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Family says dead man wrongly implicated in 1974 slaying

Family members say that Waylon Perry Sauls was wrongly accused by Cumberland County detectives in the 1974 slaying of Anthony William King.

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FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — The family of a dead Sanford man recently named as a suspect in a 1974 slaying say that Cumberland County detectives have it wrong.

Detectives recently said they believe that Waylon Perry Sauls shot and killed Anthony King in Fayetteville on July 8, 1974. Detectives said that new information from a friend of King who recently came forward led them to believe that Sauls killed King over a drug debt owed to Sauls' son.

Sauls' daughter Glenda Riggsbee, though, questioned that finding and said that authorities never talked to her family before publicly implicating her father.

"We've lived here in Lee County for years and years, and my dad retired here. We never had anybody whatsoever to approach us with anything that happened," Rigsbee said.

State Department of Correction records show that Sauls' only conviction was for driving while impaired in 1991.

He died in 1997 of acute alcoholism.

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