Arkansas Blog

A hearty round of applause and gratitude to the LRPD and law enforcement officers everywhere who worked to identify and apprehend this man. And may the Force continue to be with Anne Pressly's family.

Glad to learn the prosecutor will have the tools to make a strong case. Capital charges for sure, but change of venue? Or will he plead out to spend the rest of his life caged like the animal he is? Or will the prosecutor prefer a death penalty trial for political sake?

The truly sad, scary and outrageous reality is this case is just like hundreds repeated nation-wide that get little/no publicity. We as a nation are producing these heartless, dangerous people, and the "justice" system still wastes Billion$ each year on the senseless and counterproductive "War on Drugs." Just yesterday a guest at Thanksgiving dinner opined that people like this "do it because of drugs."

THAT mindless drivel has been driven into otherwise sensible people by the relentless propaganda machine that characterizes the Drug Warriors. Drugs don't "make" people disdain the rights of others no more than dogs cause fleas. Our "culture" produces more sociopaths than most of the other countries in the world combined. We slip annually in such measures as infant mortality while trumpeting "best health care," in education while we repeat the mantra "no child left behind," and just overall care for those less fortunate (or in Arkansas even animals) is criminally negligent while EVERY political "leader" figuratively pounds her/his chest while uttering the rote cover-up "best country in the world."

Solutions to problems require as Job One the ACKNOWLEDGMENT that problems exists, not more distracting sloganeering. Until we have the courage to speak the unvarnished TRUTH in our discourse, we are headed towards the same fate that has claimed numerous cultures over time.

My friend Steve has summed it up quite well:
"Our nation, in fact all industrialized nations and developing nations like China and India, live under the illusion that we can create open-system economics with single use product life cycles and always
find a place to dump our shit.

We're are FKED anyway! While we're slowly cogitating the effects of our actions we keep right on sawing - our oceans are dying, fisheries collapsing, temperatures rising, ice sheets melting, storm intensities increasing, species disappearing, water tables sinking, deserts expanding, forests are
beetle-ridden, disease vectors spread, tundra is releasing more and more methane, and the oceans are maxed out on absorbing any more CO2. (What did I miss?)

Yet we still think we can drill [or whatever] our way out of this and produce even more products to consume. Something's seriously wrong with the picture and your neighbors are worried about gays & praising their false gods, while awaiting the Rapture? Did I say Idiots?

Oh right! I forgot to mention the political prospects of TNW (Thermo Nuclear War.) Perfect ending I'd say."

And another friend, Mike adds: "...while we lead our lives of meaningless comfort."

Amen, and pass the Patron & weed...

AND ditto durango & PV... NO disrespect for her life denied or the loss by her family, friends, co-workers and others whose path she crossed. Confronted with this beastly man I just "went off" on our flimsy society...with paper-thin "values." Maybe a return to the stock and public stoning is in order! This guy deserves the same treatment he dished out...
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I have finally come to the conclusion that our justice system, like our health system does not work. That is not to say that I know what the better answer is...I believe we have a system that at one point served its purpose, and that at the moment it is the best out there...best being a relative word I suppose.

But issues with crime start at the very beginning of life. Today's society holds no one accountable. If you make bad grades, you have ADD or ADHD and need to be medicated. Or, maybe it is the teacher, the school system, etc. It is never the child's fault. If you get pregnant when you are 16 and drop out of high school, the government will take care of you because it is not really your fault. And, a 16 year old mother will most likely continue the same sad cycle, her child will probably get pregnant early because nothing about our government assistance programs promotes the idea of trying to get out of this cycle.

If you get in trouble at a young age, real trouble, maybe you get sent to a youth justice facility of whatever type. It is here you learn how to be a real criminal...seldom are they truly rehabbed to be productive citizens of society. Then, when someone really hurts, robs, rapes or murders someone, it must be someone else's fault....the criminal system, society, mental problems, etc.

Now, I am not discounting some of these...our criminal system is in fact NOT rehab oriented. And, there are plenty of mentally ill people not receiving the proper treatment. So, I guess in fact it does come down to society....we must begin to hold every single individual accountable for his/her downfalls. As long as humans are raised to think "well it is not my fault" then they will continue to act as if it is not.

Fine the ever living hell out of people carrying around a little weed to help pay for a system that can focus on the rehabilitation of the true criminals instead of filling up the jails with potheads. I guess if you have the extra income to buy weed, you can afford to be fined to pay for a justice system that works?

