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This story contains details about a disturbing crime against a child. Discretion is advised.
Six-year-old Becky Kunash was sleeping soundly in bed when her dad checked on her one last time on May 10, 1979.
When he looked in on her at 11 p.m., nothing was amiss. Her night light was on and the window was shut, so he went to bed.
He would be the one to identify her body the next day.
Becky's parents, Robert and Patricia Kunash, didn't realize the girl had been taken until 7 a.m., eight hours after her dad checked on her. When her mom went to wake her up, the girl was gone. A curtain was fluttering from the breeze of the open window, a sight that sent a chill down her father's spine.
Later the Kunashes learned that a predator who had been prowling the family’s neighborhood − located on charming Merritt Island off the east coast of Florida − had been drawn to the glow of Becky’s night light. He crept up, saw the girl lying in bed and decided to take her.
Now 46 agonizing years later, Florida is set to execute Bryan Jennings, a 66-year-old former Marine who admitted to kidnapping and killing the little girl. He's scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on Thursday, Nov. 13, in what will be a record 16th execution in the state this year.
Here's what you need to know about the crime, the execution and how little Becky Kunash had already made a mark on the world that she would leave far too soon.
What was Bryan Jennings convicted of?
On May 10, 1979, 20-year-old Bryan Jennings was staying with his mother and aunt on Merritt Island while on leave after serving in the Marines in Okinawa, Japan, according to an archived news report in Florida Today, part of the USA TODAY Network.
Jennings, a local high school dropout who referred to himself as a "mad dog," was awaiting his next set of orders when he went out drinking that night and ended up outside Becky Kunash's bedroom window, the newspaper reported.
Sometime after her dad checked on Becky at 11 p.m., Jennings saw the sleeping girl, took the screen off her unlocked window, opened the window, and then took her, according to court records.
After driving Becky to a nearby canal, he raped her. He later told a cellmate that he picked the girl up by the legs and smashed her head into the ground, according to court records. He then held her under water for 10 minutes and dumped her body in the canal.
As dozens of sheriff's deputies and FBI agents searched the area for Becky the next day, a fisherman found her battered and naked body floating in the Banana River just a half-mile from her home.
Soon after, Robert Kunash identified his daughter's body.
When detectives interviewed Jennings later that day, he confessed to the crime, saying the he "always had this thing to look into windows."
"That's all it was supposed to be," he told them, according to Florida Today. "I don't know why I did it. It's just something I did."
Jennings was convicted and sentenced to death in 1980 and 1982 but both convictions were overturned on appeal. He was again found guilty and sentenced to death in 1986, and that conviction stuck.
Who was Becky Kunash?
Becky Kunash's parents and friends described the little blonde girl as gregarious, vivacious and determined, even at her young age. She was so stubborn, she refused training wheels and learned to ride a bike at the age of 4, Robert Kunash told Florida Today.
The day before she was killed, Becky was so excited about being the narrator for her first-grade play that she read lines for her dad and laid out what she was going to wear with her mom, according to Florida Today.
Attracted to the good schools and tree-lined streets, Becky's parents moved their two daughters to Merritt Island from Cleveland and opened a restaurant only about a year before the murder.
Robert Kunash told Florida Today that the night Becky was killed, he put her to bed at 8 p.m., turned on the night light she needed to feel safe, and checked on her again at 9 and 11 p.m. He recalled his last words to his daughter: "I love you. Catch ya in the morning."
When he buried Becky, he put her jump rope and favorite stuffed elephant in the coffin with her. His wife and 7-year-old daughter Samantha were too distraught to attend, Florida Today reported.
Jennings' three trials were torturous on Becky's parents as they had to relive the nightmare over and over again. Their marriage didn't survive it, Patricia and her oldest daughter moved back to Cleveland, and both parents eventually remarried.
"He took my baby, my husband, my family and my home," Patricia Merrill (formerly Kunash) told Florida Today in 1986 amid Jennings' third trial.
During jury deliberations, Robert Kunash told reporters how difficult it was to even be in the same room as Jennings: "I've killed him a million times in my sleep."
Robert Kunash died at the age of 52 in 2001. USA TODAY was unable to reach Patricia Merrill or her oldest daughter for this story.
What else do we know about Bryan Jennings?
Bryan Jennings' mother, Margaret Danna, told jurors at her son's third trial that he never knew his biological father and was a problem child from birth, describing him as "very destructive and hyperactive," according to Florida Today.
She said she had wanted to admit Jennings to a mental hospital in Boston at the recommendation of a doctor but later changed her mind because she was worried that the stigma could stop him from joining the military.
One of Jennings' attorneys told jurors at his first trial in 1980 that the detective who interviewed Jennings the day after the murder was a "silver-tongued devil" and had coaxed the confession from his client.
"By the time he was through I wanted to stand up and say, 'I did it, I did it," attorney Perry West told them. "He's a master of his craft."
Assistant State Attorney Greg Stewart told jurors that Jennings had ripped Becky away from "the sanctity of her bedroom" and "left her for the crabs, the turtles and the sharks."
"This is a tapestry of such horror and brutality that it is repulsive to even think about it," he said.
Since the 1986 conviction, Jennings filed at least nine appeals. On Nov. 6 the Florida Supreme Court rejected his latest appeal that he had been unrepresented by counsel for three years because his lawyer died in 2022. He also argued that because he was unrepresented, no one was tracking his mental health.
"We reject his contention that any gap in his representation over the last four decades amounts to a denial of due process," the Florida Supreme Court wrote in denying the appeal.
When and where is Bryan Jennings' execution?
Bryan Jennings is set to be executed at 6 p.m. ET on Thursday, Nov. 13, at the Florida State Prison in Raiford. It will mark a record 16 executions this year in Florida, double the previous high annual number of executions in the state: eight, reached in 1984 and 2014.
Jennings' is the second execution scheduled in the U.S. on the same day. Oklahoma is set to execute Tremane Wood by lethal injection at 10 a.m. CT for the 2001 murder of 19-year-old Ronnie Wipf during a robbery.
And on Friday, South Carolina is set to execute Stephen Bryant by firing squad for murdering a man named Willard Tietjen in 2004 and using his blood to to write "catch me if u can" on the wall.
If all three executions move forward, states will have put 44 inmates to death in the U.S. this year, a number that hasn't been seen since 2010.
Contributing: John A. Torres, Florida Today
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter who covers the death penalty for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A 6-year-old girl was asleep in bed when she was kidnapped. Now her killer's time is up.
Reporting by Amanda Lee Myers, USA TODAY / USA TODAY
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