Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hey, it's Betsy Shepherd dropping into your feed to bring
Speaker 2: you another episode from my new podcast, Valley of Shadows.
Speaker 2: If you missed episode one, go check that out first.
Speaker 2: It sets the scene for the mysterious disappearance of Los
Speaker 2: Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy John Auja and explains why whistleblowers
Speaker 2: think the Sheriff's department is covering up what really happened
Speaker 2: to the deputy. Then come back to this episode to
Speaker 2: hear why the police's official story doesn't quite add up
Speaker 2: all right, Enjoy the episode. This series includes content that
Speaker 2: may not be suitable for all listeners. Listener and discretion
Speaker 2: is advised. Previously on Valley of Shadows.
Speaker 3: It's an all out manhunt for John Aujay, the thirty
Speaker 3: eight year old When hiking Thursday in a rugged section
Speaker 3: of the Angels National Forest known as Devil Punch Bowls.
Speaker 4: Park, he says, you know, there's a bunch of caves
Speaker 4: and stuff out here.
Speaker 5: You can pretty much disappear and nobody would ever find you.
Speaker 6: I participated in that search until my feet were bloody.
Speaker 6: But day six they said, well shut it down. Why
Speaker 6: are you shutting it down? Well, they say that they
Speaker 6: decided he committed suicide.
Speaker 7: I kept contacting homicide and saying something's wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you there's a problem.
Speaker 6: There's something rotten in the woodpile, and it stinks and
Speaker 6: I can smell it.
Speaker 8: Deputy John Aujay disappeared while jogging in the Devil's Punch
Speaker 8: Bowl on June eleventh, nineteen ninety eight. A couple weeks later,
Speaker 8: something tragic would also happen to his department issued canine, Bosco,
Speaker 8: and there are more than a few parallels between what
Speaker 8: happened with the two. Bosco was a Belgian Malinwah, which
Speaker 8: looks like a leaner version of a German shepherd. Auj
Speaker 8: got him as a puppy, trained him to do police work,
Speaker 8: and brought the dog home to live with him, his wife,
Speaker 8: Deb and their daughter Chloe. I've had my dog, Stringer
Speaker 8: Bell for over a decade. Dringer Bell, Dringer Bear.
Speaker 9: You gonna run around.
Speaker 8: He's a protector and eighty five pounds of emotional support.
Speaker 8: He's gonna run on the grass.
Speaker 1: You're gonna eat some grass.
Speaker 8: My home life revolves around my dog, just as the
Speaker 8: Aujays did around Bosco. We can tell because the dog's
Speaker 8: front and center, and dozens of family photos. Those pictures
Speaker 8: now belong to Aujay's captain, Mike Bauer, and he shares
Speaker 8: them with us. Oh my gosh, we get this picture
Speaker 8: of Chloe and the dog.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can tell that they were raised together.
Speaker 8: She's like squeezing the dog's neck, like their heads are
Speaker 8: pushed together, like you lived like your best bud. Chloe
Speaker 8: appears to be three or four in the photo. Her
Speaker 8: arms are barely able to reach around Bosco's neck, so
Speaker 8: she leans in to make it happen, smiling from ear
Speaker 8: to ear. Bosco looks annoyed like an older sibling would,
Speaker 8: which is essentially what he was. And there was another
Speaker 8: important Bosco memento. Bower came across it while rifling through
Speaker 8: Aujay's patrol vehicle just days after he was reported missing.
Speaker 7: I found his tape recorder in the visor with tape
Speaker 7: in a little tape recorder like I have.
Speaker 8: Bower points to a micro cassette player, something he uses
Speaker 8: for audio interviews and personal memos.
Speaker 1: And so I brought it in the office. I played it,
Speaker 1: and it's charming as hell.
Speaker 8: The recording was a snapshot of John and Bosco's relationship.
Speaker 8: Bower doesn't have it anymore, but he recaps it for us,
Speaker 8: and it's easy for me to imagine.
Speaker 7: Let's goat, he was playing fetch somewhere in like a
Speaker 7: high school field or somewhere out there in anlet valley.
Speaker 1: He's throwing the ball.
Speaker 7: To Bosco and he's going, hey, Bosco, and Bosco's barking,
Speaker 7: and they're doing a training exercise.
Speaker 1: Good job, you try.
Speaker 8: The connection canine cops have to their dogs is something
Speaker 8: special because they're together all the time in the trenches,
Speaker 8: working during the day and unwinding together at night.
Speaker 7: When you talk about John's relationship with his dog, you
Speaker 7: have to understand he's a one man unit and that's
Speaker 7: his partner, and it's a bond, and it's a big
Speaker 7: deal because that dog saves that officer's life. The officers
Speaker 7: in charge of the dog.
