Chapter 1: Who was Deputy Jon Ajay and what led to his disappearance?
Pushkin. Malcolm here. I want to tell you about a man named John Auger. He was a Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy, an ultramarathon runner, a survivalist, and someone who had made a study of how to stay alive in punishing terrain. And one day, he went for a run in a place called the Devil's Punch Bowl in the high desert of Los Angeles, and he never came back.
Some say Auger is just another missing hiker, claimed by the inhospitable landscape of the Southern California desert. Some say he took his own life out there. But there's another theory that many of Auger's friends and colleagues are convinced is true. that he was the victim of foul play and his own department is covering it up.
Hosted by journalists Haley Fox and Betsy Shepard, Valley of Shadows explores Auger's unsolved disappearance and the stench of corruption that's followed the case for nearly 30 years.
Through exclusive interviews, revealing wiretaps, and buried police files, Haley and Betsy enter into the criminal underworld of outlaw biker gangs, meth production, and crooked cops in Southern California's Mojave Desert, exploring one of the state's most mysterious missing persons cases. You're about to hear a preview from the show.
If you enjoy it, you can find Valley of Shadows wherever you get your podcasts.
This series includes content that may not be suitable for all listeners. Listener discretion is advised.
Is this okay?
Yeah, I'll turn it down just a little bit because sometimes you get animated.
I get pissed off. Pissed off old cop.
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Chapter 2: What theories surround Jon Ajay's missing person case?
And I said, hey, who was that? It was John Adjaye.
John Ajay was a 38-year-old canine cop, and he was calling to inquire about an upcoming job assignment.
I said, well, I've been trying to get ahold of him. And she says, oh, well, maybe he'll call back. He never called back.
John Ajay was working for the unit Bauer headed up at the time, the Special Enforcement Bureau, or SEB for short.
which consists of seven or eight SWAT teams. And the SWAT teams were involved in tactical responses to high-risk situations in the field.
SCB handled things like active shooter situations, hostage negotiations, search and rescue. It was a job that attracted adrenaline junkies like Ajay. He was an Army paratrooper and a survivalist. And those military skills, along with his buzz cut and square build, made him a shoo-in for the Sheriff's Department.
He was in the Army in Special Forces. He was working at the elite unit of the department. I have to call him a loner, but he was an elite loner because the guy was doing 50 mile runs. He was an animal.
Ajay got his kicks by going on long runs through California's backcountry. He'd go out deep into the wilderness to conquer the only obstacle course that still challenged him. And that's how Ajay was spending his day off, on June 11th, 1998. He woke up, put on his running gear, and drove to one of his favorite parks, the Devil's Punchbowl.
It's a rugged canyon where the Angeles National Forest, the San Gabriel Mountains, and the Mojave Desert all converge. Ajay entered the park just before noon, used a payphone to call into the sheriff's department, and then he took off running. He never listened to any music, just the sounds of nature as he jogged along a maze of switchbacks and up a nearly 10,000-foot mountain.
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Chapter 3: How did the search and rescue operation unfold for Jon Ajay?
And the reason they told us is they recommended we take weapons.
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 Punchbowl 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. And those were just the ones that were found.
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Chapter 4: What challenges did search teams face in the Devil's Punchbowl?
In fact, there's even confusion over the pronunciation of his last name.
His family says OJ, but to his friends... It was OJ, and he never corrected us, and he's not very bashful.
We'll never know why he didn't tell people how to pronounce his name, but it seems fitting for someone who remains a mystery to so many. Ajay was an enigma to just about everyone around him. So when he disappeared, he became an easy target for conspiracy theories. Stories began to circulate that Ajay's alive and well, living in Alaska. Others say Mexico.
Some say he was recruited by a mercenary group or joined the CIA. These theories were fueled by weird comments Ajay had made to friends like Dave Rathbun.
Dave, yes, you guys think you can find people with your searches and you think you're pretty good at it, right? I could go in the mountains and you'd never find me. And I said, there are people who want to be found that we can't find. So I'm not real impressed with your declaration there. If you don't want to be found, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to find you. So I agree.
And of course, that conversation takes on extra meaning as searchers keep coming up empty-handed.
I participated in that search until my feet were bloody, as did several of my peers. But day six, they said, well, shut it down. What do you mean, shut it down? Who said that? Who gave that order? Who shut this thing down? What are you talking about? Day six.
The sheriff's department folds the search after six days and gives a statement to the press. Sergeant Sauer, one of the deputies overseeing the operation, says, quote, A good analogy would be someone coming up to you and giving you two to three pieces of a 500-piece puzzle and asking you to guess what the picture is.
Throw into that a few pieces of an entirely different puzzle, and that is what we work with. We might never get it right. End quote.
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Chapter 5: What evidence was found during the investigation into Ajay's disappearance?
Nothing. The only thing they think they may have found of Ajay's was an energy bar wrapper left on one of the trails. From what we can tell, there's not a lot pointing to suicide. So we reach out to Ajay's colleagues and friends to get their thoughts.
He was obviously down. He was obviously upset. But was it enough to commit suicide?
Sergeant Vince Burton is still on the fence. On the one hand, Ajay did appear torn up over his marital problems. On the other, he seemed to be coping.
Would you be telling me about your ultra marathon if you were just going to end it all? Would you even be planning to go run at the punch bowl, which is an ugly area anyway?
For fact-checking purposes, we want to make clear, the punch bowl is not ugly. But go on, Vince.
None of that made sense to me with the suicide.
For Ajay's running buddy, Randy Meggardly, there's no question.
Plain and simple. I think he killed himself. That's the only way I can explain it.
Because, he says, Ajay was acting strangely, even more strangely than usual, in the weeks before his disappearance.
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Chapter 6: How did the sheriff's department handle the investigation?
We haven't ruled out the possibility of suicide, but we don't have any evidence to support that that's what he came here to do.
Bauer thinks it's irresponsible to promote the suicide theory without a high degree of certainty. So he prods the department to keep investigating.
I kept contacting Homicide and saying, something's wrong. I'm telling you, there's a problem.
But he says the department ignored the case to such an extent that he began to question their motives.
Nobody was in charge of it. And nobody wanted any of it once they saw how stinky it was getting.
Randy Meggardly represents the other end of the spectrum. So we ask him what he thinks about the possibility of foul play.
I refer to myself as a mushroom. They just feed me a little bit of poop every once in a while. I wasn't in the know on that whole thing.
I've never heard the mushroom poop metaphor before.
Yeah, you know, you feed you a little bit of poop and you grow a little bit.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of the theories surrounding Ajay's fate?
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