Betsy Shepard

Rathbun and his team of searchers come to the punch bowl, armed and ready for action.

Because maybe Ajay isn't lost or injured or running for the hills.

Maybe he's the victim of foul play.

The command post doesn't expand on why they thought Ajay may have been taken out by meth-related violence.

But to Rathbun, this theory doesn't sound too far-fetched.

Because the Antelope Valley is isolated, outlawish, and on account of its size, difficult to police.

There are a lot of people who just don't want to be around other human beings out there, which makes them sometimes dangerous.

There's people cooking meth.

It was a little bit like the Old West in a way.

I mean, this is a very unusual, strange place.

And remember that abandoned mine searchers scoped out?

Well, it turns out they're everywhere.

And they're a prime location for body dumping.

One of the things ESD did was recover dead bodies from mines.

And it wasn't just the mines.

Corpses turn up all over these parts.

You know, if all the dead bodies that were up there from being deliberately disposed of stood up at once, they'd be shoulder to shoulder.

It's a chilling image of the area's darker side.

Ajay would jog from the Devil's Bunch Bowl into the Angeles National Forest, which has been called the most dangerous national forest in America.

Around the time of Ajay's disappearance, it's estimated that two to three dozen corpses turned up in the forest every year.