Speaker 1: Like a child.
Speaker 8: Canine officers become so bonded to their dogs that when
Speaker 8: one of these animals passes away, the Sheriff's department gives
Speaker 8: a funeral like it would a uniformed officer. An American
Speaker 8: flag is draped over the dog's casket, a military band
Speaker 8: plays taps, mourners give eulogies and riflemen send the dog
Speaker 8: off with a twenty one gun salute. After Auj vanished,
Speaker 8: Bauer hears that someone from the department retrieved Bosco from
Speaker 8: the Auj home. Bower's confused because he was the person
Speaker 8: overseeing the canine unit, so if someone was to give
Speaker 8: the order to bring in Bosco, it should have been him.
Speaker 1: And I started searching for the dog. Where's the dog?
Speaker 7: I was told that dog died at the kennel during
Speaker 7: a vet exam, and most likely the dog had some
Speaker 7: sort of heart problem.
Speaker 8: The LA Sheriff's Department tells Bauer and the press that
Speaker 8: Bosco was taken to a police kennel where he died
Speaker 8: of natural cause, That the dog stopped eating after Aujay disappeared, and.
Speaker 7: The dog may have died of a broken heart because
Speaker 7: its master was gone.
Speaker 1: That's a kind of sappy crap, I was told at
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 8: Years later, Bauer hears a different account from a friend
Speaker 8: of Aujay's.
Speaker 1: She said, it's a shame that dog had to be destroyed.
Speaker 7: I said, wait a minute, Bosco died in a vet
Speaker 7: exam from some sort of heart attack from missing his master.
Speaker 8: So Bauer makes some phone calls and eventually reaches a
Speaker 8: deputy who were not going to name, and this deputy
Speaker 8: claims that he and a colleague killed Bosco. Bower met
Speaker 8: him at a diner and recorded their conversation.
Speaker 10: Go he's gonna bite.
Speaker 11: Always keep going because I got to tell.
Speaker 2: Him before he does.
Speaker 7: He says, I shot that dog with my twenty five.
Speaker 7: I said in its kennel. He says, yeah, I said
Speaker 7: you killed the dog. He says yeah.
Speaker 9: Pull filling a humpster twice sents.
Speaker 8: The deputy says it cost them twenty cents the price
Speaker 8: of a bullet to take out Bosco. He says they
Speaker 8: did it because the dog was dangerous without John Auja
Speaker 8: there to control it. Bosco should have been reassigned to
Speaker 8: another deputy, or if the dog was a liability, it
Speaker 8: should have been properly euthanized.
Speaker 7: You would expect a police organization that had ceremonies to
Speaker 7: honor their dogs to give a shit about that issue.
Speaker 8: Instead of getting a police burial, Bosco was tossed in
Speaker 8: a dumpster behind the kennel where he was shot. Bowers
Speaker 8: pissed and he confronts the higher ups at the LASD.
Speaker 7: I see you guys, what happened to Bosco? Mike, I
Speaker 7: don't know, vote, but you will just stop this. We
Speaker 7: all agreed that it was a suicide and you should
Speaker 7: just let it go.
Speaker 1: No, I'm not gonna let it go.
Speaker 8: The department says, it makes no difference what happened in Moscow.
Speaker 8: Baj died suicide, so case clothes. But if the LASD
Speaker 8: would lie about Bosco, what else might they be lying about.
Speaker 8: I'm Haley Fox.
Speaker 2: I'm Betty Shephard, and this is Valley of Shadows, Episode two,
Speaker 2: An Unreasonable Act the Devil's Punch Bowl on June eleventh,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight. It's a scene we're gonna keep returning
Speaker 2: to because the story of what happened to John Ajay
Speaker 2: is like the sedimentary rock formations in the park. It
Speaker 2: builds up over time and change of shape as new
Speaker 2: layers are added. One of those layers comes from the
Speaker 2: last known person to talk to auj before his disappearance.
Speaker 2: School teacher Dave Evanson, took his fifth grade class on
Speaker 2: a field trip to the Devil's Punch Bowl.
Speaker 1: We stop tables, the picnic tables.
Speaker 2: Dave Evanson has Parkinson's disease, which causes him to slur
Speaker 2: his speech, so his wife Don is helping him communicate
Speaker 2: with us. At this point, she knows the story pretty
Speaker 2: well because her husband has told it many times over
Speaker 2: the years, and he insists on telling it to us.
Speaker 2: Evanson's class was exiting the trail to go eat lunch
Speaker 2: when they ran into Aujenny rail.
Speaker 12: And he was just starting up the trail and that
Speaker 12: the kids saw him and started firing questions because they
Speaker 12: recognized him from Family Night.
