January 12, 2026 • 46 mins
We're sharing an episode from Valley of Shadows, a new Pushkin true crime podcast that digs into a nearly 30-year old secret buried in the California desert. On June 11, 1998, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy Jon Aujay went for a run in California’s Devil’s Punchbowl park...and never came back. Nearly 30 years later, the mystery surrounding his disappearance has only deepened. Some say Aujay is just another missing hiker, claimed by the inhospitable landscape of the Southern California desert. Some say he took his own life out there. But there’s another theory that many of Aujay’s friends and LASD colleagues are convinced is true—that he was the victim of foul play, and that his own department is covering it up. Through exclusive interviews, revealing wiretaps, and buried police files, investigative reporters Hayley Fox and Betsy Shepherd uncover vestiges of the Wild West in a small California town, where outlaw biker gangs crank out methamphetamine and local cops operate on both sides of the law.
Find Valley of Shadows wherever you get podcasts. Binge the entire season of Valley of Shadows, ad-free, by subscribing to Pushkin+. Sign up on the Valley of Shadows show page on (00:01:05) Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin.fm/plus.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Push can.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hey listeners, Betsy Shepherd here, I'm dropping into your feed
to bring you a preview of my new podcast, Valley
of Shadows. It's about an LA County Sheriff's deputy named
John Aujay, who went missing in the Majave Desert back
in nineteen ninety eight. Nearly thirty years later. The Sheriff's
department says that Auja's disappearance is still a mystery. The
(00:41):
whistleblowers say the sheriff's department is covering up what happened
to the deputy, that he was murdered in the desert,
which is a place where meth labs, outlaw biker gangs,
and dirty cops go unchecked. The show's got it all,
and I think you're gonna dig it. Find a Valley
of Shadows wherever you get your podcasts. Pushkin Plus subscribers
(01:03):
can binge the entire season right now ad free. Sign
up on the Valley of Shadows show page on Apple
Podcasts or at pushkin dot Fm, slash Plus.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
This series includes content that may not be suitable for
all listeners. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
So it's okay, yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
I'll turn it down just a little bit because sometimes
you get animated.
Speaker 5 (01:30):
I get pissed off, pissed off old cop.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
This pissed off old cop is Mike Bauer.
Speaker 6 (01:36):
Okay, my name is Mike Bauer, retired Captain LA Sheriff.
I retired in two thousand and two. My last assignment
was Major Crimes Bureau, Detective Division, LA Sheriff.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Bower spent thirty three years climbing the ranks of the
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. And he looks the part
of a retired captain. His white hair and mustache are
neatly groomed, and his eyes are permanently fixed and a
look that says, do not fuck up on my watch.
And he's pissed off because of something that happened to
one of his guys on his squad back.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
In the summer of nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
June eleventh started off like a normal day in Los Angeles,
June gloom and bad traffic.
Speaker 6 (02:19):
I got up early out of Long Beach and headed
up the six ZHO five and into East LA.
Speaker 5 (02:24):
Our office in East LA.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Bauer was doing paperwork when a call came into the
front desk. The receptionist answered.
Speaker 6 (02:32):
Then she hung up and she comes down to get
a cup of coffee across the hall and I said, hey,
who was that. It was John Aujay.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
John Aj was a thirty eight year old canine cop
and he was calling to inquire about an upcoming job assignment.
Speaker 6 (02:49):
I said, well, I've been trying to get hold of him,
and she says, oh, well, maybe he'll call back.
Speaker 7 (02:56):
He never called back.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
John Aj was working for the unit Bower headed up
at the time, the Special Enforcement Bureau or SEB for short.
Speaker 6 (03:08):
Which consists of seven or eight SWAT teams, and the
SWAT teams were involved in tactical responses to high risk
situations in the field.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
SEB handled things like active shooter situations, hostage negotiations, search
and rescue. It was a job that attracted adrenaline junkies
like Auj. He was an Army paratrooper and a survivalist,
and those military skills, along with his buzz cut and
square build, made him a shoe in for the Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 6 (03:41):
He was in the Army in Special Forces. He was
working at the elite unit of the department. I have
to call him a loaner, but he was an elite loaner.
Because the guy was doing fifty mile runs. He was
an animal.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Auj got his kicks by going on long runs through
California's backcountry. He go out deep into the wilderness to
conquer the only obstacle course that still challenged him. And
that's how Auja was spending his day off. On June eleventh,
nineteen ninety eight, he woke up, put on his running
gear and drove to one of his favorite parks, the
(04:21):
Devil's Punch Bowl. It's a rugged canyon where the Angelus
National Forest, the San Gabriel Mountains, and the Mojave Desert
all converge. Auj entered the park just before noon, used
a payphone to call into the sheriff's department, and then
he took off running. He never listened to any music,
(04:45):
just the sounds of nature as he jogged along a
maze of switchbacks and up a nearly ten thousand foot mountain.
By early evening, he looped back towards the parking lot,
but as the sun began to set, the shadows of
trees and rocks grew until night engulfed the park.
Speaker 6 (05:11):
That evening, I got a phone call saying that w
Oj is missing, that he didn't come back to his
vehicle and that they were going to start some more
extensive searching for him.
Speaker 8 (05:26):
It's an all out manhunt for John Auj. Every search
and rescue team in La County has been called in
to help the thirty eight year old when hiking Thursday
in a rugged section of the Angels National Forest known
as Devil Punch Bowls Park. It's a beautiful but dangerous area,
an area where it may be extremely difficult to find
all Jay.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
It's a pretty unique situation.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
The Sheriff's department is called in to look for a
missing hiker who's one of their own. So the search
and rescue team sent out to look for Auj consists
of his friends and colleagues.
Speaker 9 (05:59):
We took our teams out and deployed in two man
teams over the edges of the trails, into the little
nooks and crannies and the gullies that he could have
slipped and fallen into.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
But searchers find no trace of Ajay. It was as
if he just vanished into thin air. And now, nearly
thirty years later, the deputy is still missing.
Speaker 6 (06:26):
I guess I'll open a box.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
All that remains from Auj's life is packed into five
cardboard boxes. The items are wrapped in plastic and Bower
wears gloves as he combs through them.
Speaker 10 (06:41):
This is John's work jacket, and it's an SEB jacket
with his name embroidered on it, and Boss Goo his dog.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Now Bower's preserving Auja's belongings for future developments in the case.
Speaker 10 (06:55):
Okay, so here's his running shoes with his name on
the back.
Speaker 6 (06:59):
Those should have some.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
DNA in him.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
The artifacts also tell us who Auja was. There's a
photocollage full of happy memories him and his high school
sweetheart Dub on their wedding day, a birthday party for
their daughter Chloe, who was just five when he disappeared,
and puppy picks of Bosco Auj's department issued canine. And
(07:22):
next to these snapshots of domestic life, there's a steel
ballistics helmet intended to stop rifle rounds, trophies for marksmanship,
army fatigues, you know, tough guy stuff. Auj moved at
a fast clip, trying to balance the competing demands of
home and work, but his life came to an abrupt
(07:44):
and puzzling end.
Speaker 6 (07:46):
A death certificate says cause, a death, unknown manner, a
death unknown no body.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
The deputy's body has never been found, which raises a
lot of questions for Mike Bauer and a survivalist getting
lost in the woods another big question mark. Over time,
the miss of it all has turned into something else,
deep and unsettling, suspicion about the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 6 (08:18):
The only law enforcement agency in this country that I
know of, and I've looked around, who has a missing
deputy sheriff and doesn't seem to care? What the hell happened?
What's the answer? Who's motivated to find the answer?
Speaker 1 (08:34):
And that's my cue.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
When Mike Bouer first told me about au Jay, I
thought an unsolved disappearance involving a cop, that's unusual. But
when he started talking about the Sheriff's Department, his department,
that's when I locked in. Because you'd expect the LA
County Sheriff's Department to turn over every stone to find
their guy. So the claim that the LASD may have
(08:57):
an interest in not solving the case, now that's a story.
So I called up my friend Hailey Fox like me,
she's an investigative journalist, and she knows a lot about
the sheriff's department because she's reported on it for many years.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Hey, Betsy, Hey do.
Speaker 11 (09:17):
I'm good?
Speaker 3 (09:18):
I'm ready.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, I go to do this.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
It's about time. I'm a little road t adventure all right,
let's do it.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
We've teamed up on stories before and decided to get
the band back together to finanswers about this missing deputy
and to take on the largest sheriff's department in the country.
Speaker 12 (09:38):
There's a code of silence in law enforcement. You break
that code of silence, you're done.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Hey, if don't fucking kill a Copponberry, what they gonna
do to me?
Speaker 6 (09:46):
It's an obstruction of justice of a very large scale.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
I'm Betsy Shepherd.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
I'm Haley Fowx, And this is Valley of Shadows, a
show about crime and corruption in California's high Desert. Episode one,
the Devil's Punch Bowl. Betsy and I are making the
(10:19):
trek from downtown Los Angeles to the Anaelote Valley that's
the desert area north of la where Deputy Auja disappeared.