What is mental illness? How can we, as a country, begin to address violence as mental illness, as emotional imbalance and personality disorder -- in a vast and comprehensive way?

This is the issue.

I had hopes that Hillary as First Lady would make this the platform of Bill's 2nd term, right after the Columbine tragedy showed us up close and personal that things have careened way, way, way out of balance in this country. But Hillary did not do anything except express condolences.

The crisis has been here for a long time now. We are seeing people who have gone crazy right and left. I'm talking about people who seem to be perfectly "okay," in fact, who, when you see just a bit deeper, are deeply out of balance, yet they can pull it off and pass it on to their children because they are well cared for in the socio-economic department.

Narcissitic personality disorders, sociopaths, psychopaths -- these people, psychologists say, cannot be cured. Is that really true? Have we indeed investigated every possibility for how our society can support mental balance without the strong arm of the church's Ten Commandments, which clearly, are not working and have never worked?

What can we do differently?

You can call him a monster, and perhaps you are right. Cyrus Vance is ill and it is a problem for every one of us. Snuffing him out in your thoughts doesn't help, does it? No, of course it doesn't.

Wow and, wow.
Thank God for technology and modern society.

There have always been rapists, there have always been serial killers, serial rapists and serial killer rapists.
We get all shocked when something like this happens and blame society.
This depraved behavior has always existed.
We have just gotten better at catching them and the victims, if alive, are more willing to come forward.

I wonder how many other women this man may have stalked and raped.

The justice system IS broken. It takes too long to try criminals. The jail needs correction. Appeals drag on too long. Criminals have no fear of apprehension or conviction, apparently, reflected by the audacity to commit these obscene acts. No wonder gun permits are up.

"The truly sad, scary and outrageous reality is this case is just like hundreds repeated nation-wide that get little/no publicity. We as a nation are producing these heartless, dangerous people, and the "justice" system still wastes Billion$ each year on the senseless and counterproductive..."

Hear hear! Thanks, Larry.

Lots of things we do; lots of things we permit to be done produce miserable lives. It's reported that Curtis Lavelle Vance's "home town" is Marianna (Lee County). Unless one of us happens to be from Marianna or we know someone from there, we hardly think of the place. We're busy here and we just don't give much of the rest of our state much regard. until something sensational happens there or someone from a certain place draws attention here. I wonder how often it is that some miserable life is produced in some place a hundred miles from wherever we live and then winds up coming to our town to spread his or her misery. What happens to children all over the state should matter more to us. Today, a comment like "it's a local issue" is anachronistic. It is disingenuous to pretend that it is not.

Our legislators, including the members of the Assembly from my own neighborhood, still like to use that offensive dismissal when they claim that school corporal punishment is a "local issue". Of course, the description would be closer to accurate only if kids in the spanking school districts of Arkansas (the overwhelming majority of them) grew up and stayed in their communities.

In the Lee County School District (Marianna), in the 2006-2007 school year, only African American kids were spanked. More than twice as many of the paddlings were given to males as females in what the ADE calls "Regular" classes. Of the kids needing Special Education services, 3 spankings were administered... to males only. Just consider the gender representatives in the tens of thousands of spanking events in Arkansas schools every year: spankers and spankees. It is often that violence toward others is gender specific.

Spanking schools generally experience more teacher assaults, more vandalism and higher dropout rates. School corporal punishment is associated with higher incarceration rates of the adult population.

We don't know if Mr. Vance went to the schools in Marianna or if he was ever paddled. But paddling goes on in practically all of Arkansas' public schools. All the kids in those schools know about it so it affects all of them, spanked and not spanked. It teaches kids that their teachers can and will hit them with a board and hurt them on purpose for the least unwanted behaviors. It teaches kids that bigger, more powerful people can do whatever they like to others, especially with hand held weapons. It cannot communicate to them that they are safe at school or that they are regarded as much as the worst criminal in our state. They know that animals are better protected by our laws.

Hitting a child in order to make him or her hurt and humiliated does not facilitate a value for education nor does it encourage a child to feel welcome in school. Schools in Marianna maintain enrollment around a hundred per class (give or take a few tens) until the 12th grade when it drops dramatically (just 23 in 2007). Too many kids in Arkansas schools quit before graduating. We hardly encourage them to stay. An undereducated labor force is a state issue.

