On May 27, 1976, a double shooting inside a home on Karlyn Drive in the Overview Gardens community of New Castle County, Delaware, left 23-year-old female Renita Bryant dead and a 33-year-old former Wilmington patrolman, Roy McIntyre, wounded. Contemporary reporting identified the location as a house at 42 Karlyn Drive. Records confirm that the victim, a 23-year-old female, died on that date in New Castle, Delaware.
Police quickly focused on suspects connected to the victim.
Her estranged husband, Jesse J. Bryant, a 29-year-old Chester, Pennsylvania policeman, was charged with her murder arising from the Karlyn Drive shootings that killed the 23-year-old female victim and injured McIntyre. Within days, a second man, Donald Watson, 22, was arrested in Chester as a fugitive wanted in Delaware in connection with the same slaying.
The prosecution of Jesse J. Bryant culminated three years later. In May 1979, a New Castle County jury found him guilty of Murder in the First Degree for killing the 23-year-old female victim, as well as Attempted Murder, multiple Conspiracy counts, Possession of a Deadly Weapon During Commission of a Felony, and Burglary. He received two consecutive life sentences plus 30 years; Delaware's courts later clarified that the life term was to be served without the possibility of parole. His convictions were affirmed on direct appeal, and subsequent post-conviction challenges—including a 2007 appeal and a 2014 sentence-correction appeal—were rejected.
Public memorial and archival listings further corroborate key facts of the case: the victim was a 23-year-old female who died on May 27, 1976 in New Castle, Delaware. These entries align with the contemporaneous news accounts and court records documenting the homicide and ensuing conviction.
