Anchorwoman's Mother Gives Heart-Wrenching Testimony

Nov. 5, 2009— -- From the witness stand, Patti Cannady stared down at Curtis Vance, the man accused of raping and fatally beating her only child, Anne Pressly.

Then, choking back tears, she described the nightmare of discovering Pressly in her home, beaten beyond recognition.

"It was horrific," she told the jury. "I absolutely could not take the scene in. I could not imagine what I was seeing when I found my daughter."

Cannady was among the first witnesses to take the stand Wednesday following opening arguments in Vance's murder trial.

Pressly was a popular news anchor in Little Rock, Ark. Before the attack, her parents used to call at 3 a.m. to make sure she was awake. But on the morning of Oct. 20, 2008, after repeated calls, there was no answer. Frantic, Cannady rushed to her daughter's home.

She found the back door wide open and, inside, her daughter was gasping for breath in a pool of blood.

"It was Anne, but she was so swollen and her hair was completely matted with blood, she was beyond recognition," she said. "There was blood on the ceiling. That's how horrific her attack was."

A nurse who also testified Wednesday told the court she had never seen anyone so badly wounded who was still alive.

In opening statements, prosecutors told jurors that DNA evidence will provide all the proof necessary to convince them that Vance is guilty and also linked to another brutal rape. The defense said Vance was arrested only because police were under pressure to arrest someone in connection with Pressly's death.

Vance was tricked into giving up his DNA to police and into giving them three conflicting confessions, the defense said.

Cannady had said previously she was determined to look her daughter's murderer in the eye.

"I am not leaving," she said. "I will see this person eye-to-eye. They'll have to face me. And God."

High-Profile Case Attracts Familiar Jurors

Even before testimony began, the high-profile nature of the popular anchorwoman's murder case revealed itself during jury selection Monday after only one in 100 potential jurors could say they'd had never heard of the case.

Curtis Lavelle Vance stands accused of beating Pressly, 26, a rising star on the local morning news scene, into a coma and raping her in her apartment in October 2008 after a break-in. Five days after the attack, Pressly's brain stem ruptured and she died.

Vance, 28, of Marianna, Ark., is charged with capital murder. He pleaded not guilty to the attack. If convicted, Vance could face the death penalty or life in prison.

Police said Vance did not know the anchorwoman before allegedly beating her to death.

Pressly's parents hope that a trial will answer the questions that keep them up at night.

"What kind of monster are you that would take the life of an innocent child?" Patti Cannady asked. "What fills you with rage and hatred and no respect for human life? Why did you have to hurt my child and take her life?"

Police: DNA Linked Second Rape Case to Anne Pressly's Alleged Killer

As reported on "20/20" in December, the investigation into Pressly's murder may have helped solve a second crime.

Kristen Edwards, of Marianna, Ark., was raped and attacked in April. Police said that DNA evidence from Pressly's crime scene matched Edwards' attacker, and detectives from both cities collaborated to search for a suspect.

About 100 miles away, Edwards, a schoolteacher and fan of Pressly, was attacked while getting ready for work.

"It was a surprise," Edwards told ABC News. "He was hiding in my living room, and I never saw it coming. Never saw it coming."

Edwards' attacker had come at her from behind, and forced her to lie on her stomach so she could not see his face.

Edwards said her rapist warned her not to turn around and told her he had a gun and would kill her if she tried to look at him. And while she feared for her life until the end, she survived.

"I pretty much did as I was told to do," she said. "I didn't look, I didn't fight, I stopped yelling -- that sort of thing."

But Anne Pressly fought back against her attacker. Doctors also found that her left hand had been broken, a defensive wound.

DNA Evidence Holds Key to Case

From day one, Little Rock police had powerful evidence in Pressly's case. She had fought her attacker and detectives recovered DNA from sperm, blood and his skin, taken from beneath Pressly's fingernails.

"We believed that we had enough to charge somebody if we just knew who that person was," said Lt. Terry Hastings, the public information officer for the Little Rock Police Department.

Two hours away in Lee County, Edwards' case remained unsolved.

"I knew if they ever found a suspect and could match DNA, but I didn't see his face, I didn't know if there would ever be a suspect," Edwards said.

"I have no shame whatsoever in what happened to me," she said. "What happened to me was not my fault. I did everything that you're, I guess, supposed to do when something like that happens to you."

Edwards went to the hospital immediately after the attack so detectives working her case had her rapist's DNA to compare. But, for seven months, there were no breaks in the case.

"I was incredibly and still am to some extent, scared," Edwards said. "There was a lot of fear that whoever it was, was still around."

The week of Thanksgiving 2008, the Arkansas State Crime Lab reported that the DNA gathered at Pressly's crime scene matched that of Edwards' rapist.

And days later, Marianna police detective Carl McCree and Police Chief Vincent Bell stopped a car with suspicious plates. Bell said that in a city of only 5,000, the car triggered "the sixth sense that we sometimes as police officers have."

"The conversation that [the driver] was having with me connected him with the city of Marianna and Little Rock," Bell added. "There was a red flag."

The Marianna police called Little Rock, and 15 minutes later, detectives were questioning Vance, who agreed to a DNA sample swabbed from his cheek.

Pressly's Mother: 'Why Did You Hurt My Child?'

A day later, the DNA gathered by police in two Arkansas towns paid off.

"It took a day to get [the DNA evidence] compared," Hastings said. "On Wednesday afternoon, investigators were notified that it was a match."

Vance's DNA matched both cases but, by then, he had fled from his home, and Little Rock police held a Thanksgiving eve news conference asking for help from the public.

A woman in Marianna said she had seen a man who resembled Vance near her home and Lori Garner, a personal trainer at a gym a handful of blocks from where Pressly lived, told police she saw a man stalking women around the gym just before the murder. She and her client agreed Vance was the man they had seen.

"I feel confident with my opinion that it was him," she said.

The tips paid off almost immediately. Within an hour and a half, police had surrounded a Little Rock home and Vance gave up peacefully.

While Vance denies the murder, police said, he admitted to being at Pressly's house.

"We believe he probably saw her in the neighborhood, probably getting gas, maybe doing something else and then followed her and attacked her," Hastings said. "He denied being involved in it in any way. But his DNA told us otherwise."

Edwards, the rape victim, told "20/20" in December that she feels a little safer; believing the faceless man who raped her is no longer a threat.

"It completely changes your life. It changes your family's life and your friends and co-workers," she said. "I mean, it's devastating. I don't want to see him on the street, ever."

Pressly's parents said returning to their daughter's house was difficult.

"When I had to go to Anne's house and close it up for the last time ... It was hard," her father, Guy Cannady, said. "When I walked out that door, locked the door for the last time and walked away. ? It's something I'll never forget."

ABC News' Katie Escherich and Andrew Paparella contributed to this report.

For more on the Pressly case, visit KATV's Web site.