February 2, 2026 • 43 mins
Decades before Jon Aujay’s disappearance, the Devil’s Punchbowl was infamous for something else: Bigfoot sightings. Sasquatch became a known boogeyman in the area. But beneath the folklore lies something real —- a local deputy, named Rick Engels, whose reputation inspires a different kind of fear. As detectives Brandenburg and Hager look into their colleague, they uncover a surprising connection to the Aujay case.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
This series includes content that may not be suitable for
all listeners. Listener discretion is advised. Previously, on Valley of Shadows,
he said, look.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
If you go forward with this, Deputy x Y and
Z are going to know exactly what's going on, So
you got to protect her.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
What's the image on the back?
Speaker 4 (00:45):
Hits that peg with porns?
Speaker 5 (00:47):
She heard her a friend who she refused to name,
that Deputy Alogy was jogging near the punch Bowl when
he came across Deputy ingles meth lab and was killed.
Word on the street has been that Deputy Ingles has
been involved with drugs for a very long time. Yeah,
that's pretty pretty frightening.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
This is the perfect fire, by the way, and the
perfect beer, Thank you, ma'am. We're in the Angelus National
Forest near the Devil's Punch Bowl, and this time we're
camping out here. The stars are incredible.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, I guess that's one perk of it being so
freaking dark out here.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
We've pitched our tents at a campground in Big Rock Canyon.
It's one of the last places where John A. Jay
was spotted. A campground employee saw him jogging through the
campground between six and eight pm, the nightie disappeared. Yep, okay,
But the real reason I wanted to take you out
here is because this is also the location of another
(02:15):
noteworthy sighting.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Was Bigfoot standing no more than one hundred yards.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
From my blind.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
I began to shake all over.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
He was boss, this is going to a sasquatch expert.
This is where Bigfoot hangs out when he's migrating from
the Pacific northwest to Mexico.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
So you lured me out here. Have you set up
the tent and now we have to sleep.
Speaker 5 (02:49):
Out here the Bigfoot?
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yeah? Oh my god. Okay. For decades, campers and hikers
have reported seeing a sasquatch creature in the forested areas
near the Devil's Punch Bowl, and one of the first
sightings in these parts happened on April twenty second, nineteen seventy.
It was a night much like this week. Three young
(03:16):
dudes are out here camping, presumably sitting around a campfire
drinking beer just like we're doing. They hear some rustling
in the bushes and they just get spooked, so they
pack up all their stuff, hop in their truck, and
big Foot jumps out of the bushes and starts chasing
after He starts chasing after the truck. His huge harry
(03:39):
arms are just like swinging around. Big Foot chases people.
Not only does he chase people, but he's twelve feet tall,
so he probably can't run pretty fast. God okay, and
then he just disappears behind the tree line and like
down on the canyon. Stay with us. We promise we're
not jumping the shark. Ear. There's a reason we're talking
(04:00):
about Bigfoot. So the three guys go straight to the
La County Sheriff's station. They file a police report. But
that's not all. My friend or printed out a picture
of the three guys who saw Bigfoot.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Okay, hold on, Brian Golder, jarb Willie Romerman and Rick Engles.
Is this though, Rick Engles?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
The reason we're wrapping about Bigfoot is because one of
the guys who says he had the brush with the
creature was Rick Engles. He would go on to become
an La County Sheriff's deputy, basically the sheriff of Pear Blossom.
And he's the guy some informants say was running the
meth lab near the punch bowl.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Wow, he's got some major seventies vibes going here this
like rolled up plaid shirt, longish hair.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
He looks like the browny Man mixed with like David Hasselhoff.
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Here he's like clutching a Bigfoot cutout that looks like
it's just cobbled together from card.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
And some primer pains.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
It's yeh.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Since nineteen seventy three, there have been dozens of stories
of a larger than life creature haunting the shadowy corners
of the Anelope Valley, adding to the legend of the
Majave Bigfoot Bigfoot I witnessed Deputy Rick Engles would become
something of a legend himself. Local residents say he was
(05:36):
an oversized presence in the punch Bowl area, an evasive
figure who skirted the law, a boogeyman with a badge.
Speaker 6 (05:43):
Rick Angles ran that desert count of pere Blossom and
they looked the other way. But then when it comes
to the killing of a cop, Yeah, no, that was
a whole different ballgame.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Chris Turk says the word around town was that Deputy
Bigfoot Angles was behind John Aujay's disappearance.
Speaker 6 (06:03):
Do I believe what I heard on the streets? Yes,
do I believe Angles is a dirty cop? Absolutely lutely.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
These rumors make their way to homicide Detective Larry Brandenburg
and Narco Detective Darren Hager during their Auja investigations. But
how much of these stories are fact and how much
or fiction? Are they just local lore or is there
evidence to back up the claims? Are you fucking kidding me?
Speaker 5 (06:38):
What the f was that?
Speaker 1 (06:40):
That's the beast we're chasing down. I'm holding your hand.
What the motherfuck is that? Oh my god, I'm never
gonna sleep. I'm Betsy Shepherd, I'm Haley Fox.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
And this is Valley of Shadows, episode five, the Legend
of Bigfoot Homicide Detective Larry Brandenburg, here's a deputy Rick
Angles was busting meth labs in the Antelope Valley to
(07:17):
take out his competition. He also hears he was involved
in the murder of John auj. Brandenburg takes it all
with a grain of salt.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
People make suit upout cops all the time. If he's
busting a lot of drug dealers are going to talk
crap about him and make up shit to make him
look bad. But we couldn't just ignore it. At least
I couldn't.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Brandenburg finds himself in a tight spot. If he investigates
Deputy Angles as a murder suspect and he's proven innocent,
he'll catch hell from his colleagues. If the allegations against
Angles are true, then the La County Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Will catch hell.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
But Brandenburg needs to ensure that Angles is on the
up and up.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
Dirty cops are really to be afraid of because they
walk around with immunity pretty much. Imagine what the few
people that may have known about this sting. They're like, hey,
if don't fucking kill Op and Berry, what are they
gonna do to me?
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So he gets to work, But I said, you know.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
Rick Ingeles deserves two things. We need to clear his
name or if he's guilty, then we need to frickin,
arrest his ass and prosecute.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Brandenburg burns through shoe leather, knocking on doors, interviewing contacts
he gets from NARCO Detective Darren Hager.
Speaker 5 (08:32):
Rick Ingle's name starts coming up more and more and more.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Then he interviews a woman busted for meth near the
punch Bowl. Turns out she's friends with Tom Hinkle aka
METHI Clause and Richard Carroll, the guy who owned the
property near the punch bowl with the underground meth lab.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
Miss said that Hinkel and Carol were good friends. In
addition to Carrol operating and meth lab honest, probably he
allowed other individuals to produce meth on the property. Miss
said Dipty Ingles would visit Hinkel while driving his black
and white Sheriffs.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Fearful Brandenburg starts to have doubts about a hanging out
with convicted felons or anyone with a reputation for criminal
behavior is specifically prohibited by LASD policy. But the thing is,
angles was no typical deputy. He was the resident deputy.
Speaker 7 (09:25):
The idea is that you have a police officer, in
this case, deputy who is a local resident. That was
one of the requirements is they have to live within
that area they're going to be patrolling.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
This is Vince Burton, retired LASD sergeant and founder of
the Outlaw Pigs biker Club. Burton says the resident deputy
was a way for the department to put boots on
the ground in the county's most remote corners.
Speaker 7 (09:55):
You're the town sheriff in the old fashioned West where
You're the guy that's the law for the area, and
you know a lot of the bad guys.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
You know a lot of the guys.
Speaker 7 (10:04):
That are criminals and are skirting the law.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
You know everybody.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
And for more than twenty years, Rick Engles worked as
this pseudo town sheriff, overseeing Pear Blossom, the town of
fifteen hundred near the Devil's Punch Bowl. Burton says the
resident deputy is like a community police officer, but there
are some crucial differences. The resident deputy is a one
man crew. They typically work out of their home, not
(10:32):
a police station, and just like Burton did with the vagos,
he says, angles developed relationships with local criminals to keep
tabs on them and get intel.
Speaker 7 (10:42):
All the deputies knew that if there was a bad
guy they were looking for in that area, go talk
to Rick.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
First.
