Transcript of Episode 5: The Legend of Bigfoot

You know that feeling when you reach the end of a really good true crime series?

You want to know more, more about the people involved, where the case is now, and what it's like behind the scenes. I get that.

I'm Kathleen Goldhar, and on my podcast, Crime Story, I speak with the leading storytellers of true crime to dig deeper into the cases we all just can't stop thinking about. Find Crime Story wherever you get your podcasts. Pushkin. This series includes content that may not be suitable for all listeners. Listeners her discretion is advised. Previously on Valley of Shadows.

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.

What's the image on the back of the visit?

It's a pig with horns. She heard from a friend who she refused to name. The Deputy Ajay was jogging near the Punch Bowl when he came across Deputy Ingles' meth lab and was killed. Well, the word on the street has been that Deputy Ingles has been involved with drugs for a very long time. Yeah, that's pretty frightening.

This is the perfect fire, by the way.

No. No. I'm the perfect beer.

Thank you, ma'am. We're in the Angeles National Forest near the Devil's Punch Bowl, and this time we're camping out here. The stars are incredible.

I guess that's one perk of it being so freaking dark out here.

We've pitched our tents at a campground in Big Rock Canyon. It's one of the last places where John Ajay was spotted. A campground employee saw him jogging through the campground between 6: 00 and 8: 00 PM the night he disappeared.

Yep, okay.

But the real reason I wanted to take you out here is because this is also the location of another noteworthy sighting.

There he was, Bigfoot, standing no more than 100 yards from my blind.

I began to shake all over.

He was awesome.

This is, according to a Sasquatch expert, this is Where Bigfoot hangs out when he's migrating from the Pacific Northwest to Mexico.

So you lured me out here, have me set up the tent, and now we have to sleep out here with Bigfoot?

Yeah.

Oh, my God. Okay.

For decades, campers and hikers have reported seeing a sasquatch creature in the forested areas near the Devil's Punch Bowl. And one of the first sightings in these parts happened on April 22nd, 1973. It was a night much like this week. Okay. Three young dudes are out here camping, presumably sitting around a campfire drinking beer, just like we're doing. They hear some rustling in the bushes, and they just get spuked. So they pack up all their stuff, hop in their truck, and Bigfoot jumps out of the bushes and starts chasing after the-Shut up. He starts chasing after the truck. His huge hairy arms are just like, swinging around.

Bigfoot chases people?

Not only does he chase people, but he's 12 feet tall, so he probably can run pretty fast.

Oh my God. Okay.

And then he just disappears behind the tree line and down on the canyon. Stay with us. We promise we're not jumping the shark here. There's a reason we're talking about Bigfoot. So the three guys go straight to the LA County Sheriff's station. They file a police report, but that's not all my I printed out a picture of the three guys who saw Bigfoot.

Okay, hold on. Brian Goldegarbe, Willy Romerman, and Rick Angles. Is this the Rick Angles?

The reason we're rapping about Bigfoot is because one of the guys who says he had the brush with the creature was Rick Angles. He would go on to become an LA County Sheriff's Deputy, basically the Sheriff of Fairblossom. And he's the guy, some informants say, was running the meth lab near the Punch Bowl.

Wow. He's got some major '70s vibes going here. This rolled-up plaid shirt, long-ish hair.

He looks like the Bronnie Man mixed with David Hasselhoff.

Oh my God. Here, he's clutching a Bigfoot cut out that looks like it's just cobbled together from cardboard.

And some It's a primer paint.

It's a primer paint. Yeah.

Since 1973, there have been dozens of stories of a larger-than-life creature haunting the shadowy corners of the Antelope Valley, adding to the legend of the Mojave Bigfoot. Bigfoot. Bigfoot eyewitness, Deputy Rick Angles, would become something of a legend himself. Local residents say he was an oversize presence in the Punch Bowl area, an evasive figure who skirted the law, a boogie man with a badge.

Rick Ingles ran that desert town of Pierre Blossom, and they looked the other way. But then when it comes to the killing of a cop, yeah, no, that was a whole different ball game.

Chris Tuck says the word around town was that Deputy Bigfoot Angles was behind John Ajay's disappearance.

Do I believe what I heard on the streets? Yes. Do I believe Ingles is a dirty cop? Absolutely.

These rumors make their way to Homicide Detective Larry Brandenburg and Narco Detective Darren Hager during their Ajay investigations. But how much of these stories are fact and how much are fiction? Are they just local lore? Or is there evidence to back up the claims? What the f?