Speaker 2: Every year, John Auj volunteered at Family Night, a community
Speaker 2: event held at a local elementary school where Dave and
Speaker 2: Don Evanson both had worked. The roster of entertainers included
Speaker 2: audien in Bosco.
Speaker 8: And Aja became one of the stars of the show
Speaker 8: because he would bring Bosco and do demonstrations on what
Speaker 8: the dog could do.
Speaker 2: The event took place two days before the class went
Speaker 2: to the punch Bowl, so when the students see Auj
Speaker 2: in the park, they crowd around him like he's a celebrity,
Speaker 2: or really the owner of a celebrity. Do you remember
Speaker 2: any of the questions that they asked him?
Speaker 1: Where's Boscore?
Speaker 2: Where's Bosco? The kids ask? Auj says he had to
Speaker 2: leave the dog at home because he's here to train
Speaker 2: for an ultra marathon. Auj took his time with the
Speaker 2: students and even turned the conversation into a teachable moment,
Speaker 2: telling them about the importance of wilderness safety. To me,
Speaker 2: that does not sound like someone who's going out to
Speaker 2: the woods to take his own life. But that's what
Speaker 2: the Sheriff's Department says Auja did after he finished talking
Speaker 2: to these fifth graders. Evanson will never be convinced of that.
Speaker 1: He's happy.
Speaker 8: He was.
Speaker 1: Full of life, happy, having fun talking to the kids.
Speaker 2: So where is the Sheriff's Department drawing their suicide conclusion from.
Speaker 2: Is there some other evidence we don't know about? Well,
Speaker 2: if there is, the LASD sure isn't sharing it with us.
Speaker 2: They denied our public records request, saying the requested records
Speaker 2: are part of an ongoing and active criminal investigation and
Speaker 2: are therefore exempt from disclosure an ongoing and active criminal investigation.
Speaker 2: This response does not make a lot of sense to me,
Speaker 2: because Auja disappeared about thirty years ago. The state of
Speaker 2: California issued a death certificate for him all the way.
Speaker 8: Back in two thousand and three.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, the department has stuck by a suicide ruling, and
Speaker 2: they've openly and actively discouraged retired Captain Mike Bauer's investigation.
Speaker 2: Lucky for us, Bauer hasn't let up. He spent decades
Speaker 2: looking into the aj case. His office is filled with
Speaker 2: handwritten notes and discs of recorded interviews, and he's collected
Speaker 2: internal documents from the Sheriff's department which he's agreed to
Speaker 2: share with.
Speaker 1: US, including confidential suicide report. I somehow got hold of.
Speaker 2: Bower Hands as a case file that's hundreds of pages long.
Speaker 2: It includes reports that span years of investigation in the
Speaker 2: Auja's disappearance, and it tells a story.
Speaker 1: This was assigned to Homicide Bureau Missing Persons Unit. They
Speaker 1: were the ones who had to make the decision that
Speaker 1: this was a suicide.
Speaker 8: The missing person's investigation began with the person who reported
Speaker 8: John auj missing, his wife, Debbie.
Speaker 7: Then they began to get the feeling, well, this guy's
Speaker 7: got some sort of relationship problems, maybe we.
Speaker 1: Better look at it.
Speaker 8: Debbie tells detectives that she and her husband got into
Speaker 8: an argument before he took off for the punch bowl,
Speaker 8: and that she can't find his off duty gun.
Speaker 7: They went out to her house and she said there's
Speaker 7: an empty holster on the workbench, but the two inches missing.
Speaker 8: The department begins to speculate that Auj may have taken
Speaker 8: the gun with him into the devil's punch bowl to
Speaker 8: use it on himself.
Speaker 7: They then get psychological services involved in and find out
Speaker 7: about the marriage counseling.
Speaker 1: The day before.
Speaker 8: The day before Auj disappeared, he and Debbie had gone
Speaker 8: to couples counseling with an LASD psychologist. By the end
Speaker 8: of the session, the therapist concluded the Auj's were incompatible
Speaker 8: and should separate, and the Sheriff's Department says that's what
Speaker 8: pushed Auj over the edge, the falation that he and
Speaker 8: Debbie were done.
Speaker 13: When we ended, she said, if you have decided to
Speaker 13: go through with the divorce, to come back to her
Speaker 13: and she would give us ideas on parenting skills for
Speaker 13: Chloe's sake.
Speaker 8: This is an interview Bauer recorded with Debbie in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 8: He questions her at length about her marriage to John
Speaker 8: because it's the crux of the department's suicide narrative. In
Speaker 8: a nutshell, Debbie was a stay at home mom. While
Speaker 8: John worked a lot, she liked to party. His version
Speaker 8: of fun was extreme running. She was full figured with
Speaker 8: the bleach bond perm He was all muscle topped off
Speaker 8: with the military crew cut. The report says that after
Speaker 8: twelve years of marriage, the couple drifted apart. They fought
Speaker 8: a lot, and as their fights intensified, John withdrew.
