January 12, 2026 • 46 mins
Valley of Shadows is 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.
(00:01:04) 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 Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin.fm/plus.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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 Auja, who went missing in the Mojave Desert back
in nineteen ninety eight. Nearly thirty years later. The Sheriff's
department says Auj's disappearance is still a mystery, but whistleblowers
(00:23):
say the Sheriff's department is covering up what happened to
the deputy, that he was murdered in the desert where
mes labs, outlaw biker gangs, and dirty cops go unchecked.
The show's got it all, and I think you're gonna
dig it. Find Valley of Shadows wherever you listen to
your podcasts. Pushkin Plus subscribers convenge the entire season right now,
(00:47):
ad free sign up on the Valley of Shadows show
page on Apple or at pushkin dot fm, slash Plus.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
This series includes content that may not be suitable for
all listeners. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
So it's okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
I'll turn it down just a little bit, because sometimes
you get animated.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
I get pissed off, pissed off old cop.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
This pissed off old cop is Mike Bauer.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
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 1 (01:27):
Bowers 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 in the
(01:48):
summer of nineteen ninety eight. June eleventh started off like
a normal day in Los Angeles, June gloom and bad traffic.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
I got up early, Long Beach and headed up the
six zero five and into East LA. Our office in
East LA.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Bauer was doing paperwork when a call came into the
front desk.
Speaker 5 (02:10):
The receptionist answered, 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 Auj.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
John Aj was a thirty eight year old canine cop
and he was calling to inquire about an upcoming job assignment.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
I said, well, I've been trying to get hold of him,
and she says, oh, well, maybe he'll call back. He
never called back.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
John Aj was working for the unit Bower headed up
at the time, the Special Enforcement Bureau or SEB for short.
Speaker 5 (02:48):
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 1 (03:00):
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 5 (03:21):
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 1 (03:39):
Auj got his kicks by going on long runs through
California's backcountry. He'd go out deep into the wilderness to
conquer the only obstacle course that still challenged him, and
that's how Auj was spending his day off. On June eleventh,
nineteen ninety eight, he woke up, put on his running gear,
and drove to one of his favorite parks, the Devil's
(04:01):
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, just the
(04:25):
sounds of nature as he jogged along a maze of
switchbacks and up a nearly ten thousand foot mountain. By
early evening, he looped back towards the parking lot, but
as the sun began to set, the shadows of trees
and rocks grew until night engulfed the park.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
That evening, I got a phone call saying that Wog
is missing, that he didn't come back to his vehicle,
and that they were going to start some more extensive
searching for him.
Speaker 6 (05:06):
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 Angelos 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 (05:25):
It's a pretty unique situation. The Sheriff's department is called
in to look for a missing hiker who's one of
their own. So the search and rescue team sent out
to look for AJ consists of his friends and colleagues.
Speaker 7 (05:39):
We took our teams out and deployed and two men
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 1 (05:49):
But searchers find no trace of AJ. It was as
if he just vanished into thin air. And now, nearly
thirty years later, the deputy is still missing.
Speaker 5 (06:06):
I guess I'll open a box.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
All that remains from Aujy's life is packed into five
cardboard boxes. The items are wrapped in plastic, and Bower
wears gloves as he combs through them.
Speaker 5 (06:21):
This is John's work jacket, and it's an SEB jacket
with his name embroidered on it, and Bossco his dog.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Now Bower's preserving Auja's belongings for future developments in the case.
Speaker 5 (06:35):
Okay, so here's his running shoes with his name on
the back.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Those should have some DNA in him.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
The artifacts also tell us who Aujay 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 AJ's department issued canine. And
(07:02):
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 guys stuff. Auja moved at
a fast clip, trying to balance the competing demands of
home and work, but his life came to an abrupt
(07:24):
and puzzling end.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
A death certificate says cause a death unknown manner, a
death unknown, No.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Body the deputy's body has never been found, which raises
a lot of questions for Mike Bauer and a survivalist
getting lost in the woods another big question mark. Over time,
the mystery of it all has turned into something else,
deep and unsettling, suspicion about the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Answer, And that's my cue. When Mike Bauer first told
me about Auja, I thought an unsolved disappearance involving a cop,
that's unusual. But when he started talking about the Sheriff's Department,
his department, that's when I locked in. Because you'd expect
the LA County Sheriff's Department to turn over every stone
(08:33):
to find their guy. So the claim that the LASD
may have an interest in not solving the case, now
that's a story. So I called up my friend 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 2 (08:54):
Hey, that's hey, do.
Speaker 8 (08:57):
I'm good.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I'm ready.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Yeah, I do this throughout.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Time, A little road true adventure.
Speaker 9 (09:04):
All right, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
We've teamed up on stories before and decided to get
the band back together. The finanswer is about this missing
deputy and to take on the largest sheriff's department in
the country.
Speaker 10 (09:18):
There's a code of silence in law enforcement. You break
that code of silence, you're done.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Hey, if don't fucking kill a Coppon berry, what they're
gonna do to me?
Speaker 5 (09:26):
It's an obstruction of justice of a very large scale.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
I'm Betsy Shepherd, I'm Haley Fox, and this is Valley
of Shadows, a show about crime and corruption in California's
high Desert. Episode one, the Devil's Punch Bowl. Betsy and
(09:58):
I are making the track from dow Town, Los Angeles
to the Antelope 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 11 (10:15):
See, you actually have to take we gotta go north.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, we're gonna go north, but this is La Dude.
We gotta go south one time south five north fourteen
and then I think there's a one thirty eighth throat
in there, but nothing's a street.
Speaker 11 (10:28):
Jaw spoken like a true Agilino.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
I was born and raised in La County, Go Dodgers,
but this part of it feels worlds away. The Antelope Valley,
or the AV as it's sometimes called, is a three
thousand square mile stretch of the Mojave, but this part
of the high Desert doesn't have the same allure and
vibingess as places like Joshua Tree. Instead, the AVY is
(10:55):
mostly empty space, dotted with defence plants, bedroom communities, and
tumbleweed towns.
Speaker 11 (11:02):
So a lot of just like trailers kind of just
parked out in the desert. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Power lines and scrub rush. Our story takes place in
and around Pear 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 11 (11:29):
I had anxiety coming to places like this because it
reminds me of like a town that I grew up,
and there's just just like I feel, the oppressive way
to boredom.
Speaker 12 (11:37):
Oh really.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
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. Life seems like a thing in
(12:02):
the past.
Speaker 11 (12:04):
We got.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
An abandoned motel, what's this, Oh like an abandoned old restaurant.
