California, history is made by this aircraft and its pilot, Captain.
Speaker 7 (21:26):
Vieger, and it was over this part of the Anilo
Valley where Air Force pilot Chuck Yaeger pushed his plane
up to seven hundred miles per hour and broke the
sound barrier.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
For at time a man has blown an airplane. Not
there than the fiel of God.
Speaker 7 (21:45):
These military experiments over the AV are actually where the
principle of Murphy's law comes from. Because these space cowboys
got so banged up while pushing their bodies to the
limit resisting the forces of gravity and physics that an
engineer on the project, a guy named Edward Murphy, said
something along the lines of anything that can go wrong
(22:07):
will go wrong. It be long before things would start
to go wrong across the Antelote Valley. The av had
a legacy of record breaking speed, and its residents developed
an appetite for the drug version of rocket fuel meth anthetamine.
Meth just made life easier out there. Factory workers took
(22:29):
the drug to power through long shifts at defense contractor plants.
Construction workers used it to keep up with the area's
housing boom, and commuters relied on meth to stay awake
during the brutal drive to and from Los Angeles. But
moderate matthews turned into a full blown epidemic in the
early nineties as the Cold War came to an abrupt end.
Speaker 9 (22:52):
The aerospace cutback soon created a domino effect across the
Antalope Valley, and the munce thriving economy began to evaporate, like.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
So much water in the hot desert sun.
Speaker 7 (23:03):
The meth trade became an easy option for unemployed residents
to make some cash.
Speaker 8 (23:09):
At the time, the Anlope Valley was a sesspool. It
was a desert. It was known for manufacturing met the amphetamine,
so people were getting busted left and right.
Speaker 7 (23:18):
This is Chris Turk.
Speaker 8 (23:20):
My dad calls me Christine when I'm in trouble, but
most couldn't call me Chris.
Speaker 7 (23:25):
Chris Turk is originally from Massachusetts, but she got stationed
in the Antelope Valley while working for the US Army.
She left the military after a few years, had a family,
and then found work with a local attorney. Because when
Matthew skyrocketed, so did the need for criminal defense. What
was your position with him?
Speaker 8 (23:44):
At first it was just apparently ago, and then it
was investigative. I would go out on the streets and
I would talk to the people. I would talk to
some cops. I would join Everett to defend the client.
Speaker 7 (23:56):
Turk discovered she had a real knack for it.
Speaker 8 (23:58):
All the lawyers started asking my boss if I could
work on some of their cases.
Speaker 7 (24:04):
She was good at getting people to open up me.
Speaker 8 (24:07):
I was more on their level. They would all talk
to me. My ex husband is the half brother of
these other two guys that were involved in a lot
of the drug scene.
Speaker 7 (24:18):
And she had a last name that carried weight with
drug users.
Speaker 8 (24:21):
Even though it was your marriage. A lot of them
would just assume I was part of that family. They
were really easy to get information, sometimes too easy.
Speaker 7 (24:30):
The attorney Turk worked for had a meth habit of
his own, so his law firm was well connected with
the drug scene, and over time Turk learned a lot
about the criminal ecosystem in the valley, who the big
dealers were, where their laps were located, and which cops
were making the busts. And she started to notice a
trend that it was just the low level offenders who
(24:52):
were getting picked up over and over again, but none
of the heavyweights who were supplying the drugs, people like
Tom Hinkle. Hinkle spent decades working in a manufacturing and
testing site for explosives. Just a few years before Auj
went missing, a woman was killed in the desert by
a homemade bomb near Hinkle's house. According to LSD reports,
(25:17):
tire tracks led directly from the explosion to Hinkle's place,
yet he was never arrested or charged in the case.
This would become a theme for Hinkle. He seemed untouchable.
Speaker 8 (25:29):
He would have been one of the first people I invested,
yet he ever was ever that one's never even touched.
Speaker 7 (25:36):
By the late nineties, Hinkle had a day job working
at a gas station a long pair Blossom Highway near
the punch Bowl that's where he'd meet with a range
of characters, including local sheriff's deputies.
