Latest / Revisionist History / From Valley of Shadows: The Devil's Punchbowl

Transcript

From Valley of Shadows: The Devil's Punchbowl · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Bushkin, Malcolm. Here, I want to tell you about a
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: man named John Ajay. He was a Los Angeles County
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Sheriff's deputy, an ultra marathon runner, a survivalist, and someone
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: who had made a study of how to stay alive
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: in punishing terrain. And one day he went for a
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: run in a place called the Devil's Punch Bowl in
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: the high Desert of Los Angeles, and he never came back.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Some say Aja is just another missing hiker claimed by
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: the inhospitable landscape of the southern California Desert. Some say
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: he took his own life out there. But there's another
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: theory that many of Ajay's friends and colleagues are convinced
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: is true. That he was the victim of foul play
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: and his own department is covering it up. Hosted by
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: journalist Haley Fox and Betsy Shepherd, Valley of Shadows explores
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Age's unsolved disappearance and the stench of corruption that's followed
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: the case for nearly thirty years. Through exclusive interviews, revealing
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: wiretaps and buried police files, Haley and Betsy enter into
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: the criminal underworld of Outlaw Biker gang's meth production and
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: crooked cops in southern California's Mojave Desert, exploring one of
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: the state's most mysterious missing persons cases. You're about to
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: hear a preview from the show. If you enjoy it,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: you can find Value of Shadows wherever you get your podcasts.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: This series includes content that may not be suitable for
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: all listeners. Listener discretion is advised.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: So it's okay, yeah, I'll turn it down this a
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: little bit, because sometimes you get animated.
• 2:04
  Speaker 4: I get pissed off, pissed off old cop.
• 2:08
  Speaker 5: This pissed off oul cop is Mike Bauer.
• 2:11
  Speaker 6: Okay, my name is Mike Bauer, retired Captain LA Sheriff.
• 2:14
  Speaker 6: I retired in two thousand and two. My last assignment
• 2:17
  Speaker 6: was Major Crimes Bureau, Detective Division, LA Sheriff.
• 2:22
  Speaker 5: Bower spent thirty three years climbing the ranks of the
• 2:24
  Speaker 5: Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. And he looks the part
• 2:28
  Speaker 5: of a retired captain. His white hair and mustache are
• 2:31
  Speaker 5: neatly groomed, and his eyes were permanently fixed, and a
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: look that says, do not fuck up on my watch.
• 2:38
  Speaker 5: And he's pissed off because of something that happened to
• 2:40
  Speaker 5: one of his guys on his squad back in the
• 2:43
  Speaker 5: summer of nineteen ninety eight. June eleventh started off like
• 2:48
  Speaker 5: a normal day in Los Angeles, June gloom and bad traffic.
• 2:54
  Speaker 6: I got up early out of Long Beach and hitded
• 2:56
  Speaker 6: up the six zero five and into East La. Our
• 2:59
  Speaker 6: office in East LA.
• 3:01
  Speaker 5: Bauer was doing paperwork when a call came into the
• 3:03
  Speaker 5: front desk. The receptionist answered.
• 3:07
  Speaker 6: Then she hung up and she comes down to get
• 3:09
  Speaker 6: a cup of coffee across the hall, and I said, hey,
• 3:12
  Speaker 6: who was that? It was? John Auj.
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: John AJ was a thirty eight year old canine cop
• 3:20
  Speaker 5: and he was calling to inquire about an upcoming job assignment.
• 3:24
  Speaker 6: I said, well, I've been trying to get hold him,
• 3:26
  Speaker 6: and she says, oh, well, maybe he'll call back.
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: He never called back.
• 3:35
  Speaker 5: John Aj was working for the unit Bower headed up
• 3:37
  Speaker 5: at the time, the Special Enforcement Bureau or SEB for short.
• 3:43
  Speaker 6: Which consists of seven or eight SWAT teams, and the
• 3:47
  Speaker 6: SWAT teams were involved in tactical responses to high risk
• 3:52
  Speaker 6: situations in the field.
• 3:55
  Speaker 5: SEB handled things like active shooter situations, hostage negotiations, search
• 4:00
  Speaker 5: and rescue, it was a job that attracted adrenaline junkies
• 4:04
  Speaker 5: like Aj. He was an Army paratrooper and a survivalist.
• 4:09
  Speaker 5: Those military skills, along with his buzz cut and square build,
• 4:13
  Speaker 5: made him a shoe in for the Sheriff's Department.
• 4:16
  Speaker 6: He was in the Army in Special Forces. He was
• 4:19
  Speaker 6: working at the elite unit of the department. I have
• 4:22
  Speaker 6: to call him a loaner, but he was an elite
• 4:25
  Speaker 6: loaner because the guy was doing fifty mile runs. He
• 4:30
  Speaker 6: was an animal.
• 4:34
  Speaker 5: Auj got his kicks by going on long runs through
• 4:37
  Speaker 5: California's back country. He go out deep into the wilderness
• 4:41
  Speaker 5: to conquer the only obstacle course that still challenged him.
• 4:45
  Speaker 5: And that's how Auj was spending his day off. On
• 4:48
  Speaker 5: June eleventh, nineteen ninety eight, he woke up, put on
• 4:52
  Speaker 5: his running gear and drove to one of his favorite parks,
• 4:55
  Speaker 5: the Devil's Punch Bowl. It's a rugged canyon where the
• 4:59
  Speaker 5: Angelus National Forest, the San Gabriel Mountains, and the Mojave
• 5:03
  Speaker 5: Desert all converge. Auj entered the park just before noon,
• 5:12
  Speaker 5: used a payphone to call into the Sheriff's Department, and
• 5:14
  Speaker 5: then he took off running. He never listened to any music,
• 5:20
  Speaker 5: just the sounds of nature as he jogged along a
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: maze of switchbacks and up a nearly ten thousand foot mountain.
• 5:27
  Speaker 5: By early evening, he looped back towards the parking lot,
• 5:32
  Speaker 5: but as the sun began to set, the shadows of
• 5:34
  Speaker 5: trees and rocks grew until night engulfed the park.
