# Murder victims’ kin linked by death row fight



## kwflatbed (Dec 29, 2004)

By *Dave Wedge*
Boston Herald Chief Enterprise Reporter
Wednesday, January 17, 2007 - Updated: 01:14 AM EST











Convicted killer Michael Tanzi of Brockton was convicted in the Florida killing of Janet Acosta but he also confessed to the slaying of Brockton wife Caroline Holder.

*E*ach time vicious Brockton killer Michael Tanzi goes before a judge in a desperate bid to dodge lethal injection in Florida, Julie Andrew is there, not only for her dead sister, but also for the frustrated family of a Bay State murder victim.

"Your life kind of goes on and you put it in the back of your mind, but then you get the call from the State Attorney's Office, and it's like a sledgehammer hits your chest," said Andrew, whose sister, Miami Herald supervisor Janet Acosta, was carjacked, sexually assaulted and murdered by Tanzi in Florida in 2000.

"It's kind of a roller coaster ride," said Andrew, a Jacksonville resident. "But I just want to make sure this person could never do to another family what he did to my family and what he did to that other family up there in Boston."


Tanzi, who is on death row for Acosta's slaying, was before Florida's high court last month seeking to rescind his guilty plea, claiming his sentence should have been decided by a judge, not a jury. His attorney, Andrew Stanton, is seeking a new trial.

Tanzi, 29, also has confessed to brutally strangling and stabbing Caroline Holder in a Brockton laundromat in 1999, but he won't be tried for that killing until his fate in Florida has been decided by the courts, a process that could take up to 20 years.

Holder's husband, Martin, said he is "grateful" to Julie Andrew for following through on the case. He admits that the delay in prosecuting Tanzi for his wife's murder is "frustrating," but Holder has put his faith in the Florida courts to mete justice for both Acosta and his wife.

"(In the past) I didn't think that taking a life for another life was justifiable," Holder said. "But if something happens to you personally, you kind of look at it differently. Now I think it is justifiable."

The two families have never met but are forever linked thanks to a deranged killer who chose his victims at random during a drug-fueled binge.

A petty criminal who was molested and spent his life in and out of mental institutions, Tanzi confessed to using a sheet to strangle Holder, a mother of two, before stabbing her in the neck with scissors.

He also admitted carjacking Acosta while she was on her lunch break in Miami. He sexually assaulted and robbed her before cranking up the van radio so no one would hear her dying screams as he strangled her.

"I was just waiting for her to (die)," Tanzi confessed to police. "My next response was to go get high. If I let her go, I was going to get caught quicker. I didn't want to get caught. I was having too much fun."

Plymouth District Attorney Tim Cruz has said he would prosecute Tanzi for Holder's killing if the death sentence in Florida is overturned.

For Julie Andrew, Tanzi's chilling admissions provide the fuel that propels her to make sure justice is served for both women.

"Every time I go," Andrew said, "(Holder) and her family are in my thoughts because they can't be there."


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