Speaker 11 (12:13):
And rec hall, and people getting gas to presumably be
all their way.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
I mean, I think the three gas stations in a
row tell the story.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
But the closer we get to the Devil's punch Bowl
where auj was last spotted, and other worldly landscape appears,
full of spiky Joshua trees and sandstone columns.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
It's actually really beautiful. Acreage is not expected to l
are you looking at these huge rocks jutting out of
the ground and like they're making all those crazy shadows?
For seeing anything like them, I haven't either.
Speaker 11 (12:54):
I feel like I've been an old Western movie, you know,
like we're He's got this like wide epic lance scape.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Shots, total endless horizons, totally endless horizons.
Speaker 11 (13:03):
I can see why John A J. Liked to come
out here. Now it's pretty pretty big.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Okay, we are pulling into the Devil's punch Bowl County
Park parking lot.
Speaker 12 (13:20):
Here we are.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
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 8 (13:38):
Hi are you?
Speaker 11 (13:40):
But are you Jack Farley?
Speaker 5 (13:41):
By chance?
Speaker 11 (13:41):
I am.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
This is my reporting partner Haley.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
To thank you for meeting us out here. Yes, Jack
Farley's retired now, but for thirty five years he was
assigned to work the punch Bowl.
Speaker 11 (13:56):
What a cool job.
Speaker 13 (13:59):
Great for me?
Speaker 8 (14:00):
Yeah, it was awesome, good job.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
It was Farley's job to keep an eye on things,
to tend the grounds and patrol the area. So he
noticed when AUJ became a regular at the bunch Bowl,
and he clocked Auj's regular parking space, the one closest
to the trailhead.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
So I can.
Speaker 8 (14:18):
Remember seeing him sitting in the back of his truck
when you get done with a run in the mountains.
So when I'd walk out into the parking lot, I'd
see him sitting out there and ask him about his run.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Farley remembers that the day Auj disappeared, his white Ford
F one fifty truck was parked in that very same spot,
surrounded on all sides by wilderness.
Speaker 14 (14:42):
One thing that impresses us so much about this area
is that you have a desert landscape on one side,
you have mountains and forests on the other, and then
in between it's these really cool rock formations.
Speaker 8 (14:55):
Right, it's all uplifted from earthquake activity. Oh wow, punch
Bowl fault and that runs parallel with the mountains. And
then when you came up to hear you cross the
San Andrea's Fault, which of course the big one that
runs through California, several faults in the area. It took
all this sand that was laid down flat by streams
(15:17):
and tilted up into vertical relief.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
And it creates a bull shape.
Speaker 8 (15:22):
You can see a definite bowl shape coming around like this.
So that's where it got the punch bowl name.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
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 (15:47):
See the right where the shadow ends.
Speaker 8 (15:50):
There's that big rock kind of all by itself.
Speaker 14 (15:53):
If you look, it's like a forehead is facing us,
and there's a nose pointing street.
Speaker 11 (15:57):
It looks like George Washington.
Speaker 13 (15:58):
Yeah, it's a natural out rush.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
More cool.
Speaker 12 (16:02):
So there's all kinds of faces out here because it's like, oh,
our brains are programmed to see patterns.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
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.
(16:30):
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
it looks like, yeah, line will definitely better, definitely get
us lost in the wilderness. GOODT. Farley proves his outdoor
(16:51):
prowess by whipping out some real maps of the area
to help orient us to our surroundings.
Speaker 12 (16:57):
Okay, here's the Devil's Okay, and there's Burkharp tree al
right there, goes over toward Devil's Chairs, so that'd be
just to the east, goes to South Fork.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
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 8 (17:32):
So the high mountain behind the telephone poll over there, Yeah,
that's Baden Powell and that's where he would go sometimes.
How tall of the mountain, Jeez, that is one of
the higher ones. Let me think ten ten, I mean
in this range.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
And he would run from here to that mountain all
the way over there and then run up it.
Speaker 8 (17:53):
Yeah, he'd run over there, and then there're sitchbacks all
the way to the top of that mountain.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Auj was spotted again later in the day, when multiple
witnesses say they saw him jogging through a campground just
north of the mountain in the direction of the punch
Bowl parking lot. But when Farley left his post at
five PM, Aujay's truck was still parked in the lot,
and it stayed parked there as the evening bloomed over
(18:19):
the desert, and then close to midnight, Aujy's wife called
the sheriff's station to report him missing.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
As June eleventh, nineteen ninety eight years its end, Debbie
auj becomes inc preasingly 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 3 (19:12):
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 1 (19:23):
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 3 (19:31):
She was just upset. She was crying. She was obviously
very concerned.
Speaker 9 (19:38):
I just I said, okay, Debbie, we're sending people up there,
you know, keep you posted.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Patrol deputies high tail it to the punch bowl, where
they find Auja's truck, but no Auja. They think maybe
he got injured, slipped and fell for how to run
in with some wildlife. So Burton dispatches Search and Rescue
to the site and he calls in there coordinator Dave
Soer to discuss Auj's likely route.
Speaker 9 (20:04):
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.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Long distance running He's an ultra marathoner. He's like what.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
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 15 (20:39):
I gave him the best information I could give him.
You know, don't start your grid pattern so small.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
This is Randy Meggerdley. He was a patrolled deputy for
the Sheriff's Department and one of Auj's running buddies. He
reiterates to the command post that Auj was a beast.
Speaker 15 (20:56):
You're running goat trails is basically what I category the ass.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
What do you mean by that goat trails.
Speaker 15 (21:02):
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 it's crazy what kind of stuff that we were doing.
There was one that we did. It was hand over
foot trying to get up this mountain.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
And so part of the activity was figuring out how
to get to the end of it.
Speaker 15 (21:28):
Yeah, and one piece.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Hearing Meggerdy talk about ultra marathoners, it sounds like they
have no off switch. So maybe Auj just overdid it.
Speaker 15 (21:42):
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 1 (21:54):
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 8 (22:06):
I was nice to him. I said, do you know,
I know the area pretty well if you guys want.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Help, Ranger Jack Farley again, the guy.
Speaker 8 (22:12):
Goes NA, we're search and rescue. We pretty much know
what we're doing, you know. So I go okay, okay.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
But it doesn't take long for the pros realize they're
in over their heads.
Speaker 8 (22:25):
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 1 (22:30):
So Farley leads a few groups of deputies and bloodhounds
down the local trails.
Speaker 8 (22:36):
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 1 (22:52):
They heard that the dogs pick up a scent possibly
all Jay'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 8 (23:11):
So I took a group of deputies over there and
we went that really rugged wooded canyon.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
They didn't find anything, but searchers do spot some footprints
on the mountain where Auja told people he was going.