Speaker 7 (10:49):
Chances are he probably knew him and knew his house.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
And where he lived. He just a community guy, born
and raised there.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Rick Engles lived in the Antelope Valley for most of
his life. He was a rodeo rider and as a
side hustle, he would charge money to take people out
on bear hunting trips. He also ran an equestrian business
boarding horses. So it's fair to say Ingles was an
outdoorsman and something of an entrepreneur, but his main gig
was for the La County Sheriff's Department. He earned his
(11:20):
stripes working patrol in the Antelope Valley and then in
nineteen eighty eight, Vince Burton hired Angles for the resident
deputy position.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
What about his resume impressed you?
Speaker 7 (11:32):
The fact that he lived there, the fact that he
was a good cop and active and arresting people and
doing the lard's work every day.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
The department gives Angles everything he needs to be a
self contained unit, a patrol car, a police radio, and
a work phone. He doesn't punch a clock, doesn't have
a supervisor breathing down his neck. He's not even required
to check in at the local last station, which is
about a forty minute drive from Paar Blossom. So Angles
(12:02):
is basically on his own out there, and when something
goes down, he's first on the scene.
Speaker 7 (12:08):
They would literally roll on their vest, throw on what
they call ray jackets, put on a gun belt, brabber radio,
jump in their car and go there.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
But Brandenburg notices something that doesn't square with that whole
resident deputy line. If Angles is the department's local expert
and go to a guy for all things, pair blossom,
why didn't he show up at the punch Bowl when
John A j disappeared?
Speaker 5 (12:34):
He never wants volunteered to help in this search.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Angle's name is noticeably absent from the LSD sign in
sheets that were collected over the six day search.
Speaker 5 (12:45):
Everybody else in the Animal Valley, even guys that were
off duty, went up there and volunteered, not getting paid.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Hundreds of people were scouring the park in search of
the missing deputy, but not the one sheriff's deputy who
knew the punch Bowl like it was his backyard and
it was practically Angle's backyard.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
Okay, let me get him a Barry shot of this, Matt.
Here's the punch bowl right here, and Ingles lived right here.
This is how close it was.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
The park was only four miles from his house. He
hiked in the punch Bowl, knew its trails, and knew
the criminal terrain too. So one would expect Angles to
offer assistance to help the search grid or lead a
group of volunteers through the park.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
This guy never showed up. He lives right by there.
That's strange to me.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
I asked au Jay's old boss, retired at LESD, Captain
Mike Bauer, what do he thinks of Angles not showing
up at the search.
Speaker 8 (13:48):
Angles never went to the search and never searched for
John OJ, and he knew John OJ. They knew each other.
I mean there is no doubt they knew each other,
and that has created some concern that if there was
foul play, that he could in some way have some
connection to that fault play.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
When Brandenburg cares about Angle's absence from the search, that's
when he leans in and thinks there may be something
to the Angles allegations, but he needs some corroboration, so
he calls up NARCO detective Darren Hager and asks him
to talk to Keith, the star informant who kickstarted the
operation Silent Thunder Task Force's.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
With exact words, can you ask him if there's any
dirty deputies. I'm like, yeah, if you won't, So I
called Larry Brack and I said, this is the name
he gave me, brick Ingles.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Brandenburg and Hagar schedule will follow up interview with Keith
to tap him for more info and see if Angles
has a connection to Pair Blossom's other notorious figure, Tom Hinkle.
Speaker 5 (14:58):
You said that he received the information that Ingles was
a dirty cop, and he assisted Tom with his mess
sales and his meth labs.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
And the relationship was that they had their own little
enterprise out there in Para Blossom, and it was narcotic sales,
manufacturing and illegal firearm distribution.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Hagar is stunned by what he's hearing because he knows Angles.
They'd cross paths in the Analog Valley, were friendly, had
even worked a crime scene together.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
The deputy in question I always thought was a hardcore
cowboy cop, So originally I didn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
But then when Hager scans through angles track record, a
pattern emerges. Over the course of his career, Angles busted
upwards of twenty meth labs, but there were plenty that
he didn't bust.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Certain major players were never touched by Deputy Ingles. They
were big dealers. So why were certain people constantly getting
arrested by Ingles? But this other group, nothing ever happened
to him that raised a red.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
Flag to me.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
One of the untouchables was Tom Hinkle. Hager thinks that's
pretty suspicious because Hinkel's place was a whirlwind of meth
activity and it was just two miles from Deputy Angle's house.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
It's like, are you kidding me? You can't smell this?
Why wasn't this ever taken down?
Speaker 1 (16:27):
And then Hager remembers a peculiar encounter he once witnessed
between Deputy Angles and Tom Hinkle. It was back when
Hager was still a working patrol. There'd been a bombing
in Pair Blossom that left a woman dead and her
son severely injured, and there were tire tracks leading from
the site directly to Hinkle's house. Angles and Hager were
(16:48):
both dispatched to the scene. Hager says that as they
approach Hinkle's front door, Angles tells Hager to peel off
to go to the top of the hill and cover
him while he approaches Hinkle alone.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Can I go, that's awfully odd. We got a homicide
victim laying there, a kid's leg blown off, and you're
gonna go contact a homicide suspect by yourself because you
followed the tire track straight to this guy's house. And
Ingles goes, I know this guy go up there. I'm like, okay,
you're the boss, this is your area.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Hagger didn't think too much of it at the time,
but given the rumors he's hearing about Angles, he sees
it in a new light and wonders is Angles protecting Hinkle.
He only knows a one lab that Angles busted that
was linked to Hinkle, and that was the one on
Rick Carroll's property near the punch Bowl. But Angles didn't
(17:39):
really take down the lab. The operation was organized by
the California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
The lab was empty, it was gone.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Hager suspects Angles knew about the raid in advance and
helped clear out the product beforehand.
Speaker 8 (17:58):
It's easy to police somebody you don't know, but it's
hard to police somebody that you grew up with, especially
if they're doing something wrong.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Mike Bauer thinks that corruption is all but inevitable when
a resident deputy is policing his friends and neighbors.
Speaker 8 (18:16):
Say, Resident Deputy programs creates a little chief of police
in an area, and that person has no supervision.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
And the line between law enforcement and law breakers becomes blurred,
like the photographic evidence of Bigfoot.
Speaker 8 (18:33):
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 (19:00):
A couple months into his investigation, Brandenburg is working at
his desk when the phone rings. It's from the Sheriff's
department in Cerrn County, just north of La County, and
they're calling about an inmate they have in custody. This
guy who will call Roger has told them he has
information about the missing deputy.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
And so we drive up Turn County Jail that day
to talk to him.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Roger is supposed to be sent back to La to
face some outstanding warrants, but he's terrified to cross back
over county lines.
Speaker 5 (19:33):
Bigston. I can't go to La County Jail. I can't
go there. They're gonna kill me. They know I know
this stuff.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
The witness is due to be transferred to La County Jail,
which is run by the La County Sheriff's Department, which
he's terrified of because of what he knows about auj.
Speaker 5 (19:51):
We can guarantee your safety in our jail, yes, but
aside from now, we haven't promised to nont deals don't have.
Speaker 8 (19:57):
To be there.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Roger starts telling the detectives what he knows.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
I know that Tom if with Bob with meth labs.
They catch that through our go get it from.
Speaker 9 (20:10):
All the time.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
And he tells Brandenburg what happened when he went to
buy myth from Tom Hinkle back in June of nineteen
ninety eight, around the time AUJ disappeared.
Speaker 9 (20:22):
I went to go purchase some methaphetamine for a friend.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Roger admits that he's a longtime meth user, but on
this particular occasion, he says he was just buying drugs
to resell to some friends. He was in his early
twenties at the time, and this side hustle was a
way to make some party money.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
I was just charge a little bit more so I
can have extra money for like cigarettes, video games, I read,
and go out to eat. And at the time I
was at Tom Nichol's house. Par was poll numb to
his drive and Tom.
Speaker 9 (20:56):
Hickl told me to go sit in the other room.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
When I went to the other room, I've heard how
the dawing Ingles, Tom said, and ingleses, how's the doing,
old man?
