Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that Janet Acosta was a Miami Herald employee, not a reporter.
A Florida man convicted of kidnapping a 49-year-old Miami resident and strangling her to death in Monroe County was executed Tuesday evening.
Prison officials said 48-year-old Michael Tanzi was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. after receiving a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was sentenced to the death penalty after pleading guilty to the April 25, 2000, killing of Janet Acosta, a Miami Herald employee of 25 years.
As a final statement, Tanzi said,“I want to apologize to the family,” and recited a verse from the Bible, Luke 23:34, the Associated Press reported.
Tanzi lifted his head from the execution table and peeked at the galley once, before resting his head and being administered the lethal injection, according to Newsweek.
The conviction
In 2000, then 23-year-old Tanzi, attacked Acosta while she was eating lunch in her car, raped her near Florida City — about 30 miles south of Miami — and forced her to use her ATM card for money, according to court records.
He later told police, “I told her I'd slice her neck” and threatened to “cut her from ear to ear.” After driving to Cudjoe Key, roughly 20 miles from Key West, Tanzi strangled Acosta and buried her in a secluded area, according to court records.
He spent the next two days shopping, buying a new wardrobe, marijuana and food before police spotted him getting into Acosta’s van in downtown Key West and arrested him. Acosta’s body was recovered after Tanzi confessed to the killing and showed authorities where he had buried her.
Tanzi then confessed to another murder: The Aug. 11, 1999 killing of Caroline Holder in Brockton, Massachusetts. Holder, a 37-year-old mother of two, was strangled and stabbed eight months before Tanzi abducted Acosta. Tanzi never faced extradition or was charged with the previous murder because of his death sentence.
"What we have here is a fledgling serial killer," Miami police Detective Frank Casanovas told the Miami Herald in 2003.
Tanzi was indicted on charges of first-degree murder, carjacking with a weapon, kidnapping with the intent to commit a felony, armed robbery with a deadly weapon, and two counts of sexual battery with a deadly weapon.
Although he initially pleaded not guilty, Tanzi later entered a guilty plea to first-degree murder, carjacking, kidnapping and armed robbery shortly before his trial. A jury unanimously recommended the death penalty, and the judge concurred.
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Tanzi’s death warrant March 10, setting the time and date of Tanzi’s death to April 8 at 6 p.m.
Support and opposition
Two hours before the scheduled time of execution, over 70 people congregated on the Florida State prison’s front lawn in protest against the death penalty.
But some visitors arrived to show support for the state’s decision. Bill Campbell, a 70-year-old retired engineer from Marion County, attended a state execution on March 20 and returned to the prison almost three weeks later for Tanzi’s execution. He says those who support capital punishment are a silent majority, but most see executions as a “non-event” and don’t “come out and do something,” like show their support for the institutions that allow them to be carried out.
“Usually people just complain,” Campbell said. “So, if they're doing a good job, let them know.”
Some protestors traveled hours to show their opposition to the execution. Rev. Phillip Egitto, of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Daytona Beach, brought 54 members of his congregation for a vigil outside the prison. Members who could not travel participated in a prayer vigil at their home church.
“We are here because we want to make a stand to our governor and to our state that someone is being killed, not in our name,” Egitto said.
Although the group understands the feeling of wanting retribution, they don’t live by their feelings, Egitto said. “We live by doing what's right and what's wrong, and we believe killing is wrong.”
He hopes their presence makes someone recognize the death penalty is wrong, he added.
“By being here, it may be a drop in a pond,” Egitto said. “That drop has ripple effects.”
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty is one of the many advocacy groups actively participating in protests against executions. Maria Deliberato, the organization’s executive director and a practicing capital defense lawyer, has represented two clients who have been executed.
Her mission through her activism is “to tell the truth about the people that the state of Florida is executing, and to try to explain that people are worth more than the worst thing that they've ever done,” she said.
Lawyers argued ‘cruel and unusual punishment’
Tanzi’s attorneys sought to appeal his death sentence, filing a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court April 4 to stay his execution. The petition comes after the Florida Supreme Court rejected the attorneys’ request to halt the lethal injection.
The original appeal argued Tanzi’s developmental issues and health problems stemming from being morbidly obese were reasons to delay his execution.
An execution by lethal injection would violate the Constitution's Eighth Amendment, preventing cruel and unusual punishment, the appeal also argued.
“The existing protocols for lethal injection do not contemplate the execution of someone with obesity and uncontrolled medical conditions, like Mr. Tanzi’s, that are likely to complicate the lethal injection process," the filing reads.
The Florida Supreme Court rejected this claim, ruling it untimely since Tanzi’s health conditions have been known since 2009.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the most recent appeal without comment just hours before the execution was carried out.
Two other executions were carried out this year in Florida. Edward James, whose execution Campbell attended, received the lethal injection after pleading guilty to the Sept. 19, 1993, killings of an 8-year-old and her grandmother. James Dennis Ford was executed in February for the 1997 killing of a married couple in Charlotte County.
Florida was the first state to reintroduce the death penalty after the Supreme Court struck it down in 1972. Since then, the state has carried out 109 executions.
Under Florida execution guidelines, Tanzi was allowed to request a last meal so long as it did not exceed $40.
For his last meal, Tanzi ate a pork chop, bacon, ice cream and a candy bar, the Associated Press reported.
Contact Vera Lucia Pappaterra at vpappaterra@alligator.org. Follow her on X @veralupap.
Vera Lucia Pappaterra is the enterprise race and equity reporter and a second-year journalism major. She has previously worked on the university desk as the university general assignment reporter. In her free time, she enjoys deadlifting 155 lbs. and telling everyone about it.
