Murderer ready to die for his crimes

Brendan Riley

Friday, March 29, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Condemned inmate Richard Moran says he's ready to die for two Las Vegas barroom murders and apologized to his victims' families for the crimes committed while he was high on drugs.

But Moran, 42, facing execution at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, also said he's not volunteering for capital punishment like the last five men executed in Nevada -- although he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Moran complained about a legal system that, while keeping him alive through drawn-out appeals that reached the U.S. Supreme Court twice, enabled O.J. Simpson to get an acquittal from the murder charges he faced.

The comments from Moran, on Nevada's death row for 11 years, were made in a 90-minute interview Thursday with the Associated Press, conducted in a 10-by-10 prison visiting room.

In talking about the events that led to the murders, Moran said he had been fired a few weeks earlier from a bartending job because of drugs, and was in a cocaine-induced paranoid state.

"I was on the end of a real long drug and alcohol binge. ... I was pretty wrecked. I was in a downward spiral," he said. "It was just the breaking point.

"My whole life was alcohol and drug abuse from the time I was 12. I was 12 the first time I did that and I've been high ever since -- 'til I got here."

Moran said he went into the Red Pearl Saloon to see if there were any bartending jobs available, and was armed because of his exaggerated fears brought on by drugs. "I was scared all the time," he said.

Up to that point, he said, "No, I never killed anybody else. No, I never maimed anyone, I never mugged anyone, I never did anything. It was like bar fights and DUIs."

But in the case of the Red Pearl Saloon murders, "I'm the one who killed those people. There's nobody to blame but myself."

Moran said he was overwhelmed by guilt afterward and wanted to die. Now, after his years of appeals, he says, "I'm willing to pay my debt to the families of the victims.

"You can't even begin to imagine what it feels like to know you've killed somebody," Moran said. "Innocent people, you know, not self-defense, not some scumbag who was beating his wife and you were coming to her rescue or something."

Moran said it's like "you turned in your membership card to the human race."

"I can't say how sorry I am for what I did. I'm ashamed of myself," he said, adding that he wrote recently to a family member of one of the victims to express his remorse.

"My execution isn't going to fix it, but maybe it will help them ... have some peace," he said. "I'd be glad to pay that debt to them. If that helps them get a little more sleep at night, execute me today."