Manuel Pardo

Manuel "Manny" Pardo Jr. (September 24, 1956 – December 11, 2012) was an American serial killer in South Florida, a former police officer who had previously been employed by the Florida Highway Patrol and later the Sweetwater Police Department in Miami-Dade county, active from January to April 1986, often working with partner, and co-defendant, Rolando Garcia. Over the course of those months, Pardo had nine known victims. These events led to his arrest and conviction for nine counts of first degree murder in the mid-1980s, for which he was sentenced to death, and ultimately executed in December 2012. Early life and police career Pardo was born in New York on September 24, 1956. According to USA Today, Pardo was "a former Boy Scout and Marine Corps veteran, [who] began his law enforcement career in the 1970s with the Florida Highway Patrol, graduating at the top of his class at the academy. He was fired from that agency in 1979 for falsifying traffic tickets. He was soon hired by the police department in Sweetwater, a small city in Miami-Dade County." Criminal career and trial After some brushes with law enforcement, including one incident involving lying to investigators, his position at the Sweetwater Police Department was terminated. Pardo became involved in the drug trade and, in January 1986, Pardo killed his first two known victims, Mario Amador and Roberto Alonso, with a .22 caliber Ruger pistol during a robbery. Later that month, he killed Michael Millot, a Haitian anti-Duvalier activist, who Pardo believed to be a police informant. Millot was a gunsmith who had previously supplied Pardo with silencers for his handguns. Rolando Garcia lured Millot to the car of Pardo's wife, where Pardo himself was already waiting in the back seat. Once Michael Millot arrived and entered the front passenger seat of the car, Pardo fatally shot Millot in the head with a 9mm pistol. The car was later discovered to have been reupholstered after blood was cleaned out of it.