So Auja's captain, Mike Bauer, takes to the skies to
see where they lead.
Speaker 5 (23:30):
And that was the first time I ever stepped out
of a huge helicopter on the side of a mountain
with one skid touching. And then that helicopter flew off
while we examined the openings a Big Horn mine to
see whether or not it had been broken into.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Big Horn 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. By
the end of the day Sunday, the Sheriff's Department kicks
(24:10):
things into high gear. They call in the US Army
and Air Force along with the LSD heavy hitters. It's
a specialized squad called Emergency Services Detail or ESD.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
They do search and rescue, underwater search and recovery, and
they support the special weapons team with medical skills.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Dave Rathban was one of the ESD members sent out
to search.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
For Aj, and the adrenaline that you get from ESD
is different from any other adrenaline.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
ESD deputies are equipped to handle all types of emergency scenarios.
But it wasn't just the rocky ledges and wild animals
they had to worry about here. The area was full
of all kinds of criminal activity.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
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 1 (25:21):
Rathman and his team of searchers come to the punch
Bowl armed and ready for action because maybe Auj isn't
lost or injured or running for the hills. Maybe he's
the victim of foul play. The command post doesn't expand
on why they thought Auj may have been taken out
by meth related violence, but to Rathbun, this theory doesn't
(25:43):
sound too far fetched because the Anelo Valley is isolated
outlaws and on account of its size, difficult to police.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
There are a lot of people who just don't want
to be around other human beings out there, which may
makes them sometimes dangerous. There's people cooking meth. Ah. It
was a little bit like the Old West in a way.
I mean, this is a very unusual, strange place.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
And remember that abandoned mine searcher scoped out, Well, it
turns out they're everywhere and they're a prime location for
body dumping.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
One of the things ESD did was recover dead bodies
from mines.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
And it wasn't just the mines. Corpses turn up all
over these parts.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
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 1 (26:45):
It's a chilling image of the area's darker side. Auj
would jog from the Devil's Punch Bowl into the Angelus
National Forest, which has been called the most dangerous national
forest in America. Around the time of Auji's disappearance. It's
needed that two to three dozen corpses turned up in
the forest every year, and those were just the ones
(27:05):
that were found. So Rathman understands the danger he faces
but pushes on. In search of footprints, you.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
Have to look at the ground and look at bushes
that have been pushed in. We walked and walked, and
walked and walked, and walked and walked.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
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 4 (27:32):
If it was me that needed cover, he'd be there.
I kind of didn't even think about it. Someone you
could definitely depend on.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
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 4 (27:49):
He was laconic, didn't have a lot to say unless
you worked on him, and he was always kind of
severe serious.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Auj was hardly two dimensional, though he used his dead
pan personality to mess with people.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
He had this secret sense of humor, but it was
really hard to tell which card he was playing, the
funny card or the I'm John and I'm dead serious card.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
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 4 (28:32):
Pissed, and he added that Dave, I need to talk
to you.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Rathven's gotten pretty good at impersonating John Auj's baritone voice.
He says he sounded a lot like Lurch from the
Adams family.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
What you just did was a violation of California state law,
and if you do something like that again, I'll have
to write you up.
Speaker 11 (28:55):
John.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
We were chasing a suspect, and we are law enforcement
officers and so we get exemptions during those things that
may be true, but it was illegal. Is this John
being funny? You would not know, and he will never
let you know.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
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 4 (29:28):
It was Auj, and he never corrected us, and he's
not very bashful.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
We'll never know why he didn't tell people how to
pronounce his name, but it seems fitting for someone who
remains a mystery to so many. Auj was an enigma
to just about everyone around him, so when he disappeared,
he became an easy target for conspiracy theories. Stories began
to circulate that Aujay's alive and well, living in Alaska.
(29:55):
Others say Mexico. Some say he was recruited by a
mercenary group or join the CIA. These theories were fueled
by weird comments Aujy had made to friends like Dave Rathbun.
Speaker 4 (30:09):
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
(30:29):
with your with your declaration there. If you don't want
to be found, oh pretty sure, I wouldn't be able
to find you. So I agree.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
And of course that conversation takes on extra meaning a
searchers keep coming up empty handed.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
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?
Said that who gave that order? You shut the same down.
What are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Day six, the Sheriff's department folds the search after six
days and gives a statement to the press. Sergeant Soyer,
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.
(31:24):
Throw into that a few pieces of an entirely different puzzle,
and that is what we work with. We might never
get it right. End quote.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
You want to trust the department that they're doing the
right thing, But no one asked us if we should
shut it down. If I'm the search and rescue guy,
and my partners are search and rescue guys, and the
helicopter pilots have been on hundreds of searches, why are
we asking them what they think and their input.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Rathman 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 4 (32:12):
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 set it down. Why are you
shutting it down?
Speaker 2 (32:28):
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 4 (32:41):
Well, they say that they decided he committed suicide.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Internal LASD reports playing that Auj was distraught over his
failing marriage and took his own life in the punch bowl.
That gunshot the area resident heard that could have been
the sound of Auj just putting an end to it all.
But the Sheriff's Department makes that determination without a body.
They don't find any remains, blood, bullets, or a suicide note.
Speaker 5 (33:34):
Nothing.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
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 13 (33:50):
He was obviously down, he was obviously upset, but was
it enough to commit suicide?
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Sergeant Vin's burden is still on the fence. On the
one hand, Auja did appear torn up over his marital problems.
On the other he seemed to be coping.
Speaker 13 (34:06):
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 1 (34:17):
For fact checking purposes, we want to make clear the
punch bowl is not ugly.
Speaker 13 (34:22):
But go on, Vince, None of that made sense to me.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
With the suicide, Frady's running buddy, Randy Meggerdley, there's no
question playing simple.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
I think he killed himself.
Speaker 15 (34:34):
That's the only way I can explain.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Because he says Auj was acting strangely, even more strangely
than usual in the weeks before his disappearance.
Speaker 15 (34:44):
He says, you know, there's a bunch of caves and
stuff out here, you can pretty much disappear, I think
was the word that he used, and nobody would ever
find you.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Auj said similar things to Dave Rathman, but he didn't
a lot of stock in any of the statements because
he says Aujay is just a weird guy.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
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 1 (35:25):
Same Initially, Rathmin was open to the possibility of suicide,
but he's become increasingly skeptical over time because if Adja
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
(35:46):
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.
Auja did say some eerie things about this appearing. But
this disappearing act would be pretty hard to pull off.
