GREENSBORO, N.C. — Authorities say a man wanted for the 1977 killing of a former immigration official in Florida has been arrested in North Carolina.
The FBI in Jacksonville, Florida, said in a news release Thursday that agents had recently developed information that 67-year-old William Claybourne Taylor was living in Reidsville under a false name.
The release says he was taken into custody Thursday without incident and is being held in a detention center in Guilford County.
Authorities say Taylor was indicted on charges of murder and aggravated battery in the January 1977 shooting death of a former official with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the shooting of a former mayor of Williston, Florida.
The case has garnered national attention, being shown on “America’s Most Wanted” and “Unsolved Mysteries.”
In the 1977 slaying, Taylor and an accomplice, who is now deceased, are accused of pulling alongside a car occupied by the victims. Taylor allegedly shot and killed the official in an attempt to murder the former mayor.
Taylor was indicted by a grand jury in 1980 murder and aggravated battery.
“William Claybourne Taylor thought he could avoid taking responsibility for this horrible crime, but our agents continued an exhaustive search year after year,” Special Agent in Charge Michelle Klimt told WYFF-TV. “To echo the words of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, ‘The FBI always gets its man.’ We thank our law enforcement partners for their assistance, and hope this news brings comfort to the families of Taylor’s victims.”
Epoch Times contributed to this report.
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