Are you fucking kidding me? What the F was that?

That's the beast we're chasing down. I'm like holding your hand.

What the motherfuck is that? Oh my God, I'm never going to sleep.

I'm Betsey Shepard.

I'm Haley Fox, and this is Valley of Shadows. Episode 5, The Legend of Bigfoot. Homicide Detective Larry Brandenburg hears that Deputy Rick Angles was busting meth labs in the Antelope Valley to take out his competition. He also hears he was involved in the murder of John Ajay. Brandenburg takes it all with a grain of salt.

People make shit about cops all the time. If he's busting a lot of drug dealers, they're going to talk crap about them and make up shit to make him look bad. But we couldn't just ignore it. At least I couldn't.

Brandenburg finds himself in a tight spot. If he investigates Deputy Angles as a murder suspect and he's proven innocent, he'll catch hell from his colleagues. If the allegations against Angles are true, then the LA County Sheriff's Department will catch hell. But Brandenburg needs to ensure that Angles is on the up and up.

Dirty cops are really to be afraid of because they walk around with immunity, pretty much. Imagine what the few people that may have known about this think. They're like, Hey, if they'll fucking kill a cop and bury him, what are they going to do to me?

So he gets to work.

I said, You know, Rick Angles deserves two things. We need to clear his name, or if he's guilty, then we need to freaking arrest his ass and prosecute him.

Brandenburg burns through shoe leather, knocking on doors. Interviewing contacts, he gets from narco-detective, Darren Hager.

Rick Ingles' name starts coming up more and more and more.

Then he interviews a woman busted for meth near the Punch Bowl. Turns out she's friends with Tom Hinkle, a. K. A. Metha Claus, and Richard Carroll, the guy who owned the property near the Punch Bowl with the underground Meth Lab.

Ms. Wendell said that Hinkle and Carroll were good friends. In addition to Carroll operating a meth lab on his property. He allowed other individuals to produce meth on the property. Ms. Merced said Deputy Angles would visit Hinkle while driving his Black and White Sheriff's vehicle.

Brandenburg starts to have doubts about Angles. Hanging out with convicted felons or anyone with a reputation for criminal behavior is specifically prohibited by LASD policy. But the thing is, Angles was no typical deputy. He was the resident deputy.

The idea is that you have a police officer, in this case, deputy, who is a local resident. That was one of the requirements is they have to live within that area they're going to be patrolling.

This is Vince Burton, retired LASD sergeant and founder of the Outlaw Pigs Biker Club. Burton says the resident deputy was away for the department to put boots on the ground in the county's most remote corners.

You're the town sheriff in the old-fashioned West, where you're the guy that's the law for the area, and you know a lot of the bad guys. You know a lot of the guys that are criminals and are skirting the law. You know everybody.

For more than 20 years, Rick Angles worked as this pseudo town sheriff overseeing Pereblossom, the town of 1500, near the Devil's Punch Bowl. Burton says the resident deputy is like a community police officer, but there are some crucial differences. The resident deputy is a one-man crew. They typically work out of their home, not a police station. Just like Burton did with the Vagos, he says Angles developed relationships with local criminals to keep tabs on them and get intel.

All the deputies knew that if there was a bad guy they were looking for in that area, go talk to Rick first. Chances are he probably knew him and knew his house and where he lived. He's just a community guy, born and raised there.

Rick Angles lived in the Antelope Valley for most of his life. He was a rodeo rider, and as a side hustle, he would charge money to take people out on bear hunting trips. He also ran an equestrian business, boarding horses. So it's fair to say Angles was an outdoorsman and something of an entrepreneur. But his main gig was for the LA County Sheriff's Department. He earned his stripes working patrol in the Antelope Valley. And then in 1988, Vince Burton hired Angles for the resident deputy position.

What about his resume impressed you?

The fact that he lived there, the fact that he was a good cop and active and arresting people and doing the Lord's work every day.

The Department gives Angles everything he needs to be a self-contained unit, a patrol car, a police radio, and a work phone. He doesn't punch a clock, doesn't have a supervisor breathing down his neck. He's not even required to check in at the local LASD station, which is about a 40-minute drive from Parablossom. So Angles is basically on his own out there, and when something goes down, he's first on the scene.

They would literally throw on their best throw on what they call a raid jacket, put on a gun belt, grab a radio, jump in their car, and go there.