I mean, how could he have buried himself and stay
(36:07):
buried for almost three decades. Rathmin asked the Sheriff's department
to explain that one o.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
They said, well, we think he might have sat on
the edge of one of those minds and blown himself
into the mind. Thinking, okay, we are really stretching now
for an explanation as to why we can't find him.
Speaker 5 (36:32):
I didn't accept it. Just common sense told me you
probably ought to see whether there's any evidence of self infliction.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Pissed off Old Copp. Mike Bauer is evangelical in his
belief that the suicide theory is bullshit, because he says
the Sheriff's Department didn't arrive at this conclusion, they led
with it, and that poisoned the investigation from the start.
Bower says that as early as day three, an LASD
(37:03):
official was pushing the suicide narrative during search team briefings.
To Bauer, this was equivalent to telling searchers to let up.
Speaker 5 (37:13):
I took that person outside and I said, what in
the hell did you say that for? How could you
possibly know that at this point? How could you possibly
discourage them to search for somebody that worked for you?
Speaker 2 (37:29):
The Sheriff's Department was even sharing this theory with the press.
Speaker 7 (37:32):
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 2 (37:39):
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 5 (37:48):
I kept contacting homicide and saying, something's wrong.
Speaker 4 (37:52):
I'm telling you there's a problem.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
But he says, the department ignored the case to such
an extent that he began to question their motives.
Speaker 5 (38:01):
Nobody was in charge of it, and nobody wanted any
of it once they saw how stinky.
Speaker 4 (38:07):
It was getting.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Randy Meggridley represents the other end of the spectrum, so
we ask him what he thinks about the possibility of
foul play.
Speaker 15 (38:20):
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 (38:28):
I've never heard the mushroom poop batafoor before.
Speaker 15 (38:31):
Yeah. Yeah, you feed you a little bit of poopy,
you grow a little bit.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
At first, the mushroom poop analogy went way over my head.
It sounded like a Southern expression. My mom just forgot
to teach me. But then it clicked. While I was
watching The Departed, the Martin Scorsese movie about corruption within
the Boston Police Department, my theory.
Speaker 10 (38:53):
Unfeeds is they're like mushrooms, feed them shit and keep
them in the dock.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
I think what Meggridley is saying is that, but 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 4 (39:14):
That file. You'd have to get special, special permission to
touch that file.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Dave Rathman, auj's former partner, says, the Sheriff's department is
unusually protective of the AUJ case file.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
And they don't even like to hear you talking about it. Well,
to me, that's what you would call a red flag.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
So Rathman asked his buddy, a retired detective working cold
cases for the Sheriff's apartment to review the AUJ case.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
Could you maybe grab that case file? And he went,
oh no, I said, what do you mean, No, No,
Why wouldn't you want to take a look at it?
He said, no, that's a hot potato. No one's allowed
to touch that. If I start poking around that case,
they'd let me go. So well, that's interesting why it's
a suicide, he said, I don't know. I just know
(40:12):
that that case can't be touched.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Those red flags are another reason Rathmin and others just
can't get behind the party line.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
As my father would say, God bless him. There's some
rotten in the woodpile and it stinks and I can
smell it, and that.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Brings us back to the poop mushroom. It might thrive
in darkness, but to me, that's not an ideal environment
for policing. I mean, the whole concept behind law enforcement
isn't watchful eyed deter crime, right, But who is watching
the police? There's very little oversight of law enforcement agencies,
(40:54):
and it's hard to hold them accountable since they control
the collection and release of information about internal problem.
Speaker 5 (41:00):
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 2 (41:20):
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 ALJ case, and we'd remain
in the dark if it weren't for Mike Bauer and
other deputies coming forward. Bauer retired in two thousand and
(41:43):
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 4 (41:55):
They lied to me.
Speaker 16 (41:55):
They lied to me, as a fucking captain of the
fucking sheriff Department with thirty three years on the 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 5 (42:08):
They don't want me involved in it.
Speaker 16 (42:11):
Oh imagine that's how fancy that is.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
We know that law enforcement has its problems, but they're
not usually laid out for us by dyed in the
wool cops, people who know this world from the inside
and can show us where the bodies are buried. Figuratively speaking,
we tell Bauer we want to do a deep dive
on the Aujy case, beginning with his investigation.
Speaker 5 (42:38):
You guys have stumbled into a cluster of shit.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
But he's not as encouraging as we expect him to be,
and for good reason.
Speaker 14 (42:48):
Do you have any advice for us while looking into
this disappearance.
Speaker 5 (42:54):
I wouldn't do it alone. In the event somebody did
decide that you were getting too close to something, you
will not be found killed. You will simply disappear.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
This season on Valley of Shadows.
Speaker 4 (43:15):
Early on, I let the suicide theory sit at fifty
to fifty. As I've learned more and more, I'm at
about nine five murder, five to ten percent suicide.
Speaker 11 (43:30):
They rumor around the drug scene was that a deputy
stumbled onto something he shouldn't have and he was taken
care of.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
I'm here, it's shit on the street minute, bugie.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
He didn't kid suicide, he was murdered.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
I'm here for more than one person.
Speaker 11 (43:46):
Then I started hearing some rumors that there was a gun.
Speaker 9 (43:50):
And yet there's no indication that gun was ever booked
into evidence.
Speaker 10 (43:55):
If you're at it or they thought you were gonna
rat it wasn't Hey don't do that ever, again, you're done.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
They got rid of you.
Speaker 10 (44:03):
So that's where the murders came in.
Speaker 11 (44:05):
He was describing with his hands and his arms and
his whole body where this cop was buried at.
Speaker 5 (44:11):
In other words, it's not safe not because of criminals,
it's not safe because of law enforcement. And there's nothing
worse than that.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Hey, dude, we're getting like pretty far out in the
middle of nowhere and no one knows.
Speaker 5 (44:22):
We're out here.
Speaker 4 (44:23):
You've got to be careful where you go and who
you talk to.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
If you have any information or tips related to the
disappearance of John auj please call two one three, two
six two nine eight eight nine for email. Shadows at
Pushkin Vallely of Shadows is reported, written and produced by
us Haley Fox and Betsy Shepherd. Our editor is Diane Hobson.
(45:10):
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 Gurwit and Our show art
(45:31):
was designed by Sean Carney and Betsy Sheppard. Special thanks
to Nick White for show art photography. Additional thanks to
Jeremy Tao. Valley of Shadows is a production of Pushkin Industries.
To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts from Type
(45:53):
two Fun, We're Haley and Betsy. See you next week.
