Transcript of Episode 4: Outlaw Country

Several homes in the suburb of Northwood had the most beautiful landscaping.

Such perfection.

The neighbor responsible, retiree Arvind Shreeve.

He reminded me of Mr. Rogers.

But Arvind hit a dark secret.

Arvind's message was, I have a key to get you into heaven.

My mom took me to this house, and then I never lived with her again.

Gardens of Evil: Inside the Zion Society Cult, is the new season of the award-winning podcast, American Nightmare. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.

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This series includes content that may not be suitable for all listeners. Listener discretion is advised. Previously on Valley of Shadows. At the time, the Antelope Valley was a cesspool. It was a desert. It was known for manufacturing methamphetamines. So people were getting busted left and right.

It was a little bit like the Old West in a way.

I mean, this is a very unusual, strange place.

Rick Ingles was a resident deputy. I'm not sure the area he lived in. He knew this area probably better than anybody.

Tom Hinkle brings it up to my boyfriend. Tells that R.

J.

Was on a jog, ran across something he shouldn't have ran across, and he had to be taken care of, meaning he was killed.

There's a musical road in the Antelope Valley that plays the Lone Ranger theme song every time a car drives across it. And we're headed there to hear it for ourselves.

So it looks like the musical road was the first of its kind in the United States. There's like a rumble strip, and the Grooves are spaced out in a series of pitches.

You got to hit the Musical Road just right. A steady 55 miles an hour.

Are you comfortable going a full 55?

I mean, am I comfortable only going 55? Is that actually? Yes. But in the spirit of Antelope Valley speed demons, I crank it up to 65 miles an hour.

Okay, we're out in the desert. We are surrounded by scrub land.

The sun is on the horizon.

We're on our horse galloping into the distance.

And the Lone Ranger rides again.

Exhilarating.

The end of that really does slap like Super Calvinish. Yeah. Yeah, that part I legit felt like I was the worst. The Lone Ranger was first dreamed up in the 1930s for old-timey radio listeners.

A moment later, a thunder of groups and silver with a Lone Ranger in the saddle, spread into the night.

The Masped Cowboy restores order in an otherwise lawless place, the Wild West.

This is a raw frontier. You must take a realistic attitude. This is a place where mayhem, theft, murder are the commonplace instead of the unusual.

But this lawless frontier isn't just a trope in fictionalized Westerns. It's also the backdrop of John Ajay's disappearance in the Antelope Valley, where cowboys and Outlaws haven't given it up.

A car would race down the road shooting guns out the window.

Retired Captain Mike Bauer.

And we didn't think anything of it because we said, Antelope Valley is the old West.

But the gunslingers riding roughshod over these desert towns ride iron horses. Outlaw bikers travel in packs across the valley. Their vests are emblazened with names like the Hell's Angels, the Mongols, and the Vagos. They wear patches to showcase their feats from using various drugs to acts of violence, and even for killing a cop.

The Vagos chased the Hell's Angels out of that valley, and the Vagos took over. Almost every suspect who was named in the disappearance of this deputy has some connections to the Vagos Motorcycle group.

Was John Ajay one of their trophy kills? That's what Brandenburg wants to know when he hears about some local bikers who've been bragging about Ajay's murder.

Why would the Outlaw Biker Game, these big badass crooks take credit for killing a cop if they didn't? Because then when it's found out, then they're nothing but a bunch of lying punks that are taking credit for shit they don't do.

But witnesses run for the hills when Brandenburg approaches them. No one is willing to talk. The bikers tend to have that effect on people.

They're scared for their life, and rightfully so. These people were killers. They're real killers. They'll kill you in a minute if they I think it's going to save them.

The outlaw biker world is hard to break into. And without access, Brandenburg's investigation hits a roadblock. Until he hears about a hotshot young narcotics detective who's been trying to put the squeeze on the meth trade in the Antelope Valley. But enforcing the law in these parts is a dangerous undertaking. I'm Haley Fox.

I'm Betsey Shepard, and this Valley of Shadows. Episode 4, Outlaw Country.

No transposing, no hunting, no motorcycles. Check, check, check.

We're on our way to meet Darren Hager, former Narcotics Detective for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

He sees us.