Speaker 9 (21:08):
And I don't know anybody named Ingles. I never heard
that name before.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
All this way, I remember it from a little house
of the Prairie Ingles.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Roger says he's never heard the name Ingles before except
from Little House on the Prairie, which was written by
Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Speaker 9 (21:26):
Now at that point, did you know who this Ingles
guy is? No? I just thought he was a crooked
or somebody there to make purchase off.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Though Brandenburg keeps rewinding Roger in his story, betting claims
asking him to explain further.
Speaker 9 (21:43):
But you sure there was another party? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (21:45):
Because I heard his voice, Because I heard like they
already must have known each other because with how.
Speaker 9 (21:50):
We're going, they shook hands.
Speaker 5 (21:52):
How do you know they should kids?
Speaker 4 (21:53):
Because by the slap and it was like the hide
five and all that. How they did their head not
a traditional handshake. Now was like, yeah, did you hear
any other noises? I heard, like Tom boor Tom David,
like they were he was the police coast.
Speaker 5 (22:09):
So you think you're in a police skin?
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Yeah, Tom four and Tom David are police call signs
for traffick units. Brandenburg says specific details like that are
ones you look for in witness testimony.
Speaker 5 (22:23):
Who're thinking this kid don't know what that shiit me?
He ain't making that up. I don't think it just
sound too believable.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
And these details match the testimony of the woman who
told Brandenburg that Deputy Angles would visit Hinkle in his
patrol car the night Roger's there. He overhears the two
men from another room, so their conversation is a bit
muffled and distant, but he still catches fragments of what
they say.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
Ingle said he took care of his loose hands and
on that, and thanks for the bag of lie that
draft from.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Tom Hinkle, Rogers's Deputy Angles thanked Hinkle for the bag
of lie.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
And I know lies used for pie composure because we
did that, Tom Horse.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
All that lie is a corrosive chemical that speeds up decomposition.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
I heard about the riverbed with the Joshua tree, and
they say that nobody's going to ever find it.
Speaker 9 (23:23):
What they did, they loo the lie and all that.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
At first, Roger thought this whole interaction was just odd.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
Ingle's asked if there's anybody else there in the house
with built.
Speaker 9 (23:36):
And he goes no.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Hinkle lies and says, no one else is there.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
But I was in the room, and that's when I
started getting paranoid to yusually Tom, but he straight up, Yeah,
I got a friend here.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
So Roger begins to think he's heard something he shouldn't have.
And then about a week later, when he's watching TV,
he sees a news story about an LA Sheriff's deputy
that's gone missing in the Devil's punch Bowl. And that's
when the real panic sets in because Roger realizes he
might witness to something he wants no pardon. He goes
(24:13):
to his mom's house to fill her in. He tells
a stepdad and a roommate, and even writes about it
in his journal, the.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Black journal that says diary on it the really looks
like a girl's diary as a gut it from my mama.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Roger tries to forget about the whole thing, but then
about a year later, he's arrested on a minor drug charge.
He gets out a few days later and finds a
message waiting for him.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
Then when I got out, I've seen a death threat
on my doorstep.
Speaker 9 (24:44):
Describe this depth threat as you call it, and said
your rat, You're going to be count like this like
a rat. And there's a dead.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
Rat on my step with the knight threat with about
four inched old kinder bubnight.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Roger says he has no idea who left the threat,
but he assumes it has something to do with what
he overheard at Tom Hankle's house, and it scares the
shit out of him.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
I took it as serious as I. I don't want
to die something that alcohol know about. Okay, that's some
fifty pieces I heard. So what did you do?
Speaker 9 (25:19):
Then? I packed my ship and I left. I took
off by the What about? Even told my mom I
hitchhiked all had paintings field.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And that's it. Roger says he's telling Brandenburg everything he remembers.
Speaker 9 (25:35):
I just want to be honest. I just want to
get the dance.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
I just want to basically go home being for my mom.
Speaker 9 (25:43):
Okay, that's going to include the interview going on.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Taking Roger picked up some damning keywords like lie, taking
care of loose sends no one will ever know, and
the angles.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Let's say it was angles. Can you think of any
legitimate reason for this interaction?
Speaker 5 (26:10):
No, not with a guy like that. I mean, that
guy's a documented dope dealer, meth cooker, and he makes bombs. No,
I can't imagine why a deputy sheriff would be at
his house unless he's there to arrest him.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Brandenburg talks to homicide Captain Frank Merriman fills him in
on his investigation, but Merriman blows him off.
Speaker 5 (26:32):
Well, that's tweet your talk. Tweet your talk. Like you
guys are crazy. They're not to do this shit, Okay,
all right, all right.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Frank Merriman says it's just a rumor cooked up by
meth users. But for Brandenburg, drug use and reliability aren't
necessarily at odds.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
When you talk to somebody, you're watching them. You're watching
their eyes, you're watching their body language, you're watching how
they move and everything. So we kind of found him.
This kid might be credible. He was scared. He was
scared to death.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Brandenburg ultimately believes Roger because his motivation for come forward
seemed legit. He was so afraid to go to jail
in La County. He was in tears.
Speaker 5 (27:16):
I can't go there, I can't go there. I say, okay,
we'll hide you in the shriff station.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Was there anybody specific that.
Speaker 5 (27:22):
He was scared of, Oh, Hinkel, he was scared of death.
Tom Hinkle and his associates.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Roger's story is no smoking gun, But then NARCO detective
Darren Hager talks to an informant with an eerily similar account.
He interviews a close associate of Tom Hinkle and says
the witness completely shuts down, puts his head down on
the table, and refuses to share what he knows about angles.
(27:51):
He tells Hager that he's scared because, quote, who are
people going to believe a cop or me if something
was to happen. I'm not going to talk about him
and end up dead. So looking at all of these
(28:29):
informant statements, you have different people saying different things, but
they're not contradictory statements, not mutually exclusive now, so there's
a world in which they fit together like puzzle pieces.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Betsy and I are sitting at her kitchen table, surrounded
by stacks of documents from the AUJKSE file. We're taking
stock of what we've learned so far and trying to
work the info into a coherent theory.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
We have the two informants who come forward say that
they were buying drugs from meth dealer Tom Hankle, who
told them that deputy was jogging in the Devil's punch
bowl stumbled on something he shouldn't have and was taken
care of, and he does the finger.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Gunge yes, And then of course we have the huge
discovery that there is in fact a meth last there
is a methlas right near the punch bowl, and it
happens to be right along the route that Auj ran.
What are the chance I mean? And a resident who
lives nearby said they heard a gunshot around sunset the
(29:33):
night Auj disappeared, which is a lot of things lining up.
A new layer of the story gets added when an
informant says he saw Auj approaching two bikers in the
punch bowl just before he disappeared.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Then an informant comes forward says that a biker named
Big Rick told her that he was in the punch
bowl making a Fedron deal when a deputy approached him,
and so he shot and killed him, which is wild
to hear, okay, basically a confession. But there was a
(30:10):
third man. The third man involved in Auja's disappearance. According
to some informants, there's a woman who's tied in with
these bikers. She says that she ever heard the biker's talking.
They said that Ajay was murdered because he stumbled on
Deputy Angles, meth lab names him. Yeah, if that was
just a one off, we could dismiss that as hearsay.
(30:32):
But multiple informants come forward say that Angles is a
dirty cop and that he's involved in meth labs with
Tom Hankle.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Mm hm. But the part that really gets me is
Roger's testimony about the conversation he overheard between Deputy Angles
and Tom Hankle. They're talking about using lie to get
rid of something so quote no one will ever find it,
and they're talking about taking care of their loose ends.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Yeah, I mean, what could they be talking about. Unless
Angles had a horse that died and the force's name
was loose Ends, what would they be using.
Speaker 9 (31:13):
That live for.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Yeah, that seems like a stretch. It's a lot of
circumstantial evidence, but the pieces can be arranged into a
solid story.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Hankel is running meth labs. He has a silent partner
in Deputy Rick Angles. According to some informants, they're working
with outlaw bikers, specifically Big Rick, who's delivering the supplies
for their meth lab.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Big Rick is.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Out there making and a pedn drop off. When Aujay
happens to be running through the area, Big Rick kills
him to prevent the meth.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Operation from being exposed. Yeah, I mean, this is not
a super complex criminal conspiracy. It don't make sense. We
ask Brandenburg and Hager about the picture that's taking shape
in our minds, and they confirm that was their working
theory of what happened. But the detectives add another wrinkle.
