Manuel Pardo Jr. was a former Florida state trooper and suburban Miami police officer who was convicted in April 1988 of nine counts of first-degree murder. The killings took place in five separate episodes between late January and late April 1986, across about 92 days. Six men and three women died, all of them shot. Pardo was tried with an insanity defense, but against the advice of his lawyer he took the witness stand and admitted that he had intentionally killed all nine. He said they were drug dealers who had no right to live. Prosecutors said Pardo was himself a drug dealer, that robbery was his motive, and that not every victim fit his description.
The jury convicted him on every count and recommended death for each killing. The Supreme Court of Florida affirmed the convictions and sentences in 1990. His challenges in state and federal courts failed over the next two decades, and he was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison on December 11, 2012. He was 56.
The Florida Commission on Capital Cases recorded Pardo's date of birth as September 24, 1956. The Miami New Times reported that he grew up in New York City. Associated Press reports in 2012 described him as a former Boy Scout.
He served in the U.S. Navy in the 1970s. The New Times reported that he earned honors there for good conduct and marksmanship and that he was honorably discharged in 1978. A brief filed by his lawyers in his postconviction appeal called him an ex-Marine who took pride in his physical fitness; news accounts consistently describe him as a Navy veteran. After his discharge he settled in Hialeah, in Dade County, according to the New Times.
Pardo joined the Florida Highway Patrol in the 1970s and, according to the Associated Press, graduated at the top of his academy class. The New Times reported that he was named Trooper of the Month in June 1979 and received a meritorious service award that December.
His career with the patrol ended soon afterward. The Associated Press reported that he was fired in 1979 for falsifying traffic tickets. The New Times gave a fuller and slightly different account: that he resigned in January 1980 while under internal investigation over about 100 fictitious warning tickets and falsified records, and that he had also been cited for dating a woman while married and for asking women for dates during traffic stops.
He was then hired by the police department of Sweetwater, a small city in Miami-Dade County. The New Times put his start there in 1980. In 1981, according to the Associated Press, he was one of four Sweetwater officers charged with brutality; the charges were dismissed.
His police years also had another side: at trial, saving a child's life was one of the mitigating factors the sentencing judge accepted, according to the Supreme Court of Florida.
About four years after the brutality case, Sweetwater fired him. The Associated Press reported that he had flown to the Bahamas to testify in the drug-smuggling trial of a Sweetwater colleague and told the court, falsely, that he and other officers were international undercover agents. The New Times reported that the dismissal was for conduct unbecoming a police officer, and that he later failed the polygraph and psychological screening when he applied to the Hialeah Police Department.
By 1986, the state later argued, Pardo was working in the drug trade. The Commission on Capital Cases summary states that both he and his codefendant, Rolando Garcia, worked for Ramon Alvero, whom it describes as a drug dealer.
The court records and news reports describe the nine people mainly through the roles the prosecution and defense gave them. Prosecutors said several of the men were involved with drugs. Pardo described all of them, at trial, as drug dealers, and the state rejected that description for at least some of them. Associated Press reporting in 2012 said some of the victims were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and named Sara Musa as one.
Mario Amador and Roberto Alfonso were the first two victims. The Supreme Court of Florida, in Garcia's case, recorded that both men were found shot in Amador's apartment in January 1986.
Michael Millot was the third. The Commission summary records that his body was found on February 28, 1986, in Miramar, in Broward County, and that the case was later handled in Dade County. The Associated Press described him as a confidential informant who had sold Pardo guns, and the New Times described him as a Haitian gunsmith.
Luis Robledo and Ulpiano Ledo were killed together in February 1986.
Sara Musa and Fara Quintero were killed together in April 1986. Sara Musa's brother told reporters in 2012 that he still had nightmares about her death.
Ramon Alvero and Daisy Ricard were the last. The state's brief in the postconviction appeal described him as an alleged drug dealer and Pardo's alleged boss, and her as his companion.
The state's brief to the Supreme Court of Florida in the postconviction appeal set out the killings as five episodes, and the Commission on Capital Cases summary gives the offense dates. The courts accepted that structure: the Supreme Court of Florida in 1990 called them nine murders in five episodes and held that each episode was a separate event.
On January 22, 1986, Mario Amador and Roberto Alfonso were shot, and Amador was robbed. The state described the episode as a probable drug rip-off. The trial judge later found that Amador's killing was committed for financial gain.
