Victims’ families’ emotions mixed

Karen Zekan

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

The tension is almost unbearable today for Peggy Denkers.

She prays it will end at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, that the courts will make good on their promise to have Richard Moran's arm pierced with a needle of lethal poison for killing her son in 1984.

"I'll be dancing in the streets," Denkers said, half a smile forming on her lips. "It's been 11 1/2 years. It's time."

But the last-ditch legal maneuvers of Moran's attorneys have her scared.

Moran asked for the death penalty when he confessed to killing Denkers' son, Russell Rhodes, 27, and bar maid Sandra Devere, 24, at the Red Pearl Saloon on Aug. 2, 1984, with his .45-caliber automatic pistol.

The same videotaped confession has Moran detailing the five fatal rounds he fired into his ex-wife, Linda Vandervoort, on Aug. 11, 1984, before he shot himself in the stomach and slit his wrists in a failed suicide attempt.

But then he changed his mind. A slew of appeals went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court without success. Another plea earlier this week was rejected. There's still time left for another Supreme Court try today.

"I fear some bleeding heart will believe him at the last minute," Denkers said. "I fear that someone will let (Moran) back out onto the street."

The Red Pearl Saloon murders rocked Las Vegas back in 1984.

Moran didn't know his victims and was high on cocaine when he walked into the bar 15 minutes before the murders, allegedly with no plans to kill anyone.

Debra Perin was 16 when her brother, Rhodes, was killed. Their last conversation was about Devere, who had recently started working at the saloon where Rhodes had been hired as a cook a few months earlier.

"He said he was going back there to keep her company that night," Perin said of the bar at 1875 S. Decatur Blvd., now the Triple Play lounge.

"I teased him," she said, winking and mimicking an imaginary elbow nudge. " 'You got something going on with her, huh?' There was nothing going on. It was all just in fun."

He just wanted to help out a friend, Denkers said. "Russell lived just a few blocks away. He said she was nervous about working alone at the bar late at night."

The family didn't talk much about Rhodes' murder, Perin said. Today she is the only one in her family who remains uncomfortable about Saturday's planned execution.

"If it has to be done, then OK," Perin said. "I just don't believe that we should be celebrating death. I don't think it's right to cheer death on. He killed my brother, but his death isn't going to bring my brother back."

Perin would like to talk to Moran. "Just to have the chance to look into his eyes, to ask him why," she said, holding her 2-year-old son, Evan Russell Perin, named after her brother.

Denkers never heard from the Department of Prisons on her request to attend Moran's execution. Perin is sickened by the thought of watching the man die. Rhodes' brothers will not be attending either.

But Bill and Charles Vandervoort, Linda Vandervoort's brothers, will witness the moment.

"At 12:01 a.m., if Richard does die as scheduled, I will feel good," said Metro Police Capt. Carl Fruge. "There were no mistakes; he is the one that committed the crimes."

Fruge was a detective assigned to the case. Looking back, only one thing still bothers him -- "that we weren't able to capture him before he killed his ex-wife."

Three days after the Aug. 2 slayings, Moran was arrested on a drug charge and jailed two days for attacking his ex-wife in a fast food parking lot on North Nellis Boulevard. He killed the woman four days after his release in her eastern Las Vegas apartment.

"There are very few police officers that do not believe in the death penalty," Fruge said. "But as police officers, we shouldn't be advocates of what a criminal is sentenced to. Our job is to focus on the facts, bring the perpetrator to court."

Still, "if you could follow the families of murder victims, you'd see the destruction that takes place. What it does to their outlooks on life, the divorces, the trauma they go through. I hope the execution will bring these families closure, but at the same time it brings it all back like it was yesterday."