LOOK LEFT, LOOK RIGHT, STEP FORWARD BY The Gent

A story told to me in 1970 at the Border Patrol Academy.

Patrol Inspector Theodore L. Newton, Jr., and his fellow officer, Patrol Inspector (Trainee) George F. Azrak, both of Temecula, California, were found murdered in a remote deserted mountain cabin on June 19, 1967, following an intensive 48-hour search after they disappeared while on official duty. The men were kidnapped from their post during a traffic check operation along Highway 79 near Oak Grove, California, in the early morning hours of June 17, 1967. The checkpoint was located about 75 miles north of the Mexican border on a route known to have been used by illegal aliens and smugglers of aliens, narcotics, and contraband.

On June 19, a missing Service sedan was spotted about 9:00 a.m., by a member of a jeep club from Hemet, California. The sedan had been covered with brush. Fifty feet away was a deserted shack and there the bodies of the missing patrolmen were located. The cabin was located on the Bailey Ranch, a mountainous brushy area, off Highway 71 (now Highway 371) near Anza, California, and about eight miles northeast of Oak Grove where the men had been at work.

In reconstructing the crimes, it appeared that Patrol Inspectors Newton and Azrak intercepted a vehicle in which over 800 pounds of marijuana were being transported. While checking this vehicle the officers were overpowered by four convicted felons, two of whom had been following the load of marijuana in a second vehicle. The officers were then taken to the mountain cabin where they were made to lie prone with their arms extended toward each other inside a shelf of an old stove. The right wrist of one man was handcuffed to the left wrist of the other, and vice versa. Incapacitated in this manner they were shot and killed. Always be on the lookout for the unexpected.