The drives about sixty miles, but takes an hour and
a half to two hours because of the mountainous terrain.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
See you actually have to take We gotta go.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
North, Yeah, we're gonna go north, but this is La Dude.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
We gotta go south.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
One in south five north fourteen and then I think
there's a one thirty eighth throat in there, but nothing's
a street.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Shod spoken like a true Agelino.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
I was born and raised in La County, Go Dodgers,
but this part of it feels worlds away. The Antelope Valley,
or the AV as it's sometimes called, is a three
thousand square mile stretch of the Mojave, but this part
of the high desert doesn't have the same allure and
vibingess as places like Joshua Tree. Instead, the Avy is
(11:15):
mostly empty space, dotted with defence plants, bedroom communities, and
tumbleweed towns.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
So a lot of just like.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Trailers kind of just parked out in the desert.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Yeah, I mean power lines and scrub rush. Our story
takes place in and around Pair Blossom, California. It has
a population of fifteen hundred and it's where the Devil's
Punch bowls located. Driving through it, Betsy gets a case
of deja vu.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
He g had anxiety coming to places like this because
it reminds me of like.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
A town that it grew up and there's just just
like I feel the oppressive weight of boredom.
Speaker 11 (11:57):
Oh really.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
I moved to La several years ago from South Louisiana.
Had never been to Anela Valley before, but it was
immediately familiar to me. Because if you were to replace
desert with swamp, this region would look a lot like
the small town I'm from. It's rural and kind of
run down. There's more landscape than real estate, lots of
pickup trucks in town.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Life seems like a thing of the past.
Speaker 5 (12:24):
We got.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
An abandoned motel, what's this, Oh like an abandoned old
restaurant and wreck hall and people getting gas to presumably
be all their way.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Yeah, I mean, I think the three gas stations in
a row tell the story.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
But the closer we get to the Devil's punch Bowl,
where auj was last spotted, and other worldly landscape appears,
full of spiky Joshua trees and sandstone columns.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
It's actually really beautiful out here.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
It's not expected to land.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Are you looking at these huge rocks jutting out of
the ground and like they're making all those crazy shadows.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Seen anything like them?
Speaker 3 (13:12):
I haven't either.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
I feel like I've been an old Western movie, you know,
like we're just got this like wide ethic landscape shots.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Total endless horizons, totally endless horizons.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
I can see why John A j. Liked to come
out here. It's pretty pretty, not big.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Okay, we are pulling into the Devil's punch Bowl County
Park parking lot.
Speaker 13 (13:40):
Here we are.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
We've come here to retrace John Aujay's last known steps
and to meet with ranger Jack Farley. He was working
on the punch Bowl the day the deputy disappeared.
Speaker 5 (13:58):
Hi are you?
Speaker 1 (14:00):
But are you Jack Farley?
Speaker 6 (14:01):
By chance?
Speaker 1 (14:05):
This is my reporting partner, Haley.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Thank you for meeting us out here. Yes, Jock Farley's
retired now, but for thirty five years he was assigned
to work the punch Bowl.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
What a cool job.
Speaker 7 (14:19):
Great for me?
Speaker 11 (14:20):
Yeah, it was awesome, good job.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
It was Farley's job to keep an eye on things,
to tend the grounds and patrol the area. So he
noticed when AJ became a regular at the punch Bowl
and he clocked Auj's regular parking space, the one closest
to the trailhead.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
So I can.
Speaker 11 (14:38):
Remember seeing him sitting in the back of his truck
when you get done with a run in the mountains.
So when I'd walk out into the parking lot, I'd
see him sitting out there and ask him about his run.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Farley remembers that the day Auj disappeared, his white Ford
F one to fifty truck was parked in that very
same spot, surrounded on all sides by wilderness.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
One thing that impresses us so much about this area
is that you have a desert landscape on one side,
you have a mountain, it's in forests on the other,
and then in between it's these really cool rock formations.
Speaker 11 (15:15):
Right, it's all uplifted from earthquake activity. Oh wow, that's
a punch bowl fault and that runs parallel with the mountains.
And then when you came up to hear you cross
the San Andreas Fault, which of course the big one
that runs through California, several faults in the area. It
took all this sand that was laid down flat by
(15:36):
streams and tilted up into vertical relief.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
And it creates a bowl shape.
Speaker 11 (15:42):
You can see a definite bowl shape coming around like
this so that's where it got the punch bowl name.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
We're not totally sure about the devil part of it, though,
according to local lore, early homesteaders saw grinning devil in
the rock formations. We didn't see Satan in the rock face,
but we did see something else thanks to a county
park employee named Dave Numar.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
See the shadow ends.
Speaker 6 (16:10):
There's that big rock kind of all by itself.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
If you look, it's like a forehead is facing us
and there's a nose pointing street.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
It looks like George Washington.
Speaker 14 (16:18):
Yeah, it's a natural not rest more cool.
Speaker 5 (16:22):
So there's all kinds of faces out here because it's like,
oh if our brains are programmed to see patterns.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
Pattern recognition is why we see gods and goddesses in
the stars and the man in the moon. It's also
a key part of criminal investigations, a way to turn
information into a story. And that's why we've come to
the Devil's Punch Bowl to see if we can make
sense of what happened on June eleventh, nineteen ninety eight.
(16:50):
So we pull out a map we printed from the internet.
Because we're prepared journalists and elder millennials and we present
it to Ranger Farland, let me show you what.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
It looks like.
Speaker 11 (17:02):
Yeah, line will definitely.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Be definitely get us lost in the wilderness. Farley proves
his outdoor prowess by whipping out some real maps of
the area to help orient us to our surroundings.
Speaker 13 (17:17):
Okay, here's the Devil's Okay, and there's Burkhart Trail right there,
goes over toward Devil's Chairs, so that'd be just to
the east, goes to South Fork.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
One witness reported seeing Auj near the picnic tables at
the main trailhead sometime before noon. This witness was a
local teacher there on a field trip with a bunch
of elementary school kids. Auj stopped to talk to him.
He pointed to a jagon mountain in the distance, Mount
Baden Powell, and said that's where he was headed.
Speaker 11 (17:53):
So the high mountain behind the telephone pole over there, Yeah,
that's Baden Powell and that's where he would go sometimes.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
How tall is the mountain?
Speaker 11 (18:01):
Jeez, that is one of the higher ones. Let me
think ten ten, I mean in this range.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
And he would run from here to that mountain all
the way over there and then.
Speaker 11 (18:11):
Run up it. Yeah, he'd run over there and then
they're switchbacks all the way to the top of that mountain.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Aujy was spotted again later in the day, when multiple
witnesses say they saw him jogging through a campground just
north of the mountain in the direction of the punch
Bowl parking lot. But when Farley left his post at
five PM, Auj's truck was still parked in the lot,
and it stayed parked there as the evening bloomed over
(18:39):
the desert, and then close to midnight, Aujy's wife called
the sheriff's station to report him missing.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
As June eleventh, nineteen ninety eight years It's end, Debbie
auj becomes increasingly panicked because her husband, Deputy John A.
J told her he'd be home around dark and by
now he's several hours late. So she dials up one
of the share of stations where Auja worked.
Speaker 15 (19:32):
The call comes into the desk and it's from Debbie
and it says, hey, my husband, who's a deputy, he
went for a run and he didn't come home.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Vince Burton was a sergeant in the Antelope Valley. He
was also Aujay's colleague and friend, so he gets on
the phone with Debbie.
Speaker 15 (19:51):
She was just upset.
Speaker 7 (19:53):
She was crying. She was obviously very concerned.
Speaker 15 (19:58):
I just I said, okay, Debbie, we're sending people up there,
you know, keep you posted.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Patrol deputies high tail it to the punch bowl where
they find Aujay's truck.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
But no, they think maybe.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
He got injured, slipped and fell for how to run
in with some wildlife. So Burton dispatches Search and Rescue
to the site and he calls in their coordinator, Dave Soer,
to discuss Auj's likely route.
Speaker 15 (20:24):
And Dave comes in and we pull up a map
of the area. And I told him at that time,
I said, you know, John's a runner, and he goes, yeah,
and I said, no, he's a long distance runner. He's
an ultra marathoner. He's like what.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Ultra marathoners are running extremists who power through long distances.
In fact, Auj was scheduled to compete in a one
hundred mile run the week after he went missing, so
responders have a hard time wrapping their heads around the
scale of the search.
Speaker 7 (20:59):
I gave him the best information I could give him.
You know, don't start your grid pattern so small.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
This is Randy Meggerdley. He was a patrol deputy for
the Share Department and one of Auj's running buddies. He
reiterates to the command post that Auj was a beast.
Speaker 7 (21:17):
You're running goat trails is basically what I categorized them as.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
What do you mean by that goat trails?
Speaker 7 (21:22):
Well, they're just megshift trails. Sometimes they'll be covered with snow,
sometimes they'll be covered with mud, crossing rivers. I mean,
it's crazy what kind of stuff that we were doing.
There was one that we did. It was hand over
foot trying to get up this mountain.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
And so part of the activity was figuring out how
to get to.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
The end of it.
Speaker 7 (21:49):
Yeah, and one piece.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Hearing Meggerdy talk about ultra marathoners, it sounds like they
have no off switch. So maybe Auj just overdid it.
