Robbery Suspected as Motive in Beating Death of Anchor

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Robbery may have been the motive in the bludgeoning death of a popular television anchor, the police said Friday, adding that the man arrested this week in the case is also wanted in a rape near his hometown.

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KATV Television
Anne Pressly, a newswoman in Little Rock, Ark., died five days after she was attacked.
Lt. Terry L. Hastings, public information officer for the Little Rock Police Department, said it was not known where the man, Curtis L. Vance of Marianna, first spotted the anchor, Anne Pressly, 26; why he chose her as a victim; or what prompted the savage attack.

Ms. Pressly, a regular on the “Daybreak” program of KATV, the ABC television affiliate here, was found beaten and bloody in her bed early on the morning of Oct. 20 by her mother, who had driven to her daughter’s house when the younger woman did not answer a wake-up call. Her features distorted by what the police have called blunt force trauma, Ms. Pressly died five days later without regaining consciousness.

Lieutenant Hastings said the police had no reason to think Ms. Pressly had been singled out before the evening her assailant entered her rented cottage-style home in the affluent Pulaski Heights neighborhood.

“He was not stalking her,” he said in an interview. “We don’t know for sure, but we think the motive is going to be robbery. I think he saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.”

The police declined to say whether Ms. Pressly had been raped.

For weeks police agencies across Arkansas and beyond had supplied detectives here with names and DNA samples of possible suspects, hoping that the material would match evidence taken from Ms. Pressly’s home.

None of the forensic specimens were a match until Wednesday. “This time it came back positive,” Lieutenant Hastings said, explaining only that scientists at the Arkansas State Crime Laboratory here tied forensic material from Marianna, including DNA, to evidence collected from Ms. Pressly’s home.

Police officials disclosed on Friday that detectives from Little Rock had interviewed Mr. Vance on Tuesday at police headquarters in Marianna, about 100 miles east of here, after learning he had been questioned by officers there in a rape near his home on April 21. A warrant has been issued for Mr. Vance’s arrest in the rape case, said Detective Sgt. Carl D. McCree of the Marianna police.

A warrant for Mr. Vance’s arrest in the death of Ms. Pressly was obtained by midafternoon Wednesday, and within hours he had been taken into custody and charged with capital murder.

Mr. Vance, 28, did not enter a plea at his arraignment Friday morning. A judge ordered that he be held without bond pending trial. A preliminary hearing is likely to be held within days.