GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) — A man wanted for the 1977 killing of a former immigration official and the shooting of a former mayor in Florida has been arrested in North Carolina, federal authorities said Thursday.
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. He was taken into custody Thursday without incident and is being held in a detention center in Guilford County, the release said.
Authorities said 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.
He was indicted in May 1980 and arrested five days later in Chattanooga, Tennessee, authorities said. They said he never returned to Ocala, Florida, after being released in Tennessee on a $20,000 personal recognizance bond.
A federal arrest warrant was issued in August 1980 after Taylor was charged with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
The FBI statement doesn’t identify the victims. However, a story published in 2013 in the Ocala Star-Banner identified the man killed as 64-year-old Walter H. Scott, of Archer, and the man injured as former Williston Mayor Eugene T. Bailey, who was shot three times.
The report says the shooting occurred as they were driving along U.S. 27 about 18 miles west of Ocala when another car pulled alongside their vehicle. An accomplice, now dead, also was involved, the FBI said.
The newspaper report says the victims’ car veered into pine trees after the driver was shot. A suspect approached the back of the car and shot Bailey, the newspaper reported.
Two other men in the car escaped unharmed, the newspaper reported.
It wasn’t clear Thursday if Taylor has an attorney.
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