We've been granted entry. Haley and I pass through a security fence and make our way down a dirt road to Hager's house. And we have Mr. Hager in his full cowboy regalia. Here he is. Hat, boots, and buckle. Hager's 6 feet tall. He's got a horseshoe mustache and a barrel-shaped chest. It's very easy to picture him as a Sheriff's Deputy. But these days, he's a cattle rancher.

Can we start off by…

Nope. No. All right, let's go back to LA. Okay, nice to see you. Bye. Hager likes to mess with us, but he agrees to a sit-down interview. He leads us into a dark wood-paneled room, covered in old neon signs, and shows us his home bar, which is apparently a requirement for all retired Sheriff's deputies. Hager's bar is stocked with every whiskey you could possibly want, and no other type of liquor.

I built the bar, just tried to make it as rustic and Western as I could.

You really do feel like you're in an old saloon or something.

That's the whole purpose.

And just when we thought the vibes couldn't get any more Yellowstone, we noticed a big-ass taxidermied Buffalo head mounted to the wall.

The one on the wall was our herd Bull. He got pneumonia, so we mounted his head.

What made you want to farm Buffalo? That's a real challenge.

It was Larry Brandenburg's idea, the Homicide Detective.

That's right. Dieran Hager and Larry Brandenburg ran a Buffalo farm together. They became friends in 2000 and then business partners in 2003. The thing that first brought them together was the John Ajay case. It It's a long story, so we pull up stools at Hager's bar. He pours himself a glass of whiskey and starts from the beginning, like the very beginning.

As a little kid, I always wanted to become a police officer, just like any normal kid, either a cowboy or a police officer, right?

I like to think of myself as a pretty normal kid, but I can't say I ever wanted to be a cowboy or a cop. Hager is cut from a different cloth, though. He went to the Sheriff's Academy pretty much right out of high school, and by his early 20s, he was working patrol in the Antelope Valley.

They put me into a patrol car, and I was just a hook and booking machine. That's just what I like.

Hager was a hook and bookin machine. As in, he made a lot of arrests.

I was either number one or number two in stats for felony arrests out of the entire station every time.

We ask if he acquired any nicknames at the LASD. You know, like the Enforcer, the Hammer, something tough. Higger is reluctant to answer, but we keep prodding.

Nobody likes you, too. They called me Peewee because I looked like Peewee Erman. Are you happy? I'm glad you guys are happy.

These days, Hager is more of a John Wayne type. But back when he was still Peewee, he slowly worked his way from patrol deputy to narcotics. And the Antelope Valley where he was assigned was the Motherload.

I think a lot of people picture Breaking Bad whenever you're talking about making meth in the desert. Can you give us a reality check?

If you change the names, it's the same exact thing. The meth we were receiving was a super crystal clear meth, but it was 97% pure meth. It was top of the line, breaking bad meth.

Hager is not just picking people pull up for meth, though, because the drug trade is driving up all kinds of violent crime.

We were number one in homicides in Los Angeles County. So yeah, crime was huge.

Over time, Hager makes detective. But even in his new role, he can't seem to hook any of the big fish, the traffickers who are flooding the streets with meth.

These are guys we could never touch. Even if we arrested them, all the cases got kicked out. And that's how we came up with the name Untouchables.

But then in late 1999, Hager lands a case that will change the course of his career. It starts with a domestic abuse call that escalates when the suspect barricades himself inside his home.

I was able to serve a search warrant on him and found a bunch of stolen property, methamoephtamine, and was able to tie it back to one of the individuals that I knew was big in the processing of methamoetamine.

With the charges combined, the suspect is looking at major prison time.

And he finally came to me, he goes, I don't want to go to jail for 12 years. What will it take to get you off my ass?

And that's when this suspect offers to become a police informant. We're going to call him Keith.

I go, What do you got? He goes, I will give you dealers in the methamphetamine world out here that you've never touched before. And that started the ball rolling.

Keith is willing to name names to help Hager bust the area's meth giants. But first, he needs some assurance no one will ever find out. He claims there's a lot of powerful people involved, dangerous people like the bikers. Who do not fuck around.

The Outlaw bikers were big out there. If you crossed them, there was a guaranteed death. There was going to be murder.

