Later that month, Pardo fatally shot a Haitian gunsmith, Michael Millot, who was an anti-Duvalier activist. Pardo said he believed Millot, 43, was a federal informant trying to set him up for an arrest.

The hit took place in Pardo’s wife’s Honda, which police discovered later had been cleaned of blood and reupholstered.

In February 1986, Pardo shot and killed Ulpiano Ledo, 39, a welder and Santeria priest, and Luis Robledo, 37, during a robbery in a West Miami-Dade apartment.

Cops said Garcia used Robledo’s credit cards to a buy a videocassette recorder, a car radio and speakers.

Two months later, Pardo shot and killed Sara Musa, 30, and Fara Quintero, 28, who had gotten into an argument with the men about a $50 pawned ring.

Pardo believed Quintero had marked him for death by dialing 8s on a pager, a sign of death in the Santeria religion. So he killed them.

The final victims were Daisy Ricard, 38, a medical lab owner, and boyfriend Ramon Alvero Cruz, 40.

Pardo targeted Cruz for twice failing to show up to a drug deal. Detectives believe Ricard was innocent, killed because she was with Cruz.

Ricard’s body was found in a Hialeah field that April. The next day, construction workers found Cruz’s body in the trunk of an Oldsmobile — and Pardo’s fingerprint was on the corpse’s watch.

The physical evidence against Pardo was overwhelming, said retired senior prosecutor David Waksman, who tried the case with Sally Weintraub.

Scared he too was marked for death, a pal of Garcia’s came forward to tell police about photos of the murder victims the men showed off to him. And when detectives searched his house, they found disturbing Nazi memorabilia — including Pardo’s dog, who had a swastika tattoo on his leg.

They also found a credit card belonging to one victim, and a date book that included news clippings of the murders and references to the victims.

Detectives also discovered that Pardo, during the last two homicides, had accidentally gotten shot by one of the murder weapons. They retraced Pardo’s flight to New York City, where he claimed to be an out-of-town cop, who checked into a hospital because he had gotten shot.

Waksman, the prosecutor, and the lead detective flew to New York and recovered the bullet still in police evidence there.

After his arrest, Pardo bragged to a fellow inmate that police missed three more murders in Homestead. He was never charged with additional killings.

At trial, Pardo admitted to the crimes but asked to be acquitted because he was insane and couldn’t tell the difference between right and wrong. Jurors rejected the claim quickly, and Circuit Judge Phillip Knight sentenced him to death for each of the nine murders.

Afterward, Pardo held a press conference at the Dade County Jail, likening himself to “martyrs” such as John F. Kennedy Jr. and Martin Luther King Jr. He also appeared on television news show Hard Copy, an interview Waksman used for years while teaching about the insanity defense.

“He was very cold,” Waksman said. “He was doing robberies and went home and slept like a baby. He was proud of what he did.”