The weird disappearance of Deputy Jonathan Aujay at the Devil's Punchbowl

Deputy Jonathan Aujay, disappeared June 11, 1998, Devil’s Punchbowl, Antelope Valley, LA, California.

On Thursday, June 11, 1998, 38-year-old Jonathan Aujay (pronounced o-jay) traveled into the Devil’s Punchbowl Natural Area, 60 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles in the Antelope Valley, to go for a trail run.

Aujay had the day off from his job as a K9-unit dog handler with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He was a member of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Special Enforcement Bureau. At around 11. 45 a.m. he locked the truck, which he had filled at a gas station en route to the park from his Palmdale home, put on his green backpack and set out for his run. He had told his wife, Debra, that he would be home by dark, repeating it twice to her. He never returned and despite a large search, nothing has ever turned up in 22 years.

Whilst Jon had been a deputy for 18 years earlier, before that he had been a paratrooper in the Army’s Special Forces unit and he had a tattoo of the U.S. Army Eagle on his left biceps; on the right one, an old tattoo of Yosemite Sam had been covered with the letters SEB. An elite unit, the Special Enforcement Bureau handles SWAT and K9 operations for the sheriff’s department, negotiating hostage situations and serving warrants. Aujay worked nights so that he could be in the thick of the action, and he was reliable and conscientious, seldom calling in sick or using his vacation time.

On the day that Jon went missing, he called his supervisor to tell him that he did not want to take a new position within the department as a firearms instructor that he was offered and instead wanted to stay as a K-9 Deputy. Aujay was a K-9 deputy for three years and his dog, Bosco, lived with him at home.

Jon was 6 feet tall and weighed approximately 165 pounds at the time he went missing. He had brown hair and brown eyes and was wearing olive green shorts with pockets, a light-colored shirt, hiking boots, black crew socks and a blue and white or green and white baseball cap. He was also wearing a Casio brand running watch, black oval-shaped sunglasses and he was carrying a forest green in color Jansport brand day pack.

About the Devil’s Punchbowl

The Devil's Punchbowl is a scenic gorge within the Devil's Punchbowl Natural Area, an L.A. County park within the Angeles National Forest, north of the San Gabriel Mountains.

Layers of sedimentary sandstone have been tilted to nearly vertical angles by the nearby Punchbowl and Pinyon Faults (offshoots of the nearby San Andreas), while the surrounding terrain has eroded to reveal this strange, twisted geology. It’s easy for experienced hikers to access longer trails in the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument (the Devil’s Chair trek for a day hike and the longer Will Thrall Peak / Burkhart Saddle)

The trail run

Aujay was an avid runner and an experienced outdoorsman. He regularly traveled to the Sierra on weekends for hiking and camping trips, and he had staged more than ten climbing expeditions on Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the contiguous United States. As a member of the SEB running team, he competed against other local law enforcement agencies, and he also ran in individual races. The previous weekend he and a few SEB deputies had completed a 50-mile ultramarathon, his sixth.

In late June, he planned to take part in Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run, a 20-plus-hour trek through steep mountain terrain in Northern California. In the six months since he had qualified for the race, Jonathan had been going on daily runs, including trips a couple of times a month to the Punchbowl. It was an area he knew well, having spent countless hours over the years hiking and running its trail network. The hours of physical training he logged in his spare time were in order to stay in optimal shape for his job, he believed it was his duty to give 110 percent of himself to the department.

Early into his outing on this day, Aujay came across a teacher with a group of kids whose classroom he had recently visited with his K9 partner, a Belgian Malinois shepherd named Bosco. He stopped to talk, enthusiastically describing his route to the summit of 9,400-foot Mount Baden-Powell, 20 miles off. He said he’d be back around sunset. Then he continued running.

Two employees of a camp along the trail saw a man who fitted Jonathan’s description jogging in the direction of Baden-Powell. At 6 pm that evening a third camp employee spotted a man with a green pack heading toward the parking lot. Not long after that sighting, a nearby resident told a park employee he heard a single gunshot in the vicinity of the Punchbowl.

At 11 pm Debra reported her husband missing to the Palmdale sheriff’s station as he had failed to return after dark as promised, and two deputies drove to the Punchbowl. They discovered the truck, preserving it as a possible crime scene, and called for the department’s search and rescue squad, which was deployed at 11.30 pm that night. The next day searchers from the SEB joined the effort, as did three more search and rescue groups, the K9 unit, and the sheriff’s Emergency Services Detail.

