execution | My Crime Library

Manuel Pardo Jr was executed by the State of Florida for nine murders. Manuel Pardo Jr was a former police officer who over a three month period would murder six men and three women. Manuel Pardo Jr would later deny the murders of the three women and believed he was doing the right thing by murdering the six men who according to him were all involved in the drug trade. Manuel Pardo Jr would be executed by lethal injection on December 11, 2012

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A former police officer who murdered nine people during a 1986 crime spree was executed Tuesday after his attorneys’ last-minute appeals were rejected.

Manuel Pardo, 56, was pronounced dead at Florida State Prison at 7:47 p.m., about 16 minutes after the lethal injection process began. His attorneys had tried to block the execution by arguing that he was mentally ill, but federal courts declined to intercede.

Reporters could not hear his final statement because of an apparent malfunction in the death chamber’s sound system. A white sheet had been pulled up to his chin and IV lines ran into his left arm. He blinked several times, his eyes moved back and forth and he took several deep breaths. Over the next several minutes the color drained from his face before he was pronounced dead.

Prison officials said his final words were, “Airborne forever. I love you, Michi baby,” referring to his daughter.

Manuel Pardo also wrote a final statement that was distributed to the media, in which he claimed that he never killed any women, but “accepted full responsibility for killing six men.

“I never harmed those 3 women or any female. I took the blame as I knew I was doomed and it made no difference to me, at this time, having 6 or 9 death sentences,” he wrote on Dec. 11, hours before his execution. “I don’t want this hanging over my head, especially these last few minutes of life, because my war was against men who were trafficing (sic) in narcotics and no one else!”

Officials said most of Pardo’s victims were involved with drugs. Pardo contended that he was doing the world a favor by killing them over three-month period in early 1986.

“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,” Pardo told jurors at his 1988 trial.

Frank Judd, the nephew of victim Fara Quintero read a statement following the execution, which was witnessed by fewer than 10 family members of the victims.

Judd thanked the state of Florida for bringing closure to his family and said the pain he and his relatives feel about the murder of Quintero “continues to this day.”

“Personally, I don’t feel that what happened today was enough justice,” he said, adding that Pardo was a “disturbed soul.”

Pardo’s final letter apologized to his family for the “pain and grief” he caused.

“You all are so loving and wonderful, not deserving of this nightmare,” he wrote. He asked his family to please not suffer and to “be strong.” He mentioned his daughter Michi in the written statement.

“Remember Michi you are Airborne and hardcore…No tears!” he wrote.

Manuel Pardo also touched on his love of sports, devoting one of three paragraphs in his letter to baseball, soccer and bullfighting.

“On a lighter note, as a New Yorker and loyal fan, I was happy to see my Yankees and Giants win so many championships during my lifetime,” Pardo wrote.

He said it was a lifelong dream to see Spain win the World Cup and urged the Spanish government to never stop bullfights because they are “a part of our culture and heritage.”

“And if they do, I’m glad I won’t be alive to see such a travesty!”

Ann Howard, a spokeswoman for Florida’s Department of Corrections, said that Pardo visited with eight people Tuesday. He also met with the prison chaplain and a Roman Catholic bishop.

Manuel Pardo ate a last meal of rice, red beans, roasted pork, plantains, avocado, tomatoes and olive oil. For dessert, he ate pumpkin pie and drank egg nog and Cuban Coffee. Under Department of Corrections rules, the meal’s ingredients have to cost $40 or less, be available locally and made in the prison kitchen.

Manuel Pardo was dubbed the “Death Row Romeo” after he corresponded with dozens of women and persuaded many to send him money.

The former Boy Scout and Navy veteran began his law enforcement career in the 1970s with the Florida Highway Patrol, graduating at the top of his class at the academy. But 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.

In 1981, Pardo was one of four Sweetwater officers charged with brutality, but the cases were dismissed.

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

Then over a 92-day period in early 1986, Pardo committed a series of robberies, killing six men and three women. He took photos of the victims and 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.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-cop-manuel-pardo-executed-in-fla-for-9-murders/

Richard Stokley Arizona Execution

Richard Stokley was executed by the State of Arizona for the kidnapping and murders of two 13 year old girls. According to court documents Richard Stokley and Randy Brazeal would kidnap the two 13 year old girls, Mandy Myers and Mary Snyder , who were driven out to the desert where they were sexually assaulted and murdered. Randy Brazeal would testify against Richard Stokley in exchange for the death penalty off the table. Richard Stokley would be sentenced to death and would be executed by lethal injection December 5 2012

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For 20 years, Patty Hancock refused to buy new Christmas stockings for her children because they wouldn’t match the one that belonged to her slain daughter, Mandy.