Hager realizes he's in over his head, so he kicks the info up to his supervisor.

I go, Look, this is above my pay scale. This is huge. This is way huge. And it got even bigger.

His supervisor calls a meeting with a few other detectives. Hager tells them everything discussed must stay in the room. But less than 24 hours later, Hager gets a call from Keith, his informant.

He goes, Who did you tell? It's already on the street. I'm talking to you.

Keith manages to convince people he's no snitch. But the problem remains. The dealers have a direct line to someone in the Sheriff's Department. Keith says he knows a number of dirty deputies.

He said, Look, if you go forward with this, Deputy X, Y, and Z are going to know exactly what's going on. So you got to protect me.

Hager doesn't what to think, but it's his job to reassure Keith.

I had no information, confirmation that deputies were dirty, but for the safety of my informant, I don't want them injured. That's your main goal, is you never want an informant hurt.

That's why we're using aliases for Keith and other informants to protect their identities. Hager sends Keith's concerns up the flag pole to the second in command at the Narco Bureau.

He Don't talk to anybody else. Take it to the feds. Take it straight to DEA. He goes, You can't trust anybody in here.

That's what Hager does. He meets with the drug enforcement administration, tells them about the meth trade in the Antelope Valley, the untouchables, the leaks in the department, and the feds agree to help under one condition.

We'll work your dope case, but we're not going to work any deputy personnel that you have.

So the DEA and the Sheriff's Department come to an agreement. It'll be a joint effort. The DEA will lead the charge on the meth trafficking investigation, and the LASD will handle claims of police misconduct and crimes outside of narcotics. The feds ask Hager to be their local guide because this is an unusual place, and he knows it well.

I couldn't tell you how many police pursuits and chases we had through the desert because it's pitch black out there, and you're running over rattlesnakes and jackrabbits trying to get the bad guy, and they just feel they're going to get away. So I got sworn in as a federal agent for them, even though I was still LA County Deputy Sheriff.

From the start, there's a huge emphasis on discretion. To protect against leaks, the task force will operate in a vacuum without the knowledge or help of local deputies.

We got to keep this quiet. Not just that I was going undercover, but Quiet internally. Nobody needs to know. That's where the name Operation Silent Thunder came up.

Operation Silent Thunder. Almost overnight, Hager's life is turned upside down.

I was taken completely out of the station. I wasn't allowed at the station. I couldn't drive my vehicle to the station. I couldn't talk to any more deputies at the station.

He grows a beard to disguise his appearance. And he's relocated to an abandoned fire station where he and five DEA agents set up offices. It's one of many safe houses used by the task force.

They were just old abandoned houses that we had keys to. It's several of those we We had several of those so we could swap different houses so people weren't tailing us and seeing what we were doing.

Despite all Silent Thunder's efforts to keep the lowest of profiles, word of Hager's star informant reaches Homicide Detective Larry Brandenburg.

He knew that my informant was involved in this meth trade, so he wanted to ask him if he knew certain things about what's going on in the Antelope Valley.

Hager bristles at first. He's mad that word of his informant is making the rounds. But he softens when Brandenburg says he's chasing a lead related to the disappearance of John Ajay. Because Hager knew Ajay, he worked with him in Bosco a number of times. So Hager hears Brandenburg out.

And he told me what he was learning. I go, You're the homicide detective, but I sure don't believe it.

Up until now, Hager had heard little about Ajay's case, just that he vanished in the punch bowl. So he's surprised by the murder allegations. But he agrees to let Brandenburg talk to Keith at a clandestine location.

You get out there in the middle of the desert, you make sure no one's around. You're constantly looking out the windows.

They meet in a remote part of the Mojave Desert and pile into an unmarked police van. Hager makes the introduction, and the informant starts talking.

He said he had been hearing things from drug dealers that Ajay was off-duty and he came across a meth lab.

Brandenburg has heard this before, but this is added confirmation.

And the drug dealers killed him because he came across this lab and they didn't want it exposed. He didn't go to jail, and that they dropped him in hole.

It's the same story with the same names.

He brought up Tom Hinkel, said they called him God, and that he was a cold-hearted killer. And he said that he heard that Richard Carroll may also be involved.

