Florida executes Michael Tanzi

Florida on Tuesday executed a death row inmate described by one local detective as a "fledgling serial killer" for the murder of a beloved Miami Herald employee.

Florida executed Michael Tanzi on Tuesday, 25 years after the murder of beloved Miami Herald employee Janet Acosta, who was attacked in broad daylight on her lunch break in 2000.  

Michael Tanzi, 48, was executed by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Raiford and pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. ET. 

Tanzi was on death row for more than 2 decades for the 2000 murder of 49-year-old Janet Acosta, who was attacked in broad daylight on her lunch break, kidnapped, raped and strangled. The brutal crime came a few months after another woman's murder that Tanzi acknowledged committing in Massachusetts. 

"What we have here is a fledgling serial killer," Miami police Detective Frank Casanovas said at the time, according to an archived story in the Miami Herald. 

Tanzi woke at 4:45 a.m. Tuesday and met in the morning with a spiritual adviser, Department of Corrections spokesman Ted Veerman said. Tanzi’s last meal included a fried pork chop, bacon, a baked potato, corn, ice cream and a candy bar.

Twenty-three witnesses, along with Department of Corrections officials and reporters, were in the viewing room for the execution. Among the witnesses was Senate Minority Leader Jason Pizzo, D-Sunny Isles Beach.

Acosta’s sister, Julie Andrew, and niece, Jennifer Vanderwier, attended the execution and said it brought closure.

“It’s over. It’s done. Justice for Janet happened,” Andrew told reporters. “My heart just felt lighter, and I could breathe again.”

In the months leading up to the execution, Tanzi's lawyers argued that the death penalty should not have applied to him due to his developmental issues, as well as health problems from being morbidly obese. But prosecutors said Tanzi didn’t deserve mercy and that Acosta's murder could “only be described as horrific.” 

After DeSantis signed a death warrant on March 10, Tanzi’s attorneys filed a flurry of arguments in state and federal courts seeking to halt the execution.

Last week, for example, the Florida Supreme Court rejected an argument that using the state’s lethal injection procedure on Tanzi would violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

That argument stemmed from Tanzi’s obesity and other medical conditions, which his attorneys said could result in issues such as a sedation drug in the lethal injection procedure not fully taking effect and difficulties in placing intravenous lines.

In a final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Tanzi’s attorneys focused on an issue about the role of the jury before Tanzi was sentenced to death in 2003.

The jury unanimously recommended the death penalty for Tanzi, with a judge then sentencing him. But pointing in part, to a 2024 U.S. Supreme Court opinion related to jury determinations, Tanzi’s attorneys argued that a jury must find what are known as “aggravating” circumstances to justify a death sentence.

Tanzi’s attorneys wrote that his “advisory jury made no findings at all, much less determinations of defined facts necessary to impose death.”

“Mr. Tanzi’s death sentence is — and always has been — unconstitutional at its core,” the attorneys argued.

But the Florida Attorney General’s Office disputed the arguments. The U.S. Supreme Court, as is common, did not explain the reasons for refusing to halt the execution.

Why was Michael Tanzi executed?

On April 25, 2000, Tanzi attacked Acosta while she was sitting in her car eating lunch, according to court records. 

He raped her 30 miles south of Miami in Florida City before continuing to drive south, forcing Acosta to help him withdraw money using her ATM card, he confessed to police. 

"I told her I'd slice her neck," he told police. ""I told her that I'd cut her from ear to ear." 

When they reached Cudjoe Key, about 20 miles shy of Key West, he strangled Acosta and buried her in a secluded place. 

Tanzi spent the next 2 days shopping, buying a new wardrobe, marijuana and food. Police officers arrested Tanzi after seeing him get into Acosta’s van in downtown Key West. 

Police recovered Acosta's body after Tanzi confessed to the murder and showed them where he buried her. 

After Tanzi's arrest for Acosta's murder, police say he also confessed to killing Caroline Holder in the Boston suburb of Brockton just a few months earlier, according to court records. 

Holder was stabbed to death and beaten while she was working at a laundromat, according to reporting from the Tampa Bay Times. 

Tanzi never faced extradition for Holder's killing because of his death sentence for Acosta's murder. 

Who was Janet Acosta?

Acosta was the middle of three sisters: Joanie, Janet and Julie. Because their parents were alcoholics, Acosta all but raised her younger sister, Julie Andrew, according to Andrew's testimony during Tanzi's trial. 

“When we were children, we used to be awakened at night because my parents would be arguing and fighting,” she said. “Janet would hug me and we would hold on to each other until either we fell asleep or they quit arguing.” 

All 3 sisters remained close as they became adults. 

"Besides being my sister, she was my best friend," Andrew testified. "We were very close." 

Andrew described Acosta as a gentle soul, typically giving her dog Murphy Brown half her lunch and volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, which allowed her to meet former President Jimmy Carter. 

Andrew said that Acosta had a special bond with Andrew's daughter, Jennifer. 

"She taught her how to fish. She encouraged her interest in art," Andrew said. "She told Jennifer it was OK to be a tomboy and to be whoever you wanted to be." 

Who was Michael Tanzi?

Born in 1977 in the suburbs of Boston, Tanzi's attorneys describe his childhood as one full of loss, abuse and a lack of stability. They say he was sexually molested by a childhood friend and physically and emotionally abused by his father. 

Tanzi's father became more violent toward his son as he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. According to Tanzi's mother, the abuse made Tanzi become more disruptive, angry and troublesome, according to court records. 

One of Tanzi's friends said that Tanzi’s father once slammed the boy's head into the side of a truck, according to court records. Meanwhile, his mother was "not home that much," according to the friend. 

When Tanzi was around 11, his mother tried to take him to a meeting for sexual abuse victims, something he was vehemently against. 

“He didn’t want to face it," she said. "He didn’t want to talk to people about anything that had happened to him." 

When is the next execution in the US?

The next execution in the U.S. is set for Friday in South Carolina, which plans to execute Mikal Mahdi by the rare firing squad method. 

Another 2 executions, both by lethal injection, are scheduled this month: Moises Sandoval Mendoza in Texas on April 23 and James Osgood in Alabama on April 24. 

So far, 25 inmates are set to be executed in the U.S. in 2025, but that number is likely to go up as states continue to approve more death warrants. Last year, 25 inmates were executed in the U.S. 

Tanzi becomes the 3rd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Florida and the 109th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on May 25, 1979. 

Tanzi becomes the 11th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1,618th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977, after a 4-year moratorium. 

Sources: USA Today, wnmf.org, Staff, Rick Halperin, April 9, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde