TRUE CRIME CONFIDENTIAL – “LOVE AND BETRAYAL IN THE GAS CHAMBER”

A Crime Born in Neon

September 4, 1986. The Desert Sun Motel was the kind of place that clung to the highway like a barnacle—half-dead neon buzzing, sticky carpet, cigarette burns on the nightstands. It was here that Carla Jean Moore, 27, and Debbie “Dee” Raynor, 22, stormed into the lobby with dreams of easy money and a fast ticket to Florida beaches.

Instead, clerk Ronald Biggs wound up sprawled behind the counter with a bullet in his chest. Within hours, the couple was in cuffs, and the state of Louisiana was already sharpening its knives.

The Trial: “It Was Me or Her”

The trial that December had all the hallmarks of 1980s tabloid obsession: two outlaw lovers, a dead working-man clerk, and the threat of the gas chamber hanging over every word.

Prosecutors made their message clear in opening arguments: “If neither of these women speaks, then both will face the gas chamber.” That phrase hung in the air like a death sentence long before the jury had even been seated.

Dee sat through days of testimony with her hands shaking. At night she couldn’t sleep in her jail cot. Guards later recalled her mumbling, “I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die in that chair.”

When the DA’s office showed her photographs of the chamber—its dull green paint, the leather straps, the steel bucket beneath the seat—she broke. “It was like staring into hell,” she later admitted.

The deal was laid bare: testify against Carla, blame her for pulling the trigger, and Dee would live. Stay silent, and both women would go to their deaths together.

On the stand, Dee’s voice cracked. She sobbed into her hands. “Carla took the gun,” she swore. “I didn’t want nobody hurt. I was scared. She fired it.”

Carla spat a curse loud enough for the courtroom to hear. She stared daggers at Dee, the betrayal hitting harder than the verdict itself.

Three hours of deliberation was all it took. The jury gave Dee life without parole. Carla was condemned to die.

Later, Dee confessed privately to a prison matron: “I’ll live with it forever. But it was me or her. I couldn’t face that gas chamber.”

Death Row: A Life Measured in Denials

Carla was moved to a small cell block at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women. The space was no bigger than a bathroom, bare save for a cot, a toilet, and a barred window that barely let in light.

Her attorney, James Reilly, fought tooth and nail. Appeals were filed to the Louisiana Supreme Court, then to the federal Fifth Circuit. He argued that Dee’s testimony was coerced, that there was no physical evidence to prove Carla had fired the gun.

Outside the prison walls, petitions circulated. Church groups rallied. Flyers reading “SPARE CARLA MOORE” appeared on college campuses. Hundreds of signatures arrived on the governor’s desk.

But the political climate was unforgiving. The mid-80s were an era of “tough on crime,” and governors rarely granted clemency. Each denial letter came stamped and clinical: APPEAL

DENIED. SENTENCE AFFIRMED.

Carla wrote in a letter to her lawyer: “Feels like I’m shouting into a hurricane. Nobody hears me.”

The years crawled. Her tough exterior wore down. She became gaunt, haunted. Yet she clung to some shred of hope. “She’d ask me every week, ‘Any word?’” Reilly recalled. “And every week I had to tell her no.”

Execution Prep: A Machine of Death

By the spring of 1992, all hope had dried up. The date was set: June 12th.

Carla’s last 24 hours were stripped of dignity, turned into ritual. At 4 p.m., guards led her to the showers. She was ordered to scrub herself head to toe. One matron handed her rough prison-issue clothing—woven with a fabric designed to minimize cyanide absorption.

Then came the part Carla dreaded most. She was issued a diaper. “Sanitation,” the guards explained briskly. “It’s protocol.” She protested, cursed, begged not to wear it, but there was no choice. The gas chamber didn’t allow for modesty.

Witnesses later said she looked hollowed out. “She wanted to fight, but the system was bigger than her,” one guard remembered. “We had a schedule to keep. There was no slowing down.”

By nightfall, she had smoked her last pack of cigarettes, paced until her legs ached, and prayed quietly into her hands.

The Gas Chamber

At 11:45 p.m., the march began. Two matrons took her by the arms. Her legs trembled as they led her down the sterile corridor. Beyond the heavy green steel door, the chamber waited.

Inside, the chair gleamed under fluorescent lights. Leather straps dangled like waiting snakes. Beneath the chair sat the vat of sulfuric acid. A small canister of cyanide pellets was loaded into the mechanism above.

Carla was strapped in: wrists, ankles, chest. A wide belt cinched across her lap. Guards adjusted each strap with military precision. The mask went over her face, hiding everything but her eyes.

The warden read aloud: “Carla Jean Moore, you have been sentenced by the State of Louisiana to death by lethal gas. Do you have any last words?”

Her voice wavered but rang out:“Tell Dee I forgive her. But she knows what she did.”

At 12:01 a.m., the lever was pulled.

The pellets clattered into the acid below, and within seconds the chamber filled with hissing white vapor. Carla’s chest heaved. She gagged, coughed violently, her eyes rolling. Her body strained against the straps, jerking and thrashing for nearly two minutes.

Reporters described her gasps as “ragged, animal sounds.”

After seven minutes, her movements slowed. After thirteen, the prison doctor declared her dead.

Aftermath: A Legacy of Betrayal

The morning papers splashed lurid headlines:

“LOVER WALKS—PARTNER DIES IN GAS”“BETRAYAL ON THE HIGHWAY”

Dee Raynor, locked away for life, gave interviews calling Carla “dangerous” and “controlling.” But prison matrons said she often wept in her cell at night, whispering Carla’s name.

“She got her life,” one reporter wrote, “but she’ll never escape that chair.”

The Neon Motel Shootout passed into the annals of true crime not for the robbery itself, but for the cruel triangle of love, betrayal, and the hiss of cyanide gas that ended Carla Moore’s life.