That's the guy who owned the meth lab right next to the Punch Bowl. Prior to this, Brandenburg had just suspected Carroll's involvement.

So that got our attention that he's putting out the right place, the right names.

Hager gets some new names for the task force. Brandenburg lands some witness corroboration. But the biggest outcome of this meeting is that Hager and Brandenburg have entered into a unofficial partnership Hager knows he's got to maintain the cone of silence, but the department tells him anything beyond narcotics should be passed along to the appropriate law enforcement division. So that's what Hager does. He hands off Ajay leads to Larry Brandenburg. And over time, the men develop a type of alley-oop rapport.

We would get the door open through our informants to where Larry wanted us to go, and then pass that information on to Larry, and then he'd try to put the homicide investigation together. And it worked out, it worked great.

And in the process, they take a liking to each other.

Then we started hanging around each other, and then we started talking off-duty, and there might have been a couple of glasses of chocolate milk here and there off-duty. Whatever, we became good friends over it.

While Brandenburg works the homicide angle, Hager follows up on the names Keith has given him.

We talked to probably thousands of people on the street. You got to put that link chart together. Who knows who? Are they really worth looking into a little more or talking to a little more? Every time you talk to one person, that person is going to give you a whole dozen other names.

And sometimes, one of these names pays off. It's a new eyewitness who allegedly saw Ajay in the punch bowl area at sunset right before he appeared. And the witness tells Hager that Ajay had company.

There was evidence in the house, and they would not listen to me. The Proof podcast is back with a new case and a new season. And this time, the stakes are higher than ever before.

The letter from the doctor said, I have six months or less to live. I'm security shitless right now.

A dying man is serving a life sentence for a murder he says he didn't commit. Did you ever question if they got the right person?

I don't think I believed it at the time. I don't think I believe it now. I'm scared to be sitting here in this damn chair talking about this shit.

How many other cold cases were going to come forward and go, Hey, man, you need to look at my shit because I didn't do it. How many more do we have?

You can listen now to Season 3 of Proof wherever you get your podcasts, and follow along with us as we reinvestigate the murder at the bike shop.

Everything I tell you is the truth. I'm not both shit in one way or the other. I hope I don't bring a ton of shit down on me. I really do.

Narco Detective, Darren Hager, hears about a guy named Rodney Katziff. He's fresh out of jail and finds work with a local lawyer, digging up dirt on people.

Rodney Katziff was out shaking trees and bushes and interviewing people and doing his own thing.

Katziff is tied into the local drug world, including the godlike Tom Hinkle. So all sorts of characters opened up to him. And it turns out Katziff has a lead. He tells Hager about an interview he did with a man who claims that he saw John Ajay in the Punch Bowl at dusk right before he disappeared. This is a huge development because up until this point, all reported Ajay sightings had been earlier in the day. So this witness, who we're going to call Matt, might have insight into Ajay's last moment. Minutes. Katz have tells Hager that Matt was confronted by two armed bikers in the Punch Bowl, and that Matt saw John Ajay headed in the direction of those bikers. So Hager tracks down Matt to hear the story firsthand.

At first, he says they were yelling by a rock and your deputy went over to him, and he wouldn't talk any more than that.

Later, Matt starts to walk back this version of events, changes the biker details, says he saw some hippies.

The next time we talked to him, he goes, Well, I think the guys on the rocks were jumping, and they were just yelling, having fun. It wasn't like yelling like something was going wrong, like an argument.

Hager says Matt even seemed to be lying about what he was doing in the punch bowl that day. He claimed to be up there mountain biking. But Hager learns that Matt is pretty tapped in with Tom Hinkle and Richard Carroll.

He knew every player in that punch bowl area. If I wanted to ride a bike in the mountains, I'm not going to know everybody there. So this guy was intertwined somehow, some way.

But the lead fizzles out when Matt recants his story. Hager guesses it's because Matt was scared of the bikers and what would happen to him if the bikers found out he placed them in the punch bowl at the time of Ajay's disappearance. And then something happens that strengthens Hager's hunch. He circles back with Katziff, that guy out there shaking those trees, to see if he has any more details about Matt's original account. But before Hager can talk to him, Katziff disappears.