Speaker 7 (22:02):
Your brain does some wonky stuff when you're dehydrated, and
they thought maybe he got on a trail and he
was doing the forest gump, just kept running.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
That's a theory that Auj was doing the forest gump
and just kept running and got himself into a tailspin
of dehydration. Responders take note and fan out across the
search grid.
Speaker 11 (22:26):
I was nice to him. I said, do you know
I know the area pretty well?
Speaker 1 (22:29):
If you guys want help, Ranger Jack Farley again, the.
Speaker 11 (22:32):
Guy goes, no, we're search and rescue. We pretty much
know what we're doing, you know. So I go okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
But it doesn't take long for the pros realize they're
in over their heads.
Speaker 11 (22:45):
So then they're going, hey, are you the guy that
knows the area? You know, maybe you could give us
a little help.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
So Farley leads a few groups of deputies and bloodhounds
down the local trails.
Speaker 11 (22:56):
At one time thought they caught a scent and it
went up on the trail going toward the Burckhart Trail,
And we had talked about someone saying they heard a gunshot.
You can't see the house from here, but it's like
a half mile below the trail up there where the
people lived that said.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
They heard that the dogs pick up a scent, possibly Aujay's,
on a trail that's near a local resident. That guy
reported to searchers that he heard a single gunshot at
sunset the day Auja vanished. It's a detail the Sheriff's
Department registers as a potential clue.
Speaker 11 (23:31):
So I took a group of deputies over there and
we went that really rugged, wooded canyon.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
They didn't find anything, but searchers do spot some footprints
on the mountain where Auj told people he was going.
So Aujay's captain, Mike Bauer, takes to the skies to
see where they lead.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
And that was the first time I ever stepped out
of a huge helicopter on the side of a mountain
with one skid touching, And then that helicopter flew off
while we examined the openings the Big Horn Mine to
see whether or not it had been broken into.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Corn is a mine on top of the mountain leftover
from the gold rush days. Its entrance has been welded
shut to keep out hikers, and when the helicopter lands,
nineties action movie style Bowers crew finds no signs of
a break in. Auj's reported missing late Thursday night.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
By the end of the.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Day Sunday, the Sheriff's department kicks things into high gear.
They call in the US Army and Air Force along
with the LASD heavy hitters. It's a specialized squad called
Emergency Services Detail or ESD.
Speaker 5 (24:45):
They do search and rescue, underwater search and recovery, and
they support the special weapons team with medical skills.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Dave Rathbin was one of the ESD members sent out
to search for Auj.
Speaker 5 (24:59):
And the adrenaline that you get from ESD is different
from any other adrenaline.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
ESD deputies are equipped to handle all types of a
emergency scenarios. But it wasn't just the rocky ledges and
wild animals they.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Had to worry about here.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
The area was full of all kinds of criminal activity.
Speaker 5 (25:21):
One of the things they told our search teams on
day one was John may have stumbled into a meth
lab by accident. So that was told to us when
we were out searching. And the reason they told us
is they recommend that we take weapons.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Rathman and his team of searchers come to the punch
Bowl armed and ready for action because maybe Auj isn't
lost or injured or running for the hills. Maybe he's
the victim of foul play. The command post doesn't expand
on why they thought Aj may have been taken out
by meth related violence, but to Rathbun, this theory doesn't
(26:03):
sound too far fetched because the Anelo Valley is isolated
outlawsh and on account of its size, difficult to police.
Speaker 5 (26:13):
There are a lot of people who just don't want
to be around other human beings out there, which makes
them sometimes dangerous. There's people cooking meth.
Speaker 14 (26:25):
Ah.
Speaker 5 (26:26):
It was a little bit like the Old West in
a way. I mean, this is a very unusual, strange place.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
And remember that abandoned mind searcher scoped out. Well, it
turns out they're everywhere and they are a prime location
for body dumping.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
One of the things ESD did was recover dead bodies
from minds.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
And it wasn't just the mines. Corpses turn up all
over these parts.
Speaker 5 (26:56):
You know, if all the dead bodies that were up
there from being deliberately disposed of, stood up and once
they'd be shoulder to shoulder.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
It's a chilling image of the area's darker side. AJ
would jog from the Devil's Punch Bowl into the Angelus
National Forest, which has been called the most dangerous national
forest in America. Around the time of Auj's disappearance, it's
estimated that two to three dozen corpses turned up in
the forest every year, and those were just the ones
(27:25):
that were found. So Rathman understands the danger he faces,
but pushes on. In search of footprints, you have to.
Speaker 5 (27:34):
Look at the ground and look at bushes that have
been pushed in. We walked and walked, and walked and walked,
and walked and walked.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
The search is taxing for Rathban physically and emotionally, because
he and Auj were friends and back in the early
nineties they were even partners.
Speaker 5 (27:52):
If it was me that needed cover, he'd be there.
Didn't even think about it. Someone you could definitely depend on.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Rathban and Auj spent a lot of time driving around together,
but they didn't sit around riffing like partners in a
Buddy Coock movie.
Speaker 5 (28:09):
He was laconic, didn't have a lot to say unless
you worked on him, and he was always kind of
severe serious.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Auj was hardly two dimensional, though he used his dead
pan personality to mess with people.
Speaker 5 (28:28):
He had this secret sense of humor, but it was
really hard to tell which CARDI was playing, the funny
card or the I'm John and I'm dead serious card.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
One time, Rathbin and Auj had to chase down a suspect.
Rathbn was driving and he ends up reversing down a
one way street. They got the guy, but Auj looked.
Speaker 5 (28:52):
Pissed, and he added that Dave, I need to talk
to you.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Rathven's gotten pretty good and impersonating John Auj's baritone voice,
he says he sounded a lot like Lurch from the
Adams family.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
What you just did was a violent in California state law,
and if you do something like that again, I'll have
to write you up.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
John.
Speaker 5 (29:16):
We were chasing a suspect, and we are law enforcement
officers and so we get exemptions during those things that
may be true, but it was illegal. Is this John
being funny? You would not know, and he will never
let you know.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Auj was hard to read. In fact, there's even confusion
over the pronunciation of his last name. His family says Oj,
but to his friends.
Speaker 5 (29:48):
It was Auj, and he never corrected us. And he's
not very bashful.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
We'll never know why he didn't tell people how to
pronounce his name, but it seems fitting for someone who
remains a mystery to so many. Auj was an enigma
to just about everyone around him, so when he disappeared,
he became an easy target for conspiracy theories. Stories begin
to circulate that Auj's alive and well living in Alaska.
(30:15):
Others say Mexico. Some say he was recruited by a
mercenary group or join the CIA. These theories were fueled
by weird comments Auj had made to friends like Dave Rathbun.
Speaker 5 (30:29):
Dave, Yes, you guys think you can find people with
your searches, and you think you're pretty good at it. Right.
I could go on the mountains and you'd never find me.
And I said, there are people who want to be
found that we can't find. So I'm not really impressed
(30:49):
with your with your declaration there. If you don't want
to be found, I oh, pretty sure I wouldn't be
able to find you.
Speaker 14 (30:57):
So I agree.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
And of course that conversation takes on extra meaning a
searchers keep coming up empty handed.
Speaker 5 (31:06):
I participated in that search until my feet were bloody,
as did several of my peers. But day six they said, well,
shut it down. What do you mean shut it down?
Who said that? Who gave that order and shut the
thing down? What are you talking about?
Speaker 3 (31:23):
Day six, the Sheriff's department folds the search after six
days and gives a statement to the press Sergeant Sower,
one of the deputies overseeing the operation, says, quote, a
good analogy would be someone coming up to you and
giving you two to three pieces of a five hundred
piece puzzle and asking you to guess what the picture is.
(31:44):
Throw into that a few pieces of an entirely different puzzle,
and that is what we work with. We might never
get it right.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
End quote.
Speaker 5 (31:54):
You want to trust the department that they're doing the
right thing, But no one asked us if we should
shut it down. If I'm the search and rescue guy,
and my partners are search and rescue guys, and the
helicopter pilots have been on hundreds of searches, why are
we asking them what they think and their input.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Rathmin says searches for missing hikers typically last seven to
fourteen days, depending on the viability of the person. Auj
was not your typical hiker, and given his personal and
professional connection to the Sheriff's Department, it seems like the
LASD would go the extra mile to find it.
Speaker 5 (32:32):
So it's six days you cancel a search for somebody
who can run fifty or one hundred miles in the
wilderness really knows the wilderness is good or better than
anybody in ESD. They've set it down. Why are you
shutting it down?
Speaker 3 (32:48):
The Sheriff's Department tells the public that Auj disappeared without
a trace and that they're ending the search because they're
just spinning their wheels. But behind the scenes, they're telling
a very different story.
Speaker 5 (33:01):
Well. They say that they decided he committed suicide.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Internal LASD reports claimed that Auj was distraught over his
failing marriage and took his own life in the punch bowl.
That gunshot the area resident heard that could have been
the sound of Auj just putting an end to it all.
But the Sheriff's Department makes that determination without a body.
They don't find any remains, blood, bullets, or a suicide note.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Nothing.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
The only thing they think they may have found of
Aujay's was an energy bar wrapper left on one of
the trails. From what we can tell, there's not a
lot pointing to suicide, so we reach out to Aujay's
colleagues and friends to get their thoughts.