Speaker 10: Okay, let me get to someations that they wrote in
Speaker 10: the report. He was not verbally communicating with you, and
Speaker 10: he was getting more distant from you. That makes sense. Yes,
Speaker 10: was he depressed?
Speaker 9: Well, he had told the psychologist that he had been
Speaker 9: unhappy for two years with the marriage.
Speaker 14: With the marriage.
Speaker 8: Bower's fact checking the sheriff's report because it attributes a
Speaker 8: lot of its claims to Debbie's testimony, supposed characterizations of
Speaker 8: her husband and their life together.
Speaker 10: Okay, when you talked to John afterwards on the drive home,
Speaker 10: what was the conversation between the two of you about
Speaker 10: this experience with marriage counseling? What was John's attitude? I
Speaker 10: Since he was angry, do you think he was hopeful
Speaker 10: that this session was going to help save the marriage?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 8: No, no, things aren't adding up. If AUJ had been
Speaker 8: unhappy with the marriage for two years and thought it
Speaker 8: was beyond repair. Why would he suddenly snap. Well, the
Speaker 8: report quotes Debbie as saying that Auj was psychotic.
Speaker 10: That's kind of describing a person who's mentally ill.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I.
Speaker 14: Said he was psychotic. I do remember saying that his
Speaker 14: eyes did not look right. I do remember saying that
Speaker 14: to them, what respect, Just a real strong look in
Speaker 14: his eyes. Maybe his eyes looked intense.
Speaker 8: There's a world of difference between intense looking eyes and psychosis.
Speaker 8: But investigators say there were other indications that Auj was suicidal.
Speaker 8: He was giving away his prized possessions, including a family heirloom,
Speaker 8: a gold necklace, and then right before he left for
Speaker 8: the punch bowl, Auj told Debbie to have a nice life.
Speaker 8: To detectives, that was Auj saying his final goodbyes. In conclusion,
Speaker 8: the LASD report says the likelihood of suicide is overwhelming
Speaker 8: and by far surpasses any of the other possibilities. I
Speaker 8: can see why the department considered the possibility of suicide,
Speaker 8: because it's clear that Auj was going through a tough time.
Speaker 8: But to me, it's a big stretch to say, the
Speaker 8: likelihood of suicide is overwhelming, especially as I keep reading
Speaker 8: the report and find out that Auj had big plans
Speaker 8: for his future and that he wanted to spend it
Speaker 8: with his girlfriend.
Speaker 2: Auj had been seeing a forty five year old woman
Speaker 2: named Vicki da Vita. She was a competitive ultra marathon
Speaker 2: runner just like him, and she was the one Auj
Speaker 2: gave the heirloom necklace to. Their relationship was a bit
Speaker 2: of an open secret, especially when she showed up with
Speaker 2: the punch bowl searching for him day after day. We
Speaker 2: can't ask Davida what she thinks happened to Auj because
Speaker 2: she died of cancer in twenty ten, but her statement
Speaker 2: to investigators reveals a rosier picture of the deputy. According
Speaker 2: to Davida, she and Aj met at a race in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five. She was the more experienced runner and
Speaker 2: helped Aj train for his ultra marathons. They bonded over
Speaker 2: their shared passion and slowly they fell in love. But
Speaker 2: according to Davida, the relationship wasn't sexual because Aja wanted
Speaker 2: to wait until after he and his wife had officially separated.
Speaker 2: In letters to Davida, Aj called her his Eternal Love
Speaker 2: and shared poems by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, and recently,
Speaker 2: Auja had asked her to take in std test so
Speaker 2: they could finally consummate their relationship. So Aj was making moves,
Speaker 2: and Divita says he was relieved that he and Debbie
Speaker 2: were splitting up because he was ready to start the
Speaker 2: next chapter of his life. Debbie seems to confirm all this,
Speaker 2: explaining that towards the end of their marriage, she and
Speaker 2: Aj slept in different rooms and that he'd begun to
Speaker 2: take photos and art off the walls of his bedroom.
Speaker 10: He was telling Vicki that he was setting a certain
Speaker 10: time frame for him to make a decision what he
Speaker 10: was going to do. Did you sense a move out
Speaker 10: was coming?
Speaker 15: Yes, it appeared that he was going to move out.
Speaker 2: Given this new information, Auj sounds less like someone saying
Speaker 2: his final goodbyes and more like someone saying goodbye to
Speaker 2: a relationship that had already run its course, and it
Speaker 2: sheds new light on what Aj may have meant the
Speaker 2: morning June eleventh when he told his wife Debbie to
Speaker 2: have a nice life.