• 5:46
  Speaker 6: That evening, I got a phone call saying that Wog
• 5:50
  Speaker 6: is missing, that he didn't come back to his vehicle,
• 5:55
  Speaker 6: and that they were going to start some more extensive
• 5:58
  Speaker 6: searching for him.
• 6:01
  Speaker 7: It's an all out manhunt for John Aujay. Every search
• 6:04
  Speaker 7: and rescue team in La County has been called in
• 6:06
  Speaker 7: to help the thirty eight year old when hiking Thursday
• 6:09
  Speaker 7: in a rugged section of the Angelos National Forest known
• 6:12
  Speaker 7: as Double Punch Bowls Park. It's a beautiful but dangerous area,
• 6:15
  Speaker 7: an area where it may be extremely difficult to find
• 6:18
  Speaker 7: all Jay.
• 6:20
  Speaker 5: It's a pretty unique situation. The Sheriff's department is called
• 6:24
  Speaker 5: in to look for a missing hiker who's one of
• 6:26
  Speaker 5: their own. So the search and rescue team sent out
• 6:30
  Speaker 5: to look for Aj consists of his friends and colleagues.
• 6:34
  Speaker 8: We took our teams out and deployed in two man
• 6:36
  Speaker 8: teams over the edges of the trails into the little
• 6:39
  Speaker 8: nooks and crannies and the gullies that he could have
• 6:42
  Speaker 8: slipped and fallen into.
• 6:44
  Speaker 5: But searchers find no trace of aj. It was as
• 6:48
  Speaker 5: if he just vanished into thin air. And now, nearly
• 6:52
  Speaker 5: thirty years later, the deputy is still missing.
• 7:01
  Speaker 6: I guess I'll open a box.
• 7:05
  Speaker 5: All that remains from Auj's life is packed into five
• 7:08
  Speaker 5: cardboard boxes. The items are wrapped in plastic and Bower
• 7:12
  Speaker 5: wears gloves as he combs through them.
• 7:16
  Speaker 6: This is John's work jacket, and it's an SEB jacket
• 7:21
  Speaker 6: with his name embroidered on it, and Bossco his dog.
• 7:24
  Speaker 5: Now Bower's preserving Auja's belongings for future developments in the case.
• 7:30
  Speaker 6: Okay, so here's his running shoes with his name on
• 7:32
  Speaker 6: the back. Those should have some DNA in them.
• 7:37
  Speaker 5: The artifacts also tell us who Auja was. There's a
• 7:40
  Speaker 5: photocollage full of happy memories him and his high school
• 7:45
  Speaker 5: sweetheart Dub on their wedding day, a birthday party for
• 7:48
  Speaker 5: their daughter Chloe, who was just five when he disappeared,
• 7:52
  Speaker 5: and puppy picks of Bosco Auj's department issued K nine
• 7:57
  Speaker 5: and next to these snapshots of domestic life, there's a
• 8:00
  Speaker 5: steel ballistics helmet intended to stop rifle rounds, trophies for marksmanship,
• 8:06
  Speaker 5: army fatigues, you know, tough stuff. Auja moved at a
• 8:12
  Speaker 5: fast clip, trying to balance the competing demands of home
• 8:15
  Speaker 5: and work, but his life came to an abrupt and
• 8:19
  Speaker 5: puzzling end.
• 8:21
  Speaker 6: A death certificate says cause a death unknown manner, a
• 8:26
  Speaker 6: death unknown no body.
• 8:30
  Speaker 5: The deputy's body has never been found, which raises a
• 8:34
  Speaker 5: lot of questions for Mike Bauer and a survivalist getting
• 8:38
  Speaker 5: lost in the woods another big question mark. Over time,
• 8:43
  Speaker 5: the mystery of it all has turned into something else,
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: deep and unsettling, suspicion about the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
• 8:53
  Speaker 6: The only law enforcement agency in this country that I
• 8:55
  Speaker 6: know of, and I've looked around, who has a missing
• 8:58
  Speaker 6: deputy sheriff and doesn't seem to care. What the hell happened?
• 9:03
  Speaker 6: What's the answer? Who's motivated to find the answer?
• 9:09
  Speaker 5: And that's my cue. When Mike Bauer first told me
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: about Auja, I thought an unsolved disappearance involving a cop
• 9:17
  Speaker 5: that's unusual. But when he started talking about the Sheriff's Department,
• 9:21
  Speaker 5: his department, that's when I locked in. Because you'd expect
• 9:25
  Speaker 5: the La County Sheriff's Department to turn over every stone
• 9:28
  Speaker 5: to find their guy. So the claiming that the LASD
• 9:32
  Speaker 5: may have an interest in not solving the case, now
• 9:36
  Speaker 5: that's a story. So I called up my friend Hailey Fox.
• 9:41
  Speaker 5: Like me, she's an investigative journalist and she knows a
• 9:44
  Speaker 5: lot about the Sheriff's department because she's reported on it
• 9:48
  Speaker 5: for many years.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Hey, Betsy, Hey dear, I'm good. I'm ready.
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I got to do this.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: It's about time. I'm a little road trip adventure.
• 9:59
  Speaker 9: All right, let's do it.
• 10:01
  Speaker 5: We've teamed up on stories before and decided to get
• 10:04
  Speaker 5: the band back together to fin answers about this missing
• 10:08
  Speaker 5: deputy and to take on the largest sheriff's department in
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: the country.
• 10:13
  Speaker 10: There's a code of silence in law enforcement. You break
• 10:15
  Speaker 10: that code of silence, you're done.
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: Hey, if don't fucking kill a Copponberry, it's what they're
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: gonna do to me.
• 10:21
  Speaker 6: It's an obstruction of justice of a very large scale.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: I'm Betsy Shepherd, I'm Haley Fox, and this is Valley
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: of Shadows, a show about crime and corruption in California's
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: High Desert. Episode one, the Devil's Punch Bowl. Betsy and
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: I are making the trek from downtown Los Angeles to
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: the Antelope Valley that's the desert area north of La
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: where Deputy Auj disappeared. The drives about sixty miles, but
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: it takes an hour and a half to two hours
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: because of the mountainous terrain, so you actually have to
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: take We gotta go north. Yeah, we're gonna go north,
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: but this is La Dude. We gotta go south one,
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: the south, five, north, fourteen and then I think there's
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: a one thirty eighth throat in there, but nothing's a.