Speaker 14 (34:10):
He was obviously down, he was obviously upset, but was
it enough to commit suicide.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Sergeant Vince Burden is still on the fence on the
one hand, a Jay did appear torn up over his
marital problems. On the other he seemed to be coping.
Speaker 14 (34:26):
Would you be telling me about your ultra marathon if
you were just going to end it all? Would you
even be planning to go run at the punch Bowl,
which is an ugly area anyway?
Speaker 2 (34:38):
For fact checking purposes, we want to make clear the
punch Bowl is not ugly.
Speaker 14 (34:42):
But go on, Vince, None of that made sense to me.
With the suicide.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Fraday's running buddy, Randy Meggerdley, there's no question.
Speaker 7 (34:52):
Plain and simple. I think he killed himself. That's the
only way I can explain, because he.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Says Aujay was acting strangely, even more strangely than usual
in the weeks before his disappearance.
Speaker 7 (35:04):
He says, you know, there's a bunch of caves and
stuff out here, you can very much disappear I think
was the word that he used, and nobody would ever
find yet.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Auj said similar things to Dave Rathbin, but he didn't
put a lot of stock into any of the statements
because he says Aujay is just a weird guy.
Speaker 5 (35:26):
Our unit was next to a big giant duck pond,
and one of the ways we used to make jokes
about each other is kind of like, where do you
fit in the in the duck pond? John was an
I don't malign him, but he was one of the
oddest ducks in the pond, which is good, right, you
need him, you don't want everybody swim in the.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Same Initially, Rathbin was open to the possibility of suicide,
but he's become increasingly skeptical over time because if Aja
had killed himself, he thinks his body or some trace
of him would have turned up by now. So Auji's
colleagues are divided on what happened to him. It's kind
(36:06):
of like those faces seen in the rocks at the
Devil's punch Bowl. Same details, but interpreted in different ways.
And that makes sense because we feel conflicted about it too.
Aujay did say some eerie things about disappearing, but this
disappearing act would be pretty hard to pull off. I mean,
how could he have buried himself and stay buried for
(36:28):
almost three decades. Rathmin asked the Sheriff's department to explain
that one.
Speaker 5 (36:35):
They said, well, we think he might have sat on
the edge of one of those minds and blown himself
into the mind figure. Okay, we are really stretching now
for an explanation as to why we can't find him.
Speaker 6 (36:53):
I didn't accept it. Just common sense told me you
probably ought to see whether there's any evidence of self.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Infliction, pissed off Old Capp. Mike Bauer is evangelical in
his belief that the suicide theory bullshit, because he says
the Sheriff's Department didn't arrive at this conclusion, they led
with it, and that poisoned the investigation from the start.
Bower says that as early as day three, an LASD
(37:23):
official was pushing the suicide narrative during search team briefings.
To Bauer, this was equivalent to telling searchers to let up.
Speaker 6 (37:33):
I took that person outside, and I said, what and
the hell did you say that for? How could you
possibly know that at this point? How could you possibly
discourage them to search for somebody that worked for you?
Speaker 3 (37:49):
The Sheriff's Department was even sharing this theory with the press.
Speaker 9 (37:53):
We haven't ruled out the possibility of suicide, but we
don't have any evidence to support that that's what he
came here to do.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
Bower thinks it's irresponsible to promote the suicide theory without
a high degree of certainty, so he prodded the department
to keep investigating.
Speaker 6 (38:08):
I kept contacting homicide and saying, something's wrong.
Speaker 5 (38:12):
I'm telling you there's a problem.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
But he says, the apartment ignored the case to such
an extent. But he began to question their motives.
Speaker 6 (38:21):
Nobody was in charge of it, and nobody wanted any
of it once they saw how stinky it was getting.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Randy meggerdly represents the other end of the spectrum, so
we ask him what he thinks about the possibility of
foul play.
Speaker 7 (38:40):
I referred to myself as a mushroom. They just feed
me a little bit of poop every once in a while.
I wasn't in the know on that whole thing.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
I've never heard the mushroom poop batafore before.
Speaker 7 (38:51):
Yeah, yeah, oh, you seed you a little bit of poop,
et you grow a little bit.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
At first, the mushroom poop analogy went way over my head.
It sounded like a Southern expression. My mom just forgot
to teach me.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
But then it clicked.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
While I was watching The Departed, the Martin Score Seats movie,
about corruption within the Boston Police Department.
Speaker 12 (39:13):
My theory, Unfeeds is they're like mushrooms, feed him shit
and keep them in the dock.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
I think what Megerdley is saying is that he doesn't
ask a lot of questions because he prefers to be
kept in the dark about things that don't concern him
and who can really blame him? I mean, law enforcement
agencies are not exactly known for their culture of transparency.
Speaker 5 (39:34):
That file. You'd have to get special, special permission to
touch that file.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Dave Rathman, Auj's former partner, says, the Sheriff's department is
unusually protective of the AUJ case file, and they.
Speaker 5 (39:48):
Don't even like to hear you talking about it. Well,
to me, that's what you would call a red flag.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
So Rathman asked his buddy, a retired detective working cold
cases for the Sheriff's apartment to review the AUJ case.
Speaker 5 (40:07):
Could you maybe grab that case file? And he went,
oh no. I said, what do you mean, Oh no,
Why wouldn't you want to take a look at it?
He said, no, that's a hot potato. No one's allowed
to touch that. If I start poking around that case
they'd let me go. I said, well, that's interesting. Why
it's a suicide. He said, I don't know. I just
(40:31):
know that that case can't be touched.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Those red flags are another reason Rappit and others just
can't get behind the party line.
Speaker 5 (40:42):
As my father would say, God bless him. There's some
rotten in the woodpile and it stinks and I can
smell it, and.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
That brings us back to the poop mushroom.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
It might thrive in darkness, but to me, that's not
an ideal environment for policing. I mean, the whole concept
behind law enforcement is it watchful eyed, deter crime. Right
who is watching the police? There's very little oversight of
law enforcement agencies, and it's hard to hold them accountable
since they control the collection and release of information about
(41:19):
internal problems.
Speaker 6 (41:21):
The philosophy of the Sheriff's department is to hide it,
and the philosophy of government in a lot of respects
is that way. Now, with the terrible way they handle
public records requests and stuff, they just basically stonewall you.
They gave you the middle finger. If you're asking for
something that the public has a right to know.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Tell me about it. Bauer. We tried with those public
records requests and got the proverbial middle finger. Without access
to the information, it's hard for us to know how
the Sheriff's department handled the Auj case, and we'd remain
in the dark if it weren't for Mike Bauer and
other deputies coming forward. Bauer retired in two thousand and
(42:03):
two and has spent the better part of his retirement
investigating Auj's disappearance, and he's uncovered what looks like some
pretty damning information about the Sheriff's department.
Speaker 5 (42:15):
They lied to me.
Speaker 16 (42:15):
They lied to me as a fucking captain of the
fucking Sheriff's department with thirty three years on the job.
They fucking lie to me while I'm in charge of
Sheriff's intelligence. They're fucking lying to me about what they're
doing at homicide to shut this thing up.
Speaker 6 (42:28):
They don't want me involved in it.
Speaker 16 (42:31):
Oh imagine that's how fancy that is.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
We know that law enforcement has its problems, but they're
not usually laid out for us by dyed in the
wool cops, people who know this world from the inside
and can show us where the bodies are buried. Figuratively speaking,
we tell Bauer, we want to do a deep dive
on the Aujay case, beginning with his investigation.
Speaker 6 (42:58):
You guys have stumbled into a cluster of shit.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
But he's not as encouraging as we expect him to be,
and for good reason.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
Any advice for us while looking into this disappearance.
Speaker 6 (43:14):
I wouldn't do it alone. In the event somebody did
decide that you were getting too close to something, you
will not be found killed. You will simply disappear.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
This season on Valley of Shadows.
Speaker 5 (43:35):
Early on, I let the suicide theory sit at fifty
to fifty. As I've learned more and more, I'm at
about murder five to ten percent suicide.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
They ruler around the drug scene, was that a deputy
stumbled onto something he shouldn't have and he was taken
care of. I'm here, it's shit on the street minute.
Speaker 5 (44:01):
I he didn't kid suicide, he was murdered.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
I'm here for more than one person.
Speaker 12 (44:06):
And I started hearing some rumors that there.
Speaker 15 (44:09):
Was and yet there's no indication that gun was ever
booked into evidence.
Speaker 12 (44:15):
If you're at it or they thought you were gonna rat,
there wasn't. Hey don't do that ever again, you're done.
They got rid of you. So that's where the murders
came in.
Speaker 8 (44:25):
He was describing with his hands and his arms and
his whole body where this cop was buried at.
Speaker 6 (44:32):
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 3 (44:39):
Hey, dude, we're getting like pretty far out in the
middle of nowhere and no one knows where out here.
Speaker 5 (44:43):
You've got to be careful where you go and who
you talk to.
