His pain is still raw, nearly two years after his wife was kidnapped by a stranger from a downtown Raleigh parking deck and her body was left behind an abandoned farmhouse miles away.

"I am so angry and so mad and have so much hate in my heart that I can't vent like I want to," Moreland said.

His voice slow and deliberate, Moreland spoke Thursday from a courtroom witness stand moments after Antonio Chance, in exchange for a lifetime prison sentence, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for killing Cynthia Moreland, 48.

Walter Moreland lashed out at the mental retardation label Chance was given by two psychologists -- one working for defense attorneys and the other for Wake prosecutors -- who looked at IQ scores of 69, 66 and 67, Chance's test results as a child and as an adult. For legal purposes, mental retardation is defined as scores below 70.

Wake prosecutors had planned to ask a jury to give Chance a death sentence in a trial this fall. But that plan changed when the state and defense psychologists agreed that Chance was mentally retarded and thus couldn't be executed under rules set by the U.S. Supreme Court and the state of North Carolina.

"It's all because of a number that you deemed him mentally retarded," Moreland said. "I deem him one of Satan's angels."

Chance's attorney, Bryan Collins, said mental retardation didn't absolve his client.

"Mental retardation is not an excuse for what he did. It is not a defense to what he did. It did not cause him to commit this crime," Collins said.

Chance's plea came in a courtroom crowded with family members and friends of both Moreland and Chance, police investigators, representatives of news outlets and other onlookers. It marked the end of a case that startled Raleigh's residents, prompting some people to buy pepper spray and others to join in searches for her. After Moreland's death, city of Raleigh officials pledged to offer more security downtown by installing better lighting in city-owned garages. They also beefed up patrols by security guards.

Moreland disappeared Aug. 22, 2006, after dropping off her husband at WakeMed Raleigh Campus where he worked as a surgical assistant. Chance was spotted driving Moreland's car away from the downtown parking lot near her offices just before 7 a.m.

Her Camry was next spotted an hour later on a rural road outside of Coats in Harnett County, where the vehicle became stuck in a ditch, said Susan Spurlin, a Wake assistant district attorney. One witness told police investigators that Moreland was in the passenger's seat that morning in Harnett County, staring straight ahead as Chance waved away a would-be Samaritan who stopped to help the disabled car.

By 8:30 that morning, Chance had a tow truck pull the Camry out of a ditch, using a check in Moreland's car and forging her husband's name in order to pay. Cynthia Moreland was not with him at that time. Her body would be found about 100 feet away, behind an abandoned farmhouse, 12 days after she went missing.

The official cause of her death was undetermined homicide because of the extensive decomposition. But a forensic pathologist noted in the autopsy that she was likely strangled, smothered or choked to death.

Raleigh police discovered that Chance had given Moreland's cell phone to an acquaintance. He was arrested two days after her death and charged with kidnapping her, but he never told police where she was.

Moreland and her killer had never before crossed paths. She spent her spare time with her husband, daughter, mother and sisters. She doted on her grandson, Devin, then 8. She attended Mount Peace Baptist Church every Sunday.

Chance was unemployed -- a convicted sex offender who had a daily cocaine habit that both his mother and sister begged him to address. He blamed that cocaine addiction in part for the killing, telling a psychologist for the state that he was not admitted to an inpatient drug treatment program two months before the kidnapping. He was offered outpatient treatment but did not attend.

" 'Those people shut the door in my face,' " Chance said, according to a report prepared by forensic psychologist Mark Hazelrigg. " 'I wouldn't be in this situation.' "

That's as close as the Moreland family may come to hearing an explanation of why Chance killed Cynthia Moreland. In court Thursday, he didn't offer any other insight and answered only the routine questions asked by Superior Court Judge James Spencer Jr. about whether he was freely and voluntarily pleading guilty.

But his sisters rushed up to Cynthia Moreland's daughter, Keisha Mangum, after the hearing, apologizing for what their brother had done.

"Please forgive us," one of the sisters wailed, her head burrowed into Mangum's small frame.

Mangum hugged back, bawling and crying that she missed her mother.

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