Anne Pressly, Slain Anchorwoman, Beaten "So Severely" Her Teeth Knocked Out, Jaw Shoved Back: Medical Examiner

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A medical examiner says an Arkansas TV anchorwoman was beaten so severely that one blow knocked a tooth out of her mouth and another shoved her jaw to the back of her head.

Dr. Stephen Erickson testified Tuesday in the capital murder trial of Curtis Lavelle Vance, who is charged with killing TV host Anne Pressly. He was the last witness before prosecutors rested their case.

Vance has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers began their defense by asking crime scene technicians about what they didn't find at the scene, and also asked crime lab workers about DNA evidence gathered that didn't seem to have a match.

Jurors could start deliberating the case Wednesday. Vance could face the death penalty if convicted.

Comments

[XRaraavis]

The true facts of the case.

The DNA from the hair collected at the scene was entered into a DNA database before the Police knew anything about Vance. He had not volunteered any DNA to police at this time.

The DNA from the previous home invasion and rape was processed and matched the DNA from the Pressly case.

The semen recovered from the Pressly murder scene and on her body was degraded but the DNA present matched the Y chromosome profile of Vance which is only shared by Vance and his immediate male relatives.

He has confessed three times to being in her house that night, other parts of his story changed between the confessions but he admitted all three times to being in her house that night.

[thistime]

Well, that's not true. Vance wasn't identified before police decided to run the DNA of old rape cases. In Arkansas, women who claim rape, but who aren't also bludgeoned to death, aren't alllll that credible, so the first girl could wait. She probably would have waited until hell froze over, but the tragic Anne Pressly murde intervened.

His confessions, such as they are, were recorded according to their helpfulness. The less helpful, the less record..

Authorities must act respectfully to require respect.

[luziannagirl]

thistime, I managed to find the link to which you referred, by scrolling thru your recent comments.

What I wonder is why the LR police don't keep a data bank of DNA profiles of all first responders and police, so any understandable contamination by them can be immediately ruled out?

Also, do you not give credence to the lab reports that semen/bodily fluid samples from bedclothes/robe were from an individual or individuals of Vance's male lineage?

What about DNA from the back of her broken hand, which also points to Vance? Is that contamination, too?

Or, do you say that perhaps there were other participants (relatives of Vance) in the crime, and if so, it can't be determined via evidence presented so far, which one of them was responsible for her attack?

At some point, don't the pieces---DNA and otherwise--- which point to Vance pile up a bit?

[luziannagirl]

thistime, I'm overlooking your vitriol to agree with you that there's really no excuse for not processing with all due speed DNA samples from rape kits, regardless of who the victim is. Lack of funding is absolutely no excuse.

Rape is a violent crime, often brutal. Moving police resources away from, say, "nonviolent" drug offenses and traffic work and toward rape, and all violent crime, would be in order.

Perhaps this attitude is a holdover from the days when women were viewed as the property of men, and rape was about sex rather than violence and power.

[XRaraavis]

I am confused by your response because your first system seems to agree with me.

Vance was not on anyone's radar at the time DNA from the Pressly crime scene was entered into the system. Then when DNA from the first rape finally got processed it matched the DNA from the Pressly case. At this point the police had two matching sets of DNA from two crimes and no suspect.

Then the police questioned Vance and he volunteered to give them a DNA sample. This sample matched the DNA from the two crime scenes.

How did the police frame someone they didn't know about. They had the killers DNA in the system before they ever questioned Vance. The defense never claimed that Vance's DNA didn't match the DNA that was entered into the system before he was ever questioned.

[AnnfromCA]

Thanks. The apologists seem way out there, to me.

This was a good conviction.

[thistime]

Do you think they should have checked her nails for DNA promptly?

[luziannagirl]

The real controversy, in my opinion, is over the constitutionality of DNA "dragnets", where police ask for DNA samples from numbers of people who fit certain profiles. Sometimes those samples are unquestionably coerced, and lawsuits have been filed over such instances, in my state.

A few years ago, Baton Rouge was plagued by not one, but TWO serial killers responsible for the deaths of at least 30 women. Over 600 local men submitted DNA samples to police, some of their names were leaked to the media, and several otherwise upstanding citizens' reputations were trashed.

DNA evidence did end up helping narrow the "profile" quite a lot in one case, however, but good police work caught one of the men, in the end. He was convicted mostly on DNA evidence left on several victims, and is presently on death row. He's never confessed. The other one turned himself in, if I'm not mistaken.

[luziannagirl]

According to various LR news reports:

At the point where DNA from the Pressly murder scene matched DNA from the rape in Marianna, police still didn't have a name or much of a description of the perpetrator. All they knew was that it was the same person who did both crimes. The Marianna victim survived her attack, by the way, and has come forward publicly and spoken to the media several times.

At that point, Little Rock police used modern investigative police work based on fairly recent criminology, to narrow their search to the population of burglars operating or suspected to operate in the Marianna area. They asked Marianna police who were the known or suspected burglars, and then asked them to volunteer to submit DNA samples. Vance submitted a sample, and his turned out to be a match to DNA gathered at the scene of the Pressly crime.

One of Vance's "confessions" included him performing a certain act at Pressly's bedside while she slept, and she awoke to find him there. He denied rape but admitted to beating her.

[luziannagirl]

To the conspiracy theorists:

Vance was already known to police to be a burglar. His girlfriend was known to act as a fence for stolen goods.

It's now a known fact that many serial rapists and serial killers who target women begin their criminal careers as burglars.

Such criminal careers often show an escalation from peeping to burglary to rape to brutal rape to finally, murder.

