Solved case · 1967
The short answer
Two U. S. Border Patrol agents, Theodore L. Newton Jr.
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Suggest coverage for this caseOn 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.
The 45th line-of-duty death in U.S. Border Patrol history occurred, prior to Newton and Azrak's deaths.
Agents Theodore L. Newton Jr. and George F. Azrak stopped a car carrying about 800 lb of marijuana in Oak Grove, San Diego County; they were kidnapped and later found shot dead near Anza, Riverside County, California.
The two individuals from the first vehicle were arrested in Los Angeles.
Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark posthumously honored Newton with the Liberty Bell Award on behalf of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Twenty Border Patrol agents commemorated the 30th anniversary of the killings at the checkpoint and cabin.
The Border Patrol station in Murrieta, California, was renamed the Theodore L. Newton Jr. and George F. Azrak Station.
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Image recordEditorial useSourceSOLVEDListenWinchester, Riverside County, California · 2000s
On October 15, 2008, U.S. Marine Sgt. Jan Pietrzak and his wife Quiana Jenkins-Pietrzak were bound, tortured, sexually assaulted and shot to death in their Winchester, California home by four fellow Marines. All four were convicted; three received death sentences and one was sentenced to life without parole.
Image recordPublic domainSourceUNSOLVEDListenEscondido, California, United States · 1990s
Stephanie Crowe, 12, was fatally stabbed in her Escondido, California bedroom in January 1998. Her 14-year-old brother and two of his friends were charged after coercive police interrogations, two of them giving false confessions, and were later declared factually innocent; a transient man was ultimately convicted of manslaughter, but that conviction was overturned and he was acquitted at retrial in 2013.
Image recordEditorial useSourceSOLVEDListenFallbrook, California · 2010s
Joseph and Summer McStay and their two young sons disappeared from their Fallbrook, California home in February 2010, and were found dead in the desert near Victorville in November 2013; Joseph's former business partner, Charles "Chase" Merritt, was convicted of the four murders in 2019 and sentenced to death in 2020.
Credit: Public domain (1961 New York booking photo) via Wikimedia CommonsPublic domainSourceSOLVEDListenKew Gardens, Queens, New York City · 1960s
Kitty Genovese, a 28-year-old bartender, was raped and stabbed to death outside her Kew Gardens, Queens apartment building on March 13, 1964. A widely circulated New York Times account claiming 38 witnesses saw the attack and did nothing was later found to be significantly exaggerated. Winston Moseley was convicted of the murder and died in prison in 2016.
SOLVEDListenElmira, New York · 1964
A 12-year-old girl from Elmira, New York, was kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and killed in March 1964; the case went unsolved for decades until DNA and genealogical analysis identified a suspect, who had died in 2004, in 2025–2026.
Credit: http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/classics/thorne/2.htmlEditorial useSourceSOLVEDListenBondi, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia · 1960
Eight-year-old Graeme Thorne was kidnapped for ransom in Sydney in July 1960, weeks after his parents won a lottery jackpot, and was murdered within hours; Hungarian immigrant Stephen Leslie Bradley was later convicted of the murder in a case that became a landmark in Australian forensic investigation.