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 Auja, who went missing in the Mojave Desert back
in nineteen ninety eight. Nearly thirty years later. The Sheriff's
department says Auj's disappearance is still a mystery, but whistleblowers
(00:23):
say the Sheriff's department is covering up what happened to
the deputy, that he was murdered in the desert where
mes labs, outlaw biker gangs, and dirty cops go unchecked.
The show's got it all, and I think you're gonna
dig it. Find Valley of Shadows wherever you listen to
your podcasts. Pushkin Plus subscribers convenge the entire season right now,
(00:47):
ad free sign up on the Valley of Shadows show
page on Apple or at pushkin dot fm, slash Plus.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
This series includes content that may not be suitable for
all listeners. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
So it's okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
I'll turn it down just a little bit, because sometimes
you get animated.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
I get pissed off, pissed off old cop.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
This pissed off old cop is Mike Bauer.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
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 1 (01:27):
Bowers 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 in the
(01:48):
summer of nineteen ninety eight. June eleventh started off like
a normal day in Los Angeles, June gloom and bad traffic.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
I got up early, Long Beach and headed up the
six zero five and into East LA. Our office in
East LA.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Bauer was doing paperwork when a call came into the
front desk.
Speaker 5 (02:10):
The receptionist answered, 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 Auj.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
John Aj was a thirty eight year old canine cop
and he was calling to inquire about an upcoming job assignment.
Speaker 5 (02:29):
I said, well, I've been trying to get hold of him,
and she says, oh, well, maybe he'll call back. He
never called back.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
John Aj was working for the unit Bower headed up
at the time, the Special Enforcement Bureau or SEB for short.
Speaker 5 (02:48):
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 1 (03:00):
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 5 (03:21):
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 1 (03:39):
Auj got his kicks by going on long runs through
California's backcountry. He'd go out deep into the wilderness to
conquer the only obstacle course that still challenged him, and
that's how Auj was spending his day off. On June eleventh,
nineteen ninety eight, he woke up, put on his running gear,
and drove to one of his favorite parks, the Devil's
(04:01):
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, just the
(04:25):
sounds of nature as he jogged along a maze of
switchbacks and up a nearly ten thousand foot mountain. By
early evening, he looped back towards the parking lot, but
as the sun began to set, the shadows of trees
and rocks grew until night engulfed the park.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
That evening, I got a phone call saying that Wog
is missing, that he didn't come back to his vehicle,
and that they were going to start some more extensive
searching for him.
Speaker 6 (05:06):
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 Angelos 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 (05:25):
It's a pretty unique situation. The Sheriff's department is called
in to look for a missing hiker who's one of
their own. So the search and rescue team sent out
to look for AJ consists of his friends and colleagues.
Speaker 7 (05:39):
We took our teams out and deployed and two men
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 1 (05:49):
But searchers find no trace of AJ. It was as
if he just vanished into thin air. And now, nearly
thirty years later, the deputy is still missing.
Speaker 5 (06:06):
I guess I'll open a box.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
All that remains from Aujy's life is packed into five
cardboard boxes. The items are wrapped in plastic, and Bower
wears gloves as he combs through them.
Speaker 5 (06:21):
This is John's work jacket, and it's an SEB jacket
with his name embroidered on it, and Bossco his dog.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Now Bower's preserving Auja's belongings for future developments in the case.
Speaker 5 (06:35):
Okay, so here's his running shoes with his name on
the back.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Those should have some DNA in him.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
The artifacts also tell us who Aujay 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 AJ's department issued canine. And
(07:02):
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 guys stuff. Auja moved at
a fast clip, trying to balance the competing demands of
home and work, but his life came to an abrupt
(07:24):
and puzzling end.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
A death certificate says cause a death unknown manner, a
death unknown, No.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Body the deputy's body has never been found, which raises
a lot of questions for Mike Bauer and a survivalist
getting lost in the woods another big question mark. Over time,
the mystery of it all has turned into something else,
deep and unsettling, suspicion about the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 5 (07:58):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Answer, And that's my cue. When Mike Bauer first told
me about Auja, I thought an unsolved disappearance involving a cop,
that's unusual. But when he started talking about the Sheriff's Department,
his department, that's when I locked in. Because you'd expect
the LA County Sheriff's Department to turn over every stone
(08:33):
to find their guy. So the claim that the LASD
may have an interest in not solving the case, now
that's a story. So I called up my friend 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 2 (08:54):
Hey, that's hey, do.
Speaker 8 (08:57):
I'm good.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I'm ready.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Yeah, I do this throughout.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Time, A little road true adventure.
Speaker 9 (09:04):
All right, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
We've teamed up on stories before and decided to get
the band back together. The finanswer is about this missing
deputy and to take on the largest sheriff's department in
the country.
Speaker 10 (09:18):
There's a code of silence in law enforcement. You break
that code of silence, you're done.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Hey, if don't fucking kill a Coppon berry, what they're
gonna do to me?
Speaker 5 (09:26):
It's an obstruction of justice of a very large scale.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
I'm Betsy Shepherd, I'm Haley Fox, and this is Valley
of Shadows, a show about crime and corruption in California's
high Desert. Episode one, the Devil's Punch Bowl. Betsy and
(09:58):
I are making the track from dow Town, Los Angeles
to the Antelope 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 11 (10:15):
See, you actually have to take we gotta go north.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, we're gonna go north, but this is La Dude.
We gotta go south one time south five north fourteen
and then I think there's a one thirty eighth throat
in there, but nothing's a street.
Speaker 11 (10:28):
Jaw spoken like a true Agilino.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
I was born and raised in La County, Go Dodgers,
but this part of it feels worlds away. The Antelope Valley,
or the AV as it's sometimes called, is a three
thousand square mile stretch of the Mojave, but this part
of the high Desert doesn't have the same allure and
vibingess as places like Joshua Tree. Instead, the AVY is
(10:55):
mostly empty space, dotted with defence plants, bedroom communities, and
tumbleweed towns.
Speaker 11 (11:02):
So a lot of just like trailers kind of just
parked out in the desert. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Power lines and scrub rush. Our story takes place in
and around Pear 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 11 (11:29):
I had anxiety coming to places like this because it
reminds me of like a town that I grew up,
and there's just just like I feel, the oppressive way
to boredom.
Speaker 12 (11:37):
Oh really.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
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. Life seems like a thing in
(12:02):
the past.
Speaker 11 (12:04):
We got.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
An abandoned motel, what's this, Oh like an abandoned old restaurant.