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: Street shot spoken like a true Angelino.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: I was born and raised in La County, Go Dodgers,
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: but this part of it feels worlds away. The Antelope Valley,
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: or the AV as it's sometimes called, is a three
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: thousand square mile stretch of the Mojave, but this part
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: of the High Desert doesn't have the same allure and
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: vibingess as places like Joshua Tree. Instead, the Avy is
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: mostly empty space dotted with defence plants, bedroom communities, and
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: tumbleweed towns.
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: So a lot of just like.
• 12:00
  Speaker 5: Trailers kind of just park down in the desert.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean power lines and scrubbrush. Our story takes
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: place in and around Pair Blossom, California. It has a
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: population of fifteen hundred and it's where the Devil's Punch
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: bowls located. Driving through it, Betsy gets a case of
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: deja vu.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: I had anxiety coming to places like this because it
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: reminds me of like a town and I grow up
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: and there's just.
• 12:29
  Speaker 5: Just like I feel the oppressive weight of boredom.
• 12:32
  Speaker 11: Oh really.
• 12:35
  Speaker 5: I moved to La several years ago from South Louisiana.
• 12:39
  Speaker 5: I had never been to Anelo Valley before, but it
• 12:41
  Speaker 5: was immediately familiar to me because if you were to
• 12:44
  Speaker 5: replace desert with swamp, this region would look a lot
• 12:47
  Speaker 5: like the small town I'm from. It's rural and kind
• 12:50
  Speaker 5: of run down. There's more landscape than real estate, lots
• 12:54
  Speaker 5: of pickup trucks in town. Life seems like a thing
• 12:57
  Speaker 5: of the past.
• 12:59
  Speaker 9: We got.
• 13:01
  Speaker 5: An abandoned motel, what's this, Oh like an abandoned old
• 13:08
  Speaker 5: restaurant call and people getting gas to presumably be all
• 13:14
  Speaker 5: their way.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think the three gas stations in
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: a row tell the story.
• 13:22
  Speaker 5: But the closer we get to the Devil's Punch Bowl
• 13:24
  Speaker 5: where auj was last spotted, and other worldly landscape appears,
• 13:30
  Speaker 5: full of spiky Joshua trees and sandstone columns.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: It's actually really beautiful out here.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: It's not expected to light.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Are you looking at these huge rocks jutting out of
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: the ground and like they're making all those crazy shadows?
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: For seeing anything like them? I haven't either.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: I feel like I've been an old Western movie, you know,
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: like we're He's got this like wide epic landscape shots.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: Total endless horizons, totally endless horizons.
• 13:58
  Speaker 5: I can see why John aj likes to come out here.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty pretty impig Okay, we are pulling into
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: the Devil's Punch Bowl County Park parking lot.
• 14:15
  Speaker 9: Here we are.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: We've come here to retrace John Aujay's last known steps
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: and to meet with ranger Jack Farley. He was working
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: on the punch Bowl the day the deputy disappeared.
• 14:33
  Speaker 12: Hi are you? But are you Jack Farley?
• 14:36
  Speaker 13: By chance?
• 14:36
  Speaker 11: I am.
• 14:39
  Speaker 13: Betsy.
• 14:40
  Speaker 5: This is my reporting partner, Haley.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: To thank you for meeting us out here. Yes, Jack
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Farley's retired now, but for thirty five years he was
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: assigned to work the punch Bowl.
• 14:51
  Speaker 5: What a cool job.
• 14:54
  Speaker 12: Great for me?
• 14:55
  Speaker 11: Yeah, it was awesome, good job.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: It was Farley's job to keep an eye on things,
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: to tend the grounds and patrol the area. So he
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: noticed when auj became a regular at the punch Bowl,
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: and he clocked Aujay's regular parking space the one closest
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: to the trailhead.
• 15:12
  Speaker 11: So I can remember seeing him sitting in the back
• 15:14
  Speaker 11: of his truck when you get done with a run
• 15:19
  Speaker 11: in the mountains. So when I'd walk out into the
• 15:21
  Speaker 11: parking lot, I'd see him sitting out there and ask
• 15:23
  Speaker 11: him about his run.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: Farley remembers that the day all Jay disappeared, his white
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: Ford F one fifty truck was parked in that very
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: same spot, surrounded on all sides by wilderness.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: One thing that impresses us so much about this area
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: is that you have a desert landscape on one side,
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: you have mountains and forests on the other, and then
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: in between it's these really cool rock formations.
• 15:50
  Speaker 11: Right, it's all uplifted from earthquake activity. Oh wow, that's
• 15:54
  Speaker 11: a punch Bowl fault, and that runs parallel with the mountains.
• 15:59
  Speaker 11: And then when you came up to here, you cross
• 16:01
  Speaker 11: the San Andreas Fault, which of course the big one
• 16:03
  Speaker 11: that runs through California, several faults in the area. It
• 16:07
  Speaker 11: took all this sand that was laid down on flat
• 16:10
  Speaker 11: by streams and tilted up in the vertical relief.
• 16:13
  Speaker 5: And it creates a bull shape.
• 16:16
  Speaker 11: You can see a definite bull shape coming around like this.
• 16:19
  Speaker 11: So that's where it got the punch Bowl name.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: We're not totally sure about the devil part of it, though.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: According to local lore, early homesteaders saw grinning devil in
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: the rock formations. We didn't see satan in the rock face,
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: but we did see something else thanks to a county
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: park employee named Dave Numar.
• 16:41
  Speaker 9: See this right where the shadow ends, there's that big
• 16:45
  Speaker 9: rock kind of all by itself. If you look, it's
• 16:48
  Speaker 9: like a forehead is facing us and there's a nose
• 16:50
  Speaker 9: pointing stream.
• 16:51
  Speaker 10: It looks like George Washington.
• 16:52
  Speaker 9: Yeah, it's a natural not rest.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: More cool.