Speaker 8 (25:49):
He became the guy on the hill, and he became idolized.
Speaker 7 (25:55):
And then something seemed to elevate Hinkle from a dealer
to something more mythic.
Speaker 8 (26:01):
Everybody would call him God because he had that power.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
Before Aj, he was just Hinkle.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Jay.
Speaker 8 (26:09):
He was God.
Speaker 7 (26:11):
He didn't start calling himself God until after the aj disappearance.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Yep, yep.
Speaker 7 (26:22):
There are plenty of people with a God complex, but
few are so brazen to actually call themselves God. So
when Hinkle takes on the title, Turk is floored. And
then she hears about Hinkle's possible connection to Auji's disappearance.
She hears it from Sue and Mike, who were clients
of the lawyer she worked for.
Speaker 6 (26:44):
Tom Hinkl's the one who told all the information about
the cop who ran across something.
Speaker 4 (26:48):
He shouldn't have.
Speaker 6 (26:50):
Everybody called them God. He untouchable.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Turk notifies the authorities because this isn't a low level
drug offense, this is a possible homicide, and she goes
straight to the top, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which
has a field office in the area.
Speaker 8 (27:09):
And I talked to these two federal agents about what
was going on.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Turk offers to introduce the FBI agents to Mike, but
she says the meeting didn't go so well because when
she and one of the agents show up to talk
to Mike, he's hitting a meth pipe.
Speaker 8 (27:28):
I mean, I'm talking a clouded smoke when we opened
the door and the FBI agent and I just looked
at each other.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
We reached out to the FBI to ask about their
involvement in the AUJ case, but they give us their
standard line that they can neither confirm nor deny the
existence of an investigation. So we don't know what came
of Turk's tip to the Feds, but the info eventually
makes its way to homicide Detective Larry Brandenburg, who does
follow up on it.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Chris Turk was involved in the whole myth drug culture world,
so I'd talked to her. If I could get information
from her, I'll take it, you know, And if it's oh, crap,
I just discarded.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Determining the credibility of informant statements is a complicated art.
There are plenty of reasons that Sue and Mike and
others related to the Aujay case may be untrustworthy. Informants
are often longtime drug users with fuzzy memories, lengthy criminal histories,
and ulterior motives, so Brandenburg says you have to listen
(28:31):
to them and suss out their claims accordingly.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
If you just just treaded everybody and you don't follow
up on none of it, you're gonna buy anything out.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Brandenburg was skeptical going into his interviews with Sue and Mike,
but by the end he believed the couple because they
had little to gain. Sue already had a release date
for her burglary charge and a lot to lose. Brandenburg
says it would be incredibly shortsighted for them to lie
about a man who had a reputation for being a
cold hearted killer.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
That's a pretty dangerous thing to do if you just
make it up stories. I mean, that's really dumb. I
was sure wouldn't consider doing it because if it gets
back that you're snitching, or even if you're making this
shit up, you're going to pay for it.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
He also says that Sue and Mike and others would
go on to tell the story many times, and the
stories were similar and remained largely consistent.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
The little details might change, but the main theme of
it shouldn't if you're telling the truth.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
And one hyper specific detail that never varied was the
description of Hinkle's hand gesture, the one where he made
a finger gun. That detail sticks with Brandenburg because there'd
been talk of a gunshot from another source. In June
nineteen ninety eight, a witness reported to Missing Persons detectives
that he heard the sound of a firearm discharged around
(29:57):
sunset the night au Jay disappeared.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
We had talked about someone saying they heard a gunshot.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Devil's punch Bowl Park ranger Jack Farley remembers hearing this
detail during to search for auj You.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
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 they.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Heard that, And paralegal Chris Turk says the gunshot was
discussed around town.
Speaker 8 (30:25):
There was one shot like that, one witness said, because
that's when I heard on the street.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Brandenburg tries to track down the witness using the name
listed in the Missing Person's book.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
That guy wouldn't talk to me. I tried more than
once to go talk to him. I think he worked
at the punch bowl or he lived right by it.