Speaker 3 (45:06):
If you have any information or tips to the disappearance
of John Aujay, please call two one three two six
two nine eight eight nine for email Shadows at pushkin
dot FM. Valley of Shadows is reported, written and produced
by us Haley Fox and Betsy Shepherd. Our editor is
(45:29):
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 Gurwitt and Our
(45:50):
show art was designed by Sean Karney and Betsy Sheppard
Special thanks to Nick White for show art photography. Additional
thanks to Jeremy Tabb. Vallely 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
(46:11):
podcasts from Type two Fun, We're Haley and Betsy. See
you next week.
Push can.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hey listeners, Betsy Shepherd here, I'm dropping into your feed
to bring you a preview of my new podcast, Valley
of Shadows. It's about an LA County Sheriff's deputy named
John Aujay, who went missing in the Majave Desert back
in nineteen ninety eight. Nearly thirty years later. The Sheriff's
department says that Auja's disappearance is still a mystery. The
(00:41):
whistleblowers say the sheriff's department is covering up what happened
to the deputy, that he was murdered in the desert,
which is a place where meth labs, outlaw biker gangs,
and dirty cops go unchecked. The show's got it all,
and I think you're gonna dig it. Find a Valley
of Shadows wherever you get your podcasts. Pushkin Plus subscribers
(01:03):
can binge the entire season right now ad free. Sign
up on the Valley of Shadows show page on Apple
Podcasts or at pushkin dot Fm, slash Plus.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
This series includes content that may not be suitable for
all listeners. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
So it's okay, yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
I'll turn it down just a little bit because sometimes
you get animated.
Speaker 5 (01:30):
I get pissed off, pissed off old cop.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
This pissed off old cop is Mike Bauer.
Speaker 6 (01:36):
Okay, my name is Mike Bauer, retired Captain LA Sheriff.
I retired in two thousand and two. My last assignment
was Major Crimes Bureau, Detective Division, LA Sheriff.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Bower spent thirty three years climbing the ranks of the
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. And he looks the part
of a retired captain. His white hair and mustache are
neatly groomed, and his eyes are permanently fixed and a
look that says, do not fuck up on my watch.
And he's pissed off because of something that happened to
one of his guys on his squad back.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
In the summer of nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
June eleventh started off like a normal day in Los Angeles,
June gloom and bad traffic.
Speaker 6 (02:19):
I got up early out of Long Beach and headed
up the six ZHO five and into East LA.
Speaker 5 (02:24):
Our office in East LA.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Bauer was doing paperwork when a call came into the
front desk. The receptionist answered.
Speaker 6 (02:32):
Then she hung up and she comes down to get
a cup of coffee across the hall and I said, hey,
who was that. It was John Aujay.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
John Aj was a thirty eight year old canine cop
and he was calling to inquire about an upcoming job assignment.
Speaker 6 (02:49):
I said, well, I've been trying to get hold of him,
and she says, oh, well, maybe he'll call back.
Speaker 7 (02:56):
He never called back.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
John Aj was working for the unit Bower headed up
at the time, the Special Enforcement Bureau or SEB for short.
Speaker 6 (03:08):
Which consists of seven or eight SWAT teams, and the
SWAT teams were involved in tactical responses to high risk
situations in the field.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
SEB handled things like active shooter situations, hostage negotiations, search
and rescue. It was a job that attracted adrenaline junkies
like Auj. He was an Army paratrooper and a survivalist,
and those military skills, along with his buzz cut and
square build, made him a shoe in for the Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 6 (03:41):
He was in the Army in Special Forces. He was
working at the elite unit of the department. I have
to call him a loaner, but he was an elite loaner.
Because the guy was doing fifty mile runs. He was
an animal.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Auj got his kicks by going on long runs through
California's backcountry. He go out deep into the wilderness to
conquer the only obstacle course that still challenged him. And
that's how Auja was spending his day off. On June eleventh,
nineteen ninety eight, he woke up, put on his running
gear and drove to one of his favorite parks, the
(04:21):
Devil's Punch Bowl. It's a rugged canyon where the Angelus
National Forest, the San Gabriel Mountains, and the Mojave Desert
all converge. Auj entered the park just before noon, used
a payphone to call into the sheriff's department, and then
he took off running. He never listened to any music,
(04:45):
just the sounds of nature as he jogged along a
maze of switchbacks and up a nearly ten thousand foot mountain.
By early evening, he looped back towards the parking lot,
but as the sun began to set, the shadows of
trees and rocks grew until night engulfed the park.
Speaker 6 (05:11):
That evening, I got a phone call saying that w
Oj is missing, that he didn't come back to his
vehicle and that they were going to start some more
extensive searching for him.
Speaker 8 (05:26):
It's an all out manhunt for John Auj. Every search
and rescue team in La County has been called in
to help the thirty eight year old when hiking Thursday
in a rugged section of the Angels National Forest known
as Devil Punch Bowls Park. It's a beautiful but dangerous area,
an area where it may be extremely difficult to find
all Jay.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
It's a pretty unique situation.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
The Sheriff's department is called in to look for a
missing hiker who's one of their own. So the search
and rescue team sent out to look for Auj consists
of his friends and colleagues.
Speaker 9 (05:59):
We took our teams out and deployed in two man
teams over the edges of the trails, into the little
nooks and crannies and the gullies that he could have
slipped and fallen into.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
But searchers find no trace of Ajay. It was as
if he just vanished into thin air. And now, nearly
thirty years later, the deputy is still missing.
Speaker 6 (06:26):
I guess I'll open a box.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
All that remains from Auj's life is packed into five
cardboard boxes. The items are wrapped in plastic and Bower
wears gloves as he combs through them.
Speaker 10 (06:41):
This is John's work jacket, and it's an SEB jacket
with his name embroidered on it, and Boss Goo his dog.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Now Bower's preserving Auja's belongings for future developments in the case.
Speaker 10 (06:55):
Okay, so here's his running shoes with his name on
the back.
Speaker 6 (06:59):
Those should have some.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
DNA in him.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
The artifacts also tell us who Auja was. There's a
photocollage full of happy memories him and his high school
sweetheart Dub on their wedding day, a birthday party for
their daughter Chloe, who was just five when he disappeared,
and puppy picks of Bosco Auj's department issued canine. And
(07:22):
next to these snapshots of domestic life, there's a steel
ballistics helmet intended to stop rifle rounds, trophies for marksmanship,
army fatigues, you know, tough guy stuff. Auj moved at
a fast clip, trying to balance the competing demands of
home and work, but his life came to an abrupt
(07:44):
and puzzling end.
Speaker 6 (07:46):
A death certificate says cause, a death, unknown manner, a
death unknown no body.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
The deputy's body has never been found, which raises a
lot of questions for Mike Bauer and a survivalist getting
lost in the woods another big question mark. Over time,
the miss of it all has turned into something else,
deep and unsettling, suspicion about the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 6 (08:18):
The only law enforcement agency in this country that I
know of, and I've looked around, who has a missing
deputy sheriff and doesn't seem to care? What the hell happened?
What's the answer? Who's motivated to find the answer?
Speaker 1 (08:34):
And that's my cue.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
When Mike Bouer first told me about au Jay, I
thought an unsolved disappearance involving a cop, that's unusual. But
when he started talking about the Sheriff's Department, his department,
that's when I locked in. Because you'd expect the LA
County Sheriff's Department to turn over every stone to find
their guy. So the claim that the LASD may have
(08:57):
an interest in not solving the case, now that's a story.
So I called up my friend Hailey Fox like me,
she's an investigative journalist, and she knows a lot about
the sheriff's department because she's reported on it for many years.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Hey, Betsy, Hey do.
Speaker 11 (09:17):
I'm good?
Speaker 3 (09:18):
I'm ready.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah, I go to do this.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
It's about time. I'm a little road t adventure all right,
let's do it.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
We've teamed up on stories before and decided to get
the band back together to finanswers about this missing deputy
and to take on the largest sheriff's department in the country.
Speaker 12 (09:38):
There's a code of silence in law enforcement. You break
that code of silence, you're done.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Hey, if don't fucking kill a Copponberry, what they gonna
do to me?
Speaker 6 (09:46):
It's an obstruction of justice of a very large scale.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
I'm Betsy Shepherd.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
I'm Haley Fowx, And this is Valley of Shadows, a
show about crime and corruption in California's high Desert. Episode one,
the Devil's Punch Bowl. Betsy and I are making the
(10:19):
trek from downtown Los Angeles to the Anaelote Valley that's
the desert area north of la where Deputy Auja disappeared.
The drives about sixty miles, but takes an hour and
a half to two hours because of the mountainous terrain.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
See you actually have to take We gotta go.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
North, Yeah, we're gonna go north, but this is La Dude.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
We gotta go south.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
One in south five north fourteen and then I think
there's a one thirty eighth throat in there, but nothing's
a street.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Shod spoken like a true Agelino.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
I was born and raised in La County, Go Dodgers,
but this part of it feels worlds away. The Antelope Valley,
or the AV as it's sometimes called, is a three
thousand square mile stretch of the Mojave, but this part
of the high desert doesn't have the same allure and
vibingess as places like Joshua Tree. Instead, the Avy is
(11:15):
mostly empty space, dotted with defence plants, bedroom communities, and
tumbleweed towns.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
So a lot of just like.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Trailers kind of just parked out in the desert.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Yeah, I mean power lines and scrub rush. Our story
takes place in and around Pair Blossom, California. It has
a population of fifteen hundred and it's where the Devil's
Punch bowls located. Driving through it, Betsy gets a case
of deja vu.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
He g had anxiety coming to places like this because
it reminds me of like.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
A town that it grew up and there's just just
like I feel the oppressive weight of boredom.