On January 28, 1986, Michael Millot was shot. The state said Pardo and Garcia believed he was a police informant or federal agent; the Commission summary adds that Garcia believed Millot was setting him up for arrest. A witness testified that Pardo told him the killing had taken place inside a car. The trial judge found that Millot was killed to disrupt or hinder the enforcement of law, a finding the Supreme Court of Florida upheld, citing testimony that he was killed as an informer.
On February 27, 1986, Luis Robledo and Ulpiano Ledo were shot, and Robledo was robbed. The state again called it a probable drug rip-off, and its key witness said the two men, like Alfonso, were killed for drugs and money.
On April 22, 1986, Sara Musa and Fara Quintero were shot. The state's theory was that the two women had taken money to buy a videocassette recorder for Pardo and Garcia and never bought it. The state's brief describes them as women who had angered the two men.
On April 23, 1986, Ramon Alvero and Daisy Ricard were shot. The Commission summary describes the state's position at trial as being that Pardo and Garcia were removing competition for Alvero, the dealer they both worked for; the state's postconviction brief described him as Pardo's alleged boss.
Police linked Pardo to the killings partly through credit cards taken from victims and then used, according to the Associated Press. The Supreme Court of Florida noted in 2006 that Garcia had used victims' credit cards and that Garcia's palm print was found on a pawn slip for victims' jewelry.
On the night of April 26, 1986, according to the Commission summary, Pardo and Garcia flew to New York City. In New York he said he had been shot in the foot, and doctors removed a bullet. That bullet later became one of the central pieces of evidence: the Supreme Court of Florida recorded that it matched the gun used to shoot Ramon Alvero and Daisy Ricard.
Pardo was arrested in May 1986, according to the New Times; the Commission records Garcia's arrest on May 23, 1986. Searches of Pardo's home produced much of the rest of the case. The courts describe a spent casing found in his closet that matched one found under Alvero's body; blood and bullets in a car that tied him to Millot's death; his fingerprint on Daisy Ricard's wristwatch; and a diary in his handwriting that held newspaper clippings about the murders. A detective read entries from the diary to the jury. The Associated Press reported that the diary contained photographs of victims and some details of the crimes. CBS Miami reported that police also found a collection of Nazi memorabilia in his apartment.
The state's first witness at trial was Carlo Ribera, a former informant. According to the Eleventh Circuit, Ribera had known Garcia since 1985, knew he was involved with drugs, and had asked him in 1986 for work offloading illegal drugs from ships; Garcia mentioned Pardo as a possible source of such work. Ribera testified that Pardo described killing the victims and showed him diary entries, newspaper clippings and Polaroid photographs to back up what he said, and that Garcia told him about the killing of Musa and Quintero. In May 1986 Ribera gave about eight hours of videotaped interviews to a Hialeah police detective, including polygraph examinations. Those tapes were not given to the defense before trial, an omission that would matter years later.
The state also had testimony from a fellow inmate, a former Miami River police officer, to whom Pardo was said to have admitted the crimes.
A Dade County grand jury indicted Pardo on June 11, 1986, for the first-degree murder of Michael Millot and unlawful possession of a firearm. He pleaded not guilty two days later. A second indictment in March 1987 charged him with the other eight murders, along with armed robbery and firearm counts, and he again pleaded not guilty. Garcia was charged with Pardo in the second case.
The two men were tried separately. Garcia's trials took a different course.
Pardo was represented at trial by Ronald Guralnick, a privately retained lawyer. His later appellate lawyers wrote that Guralnick was paid an insignificant amount and had drafted, but never filed, a motion to withdraw that said he could not defend Pardo on what amounted to a pro bono basis.
Guralnick believed the state's evidence was overwhelming and that Pardo's best chance was an insanity defense. About two weeks before trial, on March 22, 1988, he gave notice that he would rely on insanity. He stipulated that Pardo was competent to stand trial and asked only for an evaluation of his sanity at the time of the killings. The court appointed three experts, Drs. Haber, Jacobson and Miller, who found Pardo both competent and sane. The defense expert, the psychologist Syvil Marquit, testified that Pardo was competent but legally insane; according to the Supreme Court of Florida, the defense expert said that Pardo was psychotic but knew that murder was illegal and wrong.
The defense had first sought separate trials for the different episodes. During jury selection Guralnick withdrew from that request and agreed to try all nine murders together. He explained years later that an insanity defense stood its best chance before a single jury that heard everything at once: if the jury accepted insanity in one trial, he said, Pardo would be "a total winner," while separate trials would have given him about the odds of winning the lottery.