Speaker 11 (12:13):
And rec hall, and people getting gas to presumably be
all their way.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
I mean, I think the three gas stations in a
row tell the story.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
But the closer we get to the Devil's punch Bowl
where auj was last spotted, and other worldly landscape appears,
full of spiky Joshua trees and sandstone columns.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
It's actually really beautiful. Acreage is not expected to l
are you looking at these huge rocks jutting out of
the ground and like they're making all those crazy shadows?
For seeing anything like them, I haven't either.
Speaker 11 (12:54):
I feel like I've been an old Western movie, you know,
like we're He's got this like wide epic lance scape.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Shots, total endless horizons, totally endless horizons.
Speaker 11 (13:03):
I can see why John A J. Liked to come
out here. Now it's pretty pretty big.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Okay, we are pulling into the Devil's punch Bowl County
Park parking lot.
Speaker 12 (13:20):
Here we are.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
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 8 (13:38):
Hi are you?
Speaker 11 (13:40):
But are you Jack Farley?
Speaker 5 (13:41):
By chance?
Speaker 11 (13:41):
I am.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
This is my reporting partner Haley.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
To thank you for meeting us out here. Yes, Jack
Farley's retired now, but for thirty five years he was
assigned to work the punch Bowl.
Speaker 11 (13:56):
What a cool job.
Speaker 13 (13:59):
Great for me?
Speaker 8 (14:00):
Yeah, it was awesome, good job.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
It was Farley's job to keep an eye on things,
to tend the grounds and patrol the area. So he
noticed when AUJ became a regular at the bunch Bowl,
and he clocked Auj's regular parking space, the one closest
to the trailhead.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
So I can.
Speaker 8 (14:18):
Remember seeing him sitting in the back of his truck
when you get done with a run in the mountains.
So when I'd walk out into the parking lot, I'd
see him sitting out there and ask him about his run.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Farley remembers that the day Auj disappeared, his white Ford
F one fifty truck was parked in that very same spot,
surrounded on all sides by wilderness.
Speaker 14 (14:42):
One thing that impresses us so much about this area
is that you have a desert landscape on one side,
you have mountains and forests on the other, and then
in between it's these really cool rock formations.
Speaker 8 (14:55):
Right, it's all uplifted from earthquake activity. Oh wow, punch
Bowl fault and that runs parallel with the mountains. And
then when you came up to hear you cross the
San Andrea's Fault, which of course the big one that
runs through California, several faults in the area. It took
all this sand that was laid down flat by streams
(15:17):
and tilted up into vertical relief.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
And it creates a bull shape.
Speaker 8 (15:22):
You can see a definite bowl shape coming around like this.
So that's where it got the punch bowl name.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
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 (15:47):
See the right where the shadow ends.
Speaker 8 (15:50):
There's that big rock kind of all by itself.
Speaker 14 (15:53):
If you look, it's like a forehead is facing us,
and there's a nose pointing street.
Speaker 11 (15:57):
It looks like George Washington.
Speaker 13 (15:58):
Yeah, it's a natural out rush.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
More cool.
Speaker 12 (16:02):
So there's all kinds of faces out here because it's like, oh,
our brains are programmed to see patterns.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
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.
(16:30):
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
it looks like, yeah, line will definitely better, definitely get
us lost in the wilderness. GOODT. Farley proves his outdoor
(16:51):
prowess by whipping out some real maps of the area
to help orient us to our surroundings.
Speaker 12 (16:57):
Okay, here's the Devil's Okay, and there's Burkharp tree al
right there, goes over toward Devil's Chairs, so that'd be
just to the east, goes to South Fork.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
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 8 (17:32):
So the high mountain behind the telephone poll over there, Yeah,
that's Baden Powell and that's where he would go sometimes.
How tall of the mountain, Jeez, that is one of
the higher ones. Let me think ten ten, I mean
in this range.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
And he would run from here to that mountain all
the way over there and then run up it.
Speaker 8 (17:53):
Yeah, he'd run over there, and then there're sitchbacks all
the way to the top of that mountain.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Auj was spotted again later in the day, when multiple
witnesses say they saw him jogging through a campground just
north of the mountain in the direction of the punch
Bowl parking lot. But when Farley left his post at
five PM, Aujay's truck was still parked in the lot,
and it stayed parked there as the evening bloomed over
(18:19):
the desert, and then close to midnight, Aujy's wife called
the sheriff's station to report him missing.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
As June eleventh, nineteen ninety eight years its end, Debbie
auj becomes inc preasingly 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 3 (19:12):
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 1 (19:23):
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 3 (19:31):
She was just upset. She was crying. She was obviously
very concerned.
Speaker 9 (19:38):
I just I said, okay, Debbie, we're sending people up there,
you know, keep you posted.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Patrol deputies high tail it to the punch bowl, where
they find Auja's truck, but no Auja. They think maybe
he got injured, slipped and fell for how to run
in with some wildlife. So Burton dispatches Search and Rescue
to the site and he calls in there coordinator Dave
Soer to discuss Auj's likely route.
Speaker 9 (20:04):
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.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Long distance running He's an ultra marathoner. He's like what.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
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 15 (20:39):
I gave him the best information I could give him.
You know, don't start your grid pattern so small.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
This is Randy Meggerdley. He was a patrolled deputy for
the Sheriff's Department and one of Auj's running buddies. He
reiterates to the command post that Auj was a beast.
Speaker 15 (20:56):
You're running goat trails is basically what I category the ass.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
What do you mean by that goat trails.
Speaker 15 (21:02):
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 it's crazy what kind of stuff that we were doing.
There was one that we did. It was hand over
foot trying to get up this mountain.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
And so part of the activity was figuring out how
to get to the end of it.
Speaker 15 (21:28):
Yeah, and one piece.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Hearing Meggerdy talk about ultra marathoners, it sounds like they
have no off switch. So maybe Auj just overdid it.
Speaker 15 (21:42):
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 1 (21:54):
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 8 (22:06):
I was nice to him. I said, do you know,
I know the area pretty well if you guys want.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Help, Ranger Jack Farley again, the guy.
Speaker 8 (22:12):
Goes NA, we're search and rescue. We pretty much know
what we're doing, you know. So I go okay, okay.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
But it doesn't take long for the pros realize they're
in over their heads.
Speaker 8 (22:25):
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 1 (22:30):
So Farley leads a few groups of deputies and bloodhounds
down the local trails.
Speaker 8 (22:36):
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 1 (22:52):
They heard that the dogs pick up a scent possibly
all Jay'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 8 (23:11):
So I took a group of deputies over there and
we went that really rugged wooded canyon.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
They didn't find anything, but searchers do spot some footprints
on the mountain where Auja told people he was going.
So Auja's captain, Mike Bauer, takes to the skies to
see where they lead.