Speaker 14: What was your thought at the time when he said it?
Speaker 10: Did you think suicide at the time.
Speaker 12: No, I get it.
Speaker 10: It was not a threat of suicide. Had he ever
Speaker 10: made a threat of suicide in the past. He was
Speaker 10: going to kill himself because of some problem you two
Speaker 10: were having. No, No, never expressed it.
Speaker 16: No.
Speaker 2: Debbie paints a picture of Auj's final days that looks
Speaker 2: very different from the Sheriff's departments in their report. It
Speaker 2: seems they've cherry picked details to support their suicide thesis
Speaker 2: and ignore or downplay those that contradicted. So we keep
Speaker 2: digging through the LSD reports. Bauer gives us to figure
Speaker 2: out how the department is connecting in stocks, and we
Speaker 2: find a kind of personality profile they did on Auj.
Speaker 8: I feel like this has summed up so much of
Speaker 8: what we've read and heard about him into a punch list.
Speaker 8: Can I just read the bullet points? Yeah, okay, organized, responsible, punctual, regimented, committed, structured.
Speaker 2: There's a definite theme.
Speaker 8: Did not believe in divorce or extramarital affairs, lived by
Speaker 8: and often said death before dishonor occasionally read Bible.
Speaker 2: I like that last night sounds like a real, real
Speaker 2: fun day. Auj's code of ethics is a big part
Speaker 2: of why The Sheriff's Department says he couldn't live with
Speaker 2: himself because he thought divorce and extramarital affairs were dishonorable.
Speaker 2: The LSD seems to be saying that Auj's girlfriend wasn't
Speaker 2: a reason to keep on living. It was the reason
Speaker 2: he took his life, because he was consumed with guilt
Speaker 2: over his part in ruining his marriage. We try to
Speaker 2: follow this logic.
Speaker 8: His motto was death before dishonor, which alone is extreme,
Speaker 8: but it it's interesting to me that here he is
Speaker 8: in this position where he knows he can't stay with
Speaker 8: his wife, but emotionally he's not ready or willing to
Speaker 8: accept divorce, and then the next day he disappears.
Speaker 16: Yeah, but if he's someone that sees giving up on
Speaker 16: a marriage as failure as dishonorable, then he's sure shit
Speaker 16: thinks that killing himself and giving up on life is dishonorable.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying it cuts both ways.
Speaker 2: Our main takeaway from this personality profile and the rest
Speaker 2: of the Aujay report is that the suicide theory isn't
Speaker 2: based on hard facts. It's based on subjective accounts of
Speaker 2: John Auja's behavior, just like those Rock faces in the
Speaker 2: Devil's punch bowl. It's a matter of interpretation.
Speaker 6: You'd have to say, how is he going to be dishonored?
Speaker 8: We check in with Dave r was Augie's former partner.
Speaker 8: He was one of the few people who had insight
Speaker 8: into his personal life.
Speaker 1: Divorce.
Speaker 6: That's dishonorable.
Speaker 8: Even this eighty year old cop thinks that's ridiculously puritanical.
Speaker 6: I mean, might have been in eighteen ninety three, but
Speaker 6: that was one hundred years before this, so that's beyond
Speaker 6: a stretch. It's like science fiction or something.
Speaker 8: I think Rathman got a divorce, which he says is
Speaker 8: pretty common for law enforcement officers.
Speaker 6: My son even makes this joy. He's a lieutenant on
Speaker 6: the sheriff department. And he said, yeah, my future ex
Speaker 6: wife and I are going to go here and do
Speaker 6: this and do that. I said, oh, for crying out loud.
Speaker 1: Don't say that.
Speaker 6: He said, yeah, the deputies will say that they think
Speaker 6: it's funny. And I said, I don't know if I
Speaker 6: think it's funny. Having gone through a.
Speaker 8: Divorce, Rathman doesn't buy the whole death before dishonor explanation,
Speaker 8: and he feels pretty certain that Auj would never take
Speaker 8: his own life on account of his daughter, Chloe.
Speaker 6: If you got on the subject to Chloe, he glowed, Yeah,
Speaker 6: he glowed and he went soft like wam that fast.
Speaker 16: He loved her to death.
Speaker 6: He would talk about her all the time. Chloe. Is
Speaker 6: Chloe that he's going to disappear in the mountains and
Speaker 6: kill himself and leave her alone? Does that fit with
Speaker 6: death before dishonor not very well? That's pretty dishonorable to
Speaker 6: just abandon your five year old.
Speaker 8: Daughter, Debbie. Auja has her own doubts about the suicide theory.
