Michael Zack’s nine-day crime spree in 1996 began in Tallahassee, Fla.

Now, 27 years later, his life will end in Florida’s capital city, as well.

For more than two decades, Michael Duane Zack III has filed appeal after appeal of his 1997 death sentence for the murder of an Escambia County (Fla.) woman during a crime spree which included the murder of another woman in Okaloosa County (Fla.)

On Monday, Zack’s final hope of a reprieve ended when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal from the Florida Supreme Court and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal.

Both rejected his argument that his Fetal Alcohol Syndrome had left him “intellectually disabled” and thus ineligible for the death penalty, according to the Pensacola News Journal.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that executing people with intellectual disabilities amounted to cruel and unusual punishment and thus violated the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant for Zack on Aug. 17. That order is now set to be carried out by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time at the Florida State Prison in Tallahassee, where his nine-day crime spree began in 1996.

Zack, now 54, was 28 when he was convicted and sentenced to death in the murder of Ravonne Smith, a bar employee he met and later beat and stabbed with an oyster knife in June 1996.

He was also sentenced to life in a separate case of the murder of Laura Rosillo, who he had also befriended at a bar in the Florida Panhandle.

The two murders were part of a crime spree which began when Zack, sitting in a Tallahassee bar, received a phone call from his girlfriend advising him he was being evicted from the apartment they shared. A bartender, hearing Zack’s story, offered to loan him his truck to go pick up his belongings, according to court records.

Zack left in the truck and never returned.

He drove the truck to a bar in Niceville, Fla., where he met the owner of a construction company. The man, hearing Zack was living out of the truck, offered to let Zack stay at his home. Zack repaid him by stealing two guns and $42, selling the guns to a local pawn shop.

Zack then befriended Rosillo in another bar, luring her to the beach to do drugs, where he beat her, dragged her into the dunes, strangled her and kicked sand over her face, court records say.

The next day, in a Pensacola bar, he met Smith. The two smoked marijuana together at the beach before they went to the home Smith shared with her boyfriend.

Once there, Zack smashed Smith over the head with a bottle, slammed her into the floor, raped her and stabbed her four times in the chest with an oyster knife.

He left with her television, VCR and purse. He attempted to pawn the electronics, but when the pawn shop became suspicious the items had been stolen, Zack fled the shop and hid in a vacant house for two days until police found him and arrested him.

Zack confessed to killing Smith, telling investigators he became enraged after she made a comment about the murder of his mother, who was killed by Zack’s sister, he said. He claimed he thought Smith was going to another room to get a gun when he stabbed her in self-defense.

Zack’s execution would mark the sixth in Florida since the start of 2023 and the eighth during DeSantis’ tenure as governor.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.