But Brandenburg notices something that doesn't square with that whole resident deputy line. If Angels is the department's local expert and go-to guy for all things pairblossom, why didn't he show up at the Punch Bowl when John Ajay disappeared?

He never once volunteered to help in this search.

Angles' name is noticeably absent on the LASD sign-in sheets that were collected over the six-day search.

Everybody else in Antle Valley, even guys that were off-duty, went up there and volunteered. Not getting paid.

Hundreds of people were scouring the park in search of the missing deputy, but not the one sheriff's deputy who knew the Punch Bowl like it was his backyard. And it was practically Angle's backyard.

Okay, let me get my bear in this map. Here's the Punch right here. And Angle lived right here. This is how close it was.

The park was only four miles from his house. He hiked in the Punch Bowl, knew its trails, and knew the criminal terrain, too. So one would expect Angles to offer assistance to help with the search grid or lead a group of volunteers through the park.

This guy never showed up. He lives right by there. That's strange to me.

I asked O'Jay's old boss, retired LESD Captain Mike Bauer, what he thinks of Angles not showing up at the search.

Angles never went to the search and never searched for John O'Jay, and he knew John O'Jay.

They knew each other.

I mean, there is no doubt they knew each other. And that has created some concern that if there was foul play, that he could in some way have some connection to that foul play.

When Brandenburg hears about Angle's absence from the search, that's when he leans in and thinks there may be something to the Angle's allegations, but he needs some corroboration. So he calls up narco-detective, Darren Hager, and asks him to talk to Keith, the star informant who kickstarted the Operation Silent Thunder Task Force.

His exact order is, Can you ask me if there's any dirty deputies? I'm like, Yeah, if you want. So I'd call Larry Brack, and I said, This is the name he gave me. Rick Ingles.

Rannenberg and Hager schedule a follow-up interview with Keith to tap in for more info and see if Angles has a connection to Parablossom's other notorious figure, Tom Hinkle.

He said that he received information that Ingles was a dirty cop, and he assisted Tom with his mess sales in his mess labs. The relationship was that they had their own little enterprise out there in Parabloss, and it was narcotic sales, manufacturing, and illegal firearms distribution.

Hager is stunned by what he's hearing because he knows Angles. They had crossed paths in the Antelope Valley, were friendly, had even worked a crime scene together.

The deputy in question, I always thought was a hardcore cowboy cop. So originally, I didn't believe it.

But then, when Hager scans through Angle's track record, a pattern emerges. Over the course of his career, Angles busted upwards of 20 meth labs, but there were plenty that he didn't bust.

Certain major players were never touched by Deputy Angles. They were big dealers. So why were certain people constantly getting arrested by Angles? But this other group, nothing ever happened to them. That raised a red flag to me.

One of the Untouchables was Tom Hinkle. Hager thinks that's pretty suspicious because Hinkle's place was a whirlwind of meth activity, and it was just two miles from Deputy Angle's house.

It's like, Are you kidding me? You can't smell this? Why wasn't this ever taken down?

And then Hager remembers a peculiar encounter he once witnessed between Deputy Angles and Tom Hinkle. It was back when Hager was still working patrol. There'd been a bombing in Fairblasm that left a woman dead and her son severely injured. And there were tire tracks leading from the site directly to Hinkle's house. Angles and Hager were both dispatched to the scene. Hager says that as they approach Hinkle's front door, Angles tells Hager to peel off, to go to the top of the hill and cover him while he approaches Hinkle alone.

And I go, That's awfully odd. We got a homicide victim laying in there, a kid's leg blown off, and you're going to go contact a homicide suspect by yourself because He followed the tire track straight to this guy's house. And Ingles goes, I know this guy go up there. I'm like, Okay, you're the boss. This is your area.

Hager didn't think too much of it at the time, but given the rumors he's hearing about Ingles, he sees it in a new light and wonders, is Angles protecting Hinkle? He only knows of one lab that Angles busted that was linked to Hinkle, and that was the one on Rick Carroll's property near the Punch Bowl. But Angles didn't really take down the lab, the operation was organized by the California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement.

The lab was empty. It was gone.

Hager suspects Angles knew about the raid in advance and helped clear out the product beforehand.

It's easy to police somebody you don't know, but it's hard to police somebody that you grew up with, especially if they're doing something wrong.

Mike Bauer thinks that corruption is all but inevitable when a resident deputy is policing his friends and neighbors.