Speaker 15: It just causes confusion in me, that's all, because I.
Speaker 14: Don't know what to believe.
Speaker 8: There are more than a few details about Aujay's final
Speaker 8: days that just don't add up for her, Like what
Speaker 8: he did the morning of his disappearance.
Speaker 10: You said he went to the gas station.
Speaker 12: Yes, because when the bill came for that Shell credit card,
Speaker 12: I had noticed that he had gassed up on June
Speaker 12: eleventh before going to the Fudgeball.
Speaker 8: My gas tank is always hovering around empty. So the
Speaker 8: fact that Auj took the time to stop at a
Speaker 8: gas station on his way to the punch bowl strongly
Speaker 8: implies he hadn't planned on this being his last drive,
Speaker 8: and according to the missing person's report, Auj put a
Speaker 8: sunshield on his dashboard to prevent his truck from overheating.
Speaker 8: It's another indication that Auja was planning to return from
Speaker 8: his run and drive away from the punch Bowl.
Speaker 15: I would hope the Sheriff's department would it investigate this.
Speaker 2: I just.
Speaker 14: Still want John to be found.
Speaker 6: Or his remains.
Speaker 8: There's another detail that there was a big wrench in
Speaker 8: the suicide theory. Remember that missing gun.
Speaker 15: His holster was left on the workbench in the garage,
Speaker 15: and I've never found that small smith Wesson. They told
Speaker 15: me when he was missing, they didn't find any gun.
Speaker 15: They told me there was no gun in the truck.
Speaker 15: Then I started hearing some rumors that there was a.
Speaker 12: Gun in the truck.
Speaker 8: This missing gun is one of the lynchpins of the
Speaker 8: lasd's narrative. They say Aujay didn't usually take a gun
Speaker 8: with him while jogging, therefore he must have brought the
Speaker 8: firearm into the punch Bowl with suicidal intent. But it
Speaker 8: turns out the gun was not missing, not at first anyway.
Speaker 17: Okay, so you were at punch Bowl, tell me what
Speaker 17: you did when you got there, and what you saw,
Speaker 17: and any other details that you think are important.
Speaker 2: Bower has been running down leads in the AJ case
Speaker 2: for years. There are a lot of unanswered questions, but
Speaker 2: at the top of the list is the one about
Speaker 2: Auj's phantom gun.
Speaker 11: I see the truck, I run the plate. It is
Speaker 11: his truck.
Speaker 2: Bauer is interviewing Randy Hebberly. Hebberly was an LASD deputy
Speaker 2: who worked patrol in the Anelo Valley, and he was
Speaker 2: one of the first officers to show up at the
Speaker 2: punch bowl after Auj was reported missing.
Speaker 11: Look in the truck real quick with my flashlight. I
Speaker 11: checked the door and it was locked. I then looked
Speaker 11: closely in the truck. There's a little compartment and I
Speaker 11: see the snub nose stainless steel five shot revolver. That
Speaker 11: gun was in the truck.
Speaker 2: Deputy Heberly calls his sergeant and tells him he's located
Speaker 2: Auj's vehicle.
Speaker 10: Do you remember telling the station in that cell phone
Speaker 10: call that you saw a gun in the truck.
Speaker 11: Yes, I told him his gun is in the truck.
Speaker 2: According to Hiberly, Auj left his gun in the vehicle,
Speaker 2: which means it could not have been used by him
Speaker 2: to end his life. We ask around and find out
Speaker 2: Deputy Hebberly isn't the only one who remembers the gun.
Speaker 2: Sergeant Vince Burton confirms Heberly's account. He was one of
Speaker 2: the sergeants overseeing the auj search.
Speaker 1: Deputy specifically said that his off duty.
Speaker 2: Gun was in the car, and it wasn't just one deputy.
Speaker 4: There's a couple defies that swear there was a gun there,
Speaker 4: and yet my lieutenant and I had a later time
Speaker 4: looked at all the records and everything. There's no indication
Speaker 4: that that gun was ever booked into evidence.
Speaker 1: It's not shown.
Speaker 2: This seems like a major oversight in the investigation, and
Speaker 2: even more troubling, Burton says, investigators didn't process the truck
Speaker 2: for any evidence.
Speaker 4: Since it's not a murder, they're not going to process it.
Speaker 4: They're not going to impound it. If a missing person
Speaker 4: says we'd like the car held because we think there's
Speaker 4: something suspicious, that's up to the detectives to make that call.
Speaker 2: The missing person's detectives don't flag the truck for inspection,
Speaker 2: and so Audie's gun disappears, along with who knows what else.
Speaker 2: Do you think that the gun may have gone missing
Speaker 2: between when those first officers arrived and before homicide got there.