When a person is hit for the purpose of being hurt in retaliation, it does not facilitate warm feelings and gratitude, despite the testimony of spanking apologists who incredulously thank their spankers. Wishful thinking, indeed! No, to the contrary, hurting people makes them angry, among a few other negative feelings. Just like the creation of the proverbial bully, cruelty is learned and plotted under the cruel hand. Research shows that corporal punishment can result in increased aggressiveness, greater likelihood of becoming a child abuser or a spouse abuser and more likely to commit physically violent crimes.

Sure, school corporal punishment could be dismissed by the legislature as merely a local issue if the state's legally abused students grew up to threaten only those in their hometowns. It would be merely the misfortune, the unintended consequences of outdated local policies.

Representatives to the legislature from anywhere in Pulaski County and a couple handfuls of those from several far spread districts in the state could wash their hands and call it the problem of someone else. But the kids from all over the state can and do wind up in Little Rock and all the other communities of the state. No one can say that kids don't learn to hate and to vow vengeance when they experience harsh, physical punishment from their adult caregivers. No one can say that we won't suffer for what happens out in the state and remote to our own local concerns. I agree completely with Larry: "We as a nation are producing these heartless, dangerous people.". We permit lives to be wasted. This foolishness will continue to demand our attention.

"This depraved behavior has always existed." ---A*M above...

Yes, AND this begs the issue of WHY in "the greatest country..." it exists in far, FAR greater frequency than any other country, "developed" or not!! There are so many thoughtful, provocative comments above it's not possible to laud them all. There are dozens of studies on the recidivistic nature of our penal system, but like bureaucracies everywhere it doesn't change in any way proportional to the problem.

I agree totally with Never... AND now will come the "manly" among us claiming paddling made them "manly" and those of us opposing it are merely limp-wristed weenies.

"We get all shocked when something like this happens and blame society." ---A*M again

IF society is not to blame, then the other option is God - it's either nature or nurture, ain't it??!!!!

THE nut was nailed by MAK above: "Today's society holds no one accountable." BINGO!!

The hand-wringing wingnuts are STILL convinced that WHC's BJ signaled the end of a "moral" society, but the FKing imbecile who replaced him is UNaccountable for murdering tens of thousands, including our own, repeatedly stomping on the Constitution and maybe WORST of all ensuring the other incompetent/criminal Perps in his cabal will NEVER FACE JUSTICE, as fascists everywhere have done and continue to do. At least the most heinous of them ADMIT they are fascists and don't hide behind religion, faux "patriotism" and other euphemisms for crimes against society!!!

You can't have it both ways, yet that's what we see exampled in our ruling classes minute-by-minute. I'm with other posters here that a NEW WAY may be upon us with O'Bama AND WE need to become more accountable to demand stuff gets fixed, not just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

We ARE to blame, in the end!
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If we refuse to pay for the "War on Drugs" will they threaten to release him?

"When they took the fourth amendment, I was silent because I don't deal drugs. When they took the sixth amendment, I kept quiet because I know I'm innocent. When they took the second amendment, I said nothing because I don't own a gun. Now they've come for the first amendment, and I can't say anything at all." Tim Freeman

"If we refuse to pay for the "War on Drugs" will they threaten to release him?"

Well, the level of discourse just went into the toilet with THAT stupidity...who is THEY in that sad wordsmithing, "we the people?" Surely not the fascists in power (for a few more days)!!!
THANKS so much Zath!
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Larry, I know you homos are the root cause of all our problems.. I mean you have taken God out of everything and everyplace and I said that to say this, without God we are doomed to hell and you are leading the way to hell.
Repent and God will heal the nation... for it will get worse!

Silver Bells: Cyrus Vance was the Secretary of State during the Carter Administration.

Because of mandatory drug sentencing the murderers and rapists get shorter sentences and are paroled earlier than drug offenders. Even with the massive growth in prison building we still can't keep up. Every time another increase in taxes for jails is floated the fear button is pressed. Instead of having a discourse about why America chooses to incarcerate so many or why we punish some but not others or why so many choose crime or why we criminalize so much; the argument often becomes if you don't support more jail taxes then you won't mind the release of dangerous criminals into your communities.

"Expedience, not justice, is the rule of contemporary American law."
Abbie Hoffman

Spankings?
And " . . . homos are the root cause of all our problems . . ."?

Are you people capable of thinking at all beyond your own hang ups? Good grief.

Thanks, BBB. I know who Cyrus Vance was, in case you think I don't. Thanks for correcting my huge error.

