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