Michael Tanzi, a Florida death row inmate once branded a “fledgling serial killer,” has been executed for the brutal kidnapping and murder of a newspaper employee 24 years ago.
Officials announced Tanzi’s death shortly after 6.00 pm ET, his scheduled execution time. He was executed via lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Raiford and his time of death was 6.12 pm.
In his final statement, Tanzi said, “I want to apologize to the family” and then recited a Bible verse.
Executioners administered a dose of the lethal cocktail and Tanzi’s chest heaved for three minutes, then stopped. A member of the execution team walked over to him, shook his shoulders and said his name loudly to determine whether he was conscious. Moments later, the inmate was declared dead.
Tanzi was the third person Florida has put to death this year and the first of two U.S. executions scheduled for this week. Mikal Mahdi is set to be executed in South Carolina by firing squad on Friday.
Tanzi’s attorneys asked the US Supreme Court for a stay of execution last week, arguing that administering a lethal injection to him could result in extreme pain due to his 380 lb size.
Dr Joel Zivot, an associate professor at Emory University’s Department of Anesthesiology and Surgery, determined that Tanzi would need to hold still while lying flat on his back during the execution or body movements could dislodge the catheters.
“To secure Mr Tanzi’s body from movement, an extremely high amount of forceful restraint will need to be applied...Forceful restraint and a supine posture expose him to needless suffering, cruelty and pain,” Zivot said in court filings.
The court denied the request hours before the execution.
Tanzi, 48, abducted and murdered Miami Herald employee Janet Acosta, 49, on April 25, 2000. He was indicted for first-degree murder and charged with carjacking with a weapon, kidnapping to facilitate a felony with a weapon, armed robbery with a deadly weapon and two counts of sexual battery with a deadly weapon.
She had been reading in her car during a lunch break at Miami’s Japanese Gardens when Tanzi spotted her.
He approached her and asked for a cigarette. Needing a ride to Key West, 159 miles away, Tanzi waited for her to become distracted and began punching her until he gained entry to the vehicle and took off.
During the hours-long ordeal, he tortured and raped her.
At one point, he told the woman that if she made any noise, he would “cut her from ear to ear” with a razor blade.
That night, after arriving in the Florida Keys, Tanzi decided he’d need to get rid of Acosta because she was “getting in the way.”
“He also knew he would get caught quickly if he released her alive,” the records state.
He drove to an isolated area in Cudjoe Key and told Acosta he was going to kill her. He crosslaced a piece of rope and strangled her until she died. To stifle the noise, he put duct tape on her mouth, nose and eyes. He then disposed of her body in an area where he thought she’d go unnoticed.
Tanzi would later admit to this in audio and video police interviews.
In the following days, he used funds from her ATM account to shop, eat and visit with friends. Police ultimately found him two days after the murder once they began looking for Acosta’s car following a missing persons report.
When police approached him as he returned to the car, Tanzi reportedly told them he “knew what this was about” and wanted to discuss “some bad thing he had done.”
After his 2003 trial, a jury unanimously recommended a death sentence, and the presiding judge agreed.
Friends and family described Acosta as a bookworm who enjoyed traveling, hiking, and the outdoors, according to USA Today.
After Tanzi was sentenced to death, the woman’s sister, Julie Andrew, told the Herald her family “wanted to see justice done for my sister. And we wanted to make sure no one else had to go through what we went through.”
A few months before Acosta’s murder, Tanzi killed Caroline Holder in Brockton, Massachusetts.
