Johnathan Bryant Moore was born on April 4, 1975, to Walter and Barbara Moore, who had five other children from previous marriages.

Growing up in San Antonio, Moore dreamed of becoming a pilot, until he discovered skateboarding and playing the guitar. But he says he gave up on those pastimes just as quickly after deciding he was a "failure" at everything he attempted.

By the time he was 10, his older siblings had left home, leaving the mischievous child to seek out diversions in the streets, where he had several brushes with the law.

Around this time, according to relatives who testified at his sentencing, Moore began to show signs of depression, paranoia and suicidal tendencies as a result of a dysfunctional family life, which included an alcoholic father, an abusive relative and a mentally unstable mother.

As a teen, Moore says he became an "anarchist," leading a lifestyle dedicated to resisting authority, either by making trouble in school, stealing or vandalizing public property with the anarchist "A."

Classmates who would later testify for prosecutors at Moore's sentencing recalled his obsession with the Goth and punk subcultures, as well as a tendency to scribble satanic symbols on his schoolwork.

Moore says that he also began partying heavily and abusing alcohol and drugs, including LSD and Xanax.

He never felt like he fit in with his peers, he says, until he was sent to the Laurel Ridge psychiatric hospital in San Antonio in 1991.

Prosecutors told jurors in his trial that he went to Laurel Ridge to avoid being taken into juvenile state custody, but his mother testified that he was institutionalized after attempting suicide.

In an interview with CourtTVnews.com, Moore, now 31, said he had fond memories of Laurel Ridge, where he met the sister of Heidi Seeman, whose abduction and murder made headlines in San Antonio in the 1990s.

Moore says he left the hospital with a renewed outlook on life, but he quickly slipped back into crime and drug abuse. This time, though, he began carrying guns.

After he graduated from high school, he says, his parents forced him to enroll in college three times despite his efforts to drop out, and he finally left home.

Moore moved into an apartment with a girlfriend, but he said he constantly stole to pay the rent and bills.

Moore says he was doing just that on the night of Jan. 15, 1995, when San Antonio patrolman Fabian Dale Dominguez came upon him and two friends as they were leaving a home they had just burglarized.

His crime