The resident deputy program creates a little chief of police in an area, and that person has no supervision.

And the line between law enforcement and lawbreakers becomes blurred, like the photographic evidence of Bigfoot.

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.

You know that feeling when you reach the end of a really good true crime series?

You want to know more, more about the people involved, where the case is now, and what it's like behind the scenes.

I get that. I'm Kathleen Goldhar, and on my podcast, Crime Story, I speak with the leading storytellers of true crime to dig deeper into the cases we all just can't stop thinking about. Find Crime Story wherever you get your podcasts. A couple months into his investigation, Brandenburg is working at his desk when the phone rings. It's from the Sheriff's Department in Kern County, just north of LA County, and they're calling about an inmate they have in custody. This guy, who we'll call Roger, has told them he has information about the missing deputy.

And so we drive up Kern County Jail that day to talk to him.

Roger is supposed to be sent back to LA to face some outstanding warrants, but he's terrified to cross back over county lines.

He goes, I can't go to LA County Jail. I can't go. They're going to kill me. They know I know this stuff.

The witness is due to be transferred to L. A. County Jail, which is run by the L. A. County Sheriff's Department, which he's terrified of because of what he knows about Ajay.

We can guarantee your safety in our jail. Yes. But aside from now, we have it promised to me. No deals, no nothing.

Roger starts telling the detectives what he knows.

I know that Tom is involved with meth labs because that's who I was going to get it from all the time.

And he tells Brandenburg what happened when he went to buy meth from Tom Hinkle. Back in June of 1998, around the time Ajay disappeared.

I went up to go purchase some methaphenemine for a friend.

Roger admits that he's a longtime meth user. But on this particular occasion, he says, he was just buying drugs to resell to some friends. He was in his early 20s at the time, and this side hustle was a way to make some I was just charging a little bit more so I could have extra money for cigarettes, video games I read, and go out to eat.

And at the time, I was at Tom Hinkle's house. The car was pouring up into his drive, and Tom Hinkle told me to go sit in the other room. When I went to the other room, I've heard, How's it going, Ingle? Tom said, and Ingles goes, How's it going, old man? And I don't know anybody named Ingle. I never heard that name before. All the way, I remembered it from Little House on the Prairie, Ingle.

Roger says he's never heard the name Ingle before, except from Little House on the Prairie, which was written by Laura Ingle Wilder.

Now, at that point, did you know who this Angles guy is? No. I just thought he was a crook or somebody there to make a purchase off, though.

Brandenburg keeps rewinding Roger in his story, vetting claims, asking him to explain mean further.

Are you sure there was another party? Yeah, because I heard his voice, because I heard like they already must have known each other because both how were going. They shook hands. How do you know they shook hands? Because by the slap, it was like the high five and all that, how they get their hands. Not a traditional handshake. Yeah. Did you hear any other noises? I heard Tom Four, Tom David. They were using a police code. So you think you heard a police skin? Yeah.

Tom Four and Tom David are police call signs for traffic units. Brandenburg says specific details like that are ones you look for in witness testimony.

We're thinking, this kid don't know what that shit means. He ain't making that up. I don't think. It just sounds too believable.

And these details match the testimony of the woman who told Brandenburg that Deputy Angles would visit Hinkle in his patrol car. The night Roger's there, he overhears the two men from another room, so their conversation is a bit muffled and distant, but he still catches fragments of what they say.

Hinkle said he took care of his loose ends and all that. Thanks for the bag of lie that he grabbed from Tom Hinkle.

Rodress' Deputy Angles thanked Hinkle for the bag of lie.

And I know lie is used for decomposure because he did that to my horse when he died and all that.

Lies lie is a corrosive chemical that speeds up decomposition.

I heard about a riverbed with a Joshua tree, and they say that nobody's going to ever find it. What they did to put the lie and all that.

At first, Roger thought this whole interaction was just odd.

Hinkle asked if there was anybody else there in the house with them, and he goes, no.

Hinkle lies and says no one else is there.

But I was in the room. And that's when I started getting pared because usually Tom would be straight up, Yeah, I got a friend here.

So Roger begins to think he's heard something he shouldn't have. And then about a week later, when he's watching TV, he sees a news story about an LA Sheriff's deputy that's gone missing in the Devil's Punch Bowl. And that's when the real panic sets in, because Roger realizes he might be witnessed to something he wants no part in. He goes to his mom's house to fill her in. He tells his stepdad and a roommate, and even writes about it in his journal.