(32:15):
They consider a scenario in which Auj was returning to
his truck when he spotted an LASD patrol car park
nearby or maybe a uniform deputy, and headed over to
see if he needed help.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Auj went to help Rick Ingles with these bikers. Thinking
that Rick was confronting these bikers on his own, Auj
went to back him up and found out Ingles was
on the other side.
Speaker 5 (32:44):
And no shit. Now they're like, what do we do
with this cop. We can't let him go because we're
all going to prison and I'm gonna lose my job,
my career, my light leader.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
And they had no other option but to get rid
of Auj, or else the whole organization would have been
taken down.
Speaker 5 (33:10):
Sorry, John.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
This fits with an overarching rumor about Auj that he
was trying to be a hero when he was taken out.
But again, this is just a theory until they find
a way to prove it. So Hagar and Brandenburg level
up their investigation into Angles to finally figure out if
this bigfoot was real or just folklore. As part of
(33:36):
Operation Silent Thunder, Hagar and the DEA get permission to
review phone logs of various players in the meth world,
including suspects in the AUJ case. These logs don't record
what is said on the phone, but keep track of
the numbers dialed.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
As soon as the numbers dialed, it'll document the date
and time, and then it tells you the duration of
the call and the time that had ended. And they
would tell you incoming or outgoing to whichever target phone
number that you're looking at. And it showed a connection
of Angles calling people with a criminal record that we're
involved in the dove Borden vice versa.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
The logs show a web of connections in real time,
revealing who's calling who as Operation Silent Thunders being carried out.
They also reveal a more complex system of messaging that
was intended to conceal certain relationships by using a go between.
For example, Angles wouldn't phone hinkled directly. Hager says he
(34:36):
would phone a certain someone and then that person would
immediately call Hinkle. Hagar and the task force were also
able to get a hold of Angles and Hinkle's phone
records from back in nineteen ninety eight, and those logs
show that over the course of a few days after
Aujy went missing, both Hinkle and Angles page the same
(34:56):
number multiple times. Remember this is the nineties. Pagers were
how you got someone to call you back asap, So
why would a cop and a drug dealer be urgently
trying to talk to the same person in the immediate
aftermath of Auj's disappearance. The detectives don't know who this
(35:17):
pager belonged to, so they have a lot of circumstantial
evidence tying Hinkel and Angles together, but they still need
hard evidence a crime was committed.
Speaker 5 (35:27):
So I put the search warrant together to put a
tracking device on his county vehicle, his phone records, we'll
sell phone, home phone, and his financial records.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Angles isn't the only one named in Brandenburg's affidavit. Tom
Hinkle or Jack Carroll and some of their associates are
also targets. But Angles is the main suspect.
Speaker 5 (35:49):
Deputy Ingles is assigned as the little Rock resident.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Deputy Brandenburg is reading from his search warrant affidavit.
Speaker 5 (35:57):
You're affing believes at Deputy Ingles, another unidentified individual's murdered
Deputy audj to prevent him from arresting them or exposing
their criminal activity. You got to write that kind of
strong so the judge gets it. Every They may not
come out to fruition, but you're allowed to make those
kind of opinions based on what you have.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Then Brandenburg takes the affidavit to someone at the District
Attorney's office to give it a look.
Speaker 5 (36:23):
I had him review it, da friend of mine. He's
a solid warrant to me.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Now, all Brandenburg needs to make the warrant official is
a signature from a judge at a sign off from
his captain, Frank Merriman.
Speaker 5 (36:37):
Frank he went immediately went ballistic and he started yelling
at me. He took the warrant put in his jawer.
I said, well, judge signs just warrant, Frank, we have
to serve it. He goes, yeah, you're right, but you
ain't taken it to a judge deputy, I'm ordered you
not to, and he goes, If you do, you won't
work here anymore.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
About a month later, Brandenburg gets a knock on his door.
It's two detectives from LSD's homicide Bureau, and it's.
Speaker 5 (37:05):
Jo Holmes and Brian Steinwan, who I've known him for
many years, gains with him. We're all good friends. And
they said, hey, Larry, we're ordered to go out here
and get everything and got in the case. No hard feelings,
but they ordered us about it. Okay, here's the shit
take it.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
How did that make you feel?
Speaker 9 (37:22):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (37:22):
I was pissed. Yeah, I was pissed because it basically
they're telling me I'm either stupid, crazy or incompetent, and
they're taking the case from me, which makes you pretty bad.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Even now, Brianderberg doesn't understand why he was taken off
the AJ case. If it wasn't a homicide, wouldn't the
department want proof that Angles didn't do any of the
things witnesses and informants accused him of. The Only thing
Brandonburg can figure is that the department was scared of
what he might find. Because Brandenburg says that when push
(37:56):
comes to shove the top rass acts more like politicians
than law enforcement, defending the department's image at all costs.
Speaker 5 (38:06):
I do know that when these guys get promoted high up,
pass the rank of captain, even they get up their commander,
chief assistant sheriff level, it's a cutthroat world. I was
shut down, like you you you ain't, don't do nothing
on anymore. You better not. Just if you do, you'll
be in trouble. So it's like, oh, I'm done. You
know I'm done.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Then one day, while sitting at his desk, Rihnaburg over
here is a conversation between his replacement on the AJ case,
Detective Joe Holmes, and their boss, Frank Merriman, who appeared
to be giving home some sort of instruction.
Speaker 5 (38:44):
It's to say, you got to take care of me
on this, Joe, do the right thing. And he pad
him on the back and put this thing to bed.
And Joe response was like, you know, I'll do the
right thing. I just took that as Joe going me know,
and Joe Holmes, who I respected, didn't really like Joe
will do what's right. They took it from me. Joe
(39:06):
Holmes gonna go out there and if there's something funny here,
he's going to find out. He's going to pursue it.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
But soon this interpretation of their exchange would seem a
little too generous. According to Brandenburg, I.
Speaker 5 (39:20):
Would like to say that there was nothing to fare.
He's just there on Frank's part or Joe's when that
conversation took place. I really won't believe that how it
ended up the waiting up, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
When Frank Merriman is later questioned about what happened, he
admits to spiking Brandonburg search warrant, the one that would
have given the detective a green light to dive deep
on Rick Angles to finally get to the bottom of
the deputy bigfoot legend. Merriman says he made this decision
as a type of interagency courtesy, that he was deferring
(39:53):
to the FEDS to Operation Silent Thunder because he didn't
want to kick up any dust that would interfere with
their narcotics investigation. But Brandenburg doesn't buy it.
Speaker 5 (40:05):
Honestly, it baffles me to this day. A was baffled
by it. Then the DEA agents were beside themselves, what
the fuck's wrong with your Department. What was wrong these people?
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Narcotics Detective Darren Hager doesn't buy it either.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
A homicide captain saying, detective, do not find out if
this guy's guilty or innocent?
Speaker 5 (40:30):
Don't do it? Who does that?
Speaker 3 (40:33):
Why stop it? I mean, what would it hurt? The
only thing I would hurt is if he's guilty. And
if he's guilty, they sure don't want to find out
that he's guilty.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
But there's an investigation that the Homicide Bureau and Captain
Frank Merriman can't stop. Operation Silent Thunder. Detective Darren Hager
keeps pushing the case forward, and he's got the full
weight of the DEA behind him and federal wiretops.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
Everyone's heard of the code of silence. It does exist.
It's not written down everywhere, no one could ever prove it.
But this case right here just shows one hundred percent
that there is a code of science.
Speaker 10 (41:21):
That's next time on Valley of Shadows.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
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.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Shepherd our editor Is Diane.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Hodson our executive producers Are Jacob smith And Alexandra. Garreton
original music By Jake, Gorski Ray, Lynch Mike, jersich And Hayden.
Gardner sound designed By Jake, gorski fact checking By Onica.
