Suspect Named In Anne Pressly Murder

Per the AP:

Police on Wednesday charged a man with capital murder in the beating death of a popular television anchorwoman but offered neither a motive behind the attack nor details about why they suspected him.

Officers were seeking Curtis Lavelle Vance, 28, who fled his Marianna home Wednesday with a 25-year-old woman and three children under age 5, Little Rock Police Chief Stuart Thomas said. Vance was believed to be armed with a 9mm pistol.

"He knows we're looking for him," said Lt. Terry Hastings, spokesman for the police department.

Anne Pressly, 26, died Oct. 25, five days after being severely beaten in her home. The anchorwoman's mother found her Oct. 20, a half-hour before she was due on KATV's "Daybreak" program, after she didn't answer her daily wake-up call.

Police said Vance was thought to be driving a black 1998 Oldsmobile Aurora with 22-inch rims and temporary license plates.

Murder Capitals of the World

Reliable global crime statistics are hard to come by, but here are five cities that stand in a class all their own when it comes to brutal, homicidal violence.

The five listed cities include Caracas, Venezuela, Cape Town, South Africa, New Orleans, United States, Moscow, Russia, and Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea




New Orleans, United States

Population: 220,614 to 312,000 (2007); estimates vary due to displacement of people after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Murder rate: Estimates range from 67 (New Orleans Police Department) to 95 (Federal Bureau of Investigation) per 100,000

What’s happening: With its grinding poverty, an inadequate school system, a prevalence of public housing, and a high incarceration rate, the Big Easy has long been plagued with a high rate of violent crime. Katrina didn’t help. Since the hurricane struck in 2005, drug dealers have been fighting over a smaller group of users, leading to many killings. On just one four-block stretch of Josephine Street, in the city center, four people were murdered in 2007 and 15 people shot, including a double homicide on Christmas day. A precise murder rate is hard to pinpoint because the population is swelling quickly, approaching its pre-Katrina numbers. Whether you use New Orleans’s own figures or the FBI’s, however, the city remains the most deadly in the United States, easily surpassing Detroit and Baltimore with 46 and 45 murders per 100,000 people, respectively.