Slain anchorwoman was sexually assaulted

A television anchorwoman killed in her home had been sexually assaulted and beaten so badly in a suspected burglary that her jaw shattered and she broke a hand while trying to fend off her attacker’s blows, her parents said Monday.

“This monster stole my daughter’s innocence,” said Patti Cannady, the mother of Anne Pressly, on NBC’s “Today.”

“He took her life. He took her identity. He took our lives,” she said.

Police Lt. Terry Hastings did not dispute her remarks and those of her husband, Guy, but declined to offer specifics about the attack. Police and prosecutors have refused to say whether Pressly, 26, was sexually assaulted during the Oct. 20 attack in Little Rock.

“A lot of those details, we want the jury to hear those first,” Hastings said.

- from IHT

The parents of a television anchorwoman beaten to death at her home said Monday their daughter was sexually assaulted during the attack, and an arrest warrant released by police says DNA evidence linked an eastern Arkansas man to the crime “with all scientific certainty.”

In a television interview, Guy and Patti Cannady said Anne Pressly, 26, was beaten so severely that a portion of her jaw bone was broken away. The couple said their daughter also broke her left hand while trying to defend herself.

Speaking with NBC “Today” show host Matt Lauer, the Cannadys answered “yes” when asked if their daughter had been sexual assaulted during the Oct. 20 attack at her home.

- from Dallas

Patti Cannady said she found her daughter in bed, bloody and beaten, after she didn’t answer a wake-up call. She said every bone in her daughter’s face had been broken.

“Her jaw pulverized so badly that the bone had come out of it,” Cannady said. “I actually thought that her throat, it possibly been cut, but that was possibly the first knockout punch. Her entire skull had numerous fractures from which she suffered a massive stroke.”

- from FoxNews