The black journal that says Diary on it. Basically, it looks like a girl's diary. It has a guy from my mama.

Roger tries to forget about the whole thing. But then about a year later, he's arrested on a minor drug charge. He gets out a few days later and finds a message waiting for him.

Then when I got out, I've seen a death threat on my doorstep. Describe this death threat, as you call it, and said, If you rat, you're going to come like this, like a rat. And there was a dead rat on my step with a knife through it with about a four-inch old time rebuttal knife.

Roger says he has no idea who left the threat, but he assumes it has something to do with what he overheard at Tom Hinkel's house, and it scares the shit out of him.

I took it as serious as I don't want to die. It's something I don't all know about. Just like this piece is I heard. So what did you do then? I packed my shit and I left. I took off by the way in front of my mom. I hitchhiked all the I always had a point to say it.

And that's it. Roger says he's telling Brandenburg everything he remembers.

I just want to be honest. I just want to do the best. I just want to basically go home, be with my mom. Okay, that's good. That's your food. That's the interview. Going off tape.

Roger picked up some damning keywords like lie, taking care of loose ends, No one will ever know. And Angles.

Let's say it was Angles. Can you think of any legitimate reason for this interaction?

No, not with a guy like I mean, that guy's a documented dope dealer, meth cooker, and he makes bombs. No, I can't imagine why a deputy Sheriff would be at his house unless he's there to arrest him.

Brandenburg talks to Homicide Captain Frank Maryman, fills him in on his investigation. But Maryman blows him off.

That's tweaker talk. Tweaker talk. You guys are crazy. You're not doing this shit. Okay. All right. All right, Frank.

Maryman says it It's just a rumor cooked up by meth users. But for Brandenburg, drug use and reliability aren't necessarily at odds.

When you talk to somebody, you're watching them. You're watching their eyes, you're watching their body language, you're watching how they move and everything. So we found him, This kid might be credible. He was scared. He was scared to death.

Brandenburg ultimately believes Roger because his motivation for coming forward seemed legit. He was so afraid to go to jail in LA County. He was in tears.

I can't go there. I can't go there. I said, Okay, look, we'll hide you in the Sheriff's station.

Was there anybody specific that he was scared of?

Oh, Hinkle. He was scared of death, Tom Hinkle and his associates.

Roger's story is no smoking gun. But then narco-detective, Darren Hager, talks to an informant with an eerily similar account. He interviews a close associate of Tom Hinkle, and says the witness completely shuts down, puts his head down on the table, and refuses to share what he knows about angles. He tells Hager that he's scared because, Who are people going to believe? A cop? For me if something was to happen. I'm not going to talk about him and end up dead.

You know that feeling when you reach the end of a really good true crime series?

You want to know more, more about the people involved, where the case is now, and what it's like behind the scenes.

I get that. I'm Kathleen Goldhar, and on my podcast, Crime Story, I speak with the leading storytellers of true crime to dig deeper into the cases we all just can't stop thinking about. Find Crime Story wherever you get your podcasts.

So looking at all of these informant statements, you have different people saying different things, but they're not contradictory statements.

Not mutually exclusive, no.

So there's a world in which they fit together like puzzle pieces.

Betsey and I are sitting at her kitchen table, surrounded by stacks of documents from the Ajay case file. We're taking stock of what we've learned so far and trying to work the info into a coherent theory.

We have the two informants who come forward say that they were buying drugs from meth dealer Tom Hinkle, who told them the deputy was jogging in the devil's punch bowl, stumbled on something he shouldn't have, and was taken care of, and he does the finger gun gesture.

Yes. And then, of course, we have the huge discovery that there is, in fact, a meth laugh. There is a meth laff. Right near the punch bowl, and it happens to be right along the route that Ajay ran. What are the chances? I mean, and a resident who lives nearby, said they heard a gunshot around sunset the night Ajay disappeared, which is a lot of things lining up. A new layer of the story gets added when an informant says he saw Ajay approaching two bikers in the punch bowl just before he disappeared.

Then an informant comes forward, says that a biker named Big Rick told her that he was in the punch bowl making an ephedrine deal when a deputy approached him, and so he shot and killed him.

Which is wild to hear, okay.