Pardo's views also became part of the case. The New Times reported that Guralnick said Pardo disliked Jewish people, gay people, drug users and Black people and approved of the Holocaust, and the Associated Press reported that Pardo was fascinated with Adolf Hitler and collected Nazi memorabilia. FlaglerLive reported that prosecutors relied on the diary and the Nazi memorabilia, including evidence of anti-Semitism.
The consolidated trial began on March 31, 1988, in Dade County circuit court. Over Guralnick's objection, Pardo testified in his own defense. He admitted that he had intentionally killed all nine victims and said they were drug dealers who had no right to live. His appellate lawyers later quoted him calling them parasites, leeches and the dregs of society, and they noted that he told the jury he was not insane. He said he had photographed each victim and burned the photograph afterward.
According to the Associated Press, he told the jury that he enjoyed killing and wished he had killed more. The New Times reported that he said he regretted killing nine people rather than 99. The state's view of his motive was different: Pardo, prosecutors said, was a drug dealer himself, and the killings were robberies and disputes over drugs and money.
The Supreme Court of Florida later dealt with the prosecutor's closing argument, in which he twice said that Pardo was trying to escape justice. The trial judge sustained objections, instructed the jury and admonished the prosecutor, and the high court found the remarks brief and not an attack on the insanity defense itself.
On April 15, 1988, the jury found Pardo guilty on every count in both indictments.
The penalty phase began within days. Pardo again testified over his lawyer's objection. He told the jury he was not a criminal but a soldier, that he had accomplished his mission, and that he asked to be given the death penalty rather than spend his life in prison. His lawyer told the jury that Pardo was not able to understand how his own statements would help or hurt him.
The jury recommended death on each of the nine counts. The votes, according to the state's brief, were eight to four for Amador, Musa and Millot; nine to three for Alfonso, Robledo and Ledo; and ten to two for Quintero, Alvero and Ricard. Florida law did not require a unanimous jury recommendation for a death sentence, FlaglerLive noted in 2012.
The trial judge followed the recommendations and imposed a death sentence for each murder, with concurrent 15-year terms for the noncapital crimes. The Commission on Capital Cases gives the sentencing date as April 20, 1988, amended April 21, and names the sentencing judge as Phillip W. Knight. The judge found that every killing was cold, calculated and premeditated, that Amador was killed for financial gain, and that Millot was killed to hinder law enforcement. In mitigation he found that Pardo had no significant history of prior criminal activity and was under extreme mental or emotional disturbance, and he gave weight to Pardo's military service, his saving of a child's life and his family's love and support.
After the verdict, according to the Associated Press and the New Times, Pardo said that he could have idolized Martin Luther King Jr. or John F. Kennedy instead of Hitler, but that they were pacifists and he was an activist. Guralnick argued, the Associated Press reported, that Pardo had been shaped by the lawlessness of Miami in the drug years of the 1980s and that he had done commendable things as an officer.
Pardo appealed to the Supreme Court of Florida, raising five issues. On May 31, 1990, in Pardo v. State, the court rejected all of them in a unanimous per curiam opinion.
It held that the trial court did not have to hold a competency hearing when defense counsel had stipulated to competence and every expert had found Pardo competent. It held that the state had presented competent, substantial evidence of sanity that the jury was entitled to accept. It found the prosecutor's two "escape" remarks did not require a mistrial. It upheld all three aggravating circumstances, finding that testimony showed one victim was killed as an informer and another in a drug rip-off, and that the killings were in effect executions. It held that the trial court was not required to accept Pardo's self-serving account of his motives as proof that he could not appreciate that what he did was wrong.
The state had cross-appealed, and on that issue it won. The trial judge had treated the killings as one long incident, refusing to count the earlier killings as prior capital felonies for the later ones and finding that Pardo had no significant criminal history. The high court said this was a misstatement of the law: each episode was a discrete event, and the earlier murders were prior criminal activity for the purpose of sentencing for the later ones. With that correction, the court counted four aggravating circumstances against one statutory mitigating circumstance and several others. It compared the case with other death sentences on its own motion and found death appropriate for what it called "these nine cold-blooded killings." It affirmed the judgments on all eighteen counts and the sentences. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case on May 13, 1991.
Garcia's prosecution took a very different path. The Commission on Capital Cases records that after two mistrials, the court severed the counts concerning Musa and Quintero. At the trial on the remaining counts, the jury convicted Garcia of the murders of Amador, Alfonso, Alvero and Ricard and acquitted him of the murders of Robledo and Ledo, and he received four death sentences.