Robbins additional production support By Sonia gerway and our show
(42:19):
art was designed By Sean carney And Betsy. Shepherd special
thanks To Nick white for show art. Photography vallely Of
shadows is a production Of Pushkin. Industries to find More pushkin,
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you listen to podcasts From type To. Fun We're hayley
(42:40):
And betsy see you next. Week subscribe To Pushkin plus
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(43:03):
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plus and thanks for your.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
Support
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
This series includes content that may not be suitable for
all listeners. Listener discretion is advised. Previously, on Valley of Shadows,
he said, look.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
If you go forward with this, Deputy x Y and
Z are going to know exactly what's going on, So
you got to protect her.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
What's the image on the back?
Speaker 4 (00:45):
Hits that peg with porns?
Speaker 5 (00:47):
She heard her a friend who she refused to name,
that Deputy Alogy was jogging near the punch Bowl when
he came across Deputy ingles meth lab and was killed.
Word on the street has been that Deputy Ingles has
been involved with drugs for a very long time. Yeah,
that's pretty pretty frightening.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
This is the perfect fire, by the way, and the
perfect beer, Thank you, ma'am. We're in the Angelus National
Forest near the Devil's Punch Bowl, and this time we're
camping out here. The stars are incredible.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Yeah, I guess that's one perk of it being so
freaking dark out here.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
We've pitched our tents at a campground in Big Rock Canyon.
It's one of the last places where John A. Jay
was spotted. A campground employee saw him jogging through the
campground between six and eight pm, the nightie disappeared. Yep, okay,
But the real reason I wanted to take you out
here is because this is also the location of another
(02:15):
noteworthy sighting.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Was Bigfoot standing no more than one hundred yards.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
From my blind.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
I began to shake all over.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
He was boss, this is going to a sasquatch expert.
This is where Bigfoot hangs out when he's migrating from
the Pacific northwest to Mexico.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
So you lured me out here. Have you set up
the tent and now we have to sleep.
Speaker 5 (02:49):
Out here the Bigfoot?
Speaker 1 (02:51):
Yeah? Oh my god. Okay. For decades, campers and hikers
have reported seeing a sasquatch creature in the forested areas
near the Devil's Punch Bowl, and one of the first
sightings in these parts happened on April twenty second, nineteen seventy.
It was a night much like this week. Three young
(03:16):
dudes are out here camping, presumably sitting around a campfire
drinking beer just like we're doing. They hear some rustling
in the bushes and they just get spooked, so they
pack up all their stuff, hop in their truck, and
big Foot jumps out of the bushes and starts chasing
after He starts chasing after the truck. His huge harry
(03:39):
arms are just like swinging around. Big Foot chases people.
Not only does he chase people, but he's twelve feet tall,
so he probably can't run pretty fast. God okay, and
then he just disappears behind the tree line and like
down on the canyon. Stay with us. We promise we're
not jumping the shark. Ear. There's a reason we're talking
(04:00):
about Bigfoot. So the three guys go straight to the
La County Sheriff's station. They file a police report. But
that's not all. My friend or printed out a picture
of the three guys who saw Bigfoot.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Okay, hold on, Brian Golder, jarb Willie Romerman and Rick Engles.
Is this though, Rick Engles?
Speaker 1 (04:30):
The reason we're wrapping about Bigfoot is because one of
the guys who says he had the brush with the
creature was Rick Engles. He would go on to become
an La County Sheriff's deputy, basically the sheriff of Pear Blossom.
And he's the guy some informants say was running the
meth lab near the punch bowl.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Wow, he's got some major seventies vibes going here this
like rolled up plaid shirt, longish hair.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
He looks like the browny Man mixed with like David Hasselhoff.
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Here he's like clutching a Bigfoot cutout that looks like
it's just cobbled together from card.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
And some primer pains.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
It's yeh.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Since nineteen seventy three, there have been dozens of stories
of a larger than life creature haunting the shadowy corners
of the Anelope Valley, adding to the legend of the
Majave Bigfoot Bigfoot I witnessed Deputy Rick Engles would become
something of a legend himself. Local residents say he was
(05:36):
an oversized presence in the punch Bowl area, an evasive
figure who skirted the law, a boogeyman with a badge.
Speaker 6 (05:43):
Rick Angles ran that desert count of pere Blossom and
they looked the other way. But then when it comes
to the killing of a cop, Yeah, no, that was
a whole different ballgame.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Chris Turk says the word around town was that Deputy
Bigfoot Angles was behind John Aujay's disappearance.
Speaker 6 (06:03):
Do I believe what I heard on the streets? Yes,
do I believe Angles is a dirty cop? Absolutely lutely.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
These rumors make their way to homicide Detective Larry Brandenburg
and Narco Detective Darren Hager during their Auja investigations. But
how much of these stories are fact and how much
or fiction? Are they just local lore or is there
evidence to back up the claims? Are you fucking kidding me?
Speaker 5 (06:38):
What the f was that?
Speaker 1 (06:40):
That's the beast we're chasing down. I'm holding your hand.
What the motherfuck is that? Oh my god, I'm never
gonna sleep. I'm Betsy Shepherd, I'm Haley Fox.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
And this is Valley of Shadows, episode five, the Legend
of Bigfoot Homicide Detective Larry Brandenburg, here's a deputy Rick
Angles was busting meth labs in the Antelope Valley to
(07:17):
take out his competition. He also hears he was involved
in the murder of John auj. Brandenburg takes it all
with a grain of salt.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
People make suit upout cops all the time. If he's
busting a lot of drug dealers are going to talk
crap about him and make up shit to make him
look bad. But we couldn't just ignore it. At least
I couldn't.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Brandenburg finds himself in a tight spot. If he investigates
Deputy Angles as a murder suspect and he's proven innocent,
he'll catch hell from his colleagues. If the allegations against
Angles are true, then the La County Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Will catch hell.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
But Brandenburg needs to ensure that Angles is on the
up and up.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
Dirty cops are really to be afraid of because they
walk around with immunity pretty much. Imagine what the few
people that may have known about this sting. They're like, hey,
if don't fucking kill Op and Berry, what are they
gonna do to me?
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So he gets to work, But I said, you know.
Speaker 5 (08:15):
Rick Ingeles deserves two things. We need to clear his
name or if he's guilty, then we need to frickin,
arrest his ass and prosecute.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Brandenburg burns through shoe leather, knocking on doors, interviewing contacts
he gets from NARCO Detective Darren Hager.
Speaker 5 (08:32):
Rick Ingle's name starts coming up more and more and more.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Then he interviews a woman busted for meth near the
punch Bowl. Turns out she's friends with Tom Hinkle aka
METHI Clause and Richard Carroll, the guy who owned the
property near the punch bowl with the underground meth lab.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
Miss said that Hinkel and Carol were good friends. In
addition to Carrol operating and meth lab honest, probably he
allowed other individuals to produce meth on the property. Miss
said Dipty Ingles would visit Hinkel while driving his black
and white Sheriffs.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Fearful Brandenburg starts to have doubts about a hanging out
with convicted felons or anyone with a reputation for criminal
behavior is specifically prohibited by LASD policy. But the thing is,
angles was no typical deputy. He was the resident deputy.
Speaker 7 (09:25):
The idea is that you have a police officer, in
this case, deputy who is a local resident. That was
one of the requirements is they have to live within
that area they're going to be patrolling.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
This is Vince Burton, retired LASD sergeant and founder of
the Outlaw Pigs biker Club. Burton says the resident deputy
was a way for the department to put boots on
the ground in the county's most remote corners.
Speaker 7 (09:55):
You're the town sheriff in the old fashioned West where
You're the guy that's the law for the area, and
you know a lot of the bad guys.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
You know a lot of the guys.
Speaker 7 (10:04):
That are criminals and are skirting the law.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
You know everybody.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
And for more than twenty years, Rick Engles worked as
this pseudo town sheriff, overseeing Pear Blossom, the town of
fifteen hundred near the Devil's Punch Bowl. Burton says the
resident deputy is like a community police officer, but there
are some crucial differences. The resident deputy is a one
man crew. They typically work out of their home, not
(10:32):
a police station, and just like Burton did with the vagos,
he says, angles developed relationships with local criminals to keep
tabs on them and get intel.
Speaker 7 (10:42):
All the deputies knew that if there was a bad
guy they were looking for in that area, go talk
to Rick.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
First.
