Chapter 1: What happened to Deputy William Hardy on July 19, 1995?
On June 11th, 1998, a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing.
Hey, if they'll kill a cop and bury him, what are they going to do to me?
What really happened to the missing deputy? Valley of Shadows, a new series from Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high desert.
Listen to Valley of Shadows on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is quite a wall here. Oh, these are some great photos.
That's Jimmy Carter, and that's me.
Uh-huh.
That's me and Loretta Lynn.
How did this come about?
She was giving a concert in Birmingham. Uh-huh. She carried me backstage to meet her.
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Chapter 2: Who is Bill Baxley and what role did he play in this case?
Officer William Hardy, who went by Bill, had been a deputy with the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office for 23 years. He was also a security guard at the hotel where he worked the night shift to make extra money. Hardy was 5'10", had a thin mustache, and wore his hair in a jerry curl. He was known to be easygoing and friendly. When Deputy Hardy wasn't making hotel security rounds,
Barry usually saw him wearing his brown and tan deputy uniform, sitting at one of the tables in the hotel's atrium, smoking Moore brand menthol cigarettes and drinking coffee.
You know, when I worked there and when I was working nights, it was me, you know, Officer Hardy or whatever officer on duty. And or we would sometimes have a houseman who is cleaning floors or something, but very minimal group.
And I never felt unsafe.
Barry wasn't the only person to hear the popping noises. A few guests at the hotel also heard gunshots, including Marshall Kelly Cummings, a guest in a fourth-floor room directly above the hotel's back exit.
Dude, I can remember it like it was yesterday.
As I worked on this project, I started referring to Cummings as the Keebler cookie guy because in 1995, he worked for Keebler as a truck driver.
And I was with Keebler driving one of their step vans delivering cookies and crackers and stuff.
Cummings was staying at the Crown Sterling for a company training. After the workday was over, he drank a few beers at the hotel bar with some co-workers, and then he and the other Keebler employee he was rooming with turned in between 10 and 11 p.m. But Cummings was not asleep for long.
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Chapter 3: What makes Toforest Johnson's conviction controversial?
his cigarette still burning in an ashtray. Meanwhile, back on the fourth floor, Marshal Kelly Cummings hangs up the phone with Barry and goes back to the window.
And I kept looking and I kept looking. Finally, my eyes got to where I could see. And I looked down and I could see him laying on the ground. I went, oh, no, this ain't good.
Cummings spots a body on the ground and realizes someone has been badly hurt. It's right around this time Barry makes the same terrible discovery.
There's a hallway that went to the door that went back out to the back parking lot.
As I turned the corner to go down that hallway and I looked out the door in the distance, I saw Officer Hardy on the ground. That's when I ran back to the front desk, made an emergency phone call, Yes, ma'am, this is Bearing from Crowder Steelers Hotel again. I have what appears to be a Jefferson County police officer shot in the back of our building. He is not moving. People in a car drove away.
And you say, is he in uniform? He's lying on the pavement. I'm a little afraid to go out. Is he in uniform? Yes, he is. A Birmingham police officer? Jefferson County.
He is a hired nighttime security for us.
Hey, do you know if you can find out anything like if he's breathing, if he's conscious, and how much blood? I'm trying, ma'am. My problem is I don't know if the people are still out there. Okay, we should be there shortly. Thank you very much. I'm going to go and try to look on him. Okay. Thank you. God, Jefferson County Deputy has been shot on the back entrance of the hotel, Crownstone Suites.
It is one of us, and they have got one down. He has been shot. And it looks bad.
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Chapter 4: What evidence led to Toforest Johnson's indictment?
He was not in good condition. He did have a wound to his face. He was making a gurgling, gasping noise, you know. He was not conscious.
I believe I took my jacket off, my uniform jacket off, to try to cover him or put under his head or try to comfort him. But fortunately, officers arrived so quickly, and I was removed from that area immediately.
More than a dozen officers from four different agencies arrive at the hotel. One of them is Detective Tony Richardson, who says he'd known Deputy Hardy since he first started working for the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office in 1978.
Being black, and Bill being black, Naturally, I noticed him. I was told more than once to get a haircut. That, you know, to be a deputy sheriff, you gotta have your hair cut. So the reason I mention that is because from the first day that I ever saw him, his hair was out to here.
Big afro. Big afro.
And he would put on his hat. He wore that hat religiously. Everybody else at the sheriff's office hated those hats. They didn't want to wear them, you know? But he always wore his hat.
Deputy Hardy often wore his traditional, broad-brimmed, tan, Smokey the Bear-style sheriff's hat. It was later entered as evidence from the crime scene, with a bullet hole through the brim.
And he would have it on his head, and all that hair would be on the side, would be out here. And I'm like, who is this guy? How can he get away with that? And not only that, he is in the sheriff's office. How can he get away with that? So I was intrigued by him, fascinated by him. But I was scared of him.
I was scared to meet him because I thought in my mind, this guy has got to be crazy, you know, to do that and get away with it. He's got to be crazy. I was scared of him. But anyway, when I first met him, I met him and talked to him. We started to feel better about, well, I started to feel better about him. We were never just bosom buddies real close, but we were close and we knew each other.
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Chapter 5: How did the community react to Deputy Hardy's murder?
Just, you know, stuff like that. And we laughed and talked for a minute. And that was the last time I saw him. And the next time I heard Bill's name was about 2 o'clock in the morning when I got the call saying that he had been shot. At that time, I was what was considered a crimes against persons detective, which meant that I worked homicides.
The lieutenant felt like because it involved a deputy sheriff and that we needed all the help that we could get, so I got called out.
Did you go to the actual scene? Yeah. What did you encounter when you got there?
Well, by the time I got there, Bill's body was gone.
Paramedics had already lifted Bill Hardy into an ambulance and rushed him to the emergency room of Birmingham's largest hospital. He is gravely injured with two gunshot wounds to his head and jaw. A medical examiner notes a bullet wound to Hardy's finger likely means he raised his hand in a defensive posture when he was shot.
Police go to his house to tell his wife, Patricia Diane Hardy, and bring her to the hospital. Jim Woodward, the chief deputy in Jefferson County, also rushes over when he hears that Hardy was shot. What do you remember about the incident?
I got the call that Hardy had been shot and they told me it looked very serious. So I got in my car and went down to the hospital. I stood there while they were operating on me. And then I just heard one say, that's it. It's over. We can't do anymore. It's over. We can't save him. He's gone.
What does that feel like when you are a career law enforcement officer?
Well, it's kind of devastating to you. You know, you get to know these guys. And I knew Artie. That's a very devastating thing to happen to you.
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Chapter 6: What were the circumstances surrounding the night of the murder?
Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On June 11, 1998, a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing.
It's an all-out manhunt for John Auge. Every search and rescue team in L.A. County has been called in to help.
Within days, tips started flooding into the Sheriff's Department.
The ruler around the drug scene was that a deputy was taken care of.
Is this the story of a man who just got lost in the desert? Or of a cover-up inside the nation's largest sheriff's department?
A homicide captain saying, detective, do not find out if this guy's guilty or innocent. Who does that?
Valley of Shadows, a new series from Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high desert. Do you have any advice for us while looking into this disappearance?
I wouldn't do it alone.
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