Speaker 5 (23:30):
And that was the first time I ever stepped out
of a huge helicopter on the side of a mountain
with one skid touching. And then that helicopter flew off
while we examined the openings a Big Horn mine to
see whether or not it had been broken into.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Big Horn 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. By
the end of the day Sunday, the Sheriff's Department kicks
(24:10):
things into high gear. They call in the US Army
and Air Force along with the LSD heavy hitters. It's
a specialized squad called Emergency Services Detail or ESD.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
They do search and rescue, underwater search and recovery, and
they support the special weapons team with medical skills.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Dave Rathban was one of the ESD members sent out
to search.
Speaker 4 (24:38):
For Aj, and the adrenaline that you get from ESD
is different from any other adrenaline.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
ESD deputies are equipped to handle all types of emergency scenarios.
But it wasn't just the rocky ledges and wild animals
they had to worry about here. The area was full
of all kinds of criminal activity.
Speaker 4 (25:01):
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 1 (25:21):
Rathman and his team of searchers come to the punch
Bowl armed and ready for action because maybe Auj isn't
lost or injured or running for the hills. Maybe he's
the victim of foul play. The command post doesn't expand
on why they thought Auj may have been taken out
by meth related violence, but to Rathbun, this theory doesn't
(25:43):
sound too far fetched because the Anelo Valley is isolated
outlaws and on account of its size, difficult to police.
Speaker 4 (25:53):
There are a lot of people who just don't want
to be around other human beings out there, which may
makes them sometimes dangerous. There's people cooking meth. Ah. It
was a little bit like the Old West in a way.
I mean, this is a very unusual, strange place.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
And remember that abandoned mine searcher scoped out, Well, it
turns out they're everywhere and they're a prime location for
body dumping.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
One of the things ESD did was recover dead bodies
from mines.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
And it wasn't just the mines. Corpses turn up all
over these parts.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
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 1 (26:45):
It's a chilling image of the area's darker side. Auj
would jog from the Devil's Punch Bowl into the Angelus
National Forest, which has been called the most dangerous national
forest in America. Around the time of Auji's disappearance. It's
needed that two to three dozen corpses turned up in
the forest every year, and those were just the ones
(27:05):
that were found. So Rathman understands the danger he faces
but pushes on. In search of footprints, you.
Speaker 4 (27:14):
Have to look at the ground and look at bushes
that have been pushed in. We walked and walked, and
walked and walked, and walked and walked.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
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 4 (27:32):
If it was me that needed cover, he'd be there.
I kind of didn't even think about it. Someone you
could definitely depend on.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
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 4 (27:49):
He was laconic, didn't have a lot to say unless
you worked on him, and he was always kind of
severe serious.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Auj was hardly two dimensional, though he used his dead
pan personality to mess with people.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
He had this secret sense of humor, but it was
really hard to tell which card he was playing, the
funny card or the I'm John and I'm dead serious card.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
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 4 (28:32):
Pissed, and he added that Dave, I need to talk
to you.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Rathven's gotten pretty good at impersonating John Auj's baritone voice.
He says he sounded a lot like Lurch from the
Adams family.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
What you just did was a violation of California state law,
and if you do something like that again, I'll have
to write you up.
Speaker 11 (28:55):
John.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
We were chasing a suspect, and we are law enforcement
officers and so we get exemptions during those things that
may be true, but it was illegal. Is this John
being funny? You would not know, and he will never
let you know.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
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 4 (29:28):
It was Auj, and he never corrected us, and he's
not very bashful.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
We'll never know why he didn't tell people how to
pronounce his name, but it seems fitting for someone who
remains a mystery to so many. Auj was an enigma
to just about everyone around him, so when he disappeared,
he became an easy target for conspiracy theories. Stories began
to circulate that Aujay's alive and well, living in Alaska.
(29:55):
Others say Mexico. Some say he was recruited by a
mercenary group or join the CIA. These theories were fueled
by weird comments Aujy had made to friends like Dave Rathbun.
Speaker 4 (30:09):
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
(30:29):
with your with your declaration there. If you don't want
to be found, oh pretty sure, I wouldn't be able
to find you. So I agree.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
And of course that conversation takes on extra meaning a
searchers keep coming up empty handed.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
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?
Said that who gave that order? You shut the same down.
What are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Day six, the Sheriff's department folds the search after six
days and gives a statement to the press. Sergeant Soyer,
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.
(31:24):
Throw into that a few pieces of an entirely different puzzle,
and that is what we work with. We might never
get it right. End quote.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
You want to trust the department that they're doing the
right thing, But no one asked us if we should
shut it down. If I'm the search and rescue guy,
and my partners are search and rescue guys, and the
helicopter pilots have been on hundreds of searches, why are
we asking them what they think and their input.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Rathman 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 4 (32:12):
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 set it down. Why are you
shutting it down?
Speaker 2 (32:28):
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 4 (32:41):
Well, they say that they decided he committed suicide.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Internal LASD reports playing that Auj was distraught over his
failing marriage and took his own life in the punch bowl.
That gunshot the area resident heard that could have been
the sound of Auj just putting an end to it all.
But the Sheriff's Department makes that determination without a body.
They don't find any remains, blood, bullets, or a suicide note.
Speaker 5 (33:34):
Nothing.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
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 13 (33:50):
He was obviously down, he was obviously upset, but was
it enough to commit suicide?
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Sergeant Vin's burden is still on the fence. On the
one hand, Auja did appear torn up over his marital problems.
On the other he seemed to be coping.
Speaker 13 (34:06):
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 1 (34:17):
For fact checking purposes, we want to make clear the
punch bowl is not ugly.
Speaker 13 (34:22):
But go on, Vince, None of that made sense to me.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
With the suicide, Frady's running buddy, Randy Meggerdley, there's no
question playing simple.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
I think he killed himself.
Speaker 15 (34:34):
That's the only way I can explain.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Because he says Auj was acting strangely, even more strangely
than usual in the weeks before his disappearance.
Speaker 15 (34:44):
He says, you know, there's a bunch of caves and
stuff out here, you can pretty much disappear, I think
was the word that he used, and nobody would ever
find you.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Auj said similar things to Dave Rathman, but he didn't
a lot of stock in any of the statements because
he says Aujay is just a weird guy.
Speaker 4 (35:06):
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 1 (35:25):
Same Initially, Rathmin was open to the possibility of suicide,
but he's become increasingly skeptical over time because if Adja
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
(35:46):
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.
Auja did say some eerie things about this appearing. But
this disappearing act would be pretty hard to pull off.