Speaker 7 (10:49):
Chances are he probably knew him and knew his house.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
And where he lived. He just a community guy, born
and raised there.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Rick Engles lived in the Antelope Valley for most of
his life. He was a rodeo rider and as a
side hustle, he would charge money to take people out
on bear hunting trips. He also ran an equestrian business
boarding horses. So it's fair to say Ingles was an
outdoorsman and something of an entrepreneur, but his main gig
was for the La County Sheriff's Department. He earned his
(11:20):
stripes working patrol in the Antelope Valley and then in
nineteen eighty eight, Vince Burton hired Angles for the resident
deputy position.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
What about his resume impressed you?
Speaker 7 (11:32):
The fact that he lived there, the fact that he
was a good cop and active and arresting people and
doing the lard's work every day.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
The department gives Angles everything he needs to be a
self contained unit, a patrol car, a police radio, and
a work phone. He doesn't punch a clock, doesn't have
a supervisor breathing down his neck. He's not even required
to check in at the local last station, which is
about a forty minute drive from Paar Blossom. So Angles
(12:02):
is basically on his own out there, and when something
goes down, he's first on the scene.
Speaker 7 (12:08):
They would literally roll on their vest, throw on what
they call ray jackets, put on a gun belt, brabber radio,
jump in their car and go there.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
But Brandenburg notices something that doesn't square with that whole
resident deputy line. If Angles is the department's local expert
and go to a guy for all things, pair blossom,
why didn't he show up at the punch Bowl when
John A j disappeared?
Speaker 5 (12:34):
He never wants volunteered to help in this search.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Angle's name is noticeably absent from the LSD sign in
sheets that were collected over the six day search.
Speaker 5 (12:45):
Everybody else in the Animal Valley, even guys that were
off duty, went up there and volunteered, not getting paid.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Hundreds of people were scouring the park in search of
the missing deputy, but not the one sheriff's deputy who
knew the punch Bowl like it was his backyard and
it was practically Angle's backyard.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
Okay, let me get him a Barry shot of this, Matt.
Here's the punch bowl right here, and Ingles lived right here.
This is how close it was.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
The park was only four miles from his house. He
hiked in the punch Bowl, knew its trails, and knew
the criminal terrain too. So one would expect Angles to
offer assistance to help the search grid or lead a
group of volunteers through the park.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
This guy never showed up. He lives right by there.
That's strange to me.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
I asked au Jay's old boss, retired at LESD, Captain
Mike Bauer, what do he thinks of Angles not showing
up at the search.
Speaker 8 (13:48):
Angles never went to the search and never searched for
John OJ, and he knew John OJ. They knew each other.
I mean there is no doubt they knew each other,
and that has created some concern that if there was
foul play, that he could in some way have some
connection to that fault play.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
When Brandenburg cares about Angle's absence from the search, that's
when he leans in and thinks there may be something
to the Angles allegations, but he needs some corroboration, so
he calls up NARCO detective Darren Hager and asks him
to talk to Keith, the star informant who kickstarted the
operation Silent Thunder Task Force's.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
With exact words, can you ask him if there's any
dirty deputies. I'm like, yeah, if you won't, So I
called Larry Brack and I said, this is the name
he gave me, brick Ingles.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Brandenburg and Hagar schedule will follow up interview with Keith
to tap him for more info and see if Angles
has a connection to Pair Blossom's other notorious figure, Tom Hinkle.
Speaker 5 (14:58):
You said that he received the information that Ingles was
a dirty cop, and he assisted Tom with his mess
sales and his meth labs.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
And the relationship was that they had their own little
enterprise out there in Para Blossom, and it was narcotic sales,
manufacturing and illegal firearm distribution.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Hagar is stunned by what he's hearing because he knows Angles.
They'd cross paths in the Analog Valley, were friendly, had
even worked a crime scene together.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
The deputy in question I always thought was a hardcore
cowboy cop, So originally I didn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
But then when Hager scans through angles track record, a
pattern emerges. Over the course of his career, Angles busted
upwards of twenty meth labs, but there were plenty that
he didn't bust.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Certain major players were never touched by Deputy Ingles. They
were big dealers. So why were certain people constantly getting
arrested by Ingles? But this other group, nothing ever happened
to him that raised a red.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
Flag to me.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
One of the untouchables was Tom Hinkle. Hager thinks that's
pretty suspicious because Hinkel's place was a whirlwind of meth
activity and it was just two miles from Deputy Angle's house.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
It's like, are you kidding me? You can't smell this?
Why wasn't this ever taken down?
Speaker 1 (16:27):
And then Hager remembers a peculiar encounter he once witnessed
between Deputy Angles and Tom Hinkle. It was back when
Hager was still a working patrol. There'd been a bombing
in Pair Blossom that left a woman dead and her
son severely injured, and there were tire tracks leading from
the site directly to Hinkle's house. Angles and Hager were
(16:48):
both dispatched to the scene. Hager says that as they
approach Hinkle's front door, Angles tells Hager to peel off
to go to the top of the hill and cover
him while he approaches Hinkle alone.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Can I go, that's awfully odd. We got a homicide
victim laying there, a kid's leg blown off, and you're
gonna go contact a homicide suspect by yourself because you
followed the tire track straight to this guy's house. And
Ingles goes, I know this guy go up there. I'm like, okay,
you're the boss, this is your area.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Hagger didn't think too much of it at the time,
but given the rumors he's hearing about Angles, he sees
it in a new light and wonders is Angles protecting Hinkle.
He only knows a one lab that Angles busted that
was linked to Hinkle, and that was the one on
Rick Carroll's property near the punch Bowl. But Angles didn't
(17:39):
really take down the lab. The operation was organized by
the California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
The lab was empty, it was gone.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Hager suspects Angles knew about the raid in advance and
helped clear out the product beforehand.
Speaker 8 (17:58):
It's easy to police somebody you don't know, but it's
hard to police somebody that you grew up with, especially
if they're doing something wrong.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Mike Bauer thinks that corruption is all but inevitable when
a resident deputy is policing his friends and neighbors.
Speaker 8 (18:16):
Say, Resident Deputy programs creates a little chief of police
in an area, and that person has no supervision.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
And the line between law enforcement and law breakers becomes blurred,
like the photographic evidence of Bigfoot.
Speaker 8 (18:33):
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 (19:00):
A couple months into his investigation, Brandenburg is working at
his desk when the phone rings. It's from the Sheriff's
department in Cerrn County, just north of La County, and
they're calling about an inmate they have in custody. This
guy who will call Roger has told them he has
information about the missing deputy.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
And so we drive up Turn County Jail that day
to talk to him.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Roger is supposed to be sent back to La to
face some outstanding warrants, but he's terrified to cross back
over county lines.
Speaker 5 (19:33):
Bigston. I can't go to La County Jail. I can't
go there. They're gonna kill me. They know I know
this stuff.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
The witness is due to be transferred to La County Jail,
which is run by the La County Sheriff's Department, which
he's terrified of because of what he knows about auj.
Speaker 5 (19:51):
We can guarantee your safety in our jail, yes, but
aside from now, we haven't promised to nont deals don't have.
Speaker 8 (19:57):
To be there.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Roger starts telling the detectives what he knows.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
I know that Tom if with Bob with meth labs.
They catch that through our go get it from.
Speaker 9 (20:10):
All the time.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
And he tells Brandenburg what happened when he went to
buy myth from Tom Hinkle back in June of nineteen
ninety eight, around the time AUJ disappeared.
Speaker 9 (20:22):
I went to go purchase some methaphetamine for a friend.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Roger admits that he's a longtime meth user, but on
this particular occasion, he says he was just buying drugs
to resell to some friends. He was in his early
twenties at the time, and this side hustle was a
way to make some party money.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
I was just charge a little bit more so I
can have extra money for like cigarettes, video games, I read,
and go out to eat. And at the time I
was at Tom Nichol's house. Par was poll numb to
his drive and Tom.
Speaker 9 (20:56):
Hickl told me to go sit in the other room.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
When I went to the other room, I've heard how
the dawing Ingles, Tom said, and ingleses, how's the doing,
old man?
Speaker 9 (21:08):
And I don't know anybody named Ingles. I never heard
that name before.