His car was found burned up in the wash in Parablossom, and he's never been found again. That's at the same time we were starting to get information from him on what we needed for our case.

In September 2001, Katz's car is found burned out near the Angeles National Forest, not far from where Ajay had been jogging three years earlier. Just like the deputy, Katz's vanishes into thin air. Hager can't help but think the two disappearances are related, that the men were taken out because they got too close to something. There's a common thread between the disappearances, the Outlaw Bikers.

If you didn't pay your debt, Or if you ratted, or they thought you were going to rat, or you got involved in their business, it wasn't, Hey, don't do that ever again. You're done. They got rid of you. They didn't take a chance. So that's where the murders came in.

Antelope Valley has a large presence of outlaw bikers who are constantly making the nightly news.

Witnesses describe a chaotic scene of gunfire and stabbing between the Hell's Angels and one of the most violent motorcycle gangs in the country, the Mongols.

Prosecutors say, Vagoes are being charged with murder, attempted murder, drug and firearms dealing.

I know they don't like me to call them our local terrorists, but I'll put that name on them, too.

These groups also went by another name, the one percenters. It's a term coined back in the 1940s to distinguish the majority of bikers who are law-abiding citizens from a small number of bad apples, the one %. Some bikers gangs have turned that into a point of pride, embracing the one percenter label. And that's often reflected in their names, the devil's disciples, the Grim Reapers, and the Diablos. The official term law enforcement uses to refer to one percenter groups is Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs or OMGs. The bikers got the OMG acronym well before texting emerged, just FYI. And many of these OMGs are native to Southern California.

Los Angeles originated in San Bernardino. The Vago is originated in San Bernardino. The Mongols originated in Montebello, California. So I mean, this is a lot of the mother chapters of these clubs starting right here.

This is John Carr, a retired agent from the Bureau of alcohol, tobacco, firearms, firearms, and explosives, or ATF. He's an expert in the OMGs. And back in the day, he even infiltrated some of them while working undercover. And he still looks the part, intimidating and all muscle. Carr says that the biker gangs claim their turf, and the Antelope Valley belongs to the Vagos.

The The Vagoes are still that old-school, down-and-dirty, OMG.

Carr lays out two denim vests that he confiscated from the Vagos during prior investigations. The centerpiece of the vest is the club's emblem.

Their center patch, you can see this red devil. It's supposed to be the Red Loki, the Norse God of Nistief. He's on a winged wheel. He's holding basically the Vagoes banner up in his hands. Then the MCAP is for Motorcycle Club.

Bikers are given the backpatch when they're officially selected as a member. They can earn others for different contributions to the club. In front of us, there's a swastika patch, which tracks because a lot of the biker gangs have deep roots in neo-nazizm. Other patches are slightly more subtle, like the one that says MF.

If you ask a Vago what it means, they'll say it means a motorcycle family. But as law enforcement, we know it It's what they call their motherfucker patch. It's a patch you earn for doing some form of violence.

I know that the Vagas will not like this comparison, but so it is a little bit like Girl Scout in that you get patches for doing certain things.

Absolutely. There's patches you earn, and without a doubt. I mean, in this culture, their cuts, their vests, are one of the most important things to them. It's a very sacred thing to these guys.

It's not just that the patches are sacred. There's a quasi-religious aspect to biker culture in general. The gangs hold weekly meetings they call church, and there's even a group mentality when it comes to acts of violence.

You know, They use a term called a boot party, right?

A boot party.

Or you basically stomp the shit out of somebody.

Kahr saw evidence of this firsthand. A bloody corpse that the Vagos had dumped in the desert.

That's part of the way this individual got murdered. He got stomped to death just having that motorcycle boot imprint on his face.

In the Mojave Desert, Detective Darren Hager says the Vagos were involved in all types of criminal activity.

Police from five counties carry out a massive early morning raid on the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang called Vagos. They seize guns, drugs, money, and arrest 25 bikers, charging them with murder, attempted murder, and drug dealing.

One of the agencies targeting the bikers was the DEA, with the Operation Silent Thunder Task Force.

I'm not saying all the dope in Antelope Valley came from the one percentage, but it was a big % of the Valley. I mean, they did a lot of the meth dealing, and they were huge. I mean, we took down a 57-pound ephedrin lab. We took down a 100-pound methamphetamine lab, and lots of seizures in between mean?