So the gunshots heard near the punch bowl a single gunshot.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
These details keep adding up, and Brandenburg starts to see
how the scenario might have played out. Auj was running
past one of Hinkle's meth labs.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
He saw a bunch of streakers hanging out there, and
then they're all sitting there with their hands in the
cookie jard. Oh what the fuck we do now? Gee,
we can't let this guy leave. He never left.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Brandenburg decides it's time to send the information up the
flagpole to the homicide captain. Tell him what he's hearing
from informants. But the captain blows him off.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Oh that's just tweaker talk. Tweaker talk, that's all it is.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
Brandenburg says that term tweaker talk was used to discredit
informants like Sue and Mike and undermine the theory that
Aujy was murdered.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Well, tweakers do talks best e when they get high,
they talk amongst each other. Yeah, some of it's embellis,
some of it's changed. But if you had a main theme,
it's keep getting repeated. There could be something to that.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Tweaker talk is a term Chris Turk is also familiar
with because it was used to discredit many of the
clients she worked with. She doesn't deny that meth users
are often sleep deprived and paranoid, but that doesn't mean
they don't have valuable information, especially when it comes to
a subject they know.
Speaker 8 (32:09):
The same tweakers that they said were not reliable. You
couldn't get information from him, well, the same ones that
they used information forwards to bust other people. So you
can't listen to him on one hand and not listen
to him on the other hand.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
When an informant provides leads that pan out for law enforcement,
their status changes to a confidential, reliable informant, and one
of the best ways for investigators to determine if these
leads are legit is to keep investigating see if the
intel can be corroborated.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
To me, that needs to be looked at real hard
and seriously. Not Ah, she's a freaking tweaker. I don't
believe the things she says, especially when it's already coming
from some other sources.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
But Brandenburg says he couldn't really do that because his
captain undermined him at every turn, called him names, and
tried to strong arm him into folding his investigation.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
And I told him this bullshit. I don't agree with it.
Speaker 5 (33:06):
We heard from you.
Speaker 7 (33:07):
Why you're so passionate about it?
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Why do you think he had such reaction?
Speaker 1 (33:10):
I don't know. That's the question I can't answer.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Brandenburg is taken aback by homicide Captain Frank Merryman's aggressive
attempts to put the AUJ matter to bed, especially after
he finds a note in the missing person's file from
Merryman which shows that Captain may have had his own
doubts about the case.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
I found a little posted when I was looking through
the original file. When I first got it, yell will
post it, and it was Frank's handwriting and his initials,
and it said should this go to a murder team?
Speaker 2 (33:45):
To me, this feels like a no brainer. It should
have gone to a murder team to thoroughly vet the tips,
to prove or disprove them. That should have happened three
days after Auj went missing, when the tips first started
coming in. If not, then it should have happened as
more and more informants came forward, and it definitely should
(34:08):
have been investigated in May of nineteen ninety nine, when
a large scale meth lab was discovered near the punch
Bowl where AUJ disappeared.
Speaker 7 (34:38):
A few weeks into Detective Brandenburg's investigation, he gets a
new lead from an LSD sergeant working narcotics in the
Annealo Valley. He tells Brandenburg about a property they searched
the year before, a meth lab that was located right
down the road from the Devil's Punch Bowl.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Okay, let me get him a barry to this, Matt.
Here's the punch bowl right here. This is how close
it was, and hinkled it right over here too.
Speaker 7 (35:07):
There was a meth lab near where AUJ disappeared. It
wasn't in the punch Bowl technically, but it was close by,
just two miles up the road that leads to the
Punch Bowl parking lot.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
The searcht was served at Devil's punch Bowl Road, Para Blossom, California,
a forty acre parcel land located immediately northwest of Devil's
punch Bowl County Park. During the search warrant, a major
myth ampatami lab was discovered.
Speaker 7 (35:34):
Brandenburg's reading the search warrant from May of nineteen ninety nine.