The Supreme Court of Florida reversed those convictions, holding that the state's failure to disclose Ribera's videotaped statements required a new trial. At a retrial for the Amador and Alfonso killings, Garcia was again convicted and sentenced to death. In April 2002, in Garcia v. State, the court reversed again. It held that excluding the Ribera tapes had wrongly limited Garcia's cross-examination of the state's key witness, and that the trial court had wrongly excluded Pardo's own sworn testimony from his trial, in which Pardo said Garcia had no part in the Amador and Alfonso killings. Three justices would have gone further and limited any new sentence to life in prison.
According to the state's later brief, Garcia was acquitted at a further trial of the Millot, Alvero and Ricard murders. The Eleventh Circuit recorded that he eventually pleaded guilty to four counts of second-degree murder and received 25 years in prison.
Pardo filed his first motion for postconviction relief in May 1992. It sat in the circuit court for about ten years, the Commission on Capital Cases recorded, largely because of disputes over public records, which the state said could not be released until 1997 because Garcia's case had been sent back for a new trial. The motion was amended in 2001 and later supplemented.
The new claims centered on three points. First, his lawyers argued that the state had broken its duty to disclose favorable evidence by withholding the Ribera tapes, the same tapes that had won Garcia a new trial. The state conceded that the tapes had not been disclosed. Second, they argued that Guralnick had been ineffective in giving up separate trials. Third, they argued that Pardo had been incompetent at trial. After sentencing, blood tests had confirmed a thyroid and hormonal disorder, described in the briefs as hypothyroidism, and a 2001 evaluation attributed an altered mental state to it. His lawyers noted that he had gained more than 100 pounds in jail and lost hair before trial.
The circuit court held an evidentiary hearing on June 25 and June 30, 2003, and denied relief on August 26, 2003. On June 29, 2006, the Supreme Court of Florida affirmed and also denied a habeas corpus petition. It held that the withheld tapes could not have changed the result in Pardo's case, as they had in Garcia's, because Pardo had confessed on the stand and the physical evidence against him was strong. It held that choosing a single trial was a reasonable strategy for an insanity defense. It found the competency claims barred or without merit, since four experts had found him competent and their tests looked at mental function rather than its physical causes. It also rejected a claim that his wife could have given him an alibi for the Musa and Quintero killings, noting that he had admitted both killings to the jury.
Pardo then went to federal court. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida denied his habeas corpus petition in April 2008. On November 10, 2009, a panel of the Eleventh Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Birch, affirmed. Applying the deference federal law requires to state court decisions, the panel held that no competency hearing had been required, that the thyroid diagnosis made after trial did not show he had been incompetent at trial, that counsel's choices were reasonable, and that the undisclosed tapes did not undermine confidence in the verdict given Pardo's in-court confession and the physical evidence. The U.S. Supreme Court declined review in 2010.
Pardo spent more than two decades on Florida's death row. In the 1990s, the Associated Press and CBS Miami reported, he placed lonely-hearts advertisements in tabloid newspapers, corresponded with dozens of women and persuaded many of them to send him money. Reports in 2012 put the total he collected at about $3,500, and the press called him the "Death Row Romeo." FlaglerLive reported that his prison canteen account held $3,530 in 2012. The Commission on Capital Cases recorded one disciplinary report against him, for possession of contraband at Florida State Prison in March 1990.
Governor Rick Scott signed Pardo's death warrant on October 30, 2012, and set the execution for 6 p.m. on December 11, 2012, at Florida State Prison. FlaglerLive reported that it would be the fifth execution since Scott took office.
Pardo's lawyers filed a new motion in state court. They argued that Florida's revised lethal injection procedure, adopted on September 4, 2012, which used pentobarbital as the first drug, risked leaving him inadequately sedated; that he had been wrongly denied records about how the state obtained its drugs; that he had been incompetent at trial; that his clemency proceeding, held in 1990, had been inadequate; and that more than 24 years on death row was itself cruel and unusual punishment. The circuit court denied the motion without a hearing. On December 4, 2012, the Supreme Court of Florida unanimously affirmed, calling the drug claims speculation and holding that its precedent foreclosed the claim about time on death row.
In federal court his lawyers challenged the lethal injection protocol again under the civil rights laws. After an evidentiary hearing on December 10, a federal district judge declined to stop the execution; the Associated Press named the judge as Timothy Corrigan. On December 11, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed and denied a stay. The U.S. Supreme Court denied his final requests that day. His trial lawyer, still convinced that his client was mentally ill, told the Associated Press: "I think that anyone who would get up and ask a jury sentence him to death is insane."
