LITTLE ROCK — Almost 22 years after 33-year-old Treva Parks was found beaten to death in her Little Rock apartment, the man whose blood and palm prints were found at the scene was sentenced to 45 years in prison Wednesday for killing her.
Linked by DNA to the killing, 42-year-old John Bentley Yancey told police he had been a “very violent” man in July 1990 when Parks was killed, but he didn’t remember whether he had killed Parks, who had also been sexually assaulted in the attack.
Wednesday, flanked by defense attorneys Kent Krause, Bret Qualls and Tammy Harris, Yancey pleaded no contest to firstdegree murder. In exchange for the plea, prosecutors reduced the charge from capital murder, dropped a rape charge and recommended the 45-year prison term to Circuit Judge Barry Sims.
Sentenced under the provisions of the time, Yancey can qualify for parole after serving a third of his sentence, 15 years. First-degree murder convictions now require defendants to serve at least 70 percent of their sentences, which would have kept Yancey behind bars for 31 1/2 years.
Describing the evidence for the judge, chief deputy prosecutor John Johnson called Parks’ killing “vicious.” Parks’ sister Vickie Naftzger had found her sister’s brutalized remains in the woman’s bloody bed on July 1, 1990, the prosecutor said.
Police collected evidence, including a bloody towel in the doorway of the apartment, and searched for suspects, he said. As the case languished for 20 years, forensic science progressed until authorities could extract a DNA sample from the blood, but the genetic material did not match any DNA in state and national databases, Johnson told the judge.
Yancey’s name had never surfaced in the investigation. He didn’t become a suspect until after he was arrested and convicted for a February 2009 rampage through Camden. In the course of events, a drunken Yancey bit a piece out of his wife’s face and led police in a car chase with one of his children in the vehicle, a pursuit that ended with his car breaking down after he had rammed police cars. Yancey used his child as a shield when police drew their weapons on him, and he had to be subdued with stun guns.
Sentenced in September 2009 to 30 years in prison for first-degree domestic battering and aggravated assault, Yancey’s DNA was matched by the state Crime Laboratory to the crime scene sample within six weeks of his arrival in prison.
Little Rock detectives J.C. White and Steve Moore questioned Yancey in January 2010 and took a fresh DNA sample for another lab comparison, Johnson said. That test confirmed his blood and Parks’ on the towel, the prosecutor said, and Yancey’s palm prints and semen further matched other evidence. Yancey was charged in July 2010, about three weeks after the 20th anniversary of Parks’ murder.
In that 30-minute interview with the detectives, played in court last October, Yancey said he could not explain how his DNA could be at Parks’ apartment. Shown a picture of Parks, Yancey said he’d never seen her before and didn’t remember ever being at her apartment near the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. At that time of his life, Yancey said, he’d been making his living as a burglar, describing how he’d been regularly drinking and using drugs and had problems controlling his temper.
“I don’t remember if I’ve killed anybody,” he told the detectives. “I don’t remember anything, though, like I said. I did a lot of drugs and a lot of drinking. There’s a lot of stuff I don’t remember.”
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 03/29/2012