Murders of Theodore L. Newton Jr. and George F. Azrak

On June 17, 1967, U.S. Border Patrol agents Theodore L. Newton Jr. and George F. Azrak stopped a car carrying approximately 800 lb (360 kg) of marijuana in Oak Grove, San Diego County, California. Individuals from the stopped vehicle, along with occupants of a second car, kidnapped the two agents and took them to a mountain cabin. There, the agents were handcuffed and shot. Newton was shot once in the back of the head, and Azrak was shot twice in the back of the head and once in the chest.

Following the kidnapping, a search involving roughly 200 people was launched. The agents' bodies were subsequently found on the Howard Bailey Ranch, land adjacent to the Cahuilla Reservation of the Cahuilla Band of Mission Indians, near Anza, Riverside County, California.

Newton was 26 years old, a father of two, and had served as a Border Patrol agent for one year. Azrak was 22 years old and a trainee. Their deaths marked the 46th and 47th line-of-duty deaths in the history of the U.S. Border Patrol; the prior (45th) death had occurred in 1952.

Two men who had been in the first car were arrested in Los Angeles on July 16, 1967. They were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Two additional men, who had been in the second car, were arrested in the Mexican state of Sonora and received thirty-year sentences for second-degree murder.

In the aftermath of the killings, the Border Patrol changed its checkpoint staffing practices so that agents work checkpoints in teams of at least three. In 1968, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark posthumously honored Newton with the Liberty Bell Award on behalf of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. In 1997, on the 30th anniversary of the killings, twenty Border Patrol agents held a commemoration at the checkpoint and the cabin where the agents were killed. The Newton-Azrak Award for Heroism was established in their honor; as of 2019, it had been awarded to more than 150 agents. A commemorative plaque bearing their pictures and the inscription "Died in the line of duty, June 17, 1967" was installed at the Border Patrol office in Temecula, California. On April 24, 2009, the Border Patrol station in Murrieta, California, was renamed the Theodore L. Newton Jr. and George F. Azrak Station in their honor.