A man convicted of killing a woman who was carjacked on her lunch break from her job at the Miami Herald is set to be executed Tuesday evening.
Michael Tanzi was scheduled to receive a lethal injection at Florida state prison for the 2000 abduction and strangling of Janet Acosta. A production worker at the South Florida paper, Acosta was beaten, robbed, driven to the Florida Keys and then strangled and her body left on an island.
Tanzi, 48, would become the third person executed in Florida this year, with another lethal injection scheduled on 1 May under death warrants signed by Ron DeSantis, the state governor.
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.
Court records show the victim 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 Tanzi 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 has 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, who was left unharmed.
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 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.