As Hager and his DEA counterparts start mapping out the meth trade, they identify six cells in the area. One was run by a Mexican cartel. The other five were associated with Outlaw Biker gangs, which checks because bikers and meth are a duo as old as time. Crank, one of meth's early nicknames, came from Motorcycle Gangs because they used to hide their drugs in their engine block. Also known as a crank case. The bikers would cook meth nearly anywhere in shipping containers and trailers, and the Vagos were known to use Rick Carroll's underground lab near the Punch Bowl. It was also bikers who started making crystal, a type of meth sold in rock form, and that led to skyrocketing meth use because crystal was easy to make and extremely potent. That 97% pure, breaking bad meth. Motorcycle culture is so ubiquitous in the Antelope Valley in the '90s and 2000s that the local cops want in on the action. Sheriff's deputies even formed their own biker club called the Outlaw Pigs, with jackets, patches, the whole nine yards. What's the image on the back of your jacket?

It's a pig with horns.

A pig with horns?

Yeah, it's a pig with horns.

I recently hopped on the phone with Vince Burton. He's retired from the LASD now. But when Ajay disappeared, he was a sergeant at the Palmdale station, and he helped lead the Ajay search. He also founded the Outlaw Pigs.

We didn't, you know, late. Well, we might have sped now and then on the motorcycles, but that's probably about it. We weren't thugs.

Burton says the Outlaw Pigs was just a fraternal club with cops who happened to ride Harleys. But Burton also worked in the area, so he got to know the Vagos, including the club's President, a guy named 37.

I still have the phone number for 37, who was... That's his nickname, his street name. He is like the godfather of the chapter.

Burton says that when possible, he'd let the Vagos sort out their own affairs. When members got on his radar, he'd go straight to 37 and pressure him to get his troops in line.

I would say, Go take care of your brother right now. We're going to go in there and arrest him and his old lady for being stupid or for doing this or doing that. Okay, Sergeant Burton. And his guys would go. If they had to physically handle whatever, and he would take their guy away, and the problem was solved.

Telling the Vagos to discipline its members seems like a bad idea because their form of discipline often involves violence, sometimes extreme violence. But there's a larger issue at play here. It's this chummy relationship between law enforcement and outlaw bikers. There was even a deputy rumored to be a patched member. He had all the Vagos gear at home, would park patrol vehicle outside their church meetings, and he even served as a look out for the gang. While on duty and in uniform, he posted up outside a house while the Vago robbed a couple inside. Burton says that law enforcement's relationship with the bikers was all strategic, a way to gather intel and maintain order. But this dynamic seems problematic, like it could be used as a cover for criminal behavior. Like, for example, when Burton tells a local member of the House Angels that he and his deputies have got his back.

I said, Hey, this is members of my team. They have already been told that at any time you can call them and that they will respond to you, even when I'm gone, as if it was me. You can trust them because if they violate my trust or the trust with you, then they'll deal with me, and they don't want to do that because I will forever haunt them, and I have forever friends on the Department who will make their lives miserable if they ruin that trust in me.

Burton had a similar arrangement with members of the Vagos.

As soon as they would see who I was, they knew I wasn't going to screw with them. I would just say, Hey, Desert Rick, what's up? What's going on? Everything cool? You guys behaving? It's funny. A lot of these things, they would always say, Well, you know, Sergeant Burton, we We don't shit in our own backyard.

But sometimes they do shit in their own backyard. And Ajay's disappearance might be one of those times. Because according to witnesses, the Vagos know exactly what happened to the deputy. There was evidence in the house, and they would not listen to me. The Proof podcast is back with a new case and a new season. And this time, the stakes are higher than ever before.

The letter from the doctor said, I have six months or less to live. I'm scared to share this right now.

A dying man is serving a life sentence for a murder he says he didn't commit. Did you ever question if they got the right person?

I don't think I believed it at the time. I don't think I believe it now. I'm scared to be sitting here in this damn chair talking about this shit.

How many other cold cases we're going to come forward and go, Hey, man, you need to look at my shit because I didn't do it. How many more do we have?

