1 week ago
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A man convicted of killing a woman who was carjacked on her lunch break from her job at the Miami Herald was executed Tuesday evening.
Michael Tanzi was pronounced dead at 6.12pm following a three-drug injection at Florida state prison for the April 2000 strangling of Janet Acosta, a production worker at the South Florida paper. The victim was attacked in her van, beaten, robbed, driven to the Florida Keys and then strangled before her body was left on an island.
In a final statement, his voice barely audible, Tanzi said: “I want to apologize to the family” and then recited a verse from the Bible before the drugs began flowing.
Tanzi’s chest heaved for about three minutes, then stopped. A corrections officer shook him by the shoulders and said his name loudly twice to determine if he was still conscious. There was no response shortly before Tanzi, 48, was declared dead.
He is the third person to be executed in Florida this year. Another lethal injection is scheduled on 1 May under death warrants signed by governor Ron DeSantis.
The US supreme court rejected a request from Tanzi’s attorneys to block the execution Tuesday afternoon. The court offered no noted dissent in its one-sentence statement declining to intervene.
Prison officials said Tanzi awoke at 4.45am and had one visitor, a spiritual adviser. He had a last meal that included a pork chop, bacon, corn, ice cream and a candy bar. “He’s remained compliant and in good spirits,” said Ted Veerman, a corrections department spokesperson.
After the execution, Acosta’s family members expressed relief that the ordeal was finally over. “It’s done. Basically, justice for Janet happened,” said her sister, Julie Andrew, who witnessed the execution.” My heart felt lighter and I can breathe again.”
Acosta’s niece, Janet Vanderwier, noted it took nearly 25 years to find closure. “This is the culmination of more than two decades of work to get justice for Janet,” she said.
Court records show Acosta was in her van on a break from her job at the newspaper on 25 April 2020, when Tanzi approached her to ask for a cigarette and then attacked her. He then drove to Homestead, south of Miami, where he stopped at a gas station and bound and gagged Acosta.
He took $53 in cash from her, along with her bank card. He then headed to the Florida Keys town of Tavernier, where he stole money from Acosta’s account with her bank card, according to the records.
Tanzi also stopped at a hardware store, where he bought duct tape and razor blades, the record showed. According to a summary by the state commission on capital cases, Tanzi then drove to an isolated area in Cudjoe Key and strangled Acosta to death.
Meanwhile, Acosta’s friends and co-workers reported her missing when she didn’t return from her break. That led police to her van, which Tanzi had driven to Key West. Police said Tanzi confessed to the crime and showed investigators where he had left Acosta’s body on Cudjoe Key, more than 140 miles (225km) south-west of Miami.
“If I had let her go, I was gonna get caught quicker,” Tanzi told officers, according to the record. “I didn’t want to get caught. I was having too much fun ... I told her, I says: ‘I can’t let you go. If I let you go, then I’m gonna be in a lot of trouble.’”
Tanzi was convicted of first-degree murder, carjacking, kidnapping and armed robbery. A jury recommended the death sentence in a 12-0 vote.
Tanzi had filed several appeals without success. The Florida supreme court recently rejected his claim that he shouldn’t be executed because he is “morbidly obese” and has sciatica, which could cause unconstitutional levels of pain. The court ruled his appeal was not timely because his conditions had been known since 2009.
Two executions were carried out earlier this year in Florida. Edward James, 63, was put to death on 20 March for killing an eight-year-old girl and her grandmother during a night of heavy drinking and drug use. James Dennis Ford, 64, was executed on 13 February for killing a husband and wife at a remote Florida farm in an attack witnessed by the couple’s toddler.
Eight other people have been executed across the US so far in 2025: two in South Carolina, two in Texas and one each in Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana and Oklahoma. One of the South Carolina executions used a firing squad, and another firing squad execution is scheduled there for Friday. About a dozen other executions are already scheduled nationwide.
The non-profit Death Penalty Information Center said Florida uses a three-drug cocktail for its lethal injection: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart.