Speaker 8: That's very possible.
Speaker 4: Homicide interviewed me later, but we never talked about the gun.
Speaker 1: Never came up.
Speaker 2: That's weird, right, Homicide detectives make the case for suicide
Speaker 2: based in part on a missing gun, and yet they
Speaker 2: don't seem to be that interested in finding the gun.
Speaker 2: We haven't found any records that show detectives even asked
Speaker 2: responding officers about it. There appears to be a lot
Speaker 2: of missteps in this investigation, starting from the beginning when
Speaker 2: Auja's truck wasn't combed for evidence. Then there's the department's
Speaker 2: decision to call off the search after less than a week,
Speaker 2: and the detective's single minded focus on the suicide theory,
Speaker 2: not to mention the way they punched up key witness
Speaker 2: statements from people like Debbi Aja. After six months of
Speaker 2: reporting this story, we're feeling the weight and confusion of
Speaker 2: the case. We know there's one guy who gets it.
Speaker 2: We hope Mike Bauer can give us some perspective. Bower
Speaker 2: lives on a remote ranch in Idaho.
Speaker 1: I've got to get my egg picker.
Speaker 8: His lakeside property includes a home office, which he uses
Speaker 8: as a base camp for his work on the Aujay case,
Speaker 8: and wide open land for his dogs, horses, and ducks.
Speaker 1: Oh the ducks, come on, girls, let's go.
Speaker 10: Okay.
Speaker 8: They have heated coops and kiddie pools to splashing. And
Speaker 8: the duck's food is handmade by Bower.
Speaker 1: Every day.
Speaker 8: He combines carrots, apples, corn, grapes, a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1: And sour dough bread. And the staler the better because
Speaker 1: I put it through the blender and chop it up.
Speaker 1: I don't feed these animals anything I wouldn't eat.
Speaker 8: The ducks seem to be the darlings of Bower's farm,
Speaker 8: but all sorts of animals flock to him. Deer linger
Speaker 8: in the clearings can tell them apart by their facial features.
Speaker 8: Wild turkeys congregate outside Bower's home at the same time
Speaker 8: each morning, waiting for their breakfast, and his stable of
Speaker 8: horses includes a one eyed fella named Quincy. Come on, girls,
Speaker 8: watching Bauer interact with these animals, it's enlightening. It helps
Speaker 8: me understand why he reacted so strongly to Oscar's death,
Speaker 8: and why he's so invested in the Aujay case because
Speaker 8: the things he cares about he cares about deeply. About
Speaker 8: ten years ago, Bower had scheduled a meeting with Larry Lincoln,
Speaker 8: captain of the Homicide Bureau at the time of Aujay's disappearance.
Speaker 8: Bower wanted to go over the problems with the missing
Speaker 8: person's investigation, how the detectives said there were no signs
Speaker 8: of foul play, but didn't seem to look very hard
Speaker 8: to find them.
Speaker 7: Every supervisor dreads coming into work and finding a horrible
Speaker 7: situations throwing in their lap, and they have to decide,
Speaker 7: am I going to cover it up?
Speaker 1: Or am I gonna face it head on and then
Speaker 1: stop it.
Speaker 8: About a week before the two were scheduled to meet,
Speaker 8: Lincoln sent Bauer a text saying you had to cancel.
Speaker 8: Bauer recorded a voice memo of the message right after
Speaker 8: he got it to add to his auj archive.
Speaker 18: I'm gonna tape Larry Lincoln's text this morning at just
Speaker 18: before six am. I worked with John, was involved in
Speaker 18: the search for him, and was in charge of the
Speaker 18: investigation into his disappearance. With all that I can say
Speaker 18: with certainty that John, and only John, was responsible for
Speaker 18: his death.
Speaker 17: After eight years.
Speaker 18: At homicide suicides caused me more grief than any murder.
Speaker 18: The bottom line, one cannot find reason in an unreasonable apt.
Speaker 7: End of text.
Speaker 2: Bower doesn't just think the suicide narrative is false. He
Speaker 2: thinks it's reckless. It promotes bad police work, it tarnishes
Speaker 2: Aujay's reputation, and causes immense pain to his loved ones.
Speaker 2: Processing his disappearance is one thing. But thinking Auja killed
Speaker 2: himself and did it in a way that they'd never
Speaker 2: know how or why, that's a whole new level of anguish.
Speaker 2: And no one felt that more than his daughter, Chloe.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm telling you, Chloe, don't believe it. Do
Speaker 1: not believe it. Your father did not abandon you. He
Speaker 1: was taken from you.
