STARKE, Fla. — 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 on Tuesday evening.
Barring a late reprieve, Michael Tanzi is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison for the April 2000 abduction and strangling of Janet Acosta.
A production worker at the newspaper, the victim was beaten, robbed, driven to the Florida Keys and then strangled and her body left on an island.
Tanzi, 48, would become the third inmate on Florida’s death row executed this year, with another lethal injection scheduled on May 1 under death warrants signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Court records show the victim was on a break from her job at the newspaper on April 25, 2000. She was sitting in her van reading a book when Tanzi approached her, asked for a cigarette and then began punching her in the face, the records indicate.
“Holding her wrist and threatening her with a razor blade,” court records show, Tanzi 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.
They then went on to the Florida Keys town of Tavernier, where Tanzi used Acosta’s bank card to steal money from her account, according to the records. They stopped at a hardware store where Tanzi bought duct tape and razor blades, and then Tanzi decided he had to kill Acosta, they added.
“He drove to an isolated area in Cudjoe Key, told her he was going to kill her, and began to strangle her,” according to a summary by the state Commission on Capital Cases. “He stopped to place duct tape over her mouth, nose and eyes in an attempt to quiet her and then strangled her until she expired.”
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.
“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 Monroe County jury recommended the death sentence on a 12-0 vote for Acosta’s slaying.
Tanzi has filed several appeals, none successful. The Florida Supreme Court recently rejected his claim that he shouldn’t be executed because he is “morbidly obese” and suffers from sciatica, which could cause unconstitutional levels of pain. The court ruled that his appeal was not timely because his conditions had been known since 2009.
“Additionally, this court has considered and rejected similar arguments based on obesity and IV procedures,” the justices ruled.
Two other convicted killers have been executed in Florida this year. Edward James, 63, was put to death on March 20 for killing an 8-year-old girl and her grandmother during a night of heavy drinking and drug use.
James Dennis Ford, 64, was executed on Feb. 13 for killing a husband and wife at a remote farm in an attack witnessed by the couple’s toddler, who survived the ordeal.
