Fugitive hid for decades

How one of the FBI’s ‘most wanted’ hid from feds in small-town North Carolina, In his babyish boondocks in North Carolina, neighbors knew him as James Manion, a “nice guy” who did not allege abundant but usually coiled while alive in his backyard or walking his dog down a narrow, tree-lined street.

For years, neighbors told the Associated Press, he ran a babyish wallpaper business — afore it went belly-up. He got married. He got a fishing authorization and, they said, spent his chargeless time with his wife on the water.

“I couldn’t say abundant nice things about both of them. There was never an clue of annihilation amiss,” Preston Trigg, who said he awash the brace his mother’s abode in Reidsville in 2002, told the AP.

But alfresco the quiet and comfortable activity he had congenital on Pennrose Drive in Reidsville, a boondocks abreast the North Carolina-Virginia border, FBI agents were closing in on him afterwards a about 40-year seek for an accused analgesic called William Claybourne Taylor — a blond-haired, babyish man with an arrangement of talents and a will to disappear. Agents agape on his aperture endure anniversary and anon accepted that it was him.

Taylor, 67, was arrested at his home on July 28 for getting a avoiding from justice. At his antecedent cloister appearance, the adjudicator told him he was accused of active from the law.

“That’s what the affidavit say,” Taylor replied, according to the AP.

During an displacement audition on Thursday morning, Taylor did not speak, but his advocate said he agreed to go aback to Florida, area he was accusable in the 1977 annihilation of a retired Immigration and Naturalization Service official and the attempted assassination of a above Florida mayor, according to the account agency.

Howard Neumann, the arch abettor commune advocate for Guilford County, N.C., told The Washington Post that accustomed the attributes of the charges, he suspects authorities from Florida will be in North Carolina “rather hastily” to yield him.

On a Saturday in January 1977, authorities said, Taylor, forth with earlier brother Raymond Taylor and a break driver, pulled alongside a Buick on U.S. 27 abreast Ocala, Fla.

Inside the car was Eugene T. Bailey, a affluent above ambassador of Williston, Fla.

Police said Ray Taylor, a advocate in Williston, a tiny boondocks alfresco Gainesville, capital to be abettor of Bailey’s will and had advised to annihilate him and afresh accumulation by apery his family’s acreage and accession bags of dollars in acknowledged fees, according to a 2013 commodity in the Gainesville Sun.

Police said he enlisted his brother, “Clay” Taylor, as the triggerman.

The aboriginal ammo cut through the car’s rear window and fatally addled retired INS official Walter H. Scott, according to reports. The car afresh screeched from the artery and comatose into a array of ache trees.

The Post’s Katie Mettler appear endure week:

"A apache in a affectation emerged from the “swampy scrubland,” the Ocala Star Banner reported, and attack the ambassador three times with a pistol — already in the face, alert in the torso.

"The mayor, somehow, survived, according to reports. Two added men in the car able unscathed.

"Authorities labeled the cutting an assassination attempt, but it took them three years to arraign and afresh clue down their suspects — brothers William “Clay” Claybourne Taylor and Raymond “Ray” Ellis Taylor Jr."

By that time, the Taylor brothers were active in Tennessee.

In 1980, badge arrested Clay Taylor as able-bodied as Ray, who was alive as an abettor commune attorney. Afterwards abstinent the abomination for years, Ray eventually pleaded accusable to second-degree annihilation and was bedevilled to 25 years in prison, badge said.

After Clay Taylor was accusable on accuse of annihilation and aggravated battery, he acquaint a $20,000 band and disappeared, badge said.

Federal authorities issued a accreditation for his arrest for actionable flight to abstain prosecution. His account — assuming a adolescent man with furry hair and a abounding mustache — fabricated the FBI’s most-wanted list.

The FBI affiche listed Taylor as “armed and dangerous.”

It said the 30-something doubtable was a bisexual who sometimes wore facial hair and sometimes absolute his hair red. It said he ability be alive as a “dance instructor, trumpet player, accessibility abundance clerk, keypunch operator, painter, welder.”

It said he enjoyed developed bookstores and a annealed drink.

It’s still cryptic who knew Taylor’s absolute history.

“He kept secrets appealing acceptable if he did it for 39 years,” Jack Greene, who said he installed wallpaper that Taylor sold, afresh told the Greensboro Account & Record. “Maybe the best abode to adumbrate is in apparent sight.”

Numbers listed for Taylor and his wife, Sheryl, were no best working, but the Greensboro Account & Record appear that if accomplished by phone, his sister-in-law told reporters, “We’re just a little confused.”

Neil Hendrix, a neighbor, told the AP that there was “nothing out of the accustomed about him.”

“He was just a nice guy,” Hendrix told the account agency. “I would accept never suspected, but you never know.”

Taylor’s dog groomer, Kim Merricks, said that although he kept to himself, he did allocution about his dog, Prancer.

“He lit up every time he talked about his dog. He admired that dog. That was his baby,” she said. She added: “I’m still affectionate of aloof about it. I’m still cat-and-mouse on affidavit that it’s him because he was such a nice guy.”

Taylor is getting captivated afterwards band in Guilford County. He is set to be confused aback to Marion County, Fla.

“William Claybourne Taylor anticipation he could abstain demography albatross for this abhorrent crime, but our agents connected an all-embracing seek year afterwards year,” Michelle S. Klimt, appropriate abettor in allegation of the FBI Jacksonville division, said in a statement. “To answer the words of above FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, ‘the FBI consistently gets its man.’

“We acknowledge our law administration ally for their abetment and achievement this account brings abundance to the families of Taylor’s victims.”

The FBI referred questions to bounded authorities in Guilford and Marion counties. Taylor’s advocate aswell was not accessible for comment.

Mary Gene French, Bailey’s 91-year-old daughter, said that she was adequate her father’s accused analgesic was assuredly abaft bars.

“Ever back that happened, I’ve been searching over my shoulder,” she told the Associated Press. “So I’m accomplishing just accomplished now. I achievement they authority him. I achievement they don’t let him get abroad again.”
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