You can listen now to Season 3 of Proof wherever you get your podcasts. And follow along with us as we reinvestigate the murder at the bike shop.

Everything I tell you is the truth. I'm not both shit in one way or the other. I hope I don't bring a ton of shit down on me. I really do.

The relationship between the bikers and local deputies creates major hurdles for Hager and Brandenburg. Even when witnesses are brave enough to come forward, they often change their minds before giving the detectives the information they need.

They didn't know who to trust, and that makes sense. So they said, I ain't saying shit. I just want to stay alive, and I'm going to go hide. Well, that's what happened.

It happened with a witness we'll call Tina. Hager and Brandenburg get a call from a lawyer with big news. He says his client knows the location of Ajay's remains. Up until now, people have said Ajay was dropped in a hole, but this is the first person claiming specific knowledge of where he was buried. It's a hot tip and could unlock the whole mystery of what happened on June 11th, 1998. So Hager meets with the lawyer and sets up a time to meet with his client, Tina. But she never shows. Not the first time, not the second time. So Brandenburg takes a crack at it and finds out where Tina's staying. When he gets there, she refuses to open the door, saying she can't trust him because, There are dirty cops out there. Brandenburg reassures Tina he's no dirty cop, and eventually she agrees to talk.

She said that there was a guy in the Vidal's Motorcycle Gang, and his name was Big Rick, and she said he was involved in this murder of the deputy, and that she had been shown where he was buried, which we went, Wow, okay. By who? And she says, Big Rick showed her.

A name, a supposed confession, and the possibility of forensic evidence. It's a stunning revelation. Brandenburg does his homework and finds out Big Rick isn't just a member of the Vagos. He's the sergeant at arms, the muscle, the enforcer.

And as soon as they would see who I was, they knew I wasn't going to screw with them.

And it seems he went by multiple names.

I would just say, Hey, Desert Rick, what's up? What's going Come on.

Big Rick is also a big-time meth supplier, and according to court records, he was known for using extreme force to collect on drug debts. And he's got the look to match. A prison yard Hulk So yeah, Tina's scared to cross him, which is why she shuts the conversation down before Brandenburg can find out the location of Ajay's alleged grave.

It was like searching for a needle. Hey, stack out there in that desert, that mountain.

And so you couldn't convince her to show you?

No, she wasn't going with us on a little field trip. She did not want to do that. She wasn't going that far. It was hard to get her to go this far.

Tina's story wouldn't be the only time Big Rick's name came up in connection to the Ajay case. Big Rick was identified by Hager and Operation Silent Thunder as a linchpin in the meth production process. He was an ephedrin supplier, which means he obtained and distributed one of the key ingredients for making meth. Ephedrin is found in decongestants like Sudafed and was legal to buy at the time, but only in limited quantities. Big Rick had a workaround, though. He used a connection he had the next county over, where Hager says, Rick would buy a phedrine in bulk and then distribute it to meth cooks in the Greater Peerblossom area. To people like Bearded Methaclaus, Tom Hinkle.

All the meth was coming to Tom Hinkle so he could sell the meth out of his house.

And that's why Hager takes note when a tip comes in that puts Big Rick in the devil's punch bowl on the day of Ajay's disappearance. According to a new witness, Big Rick said he was making an ephedrine deal in the punch bowl when he was approached by a cop, and so he shot and killed him, adding that the cop was stupid, thinking he could make the bust by himself. So in July 2001, when Big Rick is arrested during Operation Silent Thunder, Hager sees an opportunity to gather more intel on him.

So we take Big Rick to jail down federal custody.

Where his phone calls are recorded. So when Big Rick calls home, Hager says he got a chance to hear it.

Listen to the phone call, he calls the house, talks to his son, said, Did they find the gun?

Law enforcement had recently served a search warrant at Big Rick's house.

And his son said, No, they missed it. They didn't find because he had a false compartment under the floor of his closet.

Big Rick is still worried about that gun, though.

And he goes, You know what would happen if they found that gun? I'd be looking at the death penalty. Make sure that gun disappears. He goes, Dad, I got it taken care of.

Hager's hackles go up because a guy like Big Rick would not be stressing over just any illegal firearms. Bikers like Big Rick run guns in their sleep. So this gun must have some history to And Hager wonders if it might be connected to Ajay.