After the execution Wednesday of one of the two men who raped and murdered Mandy and her friend Mary Snyder on July 8, 1991, Hancock announced she was ready to begin a new phase in her life. It is OK to get new stockings.

Richard Dale Stokley, 60, was pronounced dead at 11:12 a.m. after receiving an injection of pentobarbital.

Richard Stokley was sentenced to die in July 1992 for killing Mandy Meyers and her friend Mary. Both girls were 13.

His death was witnessed by more than a dozen family members and lawyers involved in the case.

Richard Stokley was chatty with the medical personnel who spent 52 minutes trying to find veins that could be used to administer the pentobarbital – a drug used to both sedate an inmate and stop his heart. But when Stokley was asked if he had any final words, he simply responded, “Nah.”

He warned the medical team he had hepatitis, told a phlebotomist joke and assured them he was doing fine.

“I grew up a long time ago,” Stokley said. “I do wish I could die doing something meaningful, you know. This seems like such a waste.”

After finally assessing the final vein they needed, one of the team members told Stokley he “did good.”

“Thank you,” Stokley replied. “You did too, all of you young guys and all of you all.”

The pentobarbital rendered Stokley unconscious five minutes after the first dose was administered. The second dose was then given.

At 11:03 a.m. Stokley’s body convulsed one time. He was pronounced dead nine minutes later. He never looked at the crowd watching from the other side of the glass.

Hancock said Richard Stokley should have apologized to the families but wasn’t surprised he did not. “What do you expect from a heartless man with no soul?” she asked.

Dennis Hancock married Patty Hancock, 56, exactly one week prior to Mandy’s death.

“We’ll finally have a holiday where we don’t have someone on death row or in prison,” Dennis Hancock said. “I hope it will be a joyous one, but there will always be someone missing.”

Mary’s sister, Elisha Gonzales, broke down when recounting all of the milestones her sister never got to experience.

Stokley’s execution was a “long time in coming” and now there will hopefully be a time of healing and peace, Gonzales, 39, said. Her parents were not emotionally up to witnessing the execution, but were on the grounds of the prison, Gonzales said

On July 7, 1991, Mary and Mandy went to a community celebration near Elfrida. Witnesses said they saw 20-year-old Randy Brazeal talking to the girls at their campsite and later while next to Brazeal’s father’s car with Stokley beside him.

About 1 a.m., the girls told friends they were going to the restroom, and they were never seen alive again.

The next day, Brazeal turned himself in to Chandler police and Richard Stokley was arrested in Benson.

The girls’ nude bodies were found in an abandoned mine shaft. They’d been raped, strangled, stabbed and stomped.

Brazeal was sentenced to two concurrent terms of 20 years after being allowed to plead guilty to second-degree murder. He had invoked his right to a speedy trial, and prosecutors said they offered him a plea agreement for fear they would not have the DNA evidence back from the lab before his trial date.

Brazeal was released from prison last year and is now living in another state, Hancock said. Although Stokley is now dead, there will never really be closure for her because Brazeal is out there, Hancock said.

“I’m worried I will get a phone call that he murdered someone else’s children,” Hancock said.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Stokley’s final appeal on Tuesday

At the time of this sentencing on July 14, 1992, Stokley said he did not deny culpability, but said there was no premeditation on his part. He also said he’d been made a scapegoat.

“What I am guilty of is being an irresponsible person for most of my life, running from responsibility, living in a fantasy world, and it was my irresponsibility on the night that this incident occurred that involved me in the incident. … There is no words that can express the grief and the sorrow and the torment I have experienced over this, but I am just going to leave everything in the hands of God because that’s where it is anyway.”

For his last meal Stokley ordered a porterhouse steak, french fries, fried okra, a salad, a 2-ounce wedge of cheddar cheese, two biscuits, a banana, an apple, a peach, chocolate ice cream and cream soda.

Stokley was the sixth person to be executed in Arizona this year.

https://tucson.com/news/local/crime/stokley-makes-no-apology-is-executed/article_5ecbefc5-9c16-568f-b2d5-90e830611585.html

George Ochoa Oklahoma Execution

George Ochoa was executed by the State of Oklahoma for a double murder committed during a robbery. According to court documents George Ochoa and Osvaldo Torres would force their way into a home and would shoot and kill the two homeowners, 38 year old Francisco Morales and his 35 year old wife, Maria Yanez. Both George Ochoa and Osvaldo Torres would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Osvaldo Torres was granted clemency and was resentenced to life without parole. George Ochoa would be executed by lethal injection on December 4, 2012

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An Oklahoma death row inmate was executed Tuesday for the 1993 shooting deaths of an Oklahoma City couple.