• 16:56
  Speaker 9: So there's all kinds of faces out here because it's like, oh,
• 16:59
  Speaker 9: if our brains are programmed to see patterns.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: Pattern recognition is why we see gods and goddesses in
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: the stars and the man in the moon. Also a
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: key part of criminal investigations, a way to turn information
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: into a story. And that's why we've come to the
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: Devil's punch Bowl to see if we can make sense
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: of what happened on June eleventh, nineteen ninety eight. So
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: we pull out a map we printed from the internet
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: because we're prepared journalists and elder millennials, and we present
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: it to Ranger Farltly.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: Let me show you what it looks like.
• 17:36
  Speaker 11: Yeah, line will definitely better.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: It's definitely get us lost in.
• 17:41
  Speaker 6: God.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: Farley proves his outdoor prowess by whipping out some real
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: maps of the area to help orient us to our surroundings.
• 17:51
  Speaker 11: Okay, here's the Devil's Punt.
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: Okay, and there's Burkharp Tree all right.
• 17:58
  Speaker 11: There goes over toward Devil's Chairs, so that'd be just
• 18:02
  Speaker 11: to the east, goes to south Fork.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: One witness reported seeing Auj and the picnic tables at
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: the main trailhead sometime before noon. This witness was a
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: local teacher there on a field trip with a bunch
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: of elementary school kids. Auj stopped to talk to him.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: He pointed to a jagged mountain in the distance, Mount
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: Baden Powell, and said that's where he was headed.
• 18:27
  Speaker 11: So the high mountain behind the telephone pole over there, Yeah,
• 18:30
  Speaker 11: that's Baden powellin that's where he would go sometimes. How
• 18:34
  Speaker 11: tall of the mountain, jeez, that is one of the
• 18:37
  Speaker 11: higher ones. Let me think ten thousand ten, I mean
• 18:40
  Speaker 11: in this range.
• 18:41
  Speaker 5: And he would run from here to that mountain all
• 18:45
  Speaker 5: the way over there and then run up it.
• 18:47
  Speaker 11: Yeah, he'd run over there, and then there're sitchbacks all
• 18:50
  Speaker 11: the way to the top of that mountain.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Auj was spotted again later in the day, when multiple
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: witnesses say they saw him jogging through a campground just
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: north of the mountain in the direction of the punch
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Bowl parking lot. But when Farley left his post at
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: five PM, Auj's truck was still parked in the lot,
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: and it stayed parked there as the evening bloomed over
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: the desert, and then close to midnight, Aujy's wife called
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: the sheriff station to report him missing.
• 19:48
  Speaker 5: As June eleventh, nineteen ninety eight, years its end, Debbie
• 19:52
  Speaker 5: Aujay becomes increasingly panicked because her husband, Deputy John Ajay
• 19:58
  Speaker 5: told her he'd be home around dark, and by now
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: he's several hours late. So she dials up one of
• 20:03
  Speaker 5: the sheriff stations where Aujay worked.
• 20:06
  Speaker 14: The call comes into the desk and it's from Debbie
• 20:10
  Speaker 14: and it says, hey, my husband, who's a deputy, he
• 20:13
  Speaker 14: went for a run and he didn't come home.
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: Vince Burton was a sergeant in the Antelope Valley. He
• 20:20
  Speaker 5: was also Auja's colleague and friend. So he gets on
• 20:23
  Speaker 5: the phone with Debbie.
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: She was just upset.
• 20:27
  Speaker 12: She was crying.
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: She was obviously very concerned.
• 20:32
  Speaker 14: I just I said, okay, Debbie, we're sending people up there,
• 20:35
  Speaker 14: you know, keep you posted.
• 20:38
  Speaker 5: Patrol deputies high tail it to the punch bowl, where
• 20:41
  Speaker 5: they find Auj's truck, but no Auj. They think maybe
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: he got injured, slipped and fell for how to run
• 20:47
  Speaker 5: in with some wildlife. So Burton dispatches Search and Rescue
• 20:52
  Speaker 5: to the site and he calls in their coordinator, Dave Soer,
• 20:55
  Speaker 5: to discuss Auj's likely route.
• 20:58
  Speaker 14: And Dave comes in and we pull up a map
• 21:02
  Speaker 14: of the area and I told him at that time,
• 21:05
  Speaker 14: I said, you know, John's a runner, and he goes, yeah,
• 21:09
  Speaker 14: and I said, no, he's a long distance running He's
• 21:12
  Speaker 14: an ultra marathoner.
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: He's like what.
• 21:16
  Speaker 5: Ultra marathoners are running extremists who power through long distances.
• 21:22
  Speaker 5: In fact, Auj was scheduled to compete in a one
• 21:25
  Speaker 5: hundred mile run the week after he went missing, so
• 21:28
  Speaker 5: responders have a hard time wrapping their heads around the
• 21:31
  Speaker 5: scale of the search.
• 21:33
  Speaker 12: I gave him the best information I could give him.
• 21:36
  Speaker 12: You know, don't start your grid pattern so small.
• 21:39
  Speaker 5: This is Randy Meggerdley. He was a patrolled deputy for
• 21:42
  Speaker 5: the Sheriff's Department and one of Auj's running buddies. He
• 21:46
  Speaker 5: reiterates to the command post that Auj was a beast.
• 21:51
  Speaker 12: You're running goat trails is basically what I categorize them as.
• 21:55
  Speaker 4: What do you mean by that goat trails?
• 21:56
  Speaker 12: Well, they're just megshift trails. Sometimes they'll be covered with snow,
• 22:01
  Speaker 12: sometimes they'll be covered with mud, crossing rivers. I mean,
• 22:06
  Speaker 12: it's crazy what kind of stuff that we were doing.
• 22:10
  Speaker 12: There was one that we did. It was hand over
• 22:13
  Speaker 12: foot trying to get up this mountain.
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 22:17
  Speaker 5: And so part of the activity was figuring out how
• 22:21
  Speaker 5: to get to.
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: The end of it.
• 22:23
  Speaker 12: Yeah, and one piece.
• 22:26
  Speaker 5: Hearing Meggerdy talk about ultra marathoners, it sounds like they
• 22:30
  Speaker 5: have no off switch. So maybe Auj just overdid it.
