Starke, Florida. A Florida man condemned for killing an employee of Miami Herald who was kidnapped at his lunch was executed on Tuesday night.
Michael Tanzi received a lethal injection and was declared dead at 6:12 pm in Florida state prison for the strangulation of Janet Acosta in April 2000, authorities said. In a final statement, he apologized to the victim’s family before drugs began to flow.
A production worker in the newspaper, Acosta was attacked in her truck, beaten, stolen, driven to the Florida Keys and then strangled and her body went on an island.
Tanzi, 48, became the third person executed in Florida this year. Another lethal injection is scheduled on May 1 under the death orders signed by Governor Ron Desantis.
The judicial records show that Acosta was at a break on April 25, 2000, when it was attacked. He was reading a book in his truck when Tanzi approached her, asked for a cigarette and then began hitting her on the face, according to the records.
“Holding her doll and threatening her with a shaving blade,” Tanzi led Homestead, south of Miami, where he stopped at a service station and tied and gagged Acosta. He took $ 53 in cash, along with his bank card, prosecutors said.
Then they went to the city of Tavernier by Florida Keys, where, according to the records, Tanzi used Acosta’s banking card to steal money from her account. Later, they stopped in a hardware store where Tanzi bought adhesive tape and razor blades, the album showed.
“He led to an isolated area in Cudjoe Key, told him that he was going to kill her and began to strangle her,” according to a summary of the State Capital Case Commission. “He stopped to place the adhesive tape on his mouth, nose and eyes in an attempt to calm her and then strangle it until she expired.”
In other places, Acosta’s friends and co -workers reported that he disappeared when he did not return from his break. That took the police to his truck, which Tanzi had led Key West. Police said Tanzi confessed the crime and showed the investigators where Acosta’s body had left in a remote area in Cudjoe Key, more than 140 miles (225 kilometers) southwest of Miami.
“If I had let it go, they would catch me faster,” Tanzi told the officers, according to the Judicial Registry. “I didn’t want them to catch me. I was having fun too much … I said, I say: ‘I can’t let go. If I let you go, then I’m going to have many problems.” “
Subsequently, Tanzi was convicted of first degree murder, car theft, kidnapping and robbery by armed hand. A jury recommended the death sentence with a 12-0 vote.
Tanzi had submitted several appeals without success, including a request on the last day for an execution stay that was rejected by the United States Supreme Court without comments on Tuesday.
The Florida Supreme Court recently rejected its claim that it should not be executed because it was “morbid obese” and had sciatica, which could cause unconstitutional pain levels. The Court ruled that its appeal was not timely because its conditions had been known since 2009.
Two other executions were carried out earlier this year in Florida. Edward James, 63, received a lethal injection on March 20 for killing an 8 -year -old girl and her grandmother during a night of excessive consumption of drinks and drugs. James Dennis Ford, 64, was executed on February 13 for killing a husband and a wife in a great Florida farm in an attack witnessed by the little boy of the couple, who was unharmed.
Eight other people have been executed around the United States so far in 2025: two in South Carolina, two in Texas and one in Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana and Oklahoma. One of South Carolina executions used a shooting squad, and another execution of shot squads is scheduled on Friday. Around a dozen other executions are already scheduled throughout the country.
The non -profit death penalty information center said Florida uses a three -medication cocktail for lethal injection: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart.
On Tuesday, prison officials said Tanzi woke up at 4:45 am, had a spiritual advisor like his lonely visitor and received a last meal that included a pork chop, bacon, ice cream and a caramel bar.
