RALEIGH - Antonio Chance admitted today that he killed Progress Energy employee Cynthia Moreland after abducting her from a parking garage in downtown Raleigh two years ago.

Chance pleaded guilty in Wake Superior Court to first-degree murder, which carries a life sentence. The plea came two weeks after his attorneys announced that a psychologist hired by the state had concluded that he was mentally retarded and therefore ineligible for the death penalty.

Wake prosecutors had hoped to seek the death penalty for Chance. But on IQ tests, he consistently scored 70 or below, the legal threshold for mental retardation in North Carolina.

Moreland did not show up for work on Aug. 22, 2006. Her disappearance gripped Wake County residents, as co-workers, fellow church members and strangers joined Moreland's family and Raleigh police to search for her.

State Highway Patrol helicopters flew over Wake County as officers on horseback rode through rural areas and dogs sniffed for clues.

Chance, 30, an unemployed convicted sex offender from Garner, was arrested two days after Moreland went missing. He became a suspect after he was spotted on a convenience store surveillance camera using Moreland's credit cards. Police also learned that he had sold Moreland's cell phone to an acquaintance, according to police records.

Chance didn't tell police where Moreland's body was, according to a state psychologist's report. Instead, a woman found the body as she looked for firewood behind an abandoned farmhouse in rural Harnett County.

The cause of death was never determined, because of the decomposed state of the body, but a forensic pathologist speculated in an autopsy report that she had been strangled.

Hundreds came to her funeral, and family members noted her grace, calm demeanor and faith.

Her grandson Devin, then 8, wrote in his tribute: "Ma-Ma is my world ....I will miss her the rest of my life."

Cynthia Moreland was born in Smithfield, grew up in Zebulon and met her future husband, Walter, in a downtown Raleigh nightclub in the late 1970s when he was singing with Mark IV, a rhythm and blues quartet.

He ended up leaving the group and moving from New York City to Zebulon to be with her. The couple was married for 22 years and had planned on taking a Labor Day trip to Myrtle Beach the week she was kidnapped.

The couple moved to Wendell, and he worked as a surgical technical at WakeMed Raleigh Campus. She worked for Progress Energy for 26 years. On the day she disappeared, she dropped off her husband at WakeMed before she drove to downtown Raleigh.

Moreland was an active member of Mount Peace Baptist Church in Raleigh.

A fuller report on the guilty plea will be in tomorrow's News & Observer.

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