• 22:36
  Speaker 12: Your brain does some wonky stuff when you're dehydrated, and
• 22:41
  Speaker 12: they thought maybe he got on a trail and he
• 22:43
  Speaker 12: was doing the forest gump just kept running.
• 22:48
  Speaker 5: That's a theory that Auj was doing the forest gump
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: and just kept running and got himself into a tailspin
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: of dehydration. Responders take note and fan out across the
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: search grid.
• 23:00
  Speaker 11: I was nice to him, I said, do you know,
• 23:02
  Speaker 11: I know the area pretty well if you guys want help?
• 23:04
  Speaker 5: Ranger Jack Farley again, and the.
• 23:06
  Speaker 11: Guy goes, now, we're search and rescue pretty much know
• 23:09
  Speaker 11: what we're doing, you know.
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: So I go okay, okay.
• 23:14
  Speaker 5: But it doesn't take long for the pros realize they're
• 23:17
  Speaker 5: in over their heads.
• 23:19
  Speaker 11: So then they're going, hey, are you the guy that
• 23:21
  Speaker 11: knows the area? You know, maybe you could give us
• 23:23
  Speaker 11: a little help.
• 23:25
  Speaker 5: So Farley leads a few groups of deputies and bloodhounds
• 23:28
  Speaker 5: down the local trails.
• 23:30
  Speaker 11: At one time thought they caught a scent and it
• 23:33
  Speaker 11: went up on the trail going toward the Burkehart Trail
• 23:36
  Speaker 11: and we had talked about someone saying they heard a gunshot.
• 23:39
  Speaker 11: You can't see the house from here, but it's like
• 23:43
  Speaker 11: a half mile below the trail up there where the
• 23:45
  Speaker 11: people lived that said.
• 23:46
  Speaker 5: They heard that the dogs pick up a scent, possibly Aujay's,
• 23:51
  Speaker 5: on a trail that's near a local resident. That guy
• 23:55
  Speaker 5: reported the searchers that he heard a single gunshot at
• 23:58
  Speaker 5: sunset the day Auja vanished. It's a detail the Sheriff's
• 24:02
  Speaker 5: department registers as a potential clue.
• 24:05
  Speaker 11: So I took a group of deputies over there and
• 24:08
  Speaker 11: we went out really rugged wooded canyon.
• 24:11
  Speaker 5: They didn't find anything, but searchers do spot some footprints
• 24:15
  Speaker 5: on the mountain where auj told people he was going.
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: So Auja's captain, Mike Bauer, takes to the skies to
• 24:22
  Speaker 5: see where they lead.
• 24:24
  Speaker 6: And that was the first time I ever stepped out
• 24:26
  Speaker 6: of a huge helicopter on the side of a mountain
• 24:31
  Speaker 6: with one skid touching, And then that helicopter flew off
• 24:35
  Speaker 6: while we examined the openings of Big Horn Mine to
• 24:39
  Speaker 6: see whether or not it had been broken into.
• 24:42
  Speaker 5: Big Horn is a mine on top of the mountain
• 24:45
  Speaker 5: leftover from the gold rush days. Its entrance has been
• 24:48
  Speaker 5: welded shut to keep out hikers, and when the helicopter lands,
• 24:52
  Speaker 5: nineties action movie style Bowers crew finds no signs of
• 24:56
  Speaker 5: a break in Aujay's reported missing late Thursday night. By
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: the end of the day Sunday, the Sheriff's Department kicks
• 25:05
  Speaker 5: things into high gear. They call in the US Army,
• 25:08
  Speaker 5: an air force. Along with the LSD heavy hitters, it's
• 25:12
  Speaker 5: a specialized squad called Emergency Services Detail or ESD.
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: They do search and rescue, underwater search and recovery, and
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: they support the special Weapons team with medical skills.
• 25:28
  Speaker 5: Dave Rathbin was one of the ESD members sent out
• 25:31
  Speaker 5: to search.
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: For Aj and the adrenaline that you get from ESD
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: is different from any other adrenaline.
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: ESD deputies are equipped to handle all types of emergency scenarios.
• 25:45
  Speaker 5: But it wasn't just the rocky ledges and wild animals
• 25:48
  Speaker 5: they had to worry about here. The area was full
• 25:50
  Speaker 5: of all kinds of criminal activity.
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: One of the things they told our search teams on
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: day one was John may have stumbled into a meth
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: lab by accident. So that was told to us when
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: we were out searching, and the reason they told us
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: is they recommend that we take weapons.
• 26:15
  Speaker 5: Rathmann and his team of searchers come to the punch
• 26:17
  Speaker 5: Bowl armed and ready for action, because maybe Auj isn't
• 26:22
  Speaker 5: lost or injured or running for the hills. Maybe he's
• 26:26
  Speaker 5: the victim of foul play. The command post doesn't expand
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: on why they thought Auj may have been taken out
• 26:32
  Speaker 5: by meth related violence, but to Rathbun this theory doesn't
• 26:37
  Speaker 5: sound too far fetched. Because the Anelo Valley is isolated
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: outlaws and on account of its size, difficult to police.
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: There are a lot of people who just don't want
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: to be around other human beings out there, which makes
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: them sometimes dangerous. There's people cooking meth. Ah. It was
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: a little bit like the Old West in a way.
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: I mean, this is a very unusual, strange place.
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: And remember that abandoned mine searcher scoped out. Well, it
• 27:13
  Speaker 5: turns out they're everywhere and they are a prime location
• 27:17
  Speaker 5: for body dumping.
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: One of the things ESD did was recover dead bodies
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: from mines.
• 27:25
  Speaker 5: And it wasn't just the mines. Corpses turn up all
• 27:28
  Speaker 5: over these parts.
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: You know, if all the dead bodies that were up
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: there from being deliberately disposed of, stood up, and once
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: they'd be shoulder to shoulder.