His former partner on the SWAT team, David Rathbun, joined in the search, assuming Aujay would reappear quickly. “Jon’s tough as nails,” he remembers thinking. “They’ll find him and bring him out, and he’ll probably have a sprained or broken ankle.” Some of Aujay’s family members were confident he’d be able to withstand the harsh desert. His father-in-law recalled how Aujay had once scared off a 500-pound black bear when the two were camping in the Sierra. But when Aujay didn’t come limping from the wilderness within the first 24 hours, says Rathbun, “we got pretty antsy.”

On the third day, searchers from as far away as Malibu were participating, along with those from the nearby Air Force base. An Army Blackhawk helicopter was deployed near Mount Baden-Powell, while additional helicopters, horses, all-terrain vehicles, thermal-imaging equipment, and infrared technology were deployed to search the Punchbowl’s ravines and crevices. Searchers were airlifted to mountaintops and to some of the mines dotting the landscape.

An ultra-marathon runner named Vicki DeVita, whom Aujay was dating, said to investigators that Jonathan had told her he planned to go on an overnight “walkabout” in the wilderness; accompanied by a deputy friend of Aujay’s. She spent the night in the Punchbowl, calling for him. But nothing. Jon had hoped to move in with Vicki and had requested she submit to an HIV test before the two consummated their relationship. Vicki died in 2010.

After a week, a SEB lieutenant opened Aujay’s truck and removed his badge and wallet, according to the official log. Deputies drove the truck back to this Palmdale house. Days before the Western States 100, a friend handed Aujay’s race packet over to investigators. Deputies thought he might show up to run. He never did.

In the first week after Aujay’s disappearance, the department retrieved his dog, Bosco, from his house and boarded him at a kennel in Riverside. Within two weeks, Bosco, who was seven, died. A spokesperson for the sheriff’s department told reporters the cause was a ruptured artery, but Debra’s mother was quoted as saying Bosco had died of a broken heart.

What happened to Jonathan Aujay?

Chloe and Jon Aujay and Bosco (part of the K9 unit)

Some of Jon’s friends thought he might have returned to the military for a covert assignment. There was a theory that he might have dropped out and moved to Alaska, a place he’d talked about living in. His younger sister, Jan Kaltenbach, decided that he had plans to flee, stashing money, obtaining a new identity, and staging his disappearance. She knew her brother was increasingly miserable living in the Antelope Valley; he was a loner who desperately wanted to move to the mountains for better access to hiking and fishing. The last time she saw him was at a family wedding the month before he disappeared. “He was ready to go,” she says. “He was checked out. He was done.”

Debra and Jon began met during high school in Downey and they married in their hometown in 1986 but were headed for divorce before Aujay vanished. The couple had been married for 12 years and had a five-year-old daughter called Chloe. A month before he left his home for the last time, Jon had told Debra he thought they should go their separate ways.

The last thing Debra remembers Jon saying the morning of the Punchbowl run was “Have a nice life” and “Tell Chloe I love her.” The night he went missing, Debbie spoke to a private investigator to find out whether Aujay was cheating on her. But she abandoned that line of inquiry after learning it would cost her $500. Soon she began to think her husband’s goodbye seemed like that of a man planning to kill himself. In retrospect she thought Jon had been acting differently: There had been a cold, intense look in his eye the final time she saw him, and a month before, during an argument about their relationship, he had held a loaded gun to his temple as he drove the freeway. “What do you want me to do, kill myself?” he asked. Shocked, Debra burst into tears in the passenger seat.

He had packed his running medals as well as climbing and hiking memorabilia that had been on the walls of a spare room and returned a family heirloom bookshelf to his in-laws. Aujay also gave a gold necklace of his father’s to DeVita, the runner with whom he was starting a relationship. Was he planning to end his life? The LA sheriff’s department believed that he most likely committed suicide.

Family members did not believe that Jon would commit suicide because he was so close to his daughter, Chloe. “I never believed it for a minute,” his older brother, Joe, says of the suicide ruling. “The guy had too much pride,” says his nephew, Derec Aujay. “I’d put that on the back burner and rule that out.” Scott Griffis, a close friend who frequently went on ride-alongs with Aujay, felt the deputy simply had no reason to kill himself. “I mean, he had a zest for life.” He recalled how his friend seemed happy about the new relationship he was starting with DeVita.

Then there was the theory that Jonathan had been killed by a fellow deputy as part of a plan to hush up links to the meth world. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Special Enforcement Bureau had been embroiled in a long legal case and investigation relating to corruption involving meth production and traffickers.

