A Pulaski County Circuit judge reduced a 32-year-old man's $200,000 bail Monday after hearing that authorities have no physical evidence linking the man to claims that he beat a woman with a bat, hit her with a hammer and sexually assaulted her while holding her against her will.
Dexter Lynn Allen's attorney also told Judge Leon Johnson that the Little Rock woman initially denied knowing who attacked her.
Johnson set Allen's bail at $75,000, which was three times the $25,000 the defendant's attorney, Lou Marczuk, had asked for. Allen remained jailed as of Monday evening.
Allen is charged with aggravated robbery, first-degree battery, second-degree sexual assault, false imprisonment, aggravated assault, terroristic threatening and theft. In an interview with police, he has denied assaulting the woman.
Marczuk also pointed out that the woman had given inconsistent statements about what happened, initially telling police that Allen was not her assailant. She also first told police that she'd been held inside her home for two hours, then said she had been held for nine hours, the lawyer said.
The woman also had acknowledged a brief consensual sexual encounter with Allen shortly before the incident and has a history of drug addiction, the attorney said.
Detective Jacob Pasman testified that the 47-year-old woman suffered a fractured left-eye socket after being struck with a bat in the Feb. 4 attack at her home at a mobile home park on Chicot Road. She also had bruises all over her body, including a hammer-shaped mark on her leg, Pasman told the judge.
Allen had been a frequent visitor at her home, police said, but the woman at first denied he'd been her attacker, a denial prosecutors said she made because she was scared of him.
The woman said her attacker hit her from behind with a baseball bat and demanded oral sex, but settled for having her fondle him because she was too injured to comply with his demands, Pasman told the judge.
She said he beat her using his fists and the hammer after she tried to flee the home and choked her with the belt to her nightgown, the detective said.
The woman told officers that she refused to die that night because she did not want her daughter to have to find her body, Pasman told the judge.
The woman described to officers a nine-hour ordeal in which the man made her cook ramen noodles for him, made her wash herself and also coerced her to smoke methamphetamine under threat of being forced to eat the drug or have it injected if she didn't comply, the detective said.
The man washed himself with Pine-Sol and bleach and took her phone, jewelry and other items when he left, she told detectives.
According to a police report, she ran to a neighbor's house to call police after the attacker left.
Investigators found signs of a struggle in the home, blood on the wall and a bottle of bleach accompanied by the smell of chemicals in the home, according to the report.
Allen became a suspect when a witness called the woman's cell phone and a man named "Dot" answered. Dot is Allen's nickname, the detective said.
Allen has been jailed since his February arrest at the Waterford Apartments on Green Mountain Drive.
He had a drug pipe when he was arrested and subsequently pleaded no contest to misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia two months after his arrest, court records show.
Allen, who now reports a Dumas residence, was convicted in August of theft by receiving and fraudulent use of a credit card, accused of using a stolen credit card in July. He was on probation at the time.
He is also scheduled to stand trial before Johnson next month for an Oct. 9 arrest at his former home, 5917 Chaucer Lane, where police reported finding him with methamphetamine and a drug pipe.
Metro on 05/24/2016