That's when the LASD and other law enforcement agencies busted
the lab. Brandenburg connects it to the AUJ case in
early two thousand and So were you the first person
to make the connection between what some of these informants
were reporting and the lab that was found near the
(35:58):
punch Bowl?
Speaker 1 (36:00):
I think so, because I don't read any of it
in these reports earlier on about that.
Speaker 7 (36:07):
For Brandenburg, this was outside conference that the informant statements
weren't just.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Tweak or talk.
Speaker 7 (36:13):
The lab was located down the road from the Devil's
Punch Bowl, a straight shot from the park.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
But that's not all.
Speaker 7 (36:20):
It was owned by a good friend of Tom Hankles,
a guy named Rick Carroll. Carroll operated the lab on
his property and he let other people cook there. It
was a kind of meth making co op and a
hangout spot for all sorts of local drug users. The
lab had already been dismantled by the time Brandenburg enters
(36:42):
the scene, but he sets out to learn everything he
can from reports. The day of the lab bust, about
two dozen law enforcement officers fan out across the property.
They're led by an LA County Sheriff's deputy who lives
and works in Pair Blossom, where the punch bowl and
the lab are located.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Rick ingkles it was a resident deputy. I will sorry
the area he lived in. He knew this area probably
better than anybody.
Speaker 7 (37:09):
Deputy Angles also knows the players in the drug scene
and how to navigate the desert terrain. So as he
and others search the Carroll property, they discover an assortment
of trailers, cars, and storage containers. Law enforcement uses the
steel probe to check the ground for buried objects because
meth users are known to get creative when hiding their stash.
(37:33):
In this case, searchers find something much bigger. The probe
strikes metal, and law enforcement uncovers a hatch that opens
up into an underground room.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
It was extensive at underground tunnels. They had underground rooms,
They had all the hardware, the glassware. These is a
pretty big operation.
Speaker 7 (37:54):
There is all sorts of stuff down there, a propane stove, flasks,
and telltale blood like stains created by red phosphorus, one
of the major chemicals used to make meth. Something deputies
didn't find was meth. It appears to have been cleared
out before the raid, but the lab likely would have
been active in nineteen ninety eight when Aujy disappeared.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
The lab equipment recovered was capable of producing hundreds of
pounds of mess amfetamine. In addition, there was an operational
back hole on the property also recovered as one shot
got along with hundreds of additional pieces of evidence.
Speaker 7 (38:29):
And there was another notable discovery at the compound.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
The southeast portion of the meth lab, which have been
on this side of it, drops right down into the
punch bowl and that's where the shooting range was that
they had, and they had silhouettes of cops at that
shooting range. Can you say that again?
Speaker 7 (38:47):
There were silhouettes of cops that the people that were
at this math lab would.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Take shots at yeah, target practice, So these guys don't
want like cops too much.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Brandenburg wants to better understand the proximity of the lab
to the punch bowl, something best seen from an aerial view,
so he calls up a colleague who flies helicopters for
the Sheriff's Department. He's a pilot from the Special Enforcement Bureau,
the same bureau auj worked for. They take off and
circle over the Carroll property.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
You see right over here is this property and you
can see the outbuildings and the trailers where the meth
lab was, and all these trails.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Then the pilot makes an offhand comment about Auja that
causes things to click into place.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
For Brandenburg, he goes, yeah, I used to run some
of those trails right there with.
Speaker 7 (39:40):
Aujiy oh wow, So he knew some of the routes
that he would take.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
So this lab was located right next to a trail
that auj had run before, and it was just two
miles from Raje's truck was discovered, which is almost the
finish line in ultra marathon terms. At this point, a
lot begins to gel for Brandenburg. He's more convinced than
ever by what the informants have told him.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
All that stuff just started adding up all the time
of the investigator. I tell people this, even younger guys,
This cop stuff is not like TV. You go with
what makes common sense. Everything looks like this. Well usually
if it looks like that, that's what it is.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
So we go to see what it looks like for ourselves.
