Forensic evidence gathered at the home of a slain television anchorwoman led police to a man already suspected of raping a school teacher in eastern Arkansas, officials said Friday.
Curtis Lavelle Vance, 28, of Marianna offered a DNA sample to detectives, police said. A test by the state Crime Laboratory linked Vance to the teacher's rape and the October beating death of Anne Pressly, police said.
"That is part of what helped us get focused on him," Little Rock police Lt. Terry Hastings said.
Pulaski County District Judge Lee Munson ordered Vance to be held without bond Friday on a capital murder charge over Pressly's death. During a brief hearing at the Pulaski County jail, Vance said nothing while a public defender asked for a bond amount to be set, said deputy prosecutor John Hout.
Munson, who signed the arrest affidavit for Vance, rejected the request without asking prosecutors to offer any opposition, Hout said.
"The affidavit included facts that there was forensic evidence found in the victim's home that connected him to the crime," Hout said.
Hout said he did not have a copy of the affidavit. Hastings said Friday the affidavit had been filed to the city's district court. However, court officials said they had not received it.
Hout declined to offer any further details about the case, now bound over to the county's circuit court.
"There are a lot of people that are intensely eager to find out what the facts are," the deputy prosecutor said. "At this point and time, due to all the hard work of the police and crime lab, we probably don't need to say" what the evidence is.
Vance did not enter a plea at the hearing. If convicted of capital murder, Vance could face either a life sentence or the death penalty.
Police in Marianna say Vance voluntarily submitted a DNA sample this week in connection with a rape investigation, the Times-Herald of Forrest City reported. Marianna Police Detective Carl McCree told the newspaper and Little Rock television station KLRT that Vance faces rape and residential burglary charges in connection with the April attack.
McCree did not return repeated phone calls Friday from The Associated Press.
Vance was arrested Wednesday night for the Oct. 20 attack on Pressly, who was a morning anchorwoman for Little Rock's ABC affiliate, KATV. She lived alone in the city's Pulaski Heights section, a mix of mansions and bungalows near a country club.
Pressly's mother, visiting from out of town at the time of the attack but not staying at her daughter's home, found Pressly a half-hour before the anchorwoman was due on KATV's "Daybreak" program. The mother checked on the woman after she didn't answer her daily wake-up call.
The anchorwoman had been beaten severely on the head and upper torso.