Speaker 11 (11:57):
Oh really.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
I moved to La several years ago from South Louisiana.
Had never been to Anela Valley before, but it was
immediately familiar to me. Because if you were to replace
desert with swamp, this region would look a lot like
the small town I'm from. It's rural and kind of
run down. There's more landscape than real estate, lots of
pickup trucks in town.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Life seems like a thing of the past.
Speaker 5 (12:24):
We got.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
An abandoned motel, what's this, Oh like an abandoned old
restaurant and wreck hall and people getting gas to presumably
be all their way.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Yeah, I mean, I think the three gas stations in
a row tell the story.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
But the closer we get to the Devil's punch Bowl,
where auj was last spotted, and other worldly landscape appears,
full of spiky Joshua trees and sandstone columns.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
It's actually really beautiful out here.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
It's not expected to land.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Are you looking at these huge rocks jutting out of
the ground and like they're making all those crazy shadows.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Seen anything like them?
Speaker 3 (13:12):
I haven't either.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
I feel like I've been an old Western movie, you know,
like we're just got this like wide ethic landscape shots.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Total endless horizons, totally endless horizons.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
I can see why John A j. Liked to come
out here. It's pretty pretty, not big.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Okay, we are pulling into the Devil's punch Bowl County
Park parking lot.
Speaker 13 (13:40):
Here we are.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
We've come here to retrace John Aujay's last known steps
and to meet with ranger Jack Farley. He was working
on the punch Bowl the day the deputy disappeared.
Speaker 5 (13:58):
Hi are you?
Speaker 1 (14:00):
But are you Jack Farley?
Speaker 6 (14:01):
By chance?
Speaker 1 (14:05):
This is my reporting partner, Haley.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Thank you for meeting us out here. Yes, Jock Farley's
retired now, but for thirty five years he was assigned
to work the punch Bowl.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
What a cool job.
Speaker 7 (14:19):
Great for me?
Speaker 11 (14:20):
Yeah, it was awesome, good job.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
It was Farley's job to keep an eye on things,
to tend the grounds and patrol the area. So he
noticed when AJ became a regular at the punch Bowl
and he clocked Auj's regular parking space, the one closest
to the trailhead.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
So I can.
Speaker 11 (14:38):
Remember seeing him sitting in the back of his truck
when you get done with a run in the mountains.
So when I'd walk out into the parking lot, I'd
see him sitting out there and ask him about his run.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Farley remembers that the day Auj disappeared, his white Ford
F one to fifty truck was parked in that very
same spot, surrounded on all sides by wilderness.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
One thing that impresses us so much about this area
is that you have a desert landscape on one side,
you have a mountain, it's in forests on the other,
and then in between it's these really cool rock formations.
Speaker 11 (15:15):
Right, it's all uplifted from earthquake activity. Oh wow, that's
a punch bowl fault and that runs parallel with the mountains.
And then when you came up to hear you cross
the San Andreas Fault, which of course the big one
that runs through California, several faults in the area. It
took all this sand that was laid down flat by
(15:36):
streams and tilted up into vertical relief.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
And it creates a bowl shape.
Speaker 11 (15:42):
You can see a definite bowl shape coming around like
this so that's where it got the punch bowl name.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
We're not totally sure about the devil part of it, though,
according to local lore, early homesteaders saw grinning devil in
the rock formations. We didn't see Satan in the rock face,
but we did see something else thanks to a county
park employee named Dave Numar.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
See the shadow ends.
Speaker 6 (16:10):
There's that big rock kind of all by itself.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
If you look, it's like a forehead is facing us
and there's a nose pointing street.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
It looks like George Washington.
Speaker 14 (16:18):
Yeah, it's a natural not rest more cool.
Speaker 5 (16:22):
So there's all kinds of faces out here because it's like,
oh if our brains are programmed to see patterns.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
Pattern recognition is why we see gods and goddesses in
the stars and the man in the moon. It's also
a key part of criminal investigations, a way to turn
information into a story. And that's why we've come to
the Devil's Punch Bowl to see if we can make
sense of what happened on June eleventh, nineteen ninety eight.
(16:50):
So we pull out a map we printed from the internet.
Because we're prepared journalists and elder millennials and we present
it to Ranger Farland, let me show you what.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
It looks like.
Speaker 11 (17:02):
Yeah, line will definitely.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Be definitely get us lost in the wilderness. Farley proves
his outdoor prowess by whipping out some real maps of
the area to help orient us to our surroundings.
Speaker 13 (17:17):
Okay, here's the Devil's Okay, and there's Burkhart Trail right there,
goes over toward Devil's Chairs, so that'd be just to
the east, goes to South Fork.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
One witness reported seeing Auj near the picnic tables at
the main trailhead sometime before noon. This witness was a
local teacher there on a field trip with a bunch
of elementary school kids. Auj stopped to talk to him.
He pointed to a jagon mountain in the distance, Mount
Baden Powell, and said that's where he was headed.
Speaker 11 (17:53):
So the high mountain behind the telephone pole over there, Yeah,
that's Baden Powell and that's where he would go sometimes.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
How tall is the mountain?
Speaker 11 (18:01):
Jeez, that is one of the higher ones. Let me
think ten ten, I mean in this range.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
And he would run from here to that mountain all
the way over there and then.
Speaker 11 (18:11):
Run up it. Yeah, he'd run over there and then
they're switchbacks all the way to the top of that mountain.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Aujy was spotted again later in the day, when multiple
witnesses say they saw him jogging through a campground just
north of the mountain in the direction of the punch
Bowl parking lot. But when Farley left his post at
five PM, Auj's truck was still parked in the lot,
and it stayed parked there as the evening bloomed over
(18:39):
the desert, and then close to midnight, Aujy's wife called
the sheriff's station to report him missing.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
As June eleventh, nineteen ninety eight years It's end, Debbie
auj becomes increasingly panicked because her husband, Deputy John A.
J told her he'd be home around dark and by
now he's several hours late. So she dials up one
of the share of stations where Auja worked.
Speaker 15 (19:32):
The call comes into the desk and it's from Debbie
and it says, hey, my husband, who's a deputy, he
went for a run and he didn't come home.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Vince Burton was a sergeant in the Antelope Valley. He
was also Aujay's colleague and friend, so he gets on
the phone with Debbie.
Speaker 15 (19:51):
She was just upset.
Speaker 7 (19:53):
She was crying. She was obviously very concerned.
Speaker 15 (19:58):
I just I said, okay, Debbie, we're sending people up there,
you know, keep you posted.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Patrol deputies high tail it to the punch bowl where
they find Aujay's truck.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
But no, they think maybe.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
He got injured, slipped and fell for how to run
in with some wildlife. So Burton dispatches Search and Rescue
to the site and he calls in their coordinator, Dave Soer,
to discuss Auj's likely route.
Speaker 15 (20:24):
And Dave comes in and we pull up a map
of the area. And I told him at that time,
I said, you know, John's a runner, and he goes, yeah,
and I said, no, he's a long distance runner. He's
an ultra marathoner. He's like what.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Ultra marathoners are running extremists who power through long distances.
In fact, Auj was scheduled to compete in a one
hundred mile run the week after he went missing, so
responders have a hard time wrapping their heads around the
scale of the search.
Speaker 7 (20:59):
I gave him the best information I could give him.
You know, don't start your grid pattern so small.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
This is Randy Meggerdley. He was a patrol deputy for
the Share Department and one of Auj's running buddies. He
reiterates to the command post that Auj was a beast.
Speaker 7 (21:17):
You're running goat trails is basically what I categorized them as.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
What do you mean by that goat trails?
Speaker 7 (21:22):
Well, they're just megshift trails. Sometimes they'll be covered with snow,
sometimes they'll be covered with mud, crossing rivers. I mean,
it's crazy what kind of stuff that we were doing.
There was one that we did. It was hand over
foot trying to get up this mountain.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
And so part of the activity was figuring out how
to get to.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
The end of it.
Speaker 7 (21:49):
Yeah, and one piece.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Hearing Meggerdy talk about ultra marathoners, it sounds like they
have no off switch. So maybe Auj just overdid it.
Speaker 7 (22:02):
Your brain does some wonky stuff when you're dehydrated, and
they thought maybe he got on a trail and he
was doing the forest gump, just kept running.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
That's a theory that Auj was doing the forest gump
and just kept running and got himself into a tailspin
of dehydration. Responders take note and fan out across the
search grid.
Speaker 11 (22:26):
I was nice to him. I said, do you know
I know the area pretty well?
Speaker 1 (22:29):
If you guys want help, Ranger Jack Farley again, the.
Speaker 11 (22:32):
Guy goes, no, we're search and rescue. We pretty much
know what we're doing, you know. So I go okay, okay.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
But it doesn't take long for the pros realize they're
in over their heads.