Speaker 4 (21:12):
All this way, I remember it from a little house
of the Prairie Ingles.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Roger says he's never heard the name Ingles before except
from Little House on the Prairie, which was written by
Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Speaker 9 (21:26):
Now at that point, did you know who this Ingles
guy is? No? I just thought he was a crooked
or somebody there to make purchase off.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Though Brandenburg keeps rewinding Roger in his story, betting claims
asking him to explain further.
Speaker 9 (21:43):
But you sure there was another party? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (21:45):
Because I heard his voice, Because I heard like they
already must have known each other because with how.
Speaker 9 (21:50):
We're going, they shook hands.
Speaker 5 (21:52):
How do you know they should kids?
Speaker 4 (21:53):
Because by the slap and it was like the hide
five and all that. How they did their head not
a traditional handshake. Now was like, yeah, did you hear
any other noises? I heard, like Tom boor Tom David,
like they were he was the police coast.
Speaker 5 (22:09):
So you think you're in a police skin?
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Yeah, Tom four and Tom David are police call signs
for traffick units. Brandenburg says specific details like that are
ones you look for in witness testimony.
Speaker 5 (22:23):
Who're thinking this kid don't know what that shiit me?
He ain't making that up. I don't think it just
sound too believable.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
And these details match the testimony of the woman who
told Brandenburg that Deputy Angles would visit Hinkle in his
patrol car the night Roger's there. He overhears the two
men from another room, so their conversation is a bit
muffled and distant, but he still catches fragments of what
they say.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
Ingle said he took care of his loose hands and
on that, and thanks for the bag of lie that
draft from.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Tom Hinkle, Rogers's Deputy Angles thanked Hinkle for the bag
of lie.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
And I know lies used for pie composure because we
did that, Tom Horse.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
All that lie is a corrosive chemical that speeds up decomposition.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
I heard about the riverbed with the Joshua tree, and
they say that nobody's going to ever find it.
Speaker 9 (23:23):
What they did, they loo the lie and all that.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
At first, Roger thought this whole interaction was just odd.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
Ingle's asked if there's anybody else there in the house
with built.
Speaker 9 (23:36):
And he goes no.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Hinkle lies and says, no one else is there.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
But I was in the room, and that's when I
started getting paranoid to yusually Tom, but he straight up, Yeah,
I got a friend here.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
So Roger begins to think he's heard something he shouldn't have.
And then about a week later, when he's watching TV,
he sees a news story about an LA Sheriff's deputy
that's gone missing in the Devil's punch Bowl. And that's
when the real panic sets in because Roger realizes he
might witness to something he wants no pardon. He goes
(24:13):
to his mom's house to fill her in. He tells
a stepdad and a roommate, and even writes about it
in his journal, the.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Black journal that says diary on it the really looks
like a girl's diary as a gut it from my mama.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Roger tries to forget about the whole thing, but then
about a year later, he's arrested on a minor drug charge.
He gets out a few days later and finds a
message waiting for him.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
Then when I got out, I've seen a death threat
on my doorstep.
Speaker 9 (24:44):
Describe this depth threat as you call it, and said
your rat, You're going to be count like this like
a rat. And there's a dead.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
Rat on my step with the knight threat with about
four inched old kinder bubnight.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Roger says he has no idea who left the threat,
but he assumes it has something to do with what
he overheard at Tom Hankle's house, and it scares the
shit out of him.
Speaker 4 (25:09):
I took it as serious as I. I don't want
to die something that alcohol know about. Okay, that's some
fifty pieces I heard. So what did you do?
Speaker 9 (25:19):
Then? I packed my ship and I left. I took
off by the What about? Even told my mom I
hitchhiked all had paintings field.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And that's it. Roger says he's telling Brandenburg everything he remembers.
Speaker 9 (25:35):
I just want to be honest. I just want to
get the dance.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
I just want to basically go home being for my mom.
Speaker 9 (25:43):
Okay, that's going to include the interview going on.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Taking Roger picked up some damning keywords like lie, taking
care of loose sends no one will ever know, and
the angles.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Let's say it was angles. Can you think of any
legitimate reason for this interaction?
Speaker 5 (26:10):
No, not with a guy like that. I mean, that
guy's a documented dope dealer, meth cooker, and he makes bombs. No,
I can't imagine why a deputy sheriff would be at
his house unless he's there to arrest him.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Brandenburg talks to homicide Captain Frank Merriman fills him in
on his investigation, but Merriman blows him off.
Speaker 5 (26:32):
Well, that's tweet your talk. Tweet your talk. Like you
guys are crazy. They're not to do this shit, Okay,
all right, all right.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Frank Merriman says it's just a rumor cooked up by
meth users. But for Brandenburg, drug use and reliability aren't
necessarily at odds.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
When you talk to somebody, you're watching them. You're watching
their eyes, you're watching their body language, you're watching how
they move and everything. So we kind of found him.
This kid might be credible. He was scared. He was
scared to death.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Brandenburg ultimately believes Roger because his motivation for come forward
seemed legit. He was so afraid to go to jail
in La County. He was in tears.
Speaker 5 (27:16):
I can't go there, I can't go there. I say, okay,
we'll hide you in the shriff station.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Was there anybody specific that.
Speaker 5 (27:22):
He was scared of, Oh, Hinkel, he was scared of death.
Tom Hinkle and his associates.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Roger's story is no smoking gun, But then NARCO detective
Darren Hager talks to an informant with an eerily similar account.
He interviews a close associate of Tom Hinkle and says
the witness completely shuts down, puts his head down on
the table, and refuses to share what he knows about angles.
(27:51):
He tells Hager that he's scared because, quote, who are
people going to believe a cop or me if something
was to happen. I'm not going to talk about him
and end up dead. So looking at all of these
(28:29):
informant statements, you have different people saying different things, but
they're not contradictory statements, not mutually exclusive now, so there's
a world in which they fit together like puzzle pieces.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Betsy and I are sitting at her kitchen table, surrounded
by stacks of documents from the AUJKSE file. We're taking
stock of what we've learned so far and trying to
work the info into a coherent theory.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
We have the two informants who come forward say that
they were buying drugs from meth dealer Tom Hankle, who
told them that deputy was jogging in the Devil's punch
bowl stumbled on something he shouldn't have and was taken
care of, and he does the finger.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Gunge yes, And then of course we have the huge
discovery that there is in fact a meth last there
is a methlas right near the punch bowl, and it
happens to be right along the route that Auj ran.
What are the chance I mean? And a resident who
lives nearby said they heard a gunshot around sunset the
(29:33):
night Auj disappeared, which is a lot of things lining up.
A new layer of the story gets added when an
informant says he saw Auj approaching two bikers in the
punch bowl just before he disappeared.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Then an informant comes forward says that a biker named
Big Rick told her that he was in the punch
bowl making a Fedron deal when a deputy approached him,
and so he shot and killed him, which is wild
to hear, okay, basically a confession. But there was a
(30:10):
third man. The third man involved in Auja's disappearance. According
to some informants, there's a woman who's tied in with
these bikers. She says that she ever heard the biker's talking.
They said that Ajay was murdered because he stumbled on
Deputy Angles, meth lab names him. Yeah, if that was
just a one off, we could dismiss that as hearsay.
(30:32):
But multiple informants come forward say that Angles is a
dirty cop and that he's involved in meth labs with
Tom Hankle.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Mm hm. But the part that really gets me is
Roger's testimony about the conversation he overheard between Deputy Angles
and Tom Hankle. They're talking about using lie to get
rid of something so quote no one will ever find it,
and they're talking about taking care of their loose ends.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Yeah, I mean, what could they be talking about. Unless
Angles had a horse that died and the force's name
was loose Ends, what would they be using.
Speaker 9 (31:13):
That live for.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Yeah, that seems like a stretch. It's a lot of
circumstantial evidence, but the pieces can be arranged into a
solid story.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Hankel is running meth labs. He has a silent partner
in Deputy Rick Angles. According to some informants, they're working
with outlaw bikers, specifically Big Rick, who's delivering the supplies
for their meth lab.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Big Rick is.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Out there making and a pedn drop off. When Aujay
happens to be running through the area, Big Rick kills
him to prevent the meth.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Operation from being exposed. Yeah, I mean, this is not
a super complex criminal conspiracy. It don't make sense. We
ask Brandenburg and Hager about the picture that's taking shape
in our minds, and they confirm that was their working
theory of what happened. But the detectives add another wrinkle.
