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DNA helps police link 38-year-old to 2014 murder of wheelchair-bound man in his home

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Three years ago, Gary “Bill” Borer hadn’t been seen for days, and his ex-girlfriend and their 17-year-old son were concerned.

They called Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, and an officer met them at his house in the 1000 block of North Tibbs Avenue on the city’s west side.

Borer was wheelchair-bound and known to sometimes spend time in the cluttered garage, which had a large amount of items blocking the overhead garage door. The officer found the only door accessible to the garage padlocked. After unsuccessfully trying to remove the hardware for the lock, the officer kicked in that door.

They found Borer, believed to be 52 years old, still buckled into his motorized wheelchair, dead. “There was obvious trauma in what appeared to be a violent death,” said the court documents filed last week that preliminarily charged 38-year-old Anthony Bruce King with Borer’s murder.

The keys to the garage were found next to Borer.

After finding Borer dead in the late morning of Nov. 15, 2014, police continued their investigation. The ex-girlfriend said Borer had been selling his pain pills to a guy, King, who lived a block or so away with his mother, in the 1100 block of Groff Street. The ex-girlfriend said Borer told her he owned King money and had “made an arrangement to pay him in pills,” court documents said.

Police soon thereafter interviewed King, who said he’d been at Borer’s home a few days earlier to move a doghouse for him.

Meanwhile, crime scene investigators checked the garage where Borer was found. They found a spray bottle of Power X EX Clean, a bleach disinfectant, and a Kobalt flathead screwdriver. Both items had something, possibly blood, on them. Investigators also collected other from the garage.

A few days later, the coroner determined Borer had died by homicide from “multiple sharp force injuries to the neck and chest,” court documents said.

The next break in the case came after police asked the Indianapolis-Marion County Forensic Services Agency was asked Aug. 4, 2015, to test 10 items found in the garage to see if King’s DNA could be found on them. On Dec. 21, 2016, the agency reported that DNA on the spray bottle matched King’s, court documents said. His DNA was stored in a computer system after King was sent to prison for 1-1/2 years for a 2009 burglary conviction in Marion County, according to online prison records. A subsequent lab report on May 30 confirmed the DNA test.

King on Thursday was in the Marion County Jail awaiting an initial hearing Monday afternoon in Marion Superior Court, Criminal Division 1 to formally charge him with Borer’s murder.

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