As we approached the property where the Carroll lab was located,
it looks a lot like I imagined it did back
in nineteen ninety nine. It's sprawling, dotted with structures and
shipping containers, and has a fence around the perimeter.
Speaker 7 (40:47):
Seeing how close we are to where Aujay's truck was found,
and that there is like a little road here that
leads up to the mountains, it certainly seems possible that
he could have stumbled on this like as he was
trying to return to the park.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Yeah, that theory is starting to hold the more water
to me. It's after we leave the property that we
discover a new detail about the care Carrel lab that
it's close to another key location, in this case, driving
away from the Carroll property, we just happened to spot
a mailbox with an address of someone we've been trying
to reach for months. It turns out the witness who
(41:24):
reported hearing a gun shot at sunset the day All
Day went missing was Rick Carroll's closest neighbor. After coming
forward with the information, this witness stopped cooperating with law enforcement.
He won't return any of our calls either, and we
can't door knock him because his house is behind a
large security fence. But just seeing where he lived is
(41:47):
helpful because his home is just about a half mile
from the Carrol Lab in the direction of the punch bowl,
and that would be well within earshot of a gun going.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Off, which is Perry Mason.
Speaker 4 (41:59):
This shit.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
This changes my whole way of thinking about that theory.
Speaker 7 (42:05):
How had the Sheriff's department not made any of these
connections before? For why when the Carol Lab was rated
in nineteen ninety nine, didn't someone think, huh, this seems
like a pretty big coincidence given all the rumors we've
heard about auj being killed. And that brings us back
to Murphy's law, which has come to mean that anything
(42:27):
that can go wrong will, But it's important to note
that's a slight mischaracterization of what space engineer Edward Murphy
actually said about the flight tests over the Antelope Valley.
What he said was, if there's anything they can do wrong,
they will. It's a small but important difference. The engineer
(42:49):
wasn't saying the world is powerless against the forces of
chaos and disaster. He was saying that humans are error prone,
and he said it as a way of explaining why
organizations need to have rigorous safeguards to catch their mistakes
due diligence, oversight, quality control so that the things that
(43:09):
can go wrong don't. In the Sheriff's Department's handling of
the AUJ case, it seems like a lot went wrong,
a series of system wide failures and a breakdown of
accountability with.
Speaker 8 (43:23):
The AUJ thing that was too much of the same
thing being said, how many times do you have to
share it and not investigate with There's something more going
on here.
Speaker 7 (43:37):
Brandenburg keeps investigating, but it's hard working in a vacuum,
and the Sheriff's Department isn't making things any easier for him.
The detective pushes on, though, and he discovers Auj's disappearance
may be connected to a bigger criminal enterprise, and as
the scope of his investigation expands, so does the pool
(44:01):
of suspects.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
So the more I looked, you know, the more I
started document shit. It in a short time started snowballing,
and then the DEA got involved to try to tackle
this massive meth amphetamine problem in Animal Valley, you know,
the mostly white bikers that were cooking this stuff.
Speaker 7 (44:29):
Next time on Valley of Shadows, the.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Outlaw bikers were big out there. If you crossed them,
there was a guaranteed death that was going to be murdered.
She said that there was a guy in the Bottles
motorcycle gang and she said he was involved in this
burder for the deputy and that she had been shown
where he was buried.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
A body was found out in the remote.
Speaker 4 (44:52):
Area, duct taped, bloodied. You could see it like that
imprint of a boot, a motorcycle boot on his face.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
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
(45:50):
is Diane Hodson. Our executive producers are Jacob Smith and
Alexandra Garreton. Original music by Jake Gorsky, Ray Lynch, Mike Jersich,
and Hayden Gardner. Sound designed by Jake Gorsky, fact checking
by Onica Robbins. Additional production support by Sonya girl Away
(46:10):
and Our show art was designed by Sean Carney and
Betsy Shepherd. Special thanks to Nick White for show art photography.
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 to podcasts. From type to Fun,
(46:31):
We're Haley and Betsy. See you next week.
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