I mean, how could he have buried himself and stay
(36:07):
buried for almost three decades. Rathmin asked the Sheriff's department
to explain that one o.
Speaker 4 (36:15):
They said, well, we think he might have sat on
the edge of one of those minds and blown himself
into the mind. Thinking, okay, we are really stretching now
for an explanation as to why we can't find him.
Speaker 5 (36:32):
I didn't accept it. Just common sense told me you
probably ought to see whether there's any evidence of self infliction.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
Pissed off Old Copp. Mike Bauer is evangelical in his
belief that the suicide theory is bullshit, because he says
the Sheriff's Department didn't arrive at this conclusion, they led
with it, and that poisoned the investigation from the start.
Bower says that as early as day three, an LASD
(37:03):
official was pushing the suicide narrative during search team briefings.
To Bauer, this was equivalent to telling searchers to let up.
Speaker 5 (37:13):
I took that person outside and I said, what in
the hell did you say that for? How could you
possibly know that at this point? How could you possibly
discourage them to search for somebody that worked for you?
Speaker 2 (37:29):
The Sheriff's Department was even sharing this theory with the press.
Speaker 7 (37:32):
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 2 (37:39):
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 5 (37:48):
I kept contacting homicide and saying, something's wrong.
Speaker 4 (37:52):
I'm telling you there's a problem.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
But he says, the department ignored the case to such
an extent that he began to question their motives.
Speaker 5 (38:01):
Nobody was in charge of it, and nobody wanted any
of it once they saw how stinky.
Speaker 4 (38:07):
It was getting.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Randy Meggridley represents the other end of the spectrum, so
we ask him what he thinks about the possibility of
foul play.
Speaker 15 (38:20):
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 (38:28):
I've never heard the mushroom poop batafoor before.
Speaker 15 (38:31):
Yeah. Yeah, you feed you a little bit of poopy,
you grow a little bit.
Speaker 1 (38:37):
At first, the mushroom poop analogy went way over my head.
It sounded like a Southern expression. My mom just forgot
to teach me. But then it clicked. While I was
watching The Departed, the Martin Scorsese movie about corruption within
the Boston Police Department, my theory.
Speaker 10 (38:53):
Unfeeds is they're like mushrooms, feed them shit and keep
them in the dock.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
I think what Meggridley is saying is that, but 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 4 (39:14):
That file. You'd have to get special, special permission to
touch that file.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Dave Rathman, auj's former partner, says, the Sheriff's department is
unusually protective of the AUJ case file.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
And they don't even like to hear you talking about it. Well,
to me, that's what you would call a red flag.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
So Rathman asked his buddy, a retired detective working cold
cases for the Sheriff's apartment to review the AUJ case.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
Could you maybe grab that case file? And he went,
oh no, I said, what do you mean, No, No,
Why wouldn't you want to take a look at it?
He said, no, that's a hot potato. No one's allowed
to touch that. If I start poking around that case,
they'd let me go. So well, that's interesting why it's
a suicide, he said, I don't know. I just know
(40:12):
that that case can't be touched.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Those red flags are another reason Rathmin and others just
can't get behind the party line.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
As my father would say, God bless him. There's some
rotten in the woodpile and it stinks and I can
smell it, and that.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Brings us back to the poop mushroom. It might thrive
in darkness, but to me, that's not an ideal environment
for policing. I mean, the whole concept behind law enforcement
isn't watchful eyed deter crime, right, But who is watching
the police? There's very little oversight of law enforcement agencies,
(40:54):
and it's hard to hold them accountable since they control
the collection and release of information about internal problem.
Speaker 5 (41:00):
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 2 (41:20):
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 ALJ case, and we'd remain
in the dark if it weren't for Mike Bauer and
other deputies coming forward. Bauer retired in two thousand and
(41:43):
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 4 (41:55):
They lied to me.
Speaker 16 (41:55):
They lied to me, as a fucking captain of the
fucking sheriff Department with thirty three years on the 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 5 (42:08):
They don't want me involved in it.
Speaker 16 (42:11):
Oh imagine that's how fancy that is.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
We know that law enforcement has its problems, but they're
not usually laid out for us by dyed in the
wool cops, people who know this world from the inside
and can show us where the bodies are buried. Figuratively speaking,
we tell Bauer we want to do a deep dive
on the Aujy case, beginning with his investigation.
Speaker 5 (42:38):
You guys have stumbled into a cluster of shit.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
But he's not as encouraging as we expect him to be,
and for good reason.
Speaker 14 (42:48):
Do you have any advice for us while looking into
this disappearance.
Speaker 5 (42:54):
I wouldn't do it alone. In the event somebody did
decide that you were getting too close to something, you
will not be found killed. You will simply disappear.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
This season on Valley of Shadows.
Speaker 4 (43:15):
Early on, I let the suicide theory sit at fifty
to fifty. As I've learned more and more, I'm at
about nine five murder, five to ten percent suicide.
Speaker 11 (43:30):
They rumor around the drug scene was that a deputy
stumbled onto something he shouldn't have and he was taken
care of.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
I'm here, it's shit on the street minute, bugie.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
He didn't kid suicide, he was murdered.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
I'm here for more than one person.
Speaker 11 (43:46):
Then I started hearing some rumors that there was a gun.
Speaker 9 (43:50):
And yet there's no indication that gun was ever booked
into evidence.
Speaker 10 (43:55):
If you're at it or they thought you were gonna
rat it wasn't Hey don't do that ever, again, you're done.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
They got rid of you.
Speaker 10 (44:03):
So that's where the murders came in.
Speaker 11 (44:05):
He was describing with his hands and his arms and
his whole body where this cop was buried at.
Speaker 5 (44:11):
In other words, it's not safe not because of criminals,
it's not safe because of law enforcement. And there's nothing
worse than that.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Hey, dude, we're getting like pretty far out in the
middle of nowhere and no one knows.
Speaker 5 (44:22):
We're out here.
Speaker 4 (44:23):
You've got to be careful where you go and who
you talk to.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
If you have any information or tips related to the
disappearance of John auj please call two one three, two
six two nine eight eight nine for email. Shadows at
Pushkin Vallely of Shadows is reported, written and produced by
us Haley Fox and Betsy Shepherd. Our editor is Diane Hobson.
(45:10):
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 Gurwit and Our show art
(45:31):
was designed by Sean Carney and Betsy Sheppard. Special thanks
to Nick White for show art photography. Additional thanks to
Jeremy Tao. Valley of Shadows is a production of Pushkin Industries.
To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts from Type
(45:53):
two Fun, We're Haley and Betsy. See you next week.
Host
Jake Halpern
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