Basically a confession. But there was a third man- The third man. Involved in Ajay's disappearance, according to some informant. There's a woman who's tied in with these bikers. She says that she overheard the bikers talking. They said that Ajay was murdered because he stumbled on Deputy Angles, Meth Lab.

Names him, yeah.

If that was just a one-off, we could dismiss that as hearsay. But multiple informants come forward, say that Angles is a dirty cop and that he's involved in Meth Labs with Tom Hagle.

Mm-hmm. But the part that really gets me is Roger's testimony about the conversation he overheard between Deputy Angles and Tom Hinkle. They're talking about using lie to get rid of something. So quote, no one will ever find it, and they're talking about taking care of their loose ends.

Yeah, I mean, what could they be talking about? Unless Angles had a horse that died, and the horse's name was Loose Ends, what What would they be using that lie for?

Yeah, that seems like a stretch. It's a lot of circumstantial evidence, but the pieces can be arranged into a solid story.

Hinkle is running Meth Labs He has a silent partner in Deputy Rick Angles, according to some informants. They're working with outlaw bikers, specifically Big Rick, who's delivering the supplies for their meth lab. Big Rick is out there making an ephedrine drop off when Ajay happens to be running through the area. Big Rick kills him to prevent the meth operation from being exposed.

Yeah, I mean, this is not a super complex criminal conspiracy. It all makes sense. We ask Brandenburg and Hager about the picture that's taking shape in our minds, and they confirm that was their working theory of what happened. But the detectives add another wrinkle. They consider a scenario in which Ajay was returning to his truck when he spotted an LASD Patrol car parked nearby, or maybe a uniform deputy, and headed over to see if he needed help.

Ajay went to help Rick Ingles with these bikers, thinking that Rick was confronting these bikers on his own. Ajay went to back him up and found out Ingles was on on the other side. And, oh, shit. Now they're like, What do we do with this cop? We can't let him go because we're all going to prison. And I'm going to lose my job, my career, my livelihood. And they had no other option but to get rid of Ajay, or else the whole organization would have been taken down. Sorry, John.

This fits with an overarching rumor about Ajay, that he was trying to be a hero when he was taken out. But again, this is just a theory until they find a way to prove it. Hager and Brandenburg level up their investigation into angles to finally figure out if this Bigfoot was real or just folklore. As part of Operation Silent Thunder, Hager and the DEA get permission to review phone logs of various players in the meth world, including suspects in the Ajay case. These logs don't record what is said on the phone, but keep track of the numbers dialed.

As soon as the number is dialed, it'll document the date and time, and then it tells you the duration of the call in the time that it ended. And it would tell you incoming or outgoing to whichever target phone number that you're looking at. And it showed a connection of Ingles calling people with a criminal record that were involved in the dope world and vice versa.

The logs show a web of connections in real-time, revealing who's calling who as Operation Silent Thunder is being carried out. They also reveal a more complex system of messaging that was intended to conceal certain relationships by using a go-between. For example, Angles wouldn't phone Hinkle directly. Hager says he would phone a certain someone, and then that person would immediately call Hinkle. Hager and Task Force were also able to get a hold of Angles and Hinkle's phone records from back in 1998. And those logs show that over the course of a few days after Ajay went missing, both Hinkle and Angle paged the same number multiple times. Remember, this is the '90s. Pagers were how you got someone to call you back ASAP. So why would a cop and a drug dealer be urgently trying to talk to the same person in the immediate aftermath of Ajay's disappearance? The detectives don't know who this Pager belonged to, so they have a lot of circumstantial evidence tying Hinkle and Angles together, but they still need hard evidence a crime was committed.

So I put the search warrant together to put a tracking device on his county vehicle, his phone records, a little cell phone, home phone, and his financial records.

Angles isn't the only one named in Brandenburg's affidavit. Tom Hinkle, Richard Carroll, and some of their associates are also targets. But Angles is the main suspect.

Deputy Angles is assigned as the Little Rock resident deputy.

Brandenburg is reading from his search warrant affidavit.

Here, Affian believes that Deputy Angles and other unidentified individuals murdered Deputy Ajay to prevent him from arresting them or exposing their criminal activity. You got to write that strong so the judge gets it. Everything may not come out to fruition, but you're allowed to those opinions based on what you have.

Then Brandenburg takes the affidavit to someone at the district Attorney's office to give it a look.

I had him review it. Da friend of mine. He's a solid warrant to me.

Now all Brandenburg needs to make the warrant official is a signature from a judge and a sign off from his captain, Frank Merriman.