George Ochoa, 38, was given an injection of lethal drugs at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary at McAlester less than a month after the state Pardon and Parole Board rejected Ochoa’s request that it recommend Gov. Mary Fallin reduce his death sentence to life in prison.

Ochoa is one of two men convicted of first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of Francisco Morales, 38, and Maria Yanez, 35. Investigators say Morales was shot 12 times and Yanez 11 times in their bedroom on July 12, 1993. The couple’s three children were inside the house at the time of the shootings.

Ochoa claimed he had been shocked and suffered injuries during his incarceration, but prosecutors said his claims of hallucinations and harm were likely an attempt to feign mental incompetence. Courts prohibit the execution of people who do not understand why they are being punished.

Officials said earlier psychological evaluations showed no evidence of delusions or hallucinations, and that claims about such didn’t start until he was charged.

Ochoa lost a late attempt at having his execution postponed when the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday denied his request for a stay. A federal appeals court on Monday rejected arguments that Ochoa was mentally unfit to be executed and a challenge to the state’s procedure for determining sanity.

Prosecutors said there was little evidence to suggest a motive for the killing, but no doubt that Ochoa and his co-defendant, Osbaldo Torres, 37, were responsible. Ochoa and Torres were stopped by police near the crime scene and were described by police as “sweating and nervous,” court records show.

Torres, a Mexican citizen, was also convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in the shootings, but his sentence was reduced by then-Gov. Brad Henry in 2004. Henry imposed a sentence of life without parole after Mexican government officials raised concerns that Torres was not given a chance to speak with the Mexican consulate after being accused, as required by international conventions

https://www.foxnews.com/us/oklahoma-executes-george-ochoa-for-the-1993-shooting-deaths-of-couple-while-children-at-home

Carroll Cole Preteen Killer To Serial Killer

Carroll Cole was a serial killer who would be executed by the State of Nevada for a series of murders however it is his earliest murder that most people remember. When Carroll Cole was just eight years old he would drown another eight year old while the two were swimming. The death would be ruled to be accidental however when Carroll Cole was writing his biography in prison he would confess to this murder.

Carroll Cole would be in and out of mental hospitals throughout his teens and for some reason they would let him out even though many of the staff were against it. Carroll Cole would soon get married to a prostitute and then burn down a motel as he believed his wife was having sex with other men there. Carroll Cole would be convicted of arson and sent to prison

Once out of prison Carroll Cole would be arrested again after attempting to strangle an eleven year old girl. Again Carroll Cole was sent to prison and this time for five years

Once free from prison Carroll Cole attempted to strangle two women however this time he ended up in another mental hospital. Again the staff would free Carroll after a few years. Carroll Cole would head to California

The first woman was killed in San Diego in 1971 and would murder another woman only a few weeks later. Carroll tried to explain the killings by saying the women were having affairs on their husbands so deserved to die as it reminded him of his mothers actions

Carroll Cole would get married yet again in 1973 and the marriage was as strained as his first one. Carroll Cole would frequently leave the home where he would murder more women.

Carroll would go to Las Vegas where he would murder yet another woman before fleeing the State and heading to Texas. While in Texas Cole would murder three more women by strangulation however he was caught at the murder scene during the third murder.

Carroll Cole would end up confessing to fifteen murders and would be sentenced to life without parole in Texas however the murder in Las Vegas would come back to haunt him as he was convicted in Nevada and sentenced to death. Carroll Cole would be executed by lethal injection in 1985.

Carroll Cole More News

Convicted killer Carroll Edward Cole, who insisted that prolonging his life would be a waste of tax dollars, died by lethal injection here early Friday, the first execution in the Far West since 1979.

Cole, convicted of killing five women, fulfilled his death wish shortly after 2 a.m., when officials at Nevada’s maximum-security prison sent powerful doses of three undisclosed drugs flowing though an intravenous needle in the condemned man’s arm.

Strapped to a padded table in a converted gas chamber, Cole, 47, blinked repeatedly but showed no emotion waiting for the lethal drugs to course through his veins. He had been sedated earlier to prevent any final resistance.

Seventeen reporters and eight designated witnesses–nearly all of them court or law enforcement officials–had gathered to watch the execution. But looking out from behind one of the chamber’s three large windows, Cole seemed to notice only two of the witnesses, Mike and Judy Newton, a Las Vegas couple writing his biography.

