Brian Jennings was executed by lethal injection for assaulting, raping and drowning 6-year-old Becky Kunash, an outgoing first grader, on Merritt Island, Florida, 46 years ago.
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A former Marine who kidnapped a 6-year-old girl from her bedroom in 1979 before raping and killing her became the 16th inmate executed in Florida this year, doubling the state’s previous record.
Brian Jennings, 66, was executed at 6:20 p.m. ET on Thursday, Nov. 13, for the murder of outgoing first-grader Becky Knash, 6. Her body was found naked and beaten in a canal just a half-mile from her home on Merritt Island off Florida’s east coast.
Jennings was scheduled to become the second person to be executed in the United States on Thursday, but Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt pardoned Tremaine Wood just hours before he was scheduled to be executed.
Jennings is the 42nd inmate put to death in the United States this year, a number not seen since 2012.
What were Brian Jennings’ last words, last meal?
Asked seconds before the injection if he had any last words, Jennings declined. His last meal was a cheeseburger, fries, and soda.
What was Brian Jennings convicted of?
On May 10, 1979, 20-year-old Brian Jennings was on Merritt Island with his mother and aunt on leave after serving in the Marine Corps in Okinawa, according to archival news reports from Florida Today, part of the USA TODAY Network.
The paper said Jennings, a local high school dropout who described himself as a “mad dog” and was waiting for his next orders, went out drinking that night and climbed out of Becky Kunash’s bedroom window.
According to court records, some time after her father checked on Becky at 11 p.m., Jennings saw the girl sleeping, removed an unlocked window screen, opened the window and took her in.
After driving Becky to a nearby canal, he raped her. He later told his cellmate that he grabbed the girl’s legs and slammed her head against the ground, according to court records. The men then held her underwater for 10 minutes and dumped her body in a canal.
The next day, as dozens of sheriff’s deputies and FBI agents searched for Becky, a fisherman found her naked, battered body floating in the Banana River, just a half-mile from her home.
Shortly afterward, Robert Kunash identified his daughter’s body.
When detectives interviewed Jennings later that day, he confessed to the crime, saying, “I always had this with me to look in the window.”
“That’s all it was supposed to be,” he told them, according to Florida Today. “I don’t know why I did that. I just did it.”
Jennings was convicted and sentenced to death in 1980 and 1982, but both convictions were overturned on appeal. He was found guilty again in 1986 and sentenced to death, and his conviction was never expunged.
Who is Becky Kunash?
Becky Kunash’s parents and friends described the blonde girl as outgoing, active and strong-willed from an early age. She was so stubborn that she refused training wheels and learned to ride a bike at age 4, Robert Kunash told Florida Today in an archived story.
The day before she was killed, Becky was so excited to be the narrator of a first-grade play that she was reading lines for her father and deciding what clothes to wear with her mother, according to Florida Today.
Attracted by the excellent schools and tree-lined streets, Becky’s parents moved their two daughters from Cleveland to Merritt Island and opened a restaurant just over a year before the murders.
Robert Kunash told Florida Today that on the night Becky was killed, he put her to bed at 8 p.m., turned on a night light to keep her safe, and checked on her again at 9 and 11 p.m. He remembered his last words to his daughter: “I love you. Please come and get me in the morning.”
When burying Becky, he placed her skipping rope and her favorite stuffed elephant in the casket together. His wife and 7-year-old daughter Samantha were too distraught to attend, according to Florida Today.
Jennings’ three trials were painful for Becky’s parents, forcing them to relive their nightmares over and over again. Their marriage didn’t work out.
“He took my baby, my husband, my family and my home,” Patricia Merrill (nee Kunash) told Florida Today in 1986, in the middle of Jennings’ third trial.
During jury deliberations, Robert Kunash told reporters how difficult it was just to be in the same room as Jennings, saying, “I killed him a million times in my sleep.”
Robert Kunash died in 2001 at the age of 52. USA TODAY was unable to reach Patricia Merrill or her eldest daughter for this story.
What else do you know about Brian Jennings?
Brian Jennings’ mother, Margaret Dana, told jurors at her son’s third trial that her son never knew his biological father and had been a problem child since birth, describing him as “very destructive and hyperactive,” according to Florida Today.
She said she wanted to commit Jennings to a psychiatric hospital in Boston at the recommendation of doctors, but later changed her mind because she feared the stigma would prevent Jennings from enlisting.
Since his 1986 conviction, Jennings has appealed his conviction at least nine times. On November 6, the Florida Supreme Court rejected his latest appeal, arguing that he had been without legal representation for three years because his lawyer died in 2022. He also claimed that because he was not represented, no one was tracking his mental health.
The Florida Supreme Court rejected the appeal, saying it “rejects his argument that any gaps in his representation over the past 40 years amount to a denial of due process.”
When is the next execution?
The state of South Carolina will execute Stephen Bryant, who killed a man named Willard Tietjen in 2004 and wrote “Catch me if you can” on a wall in his blood, on Friday, November 14th.
If his execution goes ahead, states will put to death 43 inmates in the United States this year, a number not seen since 2012.
Contributor: John A. Torres, Florida Today
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter covering the death penalty for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat.
