Mike Bauer

What's the answer?

Who's motivated to find the answer?

And that's my cue.

When Mike Bauer first told me about Ajay, I thought, an unsolved disappearance involving a cop.

That's unusual.

But when he started talking about the sheriff's department, his department, that's when I locked in.

Because you'd expect the LA County Sheriff's Department to turn over every stone to find their guy.

So the claim that the LASD may have an interest in not solving the case?

Now that's a story.

So I called up my friend, Haley Fox.

Like me, she's an investigative journalist, and she knows a lot about the Sheriff's Department because she's reported on it for many years.

We've teamed up on stories before and decided to get the band back together to find answers about this missing deputy and to take on the largest sheriff's department in the country.

There's a code of silence in law enforcement.

You break that code of silence, you're done.

Hey, if they'll fucking kill a cop and bury him, what are they going to do to me?

It's an obstruction of justice of a very large scale.

I'm Betsy Shepard.

So a lot of just, like, trailers kind of just parked out in the desert.

I get anxiety coming to places like this because it reminds me of the town that I grew up in.

I feel the oppressive weight of boredom.