A 39-year-old Aurora man has been charged with murder in July’s fatal beating of 18-year-old Clarence King, a crime police said appears to be gang-related.
After a fight July 15 in the parking lot of an East Side public housing apartment complex, Anthony Bills, 39, of the 700 block of Fifth Avenue, Aurora, is accused of beating King, putting him in the trunk of a car, driving to Chicago, beating him again and leaving him for dead, according to charging documents filed this week in Kane County Circuit Court.
Bills is charged with five counts of first-degree murder, two counts of kidnapping, and one count of mob action in connection with the death of King, who lived in the first block of North Sumner Street in Aurora.
Bills and King had both been involved in a large fight at about 8:30 p.m. at an apartment complex parking lot on the 900 block of Second Avenue, according to the charges. As police arrived, many of those involved in the fight, along with spectators, ran from the scene, including King, police said in a news release Wednesday.
Shortly after, Bills and several other men involved in the fight saw King and allegedly beat him unconscious, according to police.
Bills and the others put King in the trunk of Bills’ 2002 Lincoln Continental, eventually dumping his body in the 4500 block of West West End Avenue in Chicago, according to police. Chicago police discovered King’s body around 9 a.m. July 16. The Cook County medical examiner ruled King’s death was due to the beating he had received.
Bills has already been in custody at the Kane County jail for 235 days on other charges, including mob action in connection with the July 15 fight and driving on a suspended or revoked license, according to jail and court records.
Early in the investigation, Bills was identified as a suspect, police said, crediting detective work along with information received form the public as factors in securing the charges.
After the killing, Bills went to Tennessee, where detectives located his vehicle, police said. They obtained search warrants and seized the car last November, bringing it back to Aurora and processing it for evidence, according to a news release.
Bail for Bills for the murder case was set at $5 million.
King was a former East Aurora School District 131 student, School Board President Annette Johnson previously confirmed.
Police said Wednesday they are continuing to investigate King’s death, and have not ruled out charging additional people.
Bills has a history with the Illinois Department of Corrections, records show.
He was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to a 2013 charge of battery involving great bodily harm, a class 3 felony, according to Kane County records.
His Cook and DuPage county felonies include possession of between 2,000 and 5,000 grams of marijuana, possession of a controlled substance and manufacture or delivery of a controlled substance, records show.
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