Chapter 1: What mysterious case does Valley of Shadows explore?
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Hi, everyone. It's Sarah from Sequestered here, and we've got something special to share with you today. It's a preview from a new true crime podcast that we think you're going to love. It's called Valley of Shadows. And like our most recent season of sequestered, it explores a disappearance that took place in a national park and it dives deep into the secrets that remain buried there.
This season of Valley of Shadows is hosted by journalists Haley Fox and Betsy Shepard, and it explores the unsolved disappearance of a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputy, John Adjaye, 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.
In this preview episode, we hear how Ajay, an ultra marathon runner and survivalist, went for a run one day in a national park called the Devil's Punchbowl. He never returned. His body has yet to be found. And the people closest to him insist that the ruling of his disappearance as a suicide just doesn't add up. Okay, we hope you enjoy this episode.
If you like what you hear, you can find Valley of Shadows wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want to hear the entire story ad-free right now, you can binge the series with a Pushkin Plus subscription. Sign up now on the Valley of Shadows page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm slash plus.
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. This pissed off old cop is Mike Bauer. Okay, my name is Mike Bauer, retired captain, L.A. Sheriff. I retired in 2002. My last assignment was Major Crimes Bureau, Detective Division, L.A. Sheriff. Bauer spent 33 years climbing the ranks of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
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Chapter 2: Who was Deputy Jon Aujay and what happened to him?
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. By early evening, he looped back towards the parking lot. But as the sun began to set, the shadows of trees and rocks grew until night engulfed the park. That evening, I got a phone call saying that Deputy O.J.
is missing, that he didn't come back to his vehicle, and that they were gonna start some more extensive searching for him.
It's an all-out manhunt for John Augie. Every search and rescue team in LA County has been called in to help. The 38-year-old went hiking Thursday in a rugged section of the Angeles National Forest known as Devil Punchbowls Park. It's a beautiful but dangerous area, an area where it may be extremely difficult to find Augie.
It's a pretty unique situation. The sheriff's department is called in to look for a missing hiker who's one of their own. So the search and rescue team sent out to look for Ajay consists of his friends and colleagues. We took our teams out and deployed in two-man teams over the edges of the trails into the little nooks and crannies and the gullies that he could have slipped and fallen into.
But searchers find no trace of Ajay. It was as if he just vanished into thin air. And now, nearly 30 years later, the deputy is still missing. I guess I'll open a box. All that remains from Ajay's life is packed into five cardboard boxes. The items are wrapped in plastic, and Bauer wears gloves as he combs through them. This is John's work jacket.
And it's an SEB jacket with his name embroidered on it and Bosco, his dog. Bauer's preserving Ajay's belongings for future developments in the case. Okay, so here's his running shoes with his name on the back. Those should have some DNA in them. The artifacts also tell us who Ajay was. There's a photo collage full of happy memories. Him and his high school sweetheart, Deb, on their wedding day.
A birthday party for their daughter, Chloe, who was just five when he disappeared. And puppy pics of Bosco, Ajay's department-issued canine. And next to these snapshots of domestic life, there's a steel ballistics helmet intended to stop rifle rounds, trophies for marksmanship, army fatigues, you know, tough guy stuff.
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Chapter 3: What theories surround Jon Aujay's disappearance?
The only law enforcement agency in this country that I know of, and I've looked around, who has a missing deputy sheriff and doesn't seem to care. What the hell happened? 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.
Hey, Betsy. How you doing? I'm good. I'm ready. Yeah? You want to do this? It's about time. A little road trip adventure? All right, let's do it.
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.
I'm Haley Fox, and this is Valley of Shadows, a show about crime and corruption in California's high desert. Episode one, The Devil's Punchbowl. Betsy and I are making the trek from downtown Los Angeles to the Antelope Valley. That's the desert area north of L.A. where Deputy Ajay disappeared.
The drive's about 60 miles, but it takes an hour and a half to two hours because of the mountainous terrain. So you actually have to take, we got to go north. Yeah, we're going to go north, but this is L.A., dude. We got to go south, 110 south, 5 north, 14. And then I think there's a 138 thrown in there, but nothing's a straight shot. Spoken like a true Angeleno.
I was born and raised in LA County. Go Dodgers! But this part of it feels worlds away. The Antelope Valley, or the AV as it's sometimes called, is a 3,000 square mile stretch of the Mojave. But this part of the high desert doesn't have the same allure and vibiness as places like Joshua Tree.
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Chapter 4: How did the search for Jon Aujay unfold?
John, we were chasing a suspect and we are law enforcement officers. And so we get exemptions during those things. That may be true, but it was illegal. Is this John being funny? You would not know, and he will never let you know.
Ajay was hard to read. In fact, there's even confusion over the pronunciation of his last name.
His family says OJ, but to his friends... It was Ajay, 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.
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Chapter 5: What does the evidence suggest about Aujay's fate?
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. He says, you know... Ajay said similar things to Dave Rathbun, but he didn't put a lot of stock into any of the statements because he says Ajay is just a weird guy. Our unit was next to a big giant duck pond.
And one of the ways we used to make jokes about each other is we kind of like, where do you fit in the duck pond? John was, and I don't want to malign him, but he was one of the oddest ducks in the pond, which is good, right? You need them. You don't want everybody swimming the same. Initially, Rathbun was open to the possibility of suicide, but he's become increasingly skeptical over time.
Because if Ajay had killed himself, he thinks his body or some trace of him would have turned up by now. So Ajay's colleagues are divided on what happened to him. It's kind of like those faces seen in the rocks at the Devil's Punchbowl. Same details, but interpreted in different ways. And that makes sense because we feel conflicted about it too.
Ajay did say some eerie things about disappearing, but this disappearing act would be pretty hard to pull off. I mean, how could he have buried himself and stay buried for almost three decades? Rathbun asked the sheriff's department to explain that one. They said, well, we think he might have sat on the edge of one of those mines and blown himself into the mine.
Okay, we are really stretching now for an explanation as to why we can't find him. I didn't accept it. Just common sense told me, you probably ought to see whether there's any evidence of self-infliction.
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Chapter 6: What role does the Sheriff's Department play in the investigation?
And yet, there's no indication that gun was ever booked into evidence. If you ratted or they thought you were going to rat, it wasn't, hey, don't do that ever again. You're done. They got rid of you.
So that's where the murders came in.
He was describing with his hands and his arms and his whole body where this cop was buried at.
In other words, it's not safe not because of criminals. It's not safe because of law enforcement, and there's nothing worse than that.
Hey, dude, we're getting, like, pretty far out in the middle of nowhere, and no one knows we're out here.
You've got to be careful where you go and who you talk to.
If you have any information or tips related to the disappearance of John Ajay, please call 213-262-9889 or email shadows at bushkin.fm. Valley of Shadows is reported, written, and produced by us, Haley Fox and Betsy Shepard. Our editor is Diane Hodson. Our executive producers are Jacob Smith and Alexandra Gerriton. Original music by Jake Gorski, Ray Lynch, Mike Jersich, and Hayden Gardner.
Sound design by Jake Gorski. Fact-checking by Annika Robbins. Additional production support by Sonia Gerwin. And our show art was designed by Sean Carney and Betsy Shepard. Special thanks to Nick White for show art photography. Additional thanks to Jeremy Tao. Valley of Shadows is a production of Pushkin Industries.
To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. From Type 2 Fun, we're Haley and Betsy. See you next week.
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