Men who viciously attack and murder their women (or child) victims are motivated by a strong need to dominate those they perceive as weaker or vulnerable. Violence is the only way they feel powerful.

After the crime, DNA results of rape kits gathered in recent months were reviewed as soon as they came in. Weeks went by and no match to any DNA gathered from the crime scene. There had been a backlog at labs examining those rape kits---as in many places---and finally, there was a match to DNA gathered from a rape in Marianna, not far from Little Rock. LR police asked Marianna police who the known burglars or stolen-goods fencers were, and that's how they found Vance. He gave a DNA sample, and bingo, it was a match to the DNA gathered from the Pressly case, and to the DNA from the Marianna case. The Marianna case was also a young woman who lived alone, and who was a stranger to Vance.

It looks to me like nothing but just good police work, y'all.

[thistime]

Please link to Vance's conviction history for burglary, it wasn't covered, or introduced at the trial.

Mariannia is more than two hours away from Little Rock, so I'm not sure what you consider a short distance.T­hey found Vance after they finally tested the DNA from the Marianna rape and found a match trough a hair found at the Pressly scene. At that point they finally decided to investigate the first rape, a crime which didn't concern the authorities until Pressly's murder. It is true that the first victim was a woman who lived alone, but the similarities end there. Most rape victims are women, so the only real similarity was that they lived alone, but I digress. Vance was not tried for that crime, unless you consider the murder trial as a combined case.

According to reports of testimony by the authorities, the DNA eventually found under Pressly's nails didn't match. There was DNA at the crime scene which didn't match Vance. And the hair that did match is missing.

Good police work my ass.

[luziannagirl]

I don't know that he was convicted, thistime. From the news articles I read at the time, it sounded like LR police asked Marianna police who the burglars or fences were in their area. In the BR serial killer episodes, police didn't even narrow it down that far. They asked the general public to anonymously turn in names of men they thought might be capable of such crimes, regardless of any other circumstance. I'm not sure if they eventually destroyed the DNA samples of the innocent or not---there was a lawsuit over it.

[luziannagirl]

And, thistime, where did you read or hear it was a hair? I thought the DNA match to Vance was semen found on bedclothes.

[luziannagirl]

Shortly after the tragedy a relative who lives near the scene of the murder said that authorities inspecting the crime scene later that day found Ms. Pressly's jawbone on the floor across the room. The attacker struck her with such force that some of the more solid parts of her face were ejected. Her mother confirmed that shockingly gruesome detail in an interview sometime later, and added that every bone in her face was broken, and her brain had been damaged. Reconstruction of someone's entire lower mandible would have been very difficult, and making it look "right" would have been almost impossible. At the very least, Ms.Pressly­'s promising on-camera career would have been over.

Ms.Pressly­'s case is not rare, however. Thousands of American women are bludgeoned to death or otherwise murdered by men, every year, far more than die by being struck by lightning, food poisoning, or bitten by snakes.

Women really should get together and develop an effective strategy to deal with this threat.

[Cryostatic]

Funny, an exceedingly larger number of men are bludgeoned to death or otherwise murdered by men. Far more than women.

Men really should get together and develop an effective strategy to evenly distribute the violence.

Yeah, I'm being extreme, but if you think violence against women is something that should be uniquely protected against, I wonder about your perception of the real world, since you seem so eager to trivialize violence in other regards.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/gender.htm

[luziannagirl]

Yeah, Cryo, men are quite the violent creature aren't they?

The point is....comp­ared to men, the other segments of human society ---women, children and old people of any sex---so rarely resort to violence to solve their problems or simply to entertain themselves. The PROBLEM group for the rest of us is unquestionably MEN, as your point so nicely illustrates.

Thank you.

[blaharumph]

i wish the article had more info... not on the violence, yet the things brought up by his lawyer.

[Latonya]

I hope she rests in peace

[Kiranitisme]

The guy was not hired by Vivid?

[marcain]

No deals, only the death penalty. We don't execute enough murderers.

[CC1]

That's the d@mn truth!

[Palemoon]

In such case, I think the duly convicted persons who commit such crimes should receive not only the penalty of death, but death in a manner consistent with that which they used to take another persons life. I have no problem with the death penalty so long as the person is definitely guilty. I'm reminded of what enlightenment era philosopher John Locke had to say on the matter...

"A criminal who, having renounced reason ... hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or tyger, one of those wild savage beasts with whom men can have no society nor security. And upon this is grounded the great law of Nature, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." "

I couldn't agree more.

[zippo007]

Something tells me she fought bravely to the bitter end. Too bad medical institutions can't use this animal to test new surgical methods to speed up the process to get life saving technics to the hospitals.

[AnnfromCA]

He confessed at one point, then recanted.

[AnnfromCA]

I'm glad this case is finally over. Long time coming.

[blueskybigstar]

How about this? You can't believe what any officials say in Arkansas after this.

http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/fahmy-malak
http://www.idfiles.com/fahmymalak.htm

[quacktastic]

quit stirring things up, that wasmany years ago. This is a solid case.

[AfroLatina21]

Not it isn't a solid case... obviously you haven't looked at the evidence lacking in the case.

[thistime]

Nothing has changed in Arkansas, and this was not a solid case.

[blueskybigstar]

Wow. I just got a taste of a message that I wanted to respond to but is now gone. But to answer it, this woman played Ann Coulter, is involved in the media, the whole country was bugged, they would know what stories she would want to cover, they could have been explosive, the CIA can frame anybody and make them say they did it. Anybody hear about Betsey Wright?

[blueskybigstar]

Was this man Vance in the same prison that Betsy Wright was caught bringing in contraband?