(32:15):
They consider a scenario in which Auj was returning to
his truck when he spotted an LASD patrol car park
nearby or maybe a uniform deputy, and headed over to
see if he needed help.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Auj went to help Rick Ingles with these bikers. Thinking
that Rick was confronting these bikers on his own, Auj
went to back him up and found out Ingles was
on the other side.
Speaker 5 (32:44):
And no shit. Now they're like, what do we do
with this cop. We can't let him go because we're
all going to prison and I'm gonna lose my job,
my career, my light leader.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
And they had no other option but to get rid
of Auj, or else the whole organization would have been
taken down.
Speaker 5 (33:10):
Sorry, John.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
This fits with an overarching rumor about Auj that he
was trying to be a hero when he was taken out.
But again, this is just a theory until they find
a way to prove it. So Hagar and Brandenburg level
up their investigation into Angles to finally figure out if
this bigfoot was real or just folklore. As part of
(33:36):
Operation Silent Thunder, Hagar and the DEA get permission to
review phone logs of various players in the meth world,
including suspects in the AUJ case. These logs don't record
what is said on the phone, but keep track of
the numbers dialed.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
As soon as the numbers dialed, it'll document the date
and time, and then it tells you the duration of
the call and the time that had ended. And they
would tell you incoming or outgoing to whichever target phone
number that you're looking at. And it showed a connection
of Angles calling people with a criminal record that we're
involved in the dove Borden vice versa.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
The logs show a web of connections in real time,
revealing who's calling who as Operation Silent Thunders being carried out.
They also reveal a more complex system of messaging that
was intended to conceal certain relationships by using a go between.
For example, Angles wouldn't phone hinkled directly. Hager says he
(34:36):
would phone a certain someone and then that person would
immediately call Hinkle. Hagar and the task force were also
able to get a hold of Angles and Hinkle's phone
records from back in nineteen ninety eight, and those logs
show that over the course of a few days after
Aujy went missing, both Hinkle and Angles page the same
(34:56):
number multiple times. Remember this is the nineties. Pagers were
how you got someone to call you back asap, So
why would a cop and a drug dealer be urgently
trying to talk to the same person in the immediate
aftermath of Auj's disappearance. The detectives don't know who this
(35:17):
pager belonged to, so they have a lot of circumstantial
evidence tying Hinkel and Angles together, but they still need
hard evidence a crime was committed.
Speaker 5 (35:27):
So I put the search warrant together to put a
tracking device on his county vehicle, his phone records, we'll
sell phone, home phone, and his financial records.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Angles isn't the only one named in Brandenburg's affidavit. Tom
Hinkle or Jack Carroll and some of their associates are
also targets. But Angles is the main suspect.
Speaker 5 (35:49):
Deputy Ingles is assigned as the little Rock resident.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Deputy Brandenburg is reading from his search warrant affidavit.
Speaker 5 (35:57):
You're affing believes at Deputy Ingles, another unidentified individual's murdered
Deputy audj to prevent him from arresting them or exposing
their criminal activity. You got to write that kind of
strong so the judge gets it. Every They may not
come out to fruition, but you're allowed to make those
kind of opinions based on what you have.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Then Brandenburg takes the affidavit to someone at the District
Attorney's office to give it a look.
Speaker 5 (36:23):
I had him review it, da friend of mine. He's
a solid warrant to me.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Now, all Brandenburg needs to make the warrant official is
a signature from a judge at a sign off from
his captain, Frank Merriman.
Speaker 5 (36:37):
Frank he went immediately went ballistic and he started yelling
at me. He took the warrant put in his jawer.
I said, well, judge signs just warrant, Frank, we have
to serve it. He goes, yeah, you're right, but you
ain't taken it to a judge deputy, I'm ordered you
not to, and he goes, If you do, you won't
work here anymore.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
About a month later, Brandenburg gets a knock on his door.
It's two detectives from LSD's homicide Bureau, and it's.
Speaker 5 (37:05):
Jo Holmes and Brian Steinwan, who I've known him for
many years, gains with him. We're all good friends. And
they said, hey, Larry, we're ordered to go out here
and get everything and got in the case. No hard feelings,
but they ordered us about it. Okay, here's the shit
take it.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
How did that make you feel?
Speaker 9 (37:22):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (37:22):
I was pissed. Yeah, I was pissed because it basically
they're telling me I'm either stupid, crazy or incompetent, and
they're taking the case from me, which makes you pretty bad.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Even now, Brianderberg doesn't understand why he was taken off
the AJ case. If it wasn't a homicide, wouldn't the
department want proof that Angles didn't do any of the
things witnesses and informants accused him of. The Only thing
Brandonburg can figure is that the department was scared of
what he might find. Because Brandenburg says that when push
(37:56):
comes to shove the top rass acts more like politicians
than law enforcement, defending the department's image at all costs.
Speaker 5 (38:06):
I do know that when these guys get promoted high up,
pass the rank of captain, even they get up their commander,
chief assistant sheriff level, it's a cutthroat world. I was
shut down, like you you you ain't, don't do nothing
on anymore. You better not. Just if you do, you'll
be in trouble. So it's like, oh, I'm done. You
know I'm done.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Then one day, while sitting at his desk, Rihnaburg over
here is a conversation between his replacement on the AJ case,
Detective Joe Holmes, and their boss, Frank Merriman, who appeared
to be giving home some sort of instruction.
Speaker 5 (38:44):
It's to say, you got to take care of me
on this, Joe, do the right thing. And he pad
him on the back and put this thing to bed.
And Joe response was like, you know, I'll do the
right thing. I just took that as Joe going me know,
and Joe Holmes, who I respected, didn't really like Joe
will do what's right. They took it from me. Joe
(39:06):
Holmes gonna go out there and if there's something funny here,
he's going to find out. He's going to pursue it.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
But soon this interpretation of their exchange would seem a
little too generous. According to Brandenburg, I.
Speaker 5 (39:20):
Would like to say that there was nothing to fare.
He's just there on Frank's part or Joe's when that
conversation took place. I really won't believe that how it
ended up the waiting up, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
When Frank Merriman is later questioned about what happened, he
admits to spiking Brandonburg search warrant, the one that would
have given the detective a green light to dive deep
on Rick Angles to finally get to the bottom of
the deputy bigfoot legend. Merriman says he made this decision
as a type of interagency courtesy, that he was deferring
(39:53):
to the FEDS to Operation Silent Thunder because he didn't
want to kick up any dust that would interfere with
their narcotics investigation. But Brandenburg doesn't buy it.
Speaker 5 (40:05):
Honestly, it baffles me to this day. A was baffled
by it. Then the DEA agents were beside themselves, what
the fuck's wrong with your Department. What was wrong these people?
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Narcotics Detective Darren Hager doesn't buy it either.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
A homicide captain saying, detective, do not find out if
this guy's guilty or innocent?
Speaker 5 (40:30):
Don't do it? Who does that?
Speaker 3 (40:33):
Why stop it? I mean, what would it hurt? The
only thing I would hurt is if he's guilty. And
if he's guilty, they sure don't want to find out
that he's guilty.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
But there's an investigation that the Homicide Bureau and Captain
Frank Merriman can't stop. Operation Silent Thunder. Detective Darren Hager
keeps pushing the case forward, and he's got the full
weight of the DEA behind him and federal wiretops.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
Everyone's heard of the code of silence. It does exist.
It's not written down everywhere, no one could ever prove it.
But this case right here just shows one hundred percent
that there is a code of science.
Speaker 10 (41:21):
That's next time on Valley of Shadows.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
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.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
Shepherd our editor Is Diane.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Hodson our executive producers Are Jacob smith And Alexandra. Garreton
original music By Jake, Gorski Ray, Lynch Mike, jersich And Hayden.
Gardner sound designed By Jake, gorski fact checking By Onica.
Robbins additional production support By Sonia gerway and our show
(42:19):
art was designed By Sean carney And Betsy. Shepherd special
thanks To Nick white for show art. Photography vallely Of
shadows is a production Of Pushkin. Industries to find More pushkin,
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you listen to podcasts From type To. Fun We're hayley
(42:40):
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