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: It's a chilling image of the area's darker side. Auj
• 27:43
  Speaker 5: would jog from the Devil's Punch Bowl into the Angelus
• 27:46
  Speaker 5: National Forest, which has been called the most dangerous national
• 27:50
  Speaker 5: forest in America. Around the time of Auji's disappearance, it's
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: estimated that two to three dozen corpses turned up in
• 27:56
  Speaker 5: the forest every year, and those were just the ones
• 27:59
  Speaker 5: that were found. So Rathman understands the danger he faces,
• 28:04
  Speaker 5: but pushes on. In search of footprints, you have to.
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: Look at the ground and look at bushes that have
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: been pushed in. We walked and walked and walked and
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: walked and walked and walked, and we generally don't give
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: up until it's just ridiculous.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: The search is taxing for Rathban physically and emotionally, because
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: he and Auj were friends, and back in the early
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: nineties they were even partners.
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: If it was me that needed cover, he'd be there.
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: Kind didn't even think about it, someone you could definitely
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: depend on.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: Rathbin and Auj spent a lot of time driving around together,
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: but they didn't sit around riffing like partners in a
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: buddy cop movie.
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: He was laconic, didn't have a lot to say unless
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: you worked on him, and he was always kind of
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: severe serious.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: Auj was hardly two dimensional, though he used his dead
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: pan personality to mess with people.
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: He had this secret sense of humor, but it was
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: really hard to tell which card he was playing, the
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: funny card or the I'm John and I'm dead serious card.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: One time, Rathbin and Auj had to chase down a suspect.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Rathbn was driving and he ends up reversing down a
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: one way street. They got the guy, but Auj.
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: Looked pissed, and he added that Dave, I need to
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: talk to you.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: Rathven's gotten pretty good and impersonating John Auj's baritone voice,
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: he says he sounded a lot like Lurch from the
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: Adams family.
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: What you just did was a violation of California state law,
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: and if you do something like that again, I'll have
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: to write you up. John. We were chasing a suspect,
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: and we are law enforcement officers and so we get
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: exemptions during those things. That may be true, but it
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: was illegal. Is this John being funny? You would not know,
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: and he will never let you know.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: Auj was hard to read. In fact, there's even confusion
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: over the pronunciation of his last name. His family says Oj,
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: but to his friends.
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: It was Auj and he never corrected us, and he's
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: not very bashful.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: We'll never know why he didn't tell people how to
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: pronounce his name, but it seems fitting for someone who
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: remains a mystery to so many. Auj was an enigma
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: to just about everyone around him, so when he disappeared,
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: he became an easy target for conspiracy theories. Stories began
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: to circulate that Aujy's alive and well, living in Alaska.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: Others say Mexico. Some say he was recruited by a
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: mercenary group or join the CIA. These theories were fueled
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: by weird comments aj had made to friends like Dave rathmun.
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: Dave, Yes, you guys think you can find people with
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: your searches, and you think you're pretty good at it.
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: I could go on the mountains and you'd never find me.
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: And I said, there are people who want to be
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: found that we can't find. So I'm not really impressed
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: with your with your declaration there if you don't want
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: to be found. Pretty sure I wouldn't be able to
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: find you, so I agree.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: And of course that conversation takes on extra meaning a
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: searchers keep coming up empty handed.
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: I participated in that search until my feet were bloody,
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: as did several of my peers. But day six they said,
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: well shut it down. What do you mean shut it down?
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: Who said that? Who gave that order? And shut this
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: thing down? What are you talking about?
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: Day six, the Sheriff's department folds the search after six
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: days and gives a statement to the press. Sergeant Sour,
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: one of the deputies overseeing the operation, says, quote, A
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: good analogy would be someone coming up to you and
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: giving you two to three pieces of a five hundred
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: piece puzzle and asking you to guess what the picture is.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: Throw into that a few pieces of an entirely different puzzle,
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: and that is what we work with. We might never
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: get it right. End quote.
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: You want to trust the department that they're doing the
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: right thing, But no one asked us if we should
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: shut it down. If I'm the search and rescue guy,
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: and my partners are search and rescue guys, and the
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: helicopter pilots have been on hundreds of searches. Why are
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: we asking them what they think and their input?
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: Rathman says searches for missing hikers typically last seven to
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: fourteen days, depending on the viability of the person. Paul
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: Jay was not your typical hiker, and given his personal
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: and professional connection to the Sheriff's Department, it seems like
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: the LASD would go the extra mile to find it.
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: So it's six days you cancel a search for somebody
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: who can run fifty or one hundred miles in the wilderness,
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: really knows the wilderness as good or better than anybody
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: in ESD. They just set it down. Why are you
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: setting it down?
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: The Sheriff's Department tells the public that Aujay disappeared without
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: a trace and that they're ending the search because they're
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: just spinning their wheels. But behind the scenes, they're telling
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: a very different story.
• 33:39
  Speaker 13: Well, they say that they decided he committed suicide.
• 34:09
  Speaker 5: LASD reports claaning that Auj was distraught over his failing
• 34:12
  Speaker 5: marriage and took his own life in the punch bowl.
• 34:16
  Speaker 5: That gunshot the area resident heard that could have been
• 34:19
  Speaker 5: the sound of Auj just putting an end to it all.
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: But the Sheriff's department makes that determination. Without a body.
• 34:27
  Speaker 5: They don't find any remains, blood, bullets, or a suicide note.
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: Nothing.
• 34:33
  Speaker 5: The only thing they think they may have found of
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: Aujay's was an energy bar wrapper left on one of
• 34:38
  Speaker 5: the trails. From what we can tell, there's not a
• 34:41
  Speaker 5: lot pointing to suicide, so we reach out to Aujay's
• 34:44
  Speaker 5: colleagues and friends to get their thoughts.
• 34:47
  Speaker 15: He was obviously down, he was obviously upset, but was
• 34:51
  Speaker 15: it enough to commit suicide?
• 34:54
  Speaker 5: Sergeant Vince Burden is still on the fence. On the
• 34:57
  Speaker 5: one hand, Aj did appear torn up over his marital problems.
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: On the other he seemed to be coping.
• 35:04
  Speaker 15: Would you be telling me about your ultra marathon if
• 35:08
  Speaker 15: you were just going to end at all? Would you
• 35:10
  Speaker 15: even be planning to go run at the punch Bowl,
• 35:13
  Speaker 15: which is an ugly area? Anyway?
