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