Introducing Valley of Shadows: The Devil’s Punchbowl

Lost Hills: Dark Canyon

Western Sound and Pushkin Industries

Documentary, True Crime, Society & Culture

4.2 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 12 January 2026

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Over the next few weeks, we'll be sharing episodes from a new Pushkin true crime podcast, Valley of Shadows. Valley of Shadows 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 colleagues are convinced is true—that he was the victim of foul play, and that his own department is covering it up. Through exclusive interviews, revealing wiretaps, and buried police files, investigative reporters Hayley Fox and Betsy Shepherd uncover vestiges of the Wild West in a small California town, where outlaw biker gangs crank out methamphetamine and local cops operate on both sides of the law.

(00:04:48) Find Valley of Shadows wherever you get podcasts. Binge the entire season of Valley of Shadows, ad-free, by subscribing to Pushkin+. Sign up on the Valley of Shadows show page on Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin.fm/plus

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Pushkin.
0:10.8	Hey Lost Tales listeners. It's Dana. It has been a little while since we were hanging out here on this feed, but I am here today because I wanted to tell you about
0:24.0	an incredible true crime podcast that explores a world that has a lot in common with Lost Hills.
0:31.9	The show is called Valley of Shadows, and it follows the 1998 disappearance of Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy
0:39.1	John Aege.
0:41.3	So one of the things that makes this show incredibly special to me is that it's co-hosted
0:47.7	by Haley Fox.
0:48.9	And you might remember Haley from Los Hills because she was a senior producer on three seasons of the show.
0:56.8	And on season four, she was my indispensable reporting partner. And she's also my dear friend.
1:04.9	So you heard Haley on season four, the My Teresa Richardson story, and we spent an incredible amount of time together
1:14.3	over the past five years, but it's very exciting for me to have Haley here today to tell us all
1:22.0	about Valley of Shadows before you get to hear the first episode.
1:25.7	Oh, thank you, Dana.
1:29.2	That was such a sweet intro.
1:37.4	I mean, first off, I think that there's so much about this show that reminds me of Lost Hills because Valley of Shadows is truly like a mystery that could only take place in Southern California. It's not Malibu. It's
1:46.9	about as far from Malibu as you can imagine. But it takes place at the other end of L.A. County
1:53.2	in the Mojave Desert, which is just like Joshua trees, pink sunsets, two-lane highways.
2:01.8	So the setting alone is remarkable.
2:04.9	But this story, I mean, it's truly one of the twistiest, turniest stories I've ever come
2:11.9	across.
2:12.7	It's about the sheriff's deputy, a guy named John Aege, who went for a run on his day off back in 1998,
2:20.3	and then he just never came back. And it's been almost 30 years now, and he's still unaccounted
	...

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