• 35:15
  Speaker 5: For fact checking purposes, we want to make clear the
• 35:18
  Speaker 5: punch Bowl is not ugly, But go on, Vince.
• 35:22
  Speaker 15: None of that made sense to me. With the suicide.
• 35:25
  Speaker 5: Frady's running buddy, Randy Meggerley, there's no question playing simple.
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: I think he killed himself.
• 35:32
  Speaker 12: That's the only way I can explain it.
• 35:35
  Speaker 5: Because he says Auj was acting strangely, even more strangely
• 35:38
  Speaker 5: than usual in the weeks before his disappearance.
• 35:42
  Speaker 12: He says, you know, there's a bunch of caves and
• 35:45
  Speaker 12: stuff out here, you can pretty much disappear, I think
• 35:49
  Speaker 12: was the word that he used, and nobody would ever
• 35:52
  Speaker 12: find yet.
• 35:54
  Speaker 5: Auj said similar things to Dave Rathman, but he didn't
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: put a lot of stock into any of the statements
• 36:00
  Speaker 5: because he says, Aujay is just a weird guy.
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: Our unit was next to a big, giant duck pond,
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: and one of the ways we used to make jokes
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: about each other is kind of like, where do you
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: fit in the duck pond? John was an I don't
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: malign him, but he was one of the oddest ducks
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: in the punk which is good, right. You need him,
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: you don't want everybody swim in the.
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: Same Initially, Rathmin was open to the possibility of suicide,
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: but he's become increasingly skeptical over time because if Aja
• 36:33
  Speaker 5: had killed himself, he thinks his body or some trace
• 36:37
  Speaker 5: of him would have turned up by now. So Auji's
• 36:40
  Speaker 5: colleagues are divided on what happened to him. It's kind
• 36:44
  Speaker 5: of like those faces seen in the rocks at the
• 36:45
  Speaker 5: Devil's punch Bowl. Same details but interpreted in different ways.
• 36:51
  Speaker 5: And that makes sense because we feel conflicted about it too.
• 36:56
  Speaker 5: Auja did say some eerie things about disappearing, but this
• 36:59
  Speaker 5: disappearing act would be pretty hard to pull off. I mean,
• 37:03
  Speaker 5: how could he have buried himself and stay buried for
• 37:06
  Speaker 5: almost three decades? Rathmin asked the Sheriff's department to explain
• 37:12
  Speaker 5: that one.
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: Okay, so well, we think he might have sat on
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: the edge of one of those minds and blown himself
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: into the mind thinking, okay, we are really stretching now
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: for an explanation as to whine we can't find him.
• 37:30
  Speaker 6: I didn't accept it. Just common sense told me you
• 37:36
  Speaker 6: probably ought to see whether there's any evidence of self infliction.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: Pissed off old cop Mike Bauer is evangelical in his
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: belief that the suicide theory is bullshit, because he says
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: the Sheriff's Department didn't arrive at this conclusion, they led
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: with it, and that poisoned the investigation from the start.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: Bower says that as early as day three, an LASD
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: official was pushing the suicide narrative during search team briefings.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: To Bauer, this was equivalent to telling search to let up.
• 38:11
  Speaker 6: I took that person outside, and I said, what in
• 38:15
  Speaker 6: the hell did you say that for? How could you
• 38:18
  Speaker 6: possibly know that at this point?
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: How could you.
• 38:21
  Speaker 6: Possibly discourage them to search for somebody that worked for you.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: The Sheriff's department was even sharing this theory with the press.
• 38:30
  Speaker 8: We haven't ruled out the possibility of suicide, but we
• 38:33
  Speaker 8: don't have any evidence to support that. That's what he
• 38:35
  Speaker 8: came here to do.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: Now are things that's irresponsible to promote the suicide theory
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: without a high degree of certainty. So he prodded the
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: department to keep investigating.
• 38:46
  Speaker 6: I kept contacting homicide and saying something's wrong. I'm telling
• 38:51
  Speaker 6: you there's a problem.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: But he says, the department ignored the case to such
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: an extent that he began to question their motives.
• 38:59
  Speaker 6: Nobody was in charge of it, and nobody wanted any
• 39:02
  Speaker 6: of it once they saw how stinky it was getting.
• 39:10
  Speaker 5: Randy Meggridley represents the other end of the spectrum, so
• 39:14
  Speaker 5: we ask him what he thinks about the possibility of
• 39:16
  Speaker 5: foul play.
• 39:18
  Speaker 12: I refer to myself as a mushroom they just feed
• 39:21
  Speaker 12: me a little bit of poop every once in a while.
• 39:23
  Speaker 12: I wasn't in the know on that whole thing.
• 39:26
  Speaker 5: I've never heard the mushroom poop bataphor before.
• 39:28
  Speaker 12: Yeah, yeah, you seed you a little bit of poopy,
• 39:31
  Speaker 12: you grow a little bit.
• 39:35
  Speaker 5: At first, the mushroom poop analogy went way over my head.
• 39:38
  Speaker 5: It sounded like a Southern expression. My mom just forgot
• 39:41
  Speaker 5: to teach me. But then it clicked while I was
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: watching The Departed, the Martin Scorsese movie about corruption within
• 39:48
  Speaker 5: the Boston Police Department.
• 39:50
  Speaker 10: My theory, Unfeeds is they're like mushrooms, feed him shit
• 39:53
  Speaker 10: and keep them in the dock.
• 39:56
  Speaker 5: I think what Meggridley is saying is that he doesn't
• 39:58
  Speaker 5: ask a lot of questions because he prefers to be
• 40:01
  Speaker 5: kept in the dark about things that don't concern him
• 40:04
  Speaker 5: and who can really blame him? I mean, law enforcement
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: agencies are not exactly known for their culture of transparency.
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: That file. You'd have to get special, special permission to
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: touch that file.
• 40:18
  Speaker 5: Dave Rathman, Auji's former partner, says the Sheriff's department is
• 40:22
  Speaker 5: unusually protective of the auj case file, and they.
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: Don't even like to hear you talking about it. Well,
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: to me, that's what you would call a red flag.