Speaker 2: Over the years, Bower developed a friendship with Chloe and Debbie,
Speaker 2: whose lives completely unraveled after Aujay's disappearance. Debbie struggled financially,
Speaker 2: toggling between part time jobs and collecting unemployment. She sold
Speaker 2: her house and moved in with her parents. She eventually
Speaker 2: ended up living in a car in a parking lot
Speaker 2: not far from the house. She wants shared with John.
Speaker 2: And that's why Bauer now has so many of Adjay's things,
Speaker 2: because Debbie just didn't have a place to store them.
Speaker 2: And then there's Chloe. She was just five when she
Speaker 2: lost her dad. Then she lost her dog, and then
Speaker 2: her mom. As Debbie drifted into homelessness, Chloe was shuffled
Speaker 2: around among relatives but never found a stable home base.
Speaker 2: She dropped out of high school and cycled through a
Speaker 2: series of low wage jobs while living with boyfriends or friends.
Speaker 2: Then in August of twenty twenty, Bauer got a call
Speaker 2: from Debbie.
Speaker 5: And she said, Mike, we've lost our girl. I lost you, sir,
Speaker 5: We've lost our girl.
Speaker 2: At the age of twenty six, Chloe Auja took her
Speaker 2: own life. Some might call that an unreasonable act, but
Speaker 2: I feel for her. Tragedy upended her childhood. She lost
Speaker 2: her sense of belonging and security after her dad disappeared
Speaker 2: and the shadow of his alleged suicide followed her from
Speaker 2: place to place.
Speaker 1: I told her that her father couldn't abandon her. She
Speaker 1: wanted to believe that.
Speaker 2: And this is why the AJ case has become all
Speaker 2: consuming for Bauer. Because the La County Sheriff's Department, the
Speaker 2: institution he swore allegiance to for thirty three years, has
Speaker 2: told a lie so big and so many times that
Speaker 2: the story has become its own type of bullet. It's
Speaker 2: worm its way through time, destroying lives and racking up
Speaker 2: a number of casualties, and Bower's been forced to simply
Speaker 2: watch the tragedy unfold.
Speaker 8: If John Auj didn't die by suicide, what happened to him?
Speaker 8: Throughout Bauer's investigation, He's heard a lot of stories about Auj,
Speaker 8: but there's one that just keeps coming up from multiple witnesses.
Speaker 8: That John Auj didn't take his own life. Someone else did.
Speaker 6: Early on, I'd let the suicide theory sit at fifty
Speaker 6: to fifty. As I've learned more and more, I'm at
Speaker 6: about ninety five murder, five to ten percent suicide.
Speaker 8: He said, Hey, Larry, I'm here and shit on the street.
Speaker 2: Man Auj didn't comit suicide.
Speaker 15: He was murdered.
Speaker 8: He goes, I'm hearing for more than one person.
Speaker 2: Well Son, you maybe looked into that a little more.
Speaker 6: They told our search teams. On day one, John may
Speaker 6: have stumbled into a meth lab by accident and what
Speaker 6: happened to that idea?
Speaker 15: This whole meth lab has just been a rumor I've
Speaker 15: heard for years, and I do wonder what's behind that.
Speaker 8: We wonder what's behind that too, and why the Sheriff's
Speaker 8: department didn't do more to investigate these tips. But it
Speaker 8: turns out there was a homicide detective who took it
Speaker 8: upon himself to find out what really happened all.
Speaker 5: The time of the investigator.
Speaker 8: And I tell people this, even younger guys, This cop
Speaker 8: stuff is not like TV.
Speaker 4: You go with what makes common sense.
Speaker 2: Everything looks like this, well usually if it looks like.
Speaker 14: That, that's what it is.
Speaker 8: That's next time on Valley of Shadows.
Speaker 2: If you have any information or tips related to the
Speaker 2: disappearance of John Aujay, please call two one three two six'
Speaker 2: two nine eight eight nine for Email shadows at pushkin DOT.
Speaker 2: Fm valley Of shadows is, reported written and produced by
Speaker 2: Us Betsy shepherd And Haley. Fox our editor Is Diane.
Speaker 2: Hodson our executive producers Are Jacob smith And Alexandra. Garaton
Speaker 2: original music By Jake, Gorsky Ray, Lynch Mike, jersich And Hayden.
Speaker 2: Gardner sound design By Jake. Gorsky fact checking By Anaica,
Speaker 2: Robbins additional production support By sonya And our show art
Speaker 2: was designed By Sean carney And Betsy. Shepherd special thanks
Speaker 2: To Nick white for the show art. Photo additional thanks
Speaker 2: To Stringer. Bell value Of shadows is a production Of Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Industries to find More pushkin, podcasts listen on The iHeartRadio,
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Speaker 2: type to. Fun We're betsy And. Hayley see you next.
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