Deputy’s Fate Still Unknown

Law enforcement authorities thought a two-year undercover drug operation in the Antelope Valley would almost certainly lead them to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Jonathan Aujay.

They were wrong.

As the drug investigation winds down, with several suspected drug dealers awaiting trial or sentencing in federal court, no one is closer to knowing what happened to Aujay. He is the one deputy in the 8,000-officer department who is the subject of a missing-persons case.

A plaque at the Sheriff’s Special Enforcement Bureau lists the day Aujay started work there, followed by a dash and an infinity symbol.

As the four-year anniversary of his June 11, 1998, disappearance draws near, Aujay’s family remains in the dark. His half-brother, Joe Aujay, still checks the newspapers in hopes of finding some hint of Aujay’s whereabouts.

“I keep waiting for a story from Buenos Aires where he’s lying on the beach,” Joe Aujay said recently. “I might be in denial.”

Aujay, a skilled outdoorsman and long-distance runner, was 38 when he set off into the Devil’s Punchbowl, a remote Los Angeles County park on the north slope of the San Gabriel Mountains, according to sheriff’s authorities.

Friends thought he was going on a trail run, but when he didn’t return home, authorities launched a manhunt. Hundreds of rescue workers searched the steep ravines and mountain trails in and around the park, but after two months they had found no sign of him.

More recently, the investigators working on “Operation Silent Thunder”--one of the largest drug sweeps in north Los Angeles County--checked a number of leads related to Aujay’s disappearance.

As sheriff’s deputies and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration began infiltrating six methamphetamine-producing rings in the area, homicide Det. Joe Holmes began following up stories about Aujay.

He talked to informants, Aujay’s relatives and friends, and others he hoped would reveal something that might help explain what happened to Aujay. Some tipsters said Aujay had been killed after he came across a meth lab, but they turned out to be untrustworthy.

“At the beginning, I’d thought he’d met with foul play,” Holmes said. “But we went out and interviewed all of these witnesses and I couldn’t find anything to suggest [it]. All those folks we talked to either said they’d lied about their original information, or we caught them in lies.”

Sheriff’s Capt. Frank Merriman said the disappearance has created tension in the department, as some deputies have become frustrated by their colleagues’ failure to find the 15-year department veteran. Investigators may never know what happened.

“We can’t chase rumors indefinitely,” he said.

Aujay was a member of a bureau that handles high-risk tactical situations involving barricaded suspects, hostage situations and warrant services. Colleagues said he seemed happy at work at the time of his disappearance, and detectives said he was not facing any internal disciplinary measures.

Aujay’s wife, Debbie, who declined to be interviewed, is raising the couple’s 10-year-old daughter in the L.A. area, said Aujay’s brother-in-law, Jeff Kaltenbach.

Merriman said missing-adults cases tend to be especially vexing for law enforcement. Every year in California, thousands of adults disappear for a while. Of the 35,000 adults reported missing in 2001, nearly 29,000 of them left of their own free will, according to California Department of Justice statistics.

Close friend Scott Griffis said that although he didn’t think Aujay was the type to just pack up and leave, he would not mind learning that’s what he did.

“I’m hoping he just took off.”