• 40:37
  Speaker 5: So Rathman asked his buddy, a retired detective working cold
• 40:41
  Speaker 5: cases for the Sheriff's apartment, to review the AUJ case.
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: Could you maybe grab that case file? And he went,
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: oh no. I said, what do you mean, Oh no.
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: Why wouldn't you want to take a look at it?
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: He said, no, that's a hot potato. No one's allowed
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: to touch that. If I start poking around that case,
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: they'd let me go. I said, well, that's interesting. Why
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: it's a suicide. He said, I don't know. I just
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: know that that case can't be touched.
• 41:14
  Speaker 5: Those red flags are another reason Rathbin and others just
• 41:17
  Speaker 5: can't get behind the party line.
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: As my father would say, God bless him. There's something
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: rotten in the woodpile and it stinks and I can.
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: Smell it, and that brings us back to the poop mushroom.
• 41:34
  Speaker 5: It might thrive in darkness, but to me, that's not
• 41:37
  Speaker 5: an ideal environment for policing. I mean, the whole concept
• 41:42
  Speaker 5: behind law enforcement isn't watchfulized deter crime, right, But who
• 41:47
  Speaker 5: is watching the police? There's very little oversight of law
• 41:50
  Speaker 5: enforcement agencies, and it's hard to hold them accountable since
• 41:54
  Speaker 5: they control the collection and release of information about internal problems.
• 41:58
  Speaker 6: The philosophy of the Sheriff's Department is to hide it,
• 42:02
  Speaker 6: and the philosophy of government in a lot of respects
• 42:05
  Speaker 6: is that way. Now, with the terrible way they handle
• 42:08
  Speaker 6: public records quests and stuff, they just basically stonewall you.
• 42:12
  Speaker 6: They give you the middle finger. If you're asking for
• 42:15
  Speaker 6: something that the public has a right to know.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: Tell me about it, Bauer, we tried with those public
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: records requests and got the proverbial middle finger. Without access
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: to the information, it's hard for us to know how
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: the Sheriff's department handled the Auj case, and we'd remain
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: in the dark if it weren't for Mike Bauer and
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: other deputies coming forward. Bauer retired in two thousand and
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: two and has spent the better part of his retirement
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: investigating Auj's disappearance, and he's uncovered what looks like some
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: pretty damning information about the Sheriff's Department.
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: They lied to me.
• 42:53
  Speaker 6: They lied to me, as a fucking captain of the
• 42:55
  Speaker 6: fucking sheriff's department, with thirty three years on the job.
• 42:58
  Speaker 6: They fucking lie to me while I'm in charge of
• 43:01
  Speaker 6: Sheriff's intelligence. They're fucking lying to me about what they're
• 43:04
  Speaker 6: doing in homicide to shut this thing up. They don't
• 43:06
  Speaker 6: want me involved in it.
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: Oh imagine that's how.
• 43:11
  Speaker 6: Fancy that is.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: We know that law enforcement has its problems, but they're
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: not usually laid out for us by dyed in the
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: wool cops, people who know this world from the inside
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: and can show us where the bodies are buried. Figuratively speaking,
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: we tell Bauer we want to do a deep dive
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: on the Aujy case, beginning with his investigation.
• 43:36
  Speaker 6: You guys have stumbled into a cluster of shit.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: But he's not as encouraging as we expect him to be,
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: and for good reason.
• 43:46
  Speaker 5: Do you have any advice for us while looking into
• 43:49
  Speaker 5: this disappearance.
• 43:52
  Speaker 6: I wouldn't do it alone. In the event somebody did
• 43:56
  Speaker 6: decide that you were getting too close to something, you
• 43:59
  Speaker 6: will not be found killed. You will simply disappear.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: This season on Valley of Shadows.
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: Early on, I let the suicide theory sit at fifty
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: to fifty. As I've learned more and more, I'm at
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: about ninety five murder five to ten percent suicide.
• 44:28
  Speaker 5: They ruler around the drug scene.
• 44:31
  Speaker 14: Was that a deputy stumbled onto something he shouldn't of
• 44:35
  Speaker 14: and he was taken care of.
• 44:37
  Speaker 4: I'm here, it's fill on the street minute, Augie.
• 44:40
  Speaker 5: He didn't kid suicide.
• 44:41
  Speaker 12: He was murdered.
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: I'm hearing for more more in person, and I started
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: hearing some rumors that there was a.
• 44:47
  Speaker 14: Gun, and yet there's no indication that gun was ever
• 44:52
  Speaker 14: booked into evidence.
• 44:53
  Speaker 10: If you rat it or they thought you were gonna
• 44:55
  Speaker 10: rat it wasn't. Hey, don't do that ever again. You're done.
• 45:00
  Speaker 10: They got rid of you. So that's where the murders
• 45:02
  Speaker 10: came in.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: He was describing with his hands and his arms and
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: his whole body where this cap was buried at.
• 45:09
  Speaker 6: In other words, it's not safe, not because of criminals,
• 45:12
  Speaker 6: it's not safe because of law enforcement. And there's nothing
• 45:15
  Speaker 6: worse than that.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: Hey, dude, we're getting like pretty far out in the
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: middle of nowhere and no one knows we're out here.
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: You've got to be careful where you go and who
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: you talk to.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: If you have any information or tips related to the
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: disappearance of John auj please call two one three two six,
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: two nine, eight eight nine or email Shadows at pushkin
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: dot Fm. Valley of Shadows is reported, written and produced
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: by us Haley Fox and Betsy Sheppard. Our editor is
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: Diane Hodson Oecutive producers are Jacob Smith and Alexandra Garreton.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: Original music by Jake Gorsky, Ray Lynch, Mike Jersich, and
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: Hayden Gardner. Sound designed by Jake Gorsky, fact checking by
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: Onica Robbins. Additional production support by Sonia Gerwick and our
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: show art was designed by Sean Karney and Betsy Sheppard.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: Special thanks to Nick White for show art photography. Additional
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: thanks to Jeremy Tao. Valley of Shadows is a production
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: of Pushkin Industries. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: podcasts from Type two fun. We're Haley and Betsy. See
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: you next week.