Officer to be Executed: Former Florida Policeman Manuel Pardo Convicted of 9 Vigilante Murders, Defense Claims Insanity

Former police officer Manuel Pardo will finally have his last wish granted: the 56-year-old will be executed Tuesday evening.

Once a decorated Florida police officer, Pardo was fired for lying on the stand in 1986 and transformed himself into a vigilante, murdering nine people during a three-month crime spree, according to USA Today.

Officials say most of the 56-year-old's victims were involved with drugs and Pardo claimed he was carrying out justice in an unjust world.

"I am a soldier, I accomplished my mission and I humbly ask you to give me the glory of ending my life and not send me to spend the rest of my days in state prison," the then-31-year-old Pardo told jurors at his 1988 trial. Pardo was found guilty on nine counts of first-degree murder at the trial and has been on death row ever since.

The former officer's attorneys are now arguing in federal court this week that a technicality in the law should mean their client is not executed this week. Pardo's lawyers contend a recent change in Florida's lethal injection ingredients violates Pardo's civil rights.

They allege that the drug combination being used should not be allowed because there is a real threat of the lethal drugs being improperly mixed together, resulting in the anesthetic effects potentially being lost. Pardo's attorneys say they have raised these concerns, as their client will be the first person executed using the new combination of drugs.

Pardo's attorneys are also trying to block his execution by arguing in federal appeals that he is mentally ill.

"I think that anyone who would get up and ask a jury sentence him to death is insane," lawyer Ronald Guralnick said recently.

Prior to his conviction in 1988, Pardo was known a "guy's guy," Guralnick said, and despite his later actions, as an officer, he did some commendable things.

"You can do something wrong and do a lot of right things, too," said Guralnick.

In 1982, The Miami Herald reported that former Boy Scout and Navy veteran saved a 2-month-old boy's life by reviving him with CPR. Another story noted that Pardo arrested a man for stealing valuable parrots and cockatoos to use as live sacrifices for a Santeria ritual.

Just four years later Pardo was fired after flying to the Bahamas to testify at the trial of a Sweetwater, FL colleague who was accused of drug smuggling. Pardo lied, telling the court they were international undercover agents.

That's when the transformation came. Over a 92-day period in 1986, Pardo committed a string of robberies, killing six men and three women. He reportedly took pictures of his victims and even recounted some details in his diary, which was found along with newspaper clippings about the murders. Pardo was linked to the killings after using credit cards stolen from the victims, said the Christian Post.

Pardo grew progressively more unhinged every day. He became mesmerized by Adolf Hitler, collected Nazi memorabilia, and even tattooed a swastika on his Doberman pinscher.

"He was very cold," retired prosecutor David Waksman told the Herald recently. "He was doing robberies and went home and slept like a baby. He was proud of what he did."

Guralnick believed Pardo was insane and tried to use that as a defense, arguing he couldn't tell right from wrong. But over Guralnick's objections, Pardo insisted on testifying at his trial, telling jurors that he enjoyed killing people and wished he could have murdered more.

"They're parasites and they're leeches, and they have no right to be alive," he said in court. "Somebody had to kill these people."

Guralnick said his client was not only a rigid, military-loving man, but also a product of the lawless, cocaine cowboys-fueled culture of 1980s Miami.

"I'm not admitting that he did any of that, but let's say he did," said Guralnick. "He was a victim of the time. The people he was dealing with were trash."

Speaking at a new conference following his conviction, Pardo relented that maybe he should have idolized Martin Luther King Jr. or John F. Kennedy, rather than Hitler.

"But they were pacifists," he said. "I'm an activist."

Pardo has since said that the stress of losing his job, as well as having an undiagnosed disease, turned him into a killer, but that this person was not who he really was.

Pardo's execution is scheduled to take place at 6 p.m. local time at Florida State Prison in Starke, Florida.