Deputy Sheriff William Kress Horne was 24 when he was killed on December 23, 1984, after responding to a neighbor dispute in Anson County, North Carolina. As he exited his patrol car one of the men involved in the disturbance shot him with a shotgun; Deputy Horne was fatally wounded. He had served with the Anson County Sheriff’s Office for just over three years and left a wife and child.

The suspect was apprehended later that day. That man had been released from prison in May 1968 after serving 17 years for a prior murder in Scotland County. He was later convicted of Deputy Horne’s murder and sentenced to death; the suspect died in prison of natural causes on July 29, 2004.