There's a break in the case of that promising young television reporter who was killed in her Arkansas home last month.

She was the very picture of promise.

Young, beautiful and smart, Anne Pressly was just starting to see her dreams come to life -- as a morning news anchor in Little Rock, Arkansas.

It all came to a cruel and crashing halt October 20th. When Pressly didn't answer her morning wake-up call from her mom.

Patricia Cannady rushed to her daughter's home and found what no mother should ever see.

"I was running, I ran around the corner back toward her bedroom, and I was screaming Anne, Anne..."

Her daughter bloody and beaten to within an inch or her life. Pressly never regained consciousness. She died 5 days later.

A friend of Anne’s said, "She has a heart of gold. She was good to everybody."

At her funeral, hundreds turned out to honor her life.

"Why did this happen?" was a question many asked at Anne’s funeral.

Detectives worked around the clock investigating her death -- searching her home for clues, and probing every tip called into a hotline; then on thanksgiving eve…a break in the case.

“Did you kill her?” asked an investigator.

“No,” replied Curtis Vance.

Police arrested 28-year-old Curtis Vance and charged him with capital murder. They say DNA evidence in Pressly's home has linked him to the brutal crime.

Vance is also wanted in connection with the rape of a school teacher last April.

While police believe robbery was the motive and Vance didn't know Pressly-- there are many unanswered questions.

How could it happen to a woman so many describe as a one-in-a-million friend? And, professionally, a true rising star?

Answers her parents may never have as they mourn a life