From Valley of Shadows: The Devil's Punchbowl
2/26/202647 min
Valley of Shadows is a new Pushkin true crime podcast that digs into a nearly 30-year old secret buried in the California desert. On June 11, 1998, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy Jon Aujay went for a run in California’s Devil’s Punchbowl park...and never came back. Nearly 30 years later, the mystery surrounding his disappearance has only deepened. Some say Aujay 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 Aujay’s friends and LASD colle...
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First 90 secondsMalcolm Gladwell· Host0:00
[instrumental music] 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 Punchbowl 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 Hayley Fox and Betsy Shepherd, 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, Hayley 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