Speaker 11 (22:45):
So then they're going, hey, are you the guy that
knows the area? You know, maybe you could give us
a little help.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
So Farley leads a few groups of deputies and bloodhounds
down the local trails.
Speaker 11 (22:56):
At one time thought they caught a scent and it
went up on the trail going toward the Burckhart Trail,
And we had talked about someone saying they heard a gunshot.
You can't see the house from here, but it's like
a half mile below the trail up there where the
people lived that said.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
They heard that the dogs pick up a scent, possibly Aujay's,
on a trail that's near a local resident. That guy
reported to searchers that he heard a single gunshot at
sunset the day Auja vanished. It's a detail the Sheriff's
Department registers as a potential clue.
Speaker 11 (23:31):
So I took a group of deputies over there and
we went that really rugged, wooded canyon.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
They didn't find anything, but searchers do spot some footprints
on the mountain where Auj told people he was going.
So Aujay's captain, Mike Bauer, takes to the skies to
see where they lead.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
And that was the first time I ever stepped out
of a huge helicopter on the side of a mountain
with one skid touching, And then that helicopter flew off
while we examined the openings the Big Horn Mine to
see whether or not it had been broken into.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Corn is a mine on top of the mountain leftover
from the gold rush days. Its entrance has been welded
shut to keep out hikers, and when the helicopter lands,
nineties action movie style Bowers crew finds no signs of
a break in. Auj's reported missing late Thursday night.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
By the end of the.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
Day Sunday, the Sheriff's department kicks things into high gear.
They call in the US Army and Air Force along
with the LASD heavy hitters. It's a specialized squad called
Emergency Services Detail or ESD.
Speaker 5 (24:45):
They do search and rescue, underwater search and recovery, and
they support the special weapons team with medical skills.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Dave Rathbin was one of the ESD members sent out
to search for Auj.
Speaker 5 (24:59):
And the adrenaline that you get from ESD is different
from any other adrenaline.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
ESD deputies are equipped to handle all types of a
emergency scenarios. But it wasn't just the rocky ledges and
wild animals they.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
Had to worry about here.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
The area was full of all kinds of criminal activity.
Speaker 5 (25:21):
One of the things they told our search teams on
day one was John may have stumbled into a meth
lab by accident. So that was told to us when
we were out searching. And the reason they told us
is they recommend that we take weapons.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Rathman and his team of searchers come to the punch
Bowl armed and ready for action because maybe Auj isn't
lost or injured or running for the hills. Maybe he's
the victim of foul play. The command post doesn't expand
on why they thought Aj may have been taken out
by meth related violence, but to Rathbun, this theory doesn't
(26:03):
sound too far fetched because the Anelo Valley is isolated
outlawsh and on account of its size, difficult to police.
Speaker 5 (26:13):
There are a lot of people who just don't want
to be around other human beings out there, which makes
them sometimes dangerous. There's people cooking meth.
Speaker 14 (26:25):
Ah.
Speaker 5 (26:26):
It was a little bit like the Old West in
a way. I mean, this is a very unusual, strange place.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
And remember that abandoned mind searcher scoped out. Well, it
turns out they're everywhere and they are a prime location
for body dumping.
Speaker 5 (26:45):
One of the things ESD did was recover dead bodies
from minds.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
And it wasn't just the mines. Corpses turn up all
over these parts.
Speaker 5 (26:56):
You know, if all the dead bodies that were up
there from being deliberately disposed of, stood up and once
they'd be shoulder to shoulder.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
It's a chilling image of the area's darker side. AJ
would jog from the Devil's Punch Bowl into the Angelus
National Forest, which has been called the most dangerous national
forest in America. Around the time of Auj's disappearance, it's
estimated that two to three dozen corpses turned up in
the forest every year, and those were just the ones
(27:25):
that were found. So Rathman understands the danger he faces,
but pushes on. In search of footprints, you have to.
Speaker 5 (27:34):
Look at the ground and look at bushes that have
been pushed in. We walked and walked, and walked and walked,
and walked and walked.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
The search is taxing for Rathban physically and emotionally, because
he and Auj were friends and back in the early
nineties they were even partners.
Speaker 5 (27:52):
If it was me that needed cover, he'd be there.
Didn't even think about it. Someone you could definitely depend on.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Rathban and Auj spent a lot of time driving around together,
but they didn't sit around riffing like partners in a
Buddy Coock movie.
Speaker 5 (28:09):
He was laconic, didn't have a lot to say unless
you worked on him, and he was always kind of
severe serious.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Auj was hardly two dimensional, though he used his dead
pan personality to mess with people.
Speaker 5 (28:28):
He had this secret sense of humor, but it was
really hard to tell which CARDI was playing, the funny
card or the I'm John and I'm dead serious card.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
One time, Rathbin and Auj had to chase down a suspect.
Rathbn was driving and he ends up reversing down a
one way street. They got the guy, but Auj looked.
Speaker 5 (28:52):
Pissed, and he added that Dave, I need to talk
to you.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Rathven's gotten pretty good and impersonating John Auj's baritone voice,
he says he sounded a lot like Lurch from the
Adams family.
Speaker 5 (29:06):
What you just did was a violent in California state law,
and if you do something like that again, I'll have
to write you up.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
John.
Speaker 5 (29:16):
We were chasing a suspect, and we are law enforcement
officers and so we get exemptions during those things that
may be true, but it was illegal. Is this John
being funny? You would not know, and he will never
let you know.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Auj was hard to read. In fact, there's even confusion
over the pronunciation of his last name. His family says Oj,
but to his friends.
Speaker 5 (29:48):
It was Auj, and he never corrected us. And he's
not very bashful.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
We'll never know why he didn't tell people how to
pronounce his name, but it seems fitting for someone who
remains a mystery to so many. Auj was an enigma
to just about everyone around him, so when he disappeared,
he became an easy target for conspiracy theories. Stories begin
to circulate that Auj's alive and well living in Alaska.
(30:15):
Others say Mexico. Some say he was recruited by a
mercenary group or join the CIA. These theories were fueled
by weird comments Auj had made to friends like Dave Rathbun.
Speaker 5 (30:29):
Dave, Yes, you guys think you can find people with
your searches, and you think you're pretty good at it. Right.
I could go on the mountains and you'd never find me.
And I said, there are people who want to be
found that we can't find. So I'm not really impressed
(30:49):
with your with your declaration there. If you don't want
to be found, I oh, pretty sure I wouldn't be
able to find you.
Speaker 14 (30:57):
So I agree.
Speaker 3 (30:59):
And of course that conversation takes on extra meaning a
searchers keep coming up empty handed.
Speaker 5 (31:06):
I participated in that search until my feet were bloody,
as did several of my peers. But day six they said, well,
shut it down. What do you mean shut it down?
Who said that? Who gave that order and shut the
thing down? What are you talking about?
Speaker 3 (31:23):
Day six, the Sheriff's department folds the search after six
days and gives a statement to the press Sergeant Sower,
one of the deputies overseeing the operation, says, quote, a
good analogy would be someone coming up to you and
giving you two to three pieces of a five hundred
piece puzzle and asking you to guess what the picture is.
(31:44):
Throw into that a few pieces of an entirely different puzzle,
and that is what we work with. We might never
get it right.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
End quote.
Speaker 5 (31:54):
You want to trust the department that they're doing the
right thing, But no one asked us if we should
shut it down. If I'm the search and rescue guy,
and my partners are search and rescue guys, and the
helicopter pilots have been on hundreds of searches, why are
we asking them what they think and their input.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Rathmin says searches for missing hikers typically last seven to
fourteen days, depending on the viability of the person. Auj
was not your typical hiker, and given his personal and
professional connection to the Sheriff's Department, it seems like the
LASD would go the extra mile to find it.
Speaker 5 (32:32):
So it's six days you cancel a search for somebody
who can run fifty or one hundred miles in the
wilderness really knows the wilderness is good or better than
anybody in ESD. They've set it down. Why are you
shutting it down?
Speaker 3 (32:48):
The Sheriff's Department tells the public that Auj disappeared without
a trace and that they're ending the search because they're
just spinning their wheels. But behind the scenes, they're telling
a very different story.
Speaker 5 (33:01):
Well. They say that they decided he committed suicide.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Internal LASD reports claimed that Auj was distraught over his
failing marriage and took his own life in the punch bowl.
That gunshot the area resident heard that could have been
the sound of Auj just putting an end to it all.
But the Sheriff's Department makes that determination without a body.
They don't find any remains, blood, bullets, or a suicide note.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Nothing.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
The only thing they think they may have found of
Aujay's was an energy bar wrapper left on one of
the trails. From what we can tell, there's not a
lot pointing to suicide, so we reach out to Aujay's
colleagues and friends to get their thoughts.
Speaker 14 (34:10):
He was obviously down, he was obviously upset, but was
it enough to commit suicide.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Sergeant Vince Burden is still on the fence on the
one hand, a Jay did appear torn up over his
marital problems. On the other he seemed to be coping.
Speaker 14 (34:26):
Would you be telling me about your ultra marathon if
you were just going to end it all? Would you
even be planning to go run at the punch Bowl,
which is an ugly area anyway?
