MIAMI – The man convicted of killing beloved Miami Herald employee, Janet Acosta, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Tuesday evening.
Michael Tanzi, 48, will executed at 6 p.m., at the Florida State Prison in Raiford after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant last month.
Acosta, 49, had been working at the Herald for more than two decades and was a supervisor in the paper’s make-up department, balancing space between news stories and advertising.
Acosta was described as “the calm presence” in a bustling news environment. On the afternoon of April 25, 2000, Acosta was reading in her Plymouth Voyager at the Japanese Gardens on Watson Island during her lunch break, as she was known to do.
Tanzi, a drifter from Massachusetts, was in Miami and looking for a way to Key West.
Investigators said he approached Acosta’s van and punched her, pushed her aside, and drove south.
When Acosta was overdue from her lunch break, friends and coworkers called police.
Along the trip into the Florida Keys, Tanzi tied Acosta up, withdrew money using her bank card, and ultimately strangled her.
Frank Zamora, a retired Key West detective and now an investigator with the Monroe County State Attorney’s Office, was one of the officers who helped track Tanzi down.
Zamora said Tanzi was spotted on surveillance video withdrawing money from an ATM at a bank on Front Street in Key West.
Acosta’s van was then spotted about a block away on Duval Street, abandoned in a bustling area filled with tourists and locals.
“Detectives started looking downtown,” Zamora said. “Tanzi shows up — we approach him.”
When officers confronted Tanzi, he matter-of-factly confessed, Zamora said.
He then led investigators, including Zamora, to Cudjoe Key, where he dumped her body in the mangroves after strangling her.
“Here’s the area where he ended up dumping her body,” Zamora said, pointing to a nondescript area by the water off Blimp Road. “Somewhere right in here. It’s been a long time.”
Tanzi was convicted and was recommended to be sentenced to death by a jury in Key West. Now, with his execution scheduled on Tuesday, Zamora believes justice is being served.
“He’s going to pay for what he did — killed this woman, tortured her — and now he’s going to pay the price.”