Curtis, not Cyrus.

chasv you FKing Moron: IF you could comprehend anything beyond your sick obsession with gays (and KNOWING that YOU are a sicko REPRESSED example) or your pathetic bastardization of a decent historical novel (Bible), and paid any attention at all (AND it doesn't/shouldn't matter one way or t'other - I could give a RAT about your sexual identity if you'd stop the obsessing), you'd know that:
1. I've been married (to women) twice - once for 22 1/2 years (she died), and now for 24 years and counting...
2. I have 2 (straight) children and 2 (straight) step children (all adults, all married, one deceased) and 2 grandchildren...
3. I am not now and have never been either Gay OR a Democrat (NO offense, gang ;>)!!!
4. We were all better off for the few days that Max axed your ass for being the sick SOB you are and revealing your true, pathetic, mentally ill, and violence-seeking self.
5. I have numerous gay friends, in several states including this pathetic one, and even if I DIDN'T, I do believe that the Golden Rule, and various liberty-affirming concepts underpin this country - freedom and justice for ALL - and sadly that includes pathological ASSHOLES (my aopology to the God=created orifices that some of us are not trying to disavow!) like YOU. It particularly INCLUDES also our GLBT fellow CITIZENS, and precept your dinosaur brain can't get it's grasp of.

STFU unless you have something new/interesting to say, PLEASE. Put another way: Eat shit and DIE!!!
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Speaking of mental balance -- it seems to have left this thread entirely. i sometimes wonder if people either punching or counterpunching in this crazy world even want to strike a balance. Obviously not, in the last few posts.

Lordy, some of these posts have been thigh-slappin' funny! And, Larry (I love it when you get all worked up), you simply MUST tell us one of these days how you really feel about chasv!

Name-calling instead of intelligent discourse and tolerance of differing opinions has a long history. Hitler did it, Stalin did it U.S. Citizens and Soldiers did it in War I, War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq I, Iraq II, Afghanistan, Panama, Grenada etc. It's a lot easier to discriminate, abuse or kill, when by calling them "sub-humans," "capitalists," "reds," "imperialists," "heinies," "krauts," "japs," "nips," "gooks," "wops," "ragheads," "wogs," etc., you demote them to things instead of people.

It also seems to have become the hallmark of those unable to defend a political belief or tenet with facts, just as profanity has always been the recourse of those too inarticulate to express their passions in intelligible English. . . ."

Someone once said, "Homophobes are driven by fear. Fear of their own repressed desires or of being publicly identified as a homosexual."

Strike a balance? With chasv? Surely you jest...and Doc's post proves the point that chasv's obsession is, in fact, self-hate for his gay ass. As for profanity: $#&#^@, *%&$!@ and #&$(*%#!!!
;>)

OOPS - and durango: I'm just holding back on that as I wouldn't want to offend any so-called christians...
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Yesterday, after Thanksgiving lunch, out on the deck with the smokers, somebody brought up Anne Pressly's vicious murder, and the arrest of the presumed killer.

"We were all hoping it wouldn't turn out to be a black man," they said.

Assuming Curtis Lavelle Vance's DNA pans out and convicts him, so WHAT that he's black?

Here's what.

ONLY in the still-racist south (Google the electoral map showing the tiny swath of bigoted southern Red states, including Arkansas, who disproportionately swung for McCain/Palin) would the presumed killer's race even come up.

NOBODY here ever says, "Well, the killer was white." Or Asian. Etc.

Killers come from every race.

It's telling, and pitiful, that a killer's race -- ONLY if black -- is ever mentioned in Arkansas media.

The ONLY reason for racial tagging of killers in southern media, frankly, is to reinforce racial stereotypes against blacks.

(That's not going to pass as easily, now that we've elected a black President.)

"We were all hoping it wouldn't turn out to be a black man," they said yesterday at the family Thanksgiving gathering.

You simply don't HEAR such remarks in Big Cities. Nobody thinks that way, there.

Here? You bet.

For some reason, it's REAL IMPORTANT here to racially identify criminals.

Unless, of course, they're white. Or "white" collar good-ol'-boys.

I've yet to read, in Arkansas, a report of "white" killer Joe Blow assaulting and murdering anybody.

Or a "white" robbery suspect holding up an E-Z Mart.

Funny. White criminals' race is NEVER mentioned.

Black criminals' race? Always.

Go figure.

The Anne Pressly murder is a sorrowful tragedy from any perspective.

The only reason to interject race into it is to perpetuate Arkansas' equally tragic -- and ugly -- history of racism.

"Funny. White criminals' race is NEVER mentioned. Black criminals' race? Always."