There were rumors circulating within the Antelope Valley stations that deputies were warning meth players of pending drug busts. In the early 1990s, a five-year internal investigation led to the indictments of 35 deputies who’d stolen millions of dollars from drug dealers. FBI video surveillance captured a sergeant and two narcotics detectives taking $30,000 from a drug dealer’s hotel room. A detective assigned to an elite narcotics team was arrested for hiding $150,000 stolen by a colleague.

A few days after Aujay vanished, a woman linked to the Antelope Valley’s outlaw bikers called the sheriff’s department to report she’d heard that Aujay had come across a meth lab and “was taken care of.” Then a tip came in from an informant who said a biker dealer claimed that after the deputy discovered something on his jog, he “was going to be a hero and was taken care of” before being “put into a hole.”

Separate investigations by the FBI, by a sheriff’s homicide detective and the Operation Silent Thunder drug task force (which Aujay had been a part of), turned up similar intelligence. Years later, Aujay’s former boss, Mike Bauer, began to suspect that a different deputy, someone who’s now retired, had murdered Jony.

There were plenty of stories, but none were confirmed. A woman claimed to know where his body was buried, and a man contacted the task force, saying he was present when the deputy was murdered. A third person reported seeing Aujay return to his truck in the Devil’s Punchbowl parking lot at dusk before walking back out with his backpack in the direction of two armed bikers. The witness then heard screaming.

Deputy Randell Heberle insists that when he arrived at the Punchbowl after Aujay was reported missing, he spotted a snub-nosed .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver on the center console of the truck. “No deputy back then would leave their gun visible,” says Heberle, who retired in 2010. The chance that a passerby might see it, break into the vehicle, and use the gun to commit a crime was too high. “It’s not just a red flag,” he says. “It’s full-on fireworks. Fourth of July.” He says he reported the gun to others at the site, but the official missing person flyers stated that Aujay was likely carrying the gun. “My recollection is that we could not account for his two-inch revolver,” says Dave Sauer, the sergeant who led the search.

The Hager court case

In May 2018, Darren Hager, a deputy with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department received a jury award of $4.5 million upon their finding that Hager was wrongfully terminated in retaliation for looking too closely into the disappearance.

In January 2000, an LASD homicide detective received permission to reopen the case and, after a three-month investigation, he concluded that another deputy was involved in the drug trade and was the prime suspect in the murder of Aujay. Allegedly, the homicide captain refused to authorize a search warrant, took the detective off the case, and threatened to terminate the detective if he continued with the case.

In December 1999, Hager arrested a man who offered to become an informant against five major methamphetamine manufacturers and distributors in the Antelope Valley. He not only provided leads for ongoing drug investigations, but he also reported a rumor that a certain deputy was involved in the Aujay disappearance.

In March 2000, a joint narcotics task force was formed targeting the major meth dealers in Antelope Valley. Hager was the LASD member of the DEA task force. The then-assistant sheriff, Larry Waldie, ordered Hager to investigate the narcotics with the DEA, but only to document, not investigate, any information obtained on Aujay or any corrupt deputies, which was to be later turned over to homicide or the LASD Internal Criminal Investigation Bureau. Hager considered the DEA task force investigation an enormous success. The 11-month investigation led to 290 state arrests and 32 federal convictions for narcotics manufacturing and trafficking. And, as he was instructed, Hager said he turned over the information he obtained relating to Aujay and any corrupt deputies to his lieutenant, who transmitted it up the chain of command.

Hager said he was then subject to an 11-month investigation by the Internal Affairs Bureau, which he contended was retaliation for reporting the information about the corrupt deputies. On July 28, 2003, he was terminated from his job.

Hager then filed a suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court against the Sheriff's Department and the county for retaliation and wrongful termination. He argued that, since he was hired in February 1998, he was rated outstanding for his last three reviews in 1999, 2000, and 2001, and in 2002 he went to Washington, D.C., to be presented with the DEA's Administrator's Award for his work on the task force, and that such termination was improper. After his termination, Hager said he was unable to find work because of the nature of the charges made against him: reckless investigation, disobeying orders, and making false statements to his superiors.

The defense argued that Aujay committed suicide and that the supposed corrupt deputy's involvement in his death was disproved by the February to April 2001 homicide investigation of Aujay's disappearance. The defense also contended that Hager falsely misrepresented and reported information to his superiors that were allegedly obtained from both informants and federal wiretaps about the claimed corrupt deputy.

The jury returned a verdict in favor of Hager, awarding him $806,041 for past lost earnings, $1,199,974 for future lost earnings, and $2,500,000 for noneconomic damages, totaling $4,506,015.

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