Murder suspect captured in NC after nearly 40 years

A man wanted for his involvement with a scheme to murder a Florida mayor was arrested in North Carolina Thursday, nearly 40 years after the crime.

According to the FBI, William Claybourne Taylor has been living in Reidsville, N.C. under a false name. Special agents with the FBI Charlotte Division's Greensboro Resident Agency took Taylor into custody Thursday.

Taylor, now 67, was wanted for his alleged involvement in the Jan. 8, 1977 murder of a former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) official and the attempted murder of the former Williston, Fla. mayor.

According to the FBI, on the night of the murder, Taylor and his accomplice pulled alongside the victim's vehicle and shot and killed the INS official. The FBI said Taylor was trying to kill the former mayor.

Taylor's accomplice is now deceased.

Taylor was arrested in 1980 in Tennessee but was released on a $20,000 personal recognizance bond to return to Ocala, Fla., where he was charged.

FBI officials said Taylor never showed up in Ocala to surrender.

"William Claybourne Taylor thought he could avoid taking responsibility for this horrible crime, but our agents continued an exhaustive search year after year," said Michelle S. Klimt with the FBI. "To echo the words of former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, 'the FBI always gets its man.'"

Taylor is being held in the Guilford County, N.C. Detention Center.