On his last day Pardo met with eight people, the prison chaplain and a Roman Catholic bishop, a Department of Corrections spokeswoman said. His last meal was a Cuban-style menu that included rice, red beans, roast pork and pumpkin pie.
Pardo was pronounced dead at 7:47 p.m. on December 11, 2012, about 16 minutes after the lethal injection began, according to the Associated Press. A spokeswoman for the governor confirmed the time. Reporters could not hear his spoken final words because of a sound system failure in the death chamber; prison officials gave them as "Airborne forever. I love you, Michi baby," a message to his daughter.
Pardo also left a written statement. In it, according to CBS Miami and the Associated Press, he accepted responsibility for killing six men, said he never harmed any women, and wrote that he was doomed and that the number of death sentences made no difference to him. The New Times reported that he wrote that he was ready to ride the midnight train to Georgia.
Sara Musa's brother had said before the execution that it was "about time," and that he and his elderly mother planned to attend.
Several claims about this case go beyond what the courts decided.
His own account of his motive. At trial Pardo said he killed drug dealers to rid society of them. The state, the trial court and the Supreme Court of Florida did not accept that framing. The court found one killing was for money, another to silence an informant, and the state said Musa and Quintero were killed over money paid for a videocassette recorder that was never bought. The jury's convictions do not depend on whether any victim sold drugs.
His final statement. In 2012 he wrote that he had killed six men but not the three women. That contradicts his sworn testimony in 1988, in which he admitted all nine killings, and the jury's verdicts. The Supreme Court of Florida relied on that admission in 2006 when it rejected his alibi claim for the deaths of Musa and Quintero.
Other killings. The New Times reported that while awaiting trial, Pardo allegedly told a fellow detainee that he had committed three more murders in Homestead. He was never charged with any such killing, and no court found it proven.
Garcia's role. Pardo testified at his own trial that Garcia had no part in the Amador and Alfonso killings. Garcia's capital convictions were reversed twice, he was acquitted on several counts, and he ended by pleading guilty to four counts of second-degree murder. The question of what each man did in each episode was never settled by a single jury.
His mental state. Every court that reviewed the case found that Pardo was competent and sane under Florida law. His trial lawyer and his later appellate lawyers believed he was mentally ill, and the post-trial thyroid diagnosis was offered as an explanation; the courts held that it did not show incompetence at trial.
September 24, 1956: Manuel Pardo Jr. born (Commission on Capital Cases).
1970s: Serves in the U.S. Navy; honorably discharged in 1978 (New Times).
1979 to 1980: Florida Highway Patrol; named Trooper of the Month in June 1979; leaves over falsified tickets (fired in 1979 per AP; resigned January 1980 per New Times).
About 1980: Joins the Sweetwater Police Department.
1981: One of four Sweetwater officers charged with brutality; charges dismissed.
About 1985: Fired by Sweetwater after false testimony in the Bahamas.
January 22, 1986: Mario Amador and Roberto Alfonso killed.
January 28, 1986: Michael Millot killed; body found in Miramar on February 28.
February 27, 1986: Luis Robledo and Ulpiano Ledo killed.
April 22, 1986: Sara Musa and Fara Quintero killed.
April 23, 1986: Ramon Alvero and Daisy Ricard killed.
April 26, 1986: Pardo and Garcia fly to New York, where a bullet is removed from Pardo's foot.
May 1986: Pardo arrested; Garcia arrested May 23.
June 11, 1986: Indicted for Millot's murder.
March 1987: Indicted for the other eight murders.
March 31, 1988: Consolidated trial begins.
April 15, 1988: Guilty on all counts.
April 1988: Jury recommends death on all nine counts; death sentences imposed.
May 31, 1990: Supreme Court of Florida affirms.
May 13, 1991: U.S. Supreme Court denies review.
May 1992: First postconviction motion filed.
April 18, 2002: Garcia's convictions for Amador and Alfonso reversed a second time.
August 26, 2003: Circuit court denies Pardo postconviction relief.
June 29, 2006: Supreme Court of Florida affirms the denial.
April 2008: Federal district court denies habeas corpus.
November 10, 2009: Eleventh Circuit affirms.
2010: U.S. Supreme Court denies review.
October 30, 2012: Governor Rick Scott signs the death warrant.
December 4, 2012: Supreme Court of Florida rejects his final state appeal.
December 11, 2012: Executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison; pronounced dead at 7:47 p.m.