That statement was just, in my book, is huge. Why are you concerned about a death penalty over a fire? You can go out and kill anybody you want. You're not going to get the death penalty in California. But if you killed a cop, that was the death penalty. And that was the only missing cop that I know in that time period.

California rarely executes people. The last one was in 2006. But one of the special circumstances used to invoke capital punishment here is the murder of a law enforcement officer. In fact, a California man was recently sentenced to death for killing a cop. So Hager's right. Big Rick's statement is suspicious, especially in light of everything else Hager and Brandenburg have heard, like Big Rick taking Tina to Ajay's alleged gravesite and telling another witness he killed a cop, and the eyewitness who says he saw Ajay in the punch bowl with two bikers. Hager thinks he's on to something.

We just need that one person to say, I was there. This is what happened. It wasn't a suicide. Ajay's not in Alaska. He's not working for the government. He was murdered at the punch bowl.

Brandenburg thinks he's got a line on that person. When a woman comes forward saying that her longtime friend is dating a Vagos member and has insider knowledge of what happened to Ajay.

She had told her the story that she was in this Vago party in the garage, and she overheard the statement that this deputy, not Ajay, didn't know his name, I don't think, but he came across a meth lab that the Vagos were involved with, and he was going to be a hero, and he was taken care of.

It's the same story that Brandenburg has been hearing over over again. There's one detail that makes this tip stand out, though. The Vagos were reportedly telling this story within a few days of Ajay's disappearance. And Brandenburg thinks they're not going to brag about killing a cop unless they're sure he's dead.

Because then you're going to look like foules on the street. We're taking credit for big bad bikers taking care of this Deputy Sheriff, and now they find them alive up there in the mountains or in Alaska or wherever. You look pretty stupid. So that's why I thought people don't make up shit like that.

So he sets out to find the woman who was at the biker party, who we're going to call Jen. But she keeps dodging Brandenburg, which he takes to mean he's on the right track.

If an informant, somebody's in jail, for instance, and they call you and they say, Hey, I got some real good info on something. Come talk to me. You're always skeptical. Okay, what do you want? Return. But when you get it, like this girl didn't raise her hands. She wasn't calling us. Hey, come talk to me. No, she was hiding from us.

Jen had only told a close friend or two, had never reached out to the cops directly. And when Brandenburg does eventually find her, she still won't talk. Not at first, anyway.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. And then we pressed her and she finally said, You guys, you're all connected. Cops, dirty, good and bad. You're all the same. And she said, She said she didn't trust any of us.

This is emerging as a pattern for Brandemberg and Hager. Witnesses and informants who are scared of the cops.

Ms. Hager went on to say that she heard from a friend who she He used to name that Deputy Ajay was jogging near the Punch Bowl when he came across Deputy Angle's Meth Lab and was killed.

Deputy Angles' Meth Lab.

The word on the street among the close circle of drug dealers has been that Deputy Angles has been involved with drugs for a very long time.

As in LA County Sheriff's Deputy, Rick Ingles.

Yeah, that's pretty frightening.

If this alleged dirty deputy was involved in the local meth trade, what else could he be involved in? That's next time on Valley of Shadows.

There was an inappropriate relationship between Rick Ingles and at least one drug dealer in the area.

Then I started interviewing other people, and Rick Ingles' name starts coming up more and more and more.

Do I believe Ingles is a dirty cop?

Absolutely. If you have any information or tips related to the disappearance of John Ajay, please call 213-262-9889, or email shadows@pushkin. Fm. Valley of Shadows is reported, written, and produced by us, Betsey Shepard and Haley Fox. Our editor is Diane Hudson. Our executive producers are Jacob Smith, and Alexandra Gareton. Original music by Jake Gorsky, Ray Lynch, Mike Jersich, and Hayden Gardner. Sound design by Jake Gorsky. Fact checking by Anika Robbins. Additional production support by Sonja Gurwitt. Our show art was designed by Sean Carney and Betsey Sheppard. Special thanks to nick White for the show art photo. Valley of Shadows is a production of Pushkin Industries. To find more Pushkin podcast, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. From Type 2 Fun, we're Betsey and Haley. See you next week.

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