His last words were to them: “It’s all right,” he mouthed through the glass.

Took Five Minutes

Moments later, as the lethal drugs began to flow, Cole closed his eyes, coughed and appeared to convulse, gasping for breath. Over the next several seconds, his chest heaved mechanically and his head slowly arched back. His lips parted; his eyelids opened slightly.

Then, he lay still. It had taken Cole five minutes to die.

“He was ready to go; he wanted to go,” said his attorney, Edward G. (Ted) Marshall, one of the official witnesses.

The last execution west of Texas occurred Oct. 22, 1979, on the very spot where Cole died. On that day, Jesse Walter Bishop of Garden Grove, Calif., went to the gas chamber for gunning down a honeymooner in a Las Vegas casino robbery.

Cole’s execution–the 50th since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976–marked the first time that execution by lethal injection was used in this state, where the gas chamber was born in 1924.

Nevada lawmakers authorized the use of lethal injections last year after George W. Sumner, director of state prisons, complained that the old chamber had leaks. Supporters of the switch declared it a more humane means of executing Cole and the other 28 men and two women on Nevada’s Death Row.

A one-time San Diego resident who was raised in Richmond, Calif., the stubby, tattooed Cole was convicted in Texas of strangling three Dallas women in 1980. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Confessed to 13 Murders

In February, 1984, Cole was extradited to Nevada, where seven months later he received the death sentence for strangling two Las Vegas women in 1977 and 1979.

Cole confessed to 13 murders and once told a psychiatrist that he killed 35 people, all but one of them women whom he usually picked up in bars.

To the end, Cole rejected all legal efforts to save him.

“I just messed up my life so bad that I just don’t care to go on,” he told one interviewer last week.

Given Cole’s insistence that he be put to death, not even the American Civil Liberties Union attempted to intervene in his behalf.

But there was one last-minute effort to save his life.

On Thursday night, Nevada’s five Supreme Court justices met briefly to review a petition filed earlier in the day by three Death Row inmates anxious to delay Cole’s date with death.

Fearing that his willingness could hasten their own scheduled executions, the inmates contended that Cole was mentally unbalanced and entitled to better psychiatric evaluation than was available at the prison.

The high court disagreed, deliberating about half an hour before denying a stay of execution.

Cole spent his last day under constant watch in a special, third-story cell less than 20 paces from the death chamber.

He wore new prison denims and his old white sneakers. The laces of the shoes had been removed to prevent any possibility of his hanging himself.

Dines on Shrimp and Chowder

At 5:30 p.m., Cole was served his last meal. He was given what he had requested: tossed salad with French dressing, jumbo shrimp, French fries and Boston clam chowder. He also finished off what remained of the 25 pounds of cookies and candy sent him last week by the Newtons.

Then Cole, a Catholic, wiled away his final hours playing cards with the prison priest.

At 12:20 a.m., he received the first of two shots of Valium intended to calm him. He hardly seemed to need it.

“He wasn’t nervous at all,” said Harol L. Whitley, the prison warden.

Outside, on the parking lot of the sober, gray granite prison, about a dozen people gathered under a crescent moon to light candles in protest of Cole’s execution.

“It’s a time to witness against the whole concept of vengeance,” said a spokesman for the group, Reno community organizer Bob Fulkerson.

At 1:43 a.m., wearing leg irons and a chain attached to his waist and wrists, Cole was escorted into the death chamber and lifted onto the table by four corrections officers who had volunteered for the job. When the medical equipment was in place 23 minutes later, the execution began.

Positioned behind a wall so that he could not be identified, a volunteer from the prison staff inserted a syringe filled with lethal liquid into the intravenous needle.

In all, Cole was injected with three drugs to stop his heart and disrupt his breathing.

There was no noise, except for the whirring of a nearby wall fan. The witnesses–one or two of them dabbing moist eyes–watched quietly as Cole convulsed.

Cole was declared dead at 2:10 a.m.

Family Didn’t Attend

His body was taken to a Carson City mortuary, where a prominent Las Vegas neurologist planned to examine Cole’s brain for any biological evidence that might explain his life of violence.

Cole is survived by a brother and three sisters. None attended his execution, and his body was not claimed.

After an autopsy, his remains were to be cremated.

The cell blocks, steaming in the cold night air, were silent as Cole’s body was wheeled to a waiting station wagon for the three-mile ride to the mortuary.

The temperature by 2:35 a.m. had dipped to 26 degrees as the vehicle made its way past the prison gate.

The death penalty protesters keeping vigil on the parking lot had already gone home.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-12-07-mn-14259-story.html