Arkansas police have arrested a man suspected of bludgeoning to death popular TV anchorwoman Anne Pressly, who had just appeared in a cameo role in the George Bush biopic W.

Ms Pressly, 26, died in hospital on October 25, five days after being severely beaten at her home in Little Rock, the hometown of Bill Clinton. Last night police arrested Curtis Lavelle Vance, 28, on a capital murder charge - but offered no motive for the attack nor details of the evidence against him.

Mr Vance was apparently aware that police were seeking him before his arrest and had earlier fled his Marianna home with a 25-year-old woman and three children under age 5, officers said.

Terry Hastings, a spokesman for Little Rock Police, said he was arrested without incident at a home at around 11pm.

“We got a tip. We went there and he’s in custody,” Mr Hastings said this morning. “As far as we know he wasn’t armed.”

Little Rock Police Chief Stuart Thomas had said before the arrest that Mr Vance was believed to be armed with a 9mm pistol and “a lot of extra ammunition.”

Ms Pressly was found unconscious by her mother on the morning of October 20, half an hour before she was due on KATV’s “Daybreak" programme, a morning TV show on the ABC network’s affiliate station in Little Rock.

The anchor, who had failed to respond to her mother's daily wake-up call, was still bleeding badly from the head. Officers initially said that Ms Pressly had been stabbed and suffered “severe wounds”. However It was later established that she had been beaten around the head and upper body with a blunt object. She never regained consciousness.

The previous night, Ms Pressly had dined at a restaurant with a friend, Mallory Hardin, before going to see Oliver Stone's W. with other friends. In a text message to Ms Hardin afterwards, she said she was delighted with her brief performance.

“If there’s one person that doesn’t have an enemy, it is Anne Pressly,” Ms Hardin later told the NBC Today show.

Ms Pressly won her role in W. after travelling to Shreveport, Louisiana - where much of the film was being shot - to work on a story about the area's thriving film industry. The movie's casting director noticed her and offered her a walk-on part.

The anchorwoman appears as a conservative commentator who speaks favorably of President Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished" event on an aircraft carrier following the Iraq invasion.

Before Mr Vance's arrest, police said they were investigating whether the attack was a random home invasion, or the work of a stalker or fellow filmgoer. Ms Pressly's handbag was missing from her home and one of her credit cards was used at a petrol station after the beating, but security footage did not afford a good view of the person using it.

Mr Hastings had said previously that DNA and other evidence from the scene gave police a portrait of the suspect, though they did not have a name until this month.

At a news conference last night Police Chief Thomas said that the capital murder charge against Vance was based on “a very, very solid case due to solid detective work.” He offered no futher details, however.

Ms Pressly lived alone in the city’s Pulaski Heights section, a mix of mansions and bungalows near the Little Rock Country Club. Her mother was visiting from out of town at the time of the attack but not staying at her daughter’s home.

The police chief said Mr Vance frequently visited the Little Rock area, about 90 miles west of Marianna, and had a lot of contacts there.

According to KATV, Ms Pressly’s most notable journalistic achievement was an interview with Vice-President Dick Cheney - also satirised in the Stone biopic. Like her appearance in the movie, the interview also came about by chance.

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