Frank, he immediately went ballistic. And He started yelling at me. He took the warrant, put it in his drawer. I said, Well, if this judge signs this warrant, Frank, we have to serve it. He goes, Yeah, you're right, but you ain't taking it to a judge, Deputy. I'm ordering you not to. And he goes, If you do, you won't work here anymore.

About a month later, Randenberg gets a knock on his door. It's two detectives from LASD's Homicide Bureau.

And it's Joe Holmes and Brian Steinwand, who I've known for many years. We're gangs with them. We're all good friends. They said, Hey, Larry, we were ordered to go out here and get everything you got in the case. No hard feelings, but they ordered us to go out here. Okay, here's the shit. Take it.

How did that make you feel?

Oh, I was pissed. Yeah, I was pissed because basically, they're telling me I'm either stupid, crazy, or incompetent, and they're taking the case from me, which makes you pretty mad.

Even now, Brandenburg doesn't understand why he was taken off the Ajay case. If it wasn't a homicide, wouldn't the Department want proof that Angles didn't do any of the things witnesses and informants accused him of? The only thing Brandenburg can figure is that the Department was scared of what he might find, because Brandenburg says that when push comes to shove, the top RAS acts more like politicians than law enforcement, defending the Department's image at all costs.

I do know that when these guys get promote high up past the rank of captain, even, they get up that commander, chief, assistant Sheriff level. It's a cutthroat world. I was shut down. Like, Don't do nothing on that anymore. You better not, because if you do, you'll be in trouble. So it was like, Oh, I'm done. I'm done.

Then one day, while sitting at his desk, Randenberg overhears a conversation between his replacement on the Ajay case, Detective Joe Holmes, and their boss, Frank Merriman, who appeared to be giving Holmes some instruction.

It's to say, You got to take care of me on this, Joe. Do the right thing. And he pared him on the back and put this thing to bed. And Joe, the response was like, You know I'll do the right thing. I just took that as Joe going, me knowing Joe Holmes, who I respected and really liked, Joe will do what's right. They took it from me. Joe Holmes is going to go out there, and if there's something funny here, he's going to find out. He's going to pursue it.

But soon this interpretation of their exchange would seem a little too generous, according to Brandenburg.

I would like to say that there was nothing to share on Frank's part or Joe's when that conversation took place. I really want to believe that. How it ended up the way it ended up, I don't know.

When Frank Merriman is later questioned about what happened, he admits to spiking Brandenburg's search warrant, the one that would have given the detective a green light to dive deep on Rick Angles to finally get to the bottom of the Deputy Bigfoot legend. Merriman says he made this decision as a type of inter-agency courtesy, that he was deferring to the feds, to Operation Silent Thunder, because he didn't want to kick up any dust that would interfere with their narcotics investigation. But Brandenburg doesn't buy it.

Honestly, it baffles me to this day. The DEA was baffled by it, and the DEA agents were beside themselves. What the fuck is wrong with your department? What the fuck is wrong with these people?

Narcotics Detective, Darren Hager, doesn't buy it either.

A homicide captain saying, Detective, do not find out if this guy's guilty or innocent. Don't do it. Who does that? Why stop it? I mean, what would it hurt? The only thing it would hurt is if he's guilty. If he's guilty, they sure don't want to find out that guilty.

But there's an investigation that the Homicide Bureau and Captain Frank Merriman can't stop. Operation Silent Thunder. Detective Darren Hager keeps pushing the case forward, and he's got the full weight of the DEA behind him. And federal wire taps.

Everyone's heard of the Code of Silence. It does exist. It's not written down everywhere. No one could ever prove it. But this case right here just shows 100% that there is a code of science.

That's next time on Valley of Shadows.

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, Haley Fox and Betsey Sheppard. 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 Garner. Sound design by Jake Gorsky. Fact Checking by Anika Robbins. Additional production support by Sonja Gurwin. Our show art was designed by Sean Carnie and Betsey Shepard. Special thanks to nick White for show art photography. 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 Betsey. See you next week. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus to hear the entire season of Valley of Shadows, ad-free, starting January 12th. You'll also get bonus episodes, full audiobooks, and early ad-free listening from your favorite Pushkin hosts and authors. Find Pushkin Plus on the Valley of Shadows show page on Apple podcast or at pushkin. Fm/plus. And thanks for your support. You know that feeling when you reach the end of a really good True Crime series?

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