Speaker 1: On June eleventh, nineteen ninety eight, the deputy from the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing.
Speaker 2: It's an all out manhunt for John Auj. Every search
Speaker 2: and rescue team in La County has been called in
Speaker 2: to help.
Speaker 1: Deputy Jonathan a J spin his day off jogging in
Speaker 1: a rugged section of the Mojave Desert known as the
Speaker 1: Devil's Punch Bowl, but he never returned home to his
Speaker 1: wife and young daughter.
Speaker 2: Friends say Auj is a highly trained survivalist in hiker
Speaker 2: and fear his disappearance may mean he's in serious trouble.
Speaker 3: Within days, tips started flooding into the Sheriff's department that
Speaker 3: their deputy was the victim of foul play.
Speaker 1: I'm here, it's shit out of the street man Auj
Speaker 1: was murdered.
Speaker 3: I'm hearing from a one more in person.
Speaker 2: A ruler around the drug scene was that a deputy
Speaker 2: stumbled onto something he's shouldn't of and he was taken
Speaker 2: care of.
Speaker 3: But the Sheriff's department dismissed the tips suddenly called off
Speaker 3: the search for Auja.
Speaker 1: His death certificate says cause a death unknown manner, a
Speaker 1: death unknown no body.
Speaker 3: And thirty years later, the La County Sheriff's Apartment still
Speaker 3: hasn't found him.
Speaker 1: The only law enforcement agency in this country that I
Speaker 1: know of who has a missing deputy sheriff and doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to care.
Speaker 3: What the hell happened?
Speaker 1: What's the answer? Who's motivated to find the answer. And
Speaker 1: that's where we come in. I'm Betsy Shepherd and I'm
Speaker 1: Haley Fox. We're investigative journalists, and for the past year
Speaker 1: we've been retracing Auj's steps in the devil's punch bowl,
Speaker 1: trying to separate fact from fiction. How hot do you
Speaker 1: think it is right now?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's pushing one hundred.
Speaker 1: For sure. Your brain does some wonky stuff when you're dehydrated.
Speaker 2: And they thought maybe he got on the trail and
Speaker 2: keeps doing the forest going, just kept roaming.
Speaker 3: But out here it's not just heat stroke you have
Speaker 3: to worry about. It's meth labs hidden in canyons, outlaw
Speaker 3: bikers running drugs, and deputies who operate on both sides
Speaker 3: of the law. I think a lot of people picture
Speaker 3: breaking bad whatever you're talking about, making meth in the desert.
Speaker 3: Can you give us a reality check?
Speaker 1: If you change the names. It's the same exact thing.
Speaker 1: Is this the story of a man who just got
Speaker 1: lost in the desert? Or of a cover up inside
Speaker 1: the nation's largest sheriff's department?
Speaker 2: A homicide captain saying, detective, do not find out if
Speaker 2: this guy's guilty or innocent? Who does that?
Speaker 1: Hey, I don't fucking kill a Coffinberry? What are you
Speaker 1: gonna do to me?
Speaker 2: As my father would say, God bless him, there's something
Speaker 2: rotten in the woodpile, and it stinks and I can
Speaker 2: smell it.
Speaker 3: What really happened to the missing deputy.
Speaker 1: Which is Perry Mason? This shit?
Speaker 3: This changes my whole way of gin him about theory.
Speaker 3: Valley of Shadows a new series from Pushkin Industries about
Speaker 3: crime and corruption in California's High Desert.
Speaker 1: Do you have any advice for us while looking into
Speaker 1: this disappearance? I wouldn't do it alone. In the event
Speaker 1: somebody did decide that you were getting too close to something,
Speaker 1: you will not be found killed. You will simply disappear.
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