Speaker 2 (34:38):
For fact checking purposes, we want to make clear the
punch Bowl is not ugly.
Speaker 14 (34:42):
But go on, Vince, None of that made sense to me.
With the suicide.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Fraday's running buddy, Randy Meggerdley, there's no question.
Speaker 7 (34:52):
Plain and simple. I think he killed himself. That's the
only way I can explain, because he.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Says Aujay was acting strangely, even more strangely than usual
in the weeks before his disappearance.
Speaker 7 (35:04):
He says, you know, there's a bunch of caves and
stuff out here, you can very much disappear I think
was the word that he used, and nobody would ever
find yet.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Auj said similar things to Dave Rathbin, but he didn't
put a lot of stock into any of the statements
because he says Aujay is just a weird guy.
Speaker 5 (35:26):
Our unit was next to a big giant duck pond,
and one of the ways we used to make jokes
about each other is kind of like, where do you
fit in the in the duck pond? John was an
I don't malign him, but he was one of the
oddest ducks in the pond, which is good, right, you
need him, you don't want everybody swim in the.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Same Initially, Rathbin was open to the possibility of suicide,
but he's become increasingly skeptical over time because if Aja
had killed himself, he thinks his body or some trace
of him would have turned up by now. So Auji's
colleagues are divided on what happened to him. It's kind
(36:06):
of like those faces seen in the rocks at the
Devil's punch Bowl. Same details, but interpreted in different ways.
And that makes sense because we feel conflicted about it too.
Aujay did say some eerie things about disappearing, but this
disappearing act would be pretty hard to pull off. I mean,
how could he have buried himself and stay buried for
(36:28):
almost three decades. Rathmin asked the Sheriff's department to explain
that one.
Speaker 5 (36:35):
They said, well, we think he might have sat on
the edge of one of those minds and blown himself
into the mind figure. Okay, we are really stretching now
for an explanation as to why we can't find him.
Speaker 6 (36:53):
I didn't accept it. Just common sense told me you
probably ought to see whether there's any evidence of self.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Infliction, pissed off Old Capp. Mike Bauer is evangelical in
his belief that the suicide theory bullshit, because he says
the Sheriff's Department didn't arrive at this conclusion, they led
with it, and that poisoned the investigation from the start.
Bower says that as early as day three, an LASD
(37:23):
official was pushing the suicide narrative during search team briefings.
To Bauer, this was equivalent to telling searchers to let up.
Speaker 6 (37:33):
I took that person outside, and I said, what and
the hell did you say that for? How could you
possibly know that at this point? How could you possibly
discourage them to search for somebody that worked for you?
Speaker 3 (37:49):
The Sheriff's Department was even sharing this theory with the press.
Speaker 9 (37:53):
We haven't ruled out the possibility of suicide, but we
don't have any evidence to support that that's what he
came here to do.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
Bower thinks it's irresponsible to promote the suicide theory without
a high degree of certainty, so he prodded the department
to keep investigating.
Speaker 6 (38:08):
I kept contacting homicide and saying, something's wrong.
Speaker 5 (38:12):
I'm telling you there's a problem.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
But he says, the apartment ignored the case to such
an extent. But he began to question their motives.
Speaker 6 (38:21):
Nobody was in charge of it, and nobody wanted any
of it once they saw how stinky it was getting.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Randy meggerdly represents the other end of the spectrum, so
we ask him what he thinks about the possibility of
foul play.
Speaker 7 (38:40):
I referred to myself as a mushroom. They just feed
me a little bit of poop every once in a while.
I wasn't in the know on that whole thing.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
I've never heard the mushroom poop batafore before.
Speaker 7 (38:51):
Yeah, yeah, oh, you seed you a little bit of poop,
et you grow a little bit.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
At first, the mushroom poop analogy went way over my head.
It sounded like a Southern expression. My mom just forgot
to teach me.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
But then it clicked.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
While I was watching The Departed, the Martin Score Seats movie,
about corruption within the Boston Police Department.
Speaker 12 (39:13):
My theory, Unfeeds is they're like mushrooms, feed him shit
and keep them in the dock.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
I think what Megerdley is saying is that he doesn't
ask a lot of questions because he prefers to be
kept in the dark about things that don't concern him
and who can really blame him? I mean, law enforcement
agencies are not exactly known for their culture of transparency.
Speaker 5 (39:34):
That file. You'd have to get special, special permission to
touch that file.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Dave Rathman, Auj's former partner, says, the Sheriff's department is
unusually protective of the AUJ case file, and they.
Speaker 5 (39:48):
Don't even like to hear you talking about it. Well,
to me, that's what you would call a red flag.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
So Rathman asked his buddy, a retired detective working cold
cases for the Sheriff's apartment to review the AUJ case.
Speaker 5 (40:07):
Could you maybe grab that case file? And he went,
oh no. I said, what do you mean, Oh no,
Why wouldn't you want to take a look at it?
He said, no, that's a hot potato. No one's allowed
to touch that. If I start poking around that case
they'd let me go. I said, well, that's interesting. Why
it's a suicide. He said, I don't know. I just
(40:31):
know that that case can't be touched.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Those red flags are another reason Rappit and others just
can't get behind the party line.
Speaker 5 (40:42):
As my father would say, God bless him. There's some
rotten in the woodpile and it stinks and I can
smell it, and.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
That brings us back to the poop mushroom.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
It might thrive in darkness, but to me, that's not
an ideal environment for policing. I mean, the whole concept
behind law enforcement is it watchful eyed, deter crime. Right
who is watching the police? There's very little oversight of
law enforcement agencies, and it's hard to hold them accountable
since they control the collection and release of information about
(41:19):
internal problems.
Speaker 6 (41:21):
The philosophy of the Sheriff's department is to hide it,
and the philosophy of government in a lot of respects
is that way. Now, with the terrible way they handle
public records requests and stuff, they just basically stonewall you.
They gave you the middle finger. If you're asking for
something that the public has a right to know.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Tell me about it. Bauer. We tried with those public
records requests and got the proverbial middle finger. Without access
to the information, it's hard for us to know how
the Sheriff's department handled the Auj case, and we'd remain
in the dark if it weren't for Mike Bauer and
other deputies coming forward. Bauer retired in two thousand and
(42:03):
two and has spent the better part of his retirement
investigating Auj's disappearance, and he's uncovered what looks like some
pretty damning information about the Sheriff's department.
Speaker 5 (42:15):
They lied to me.
Speaker 16 (42:15):
They lied to me as a fucking captain of the
fucking Sheriff's department with thirty three years on the job.
They fucking lie to me while I'm in charge of
Sheriff's intelligence. They're fucking lying to me about what they're
doing at homicide to shut this thing up.
Speaker 6 (42:28):
They don't want me involved in it.
Speaker 16 (42:31):
Oh imagine that's how fancy that is.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
We know that law enforcement has its problems, but they're
not usually laid out for us by dyed in the
wool cops, people who know this world from the inside
and can show us where the bodies are buried. Figuratively speaking,
we tell Bauer, we want to do a deep dive
on the Aujay case, beginning with his investigation.
Speaker 6 (42:58):
You guys have stumbled into a cluster of shit.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
But he's not as encouraging as we expect him to be,
and for good reason.
Speaker 2 (43:09):
Any advice for us while looking into this disappearance.
Speaker 6 (43:14):
I wouldn't do it alone. In the event somebody did
decide that you were getting too close to something, you
will not be found killed. You will simply disappear.
Speaker 3 (43:32):
This season on Valley of Shadows.
Speaker 5 (43:35):
Early on, I let the suicide theory sit at fifty
to fifty. As I've learned more and more, I'm at
about murder five to ten percent suicide.
Speaker 1 (43:50):
They ruler around the drug scene, was that a deputy
stumbled onto something he shouldn't have and he was taken
care of. I'm here, it's shit on the street minute.
Speaker 5 (44:01):
I he didn't kid suicide, he was murdered.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
I'm here for more than one person.
Speaker 12 (44:06):
And I started hearing some rumors that there.
Speaker 15 (44:09):
Was and yet there's no indication that gun was ever
booked into evidence.
Speaker 12 (44:15):
If you're at it or they thought you were gonna rat,
there wasn't. Hey don't do that ever again, you're done.
They got rid of you. So that's where the murders
came in.
Speaker 8 (44:25):
He was describing with his hands and his arms and
his whole body where this cop was buried at.
Speaker 6 (44:32):
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 3 (44:39):
Hey, dude, we're getting like pretty far out in the
middle of nowhere and no one knows where out here.
Speaker 5 (44:43):
You've got to be careful where you go and who
you talk to.
Speaker 3 (45:06):
If you have any information or tips to the disappearance
of John Aujay, please call two one three two six
two nine eight eight nine for email Shadows at pushkin
dot FM. Valley of Shadows is reported, written and produced
by us Haley Fox and Betsy Shepherd. Our editor is
(45:29):
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 Gurwitt and Our
(45:50):
show art was designed by Sean Karney and Betsy Sheppard
Special thanks to Nick White for show art photography. Additional
thanks to Jeremy Tabb. Vallely 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
(46:11):
podcasts from Type two Fun, We're Haley and Betsy. See
you next week.
Host
Lucy Sherriff
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