Please, darling Norma, get a grip and point to the place where the local print medium has referred to Curtis Lavelle Vance as being black. You don't REALLY believe the media in Arkansas (OR in "Big Cities") should withhold photos and video footage simply because the apprehended is black, do you?

If the investigators knew he was BLACK yes BLACK from the beginning because of the dna evidence left at the scene that should have been told to the public!!!
That would identify the race of the person they were looking for. There's NOTHING wrong with that! Same goes if he was white or asian or any other race.
What in God's name is wrong with that?

If she was raped that should be released as well. The public needs to be aware. If there was more than one perpertrator that should be told.

A savage murderer is just that. Brianna Denison's killer was WHITE. They said all along they were looking for a white male. Race has NOTHING to do with it.

Politics might though. If they didn't want to release the fact that they knew he was black prior to the elections then they should rot in hell. They knew his race from the dna evidence. YES they can figure this out.

Sorting through sensible comments and the other, it remains that Larry's "We as a nation are producing these heartless, dangerous people." is the most contextual. Anne Pressly is gone. It appears that Curtis Vance is gone, figuratively, at the least. These are preventable losses. That's the point. All the name calling and blaming and threatening challenges just waste air and space. They're distractions. Some of us need those because they help us do nothing differently when we all know that unless we figure out what we did wrong we will just do it all over again, with the same tragic outcomes.

We know that childhood experiences, from the conditions in which we are conceived through a point somewhere just beyond entry into elementary school, are the biggest determinate of who and what we become, somewhat more or less than genetics. We've known for some time that it is practically hopeless to undo a childhood scarred by abuse and severe neglect; that rarely do we rehabilitate the most violent among us; that it costs more to incarcerate a person than to help a child develop with proper nutrition, nurturance and education. But we get a morbid satisfaction in punishing folks, provided we get to do it quickly and fittingly. Pretty dumb, considering that we really know better. This illustrates the fact that we too often are motivated by what we feel rather than what we think and we just don't feel that good about kids.

The punishment of Curtis Vance or whoever took Anne Pressly will never feel as good as losing her feels bad. It's a really poor bargain. So, we've just got to get beyond our dependence on the emotive in everything we do and strive for more thoughtful policy decisions. Perhaps more noble feelings will follow.

Corporal punishment is just one dumb thing we do to kids simply because it feels right. However, it is one of the most unnecessary and it's one of the most easily eliminated. It's a very contextual consideration in light of the fact that violence so certainly seems to beget violence. When we intentionally expose children to violent acts, we are going to get some violent children who grow into violent adults.

Protecting children from cruelty at the hands of parents and siblings is a pretty tough nut to crack because of our reverence for family privacy and the sanctity of parenthood. But school corporal punishment is used only where the teachers are lazy or very poorly informed (teachers in 29 states do a good job without hitting their pupils). We can change that if we can get beyond doing what feels right, what is comfortable and merely familiar, and doing what has been shown to consistently produce good results in schools where non-violent problem solving is both encouraged and modeled by the teachers.

No one deserves to be hurt on purpose... not Anne Pressly and the millions of other innocent victims of violent crimes in our country and not any Arkansas school kid who chews gum in class or runs in the hallway or doesn't get her homework done or fails to tuck in his shirt or commits whatever minor offense that provides some brute with a board an excuse to take anger and frustration out on a little kid (ranking near the top of the ridiculous reasons list is hitting a kid for hitting another kid). We have nothing good to show for it. Just look at our dropout rates, vandalism, school shootings, poor academic rankings and incarceration rates that are higher than those in states that do not allow teachers to hit little kids with a handheld weapon.

It's interesting to see all of the people here using this poor woman's murder to push their own agendas. So far, we have no evidence that Mr. Vance is mentally ill, a drug user, spanked in school, gay, or a racist. He is certainly being held accountable for the accusations against him, and so far, the criminal justice system seems to be handling him just fine.

"...the criminal justice system seems to be handling him just fine."

What?

You've shown up sort of late to pick a fight, Bub. Most folks have quit the thread.

Events like this don't start with a "poor woman's murder", followed by a lucky collar which is then the cue for someone to say that the criminal justice system seems to be handling it "just fine". Some here have tried to look back a little further; some less fairly than others. Some believe these things might be interrupted before needing a criminal justice system. Sadly, especially for Anne Pressly, whatever the criminal justice system does, it all too often does it too late. Obviously, I can't say I appreciate your critique on the thread. No thanks either for summing it up so succinctly with "handling him just fine".