They married 10 weeks after meeting. A killer ended their love story 8 years later.

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Randy White was protective of his beautiful young wife.
When the couple met for lunch at their Florida home on June 14, 1982, he insisted on following her back to work in his car despite the inconvenience. He watched her unlock the door and wave goodbye. He tooted his horn and drove off.
Twelve minutes later, Janet Renee White was dead, stabbed repeatedly in the nearby woods.
"At 12:55 p.m., I kissed her goodbye. They estimated her time of death was 1:07 p.m.," Randy White told USA TODAY in an interview. "You're not prepared for life to just stop that abruptly."
Now Renee's killer − Kayle Barrington Bates − is set to be executed by lethal injection in Florida on Aug. 19.
Randy plans to be there because he wants to see justice finally carried out for Renee, 43 years after her murder.
As Bates' appeals run out and his execution approaches, USA TODAY is looking back at Randy and Renee White's love story, the horrific crime, and how he managed to survive the worst day of his life.
'Who the heck is that young lady?'
Randy White was 19 years old and hanging out at a pizza parlor in Marianna in the Florida panhandle.
"She walks in the door, and I mean the second she walked in, I can still remember what I said. 'Who the heck is that young lady?'" Randy recalled. "She was absolutely gorgeous."
The raven-haired girl ordered pizza and was looking for a seat when Randy took her by the wrist and told her to sit by him.
"She said, 'I don't know you,' and I said, 'That don't matter, sit down,'" he recalled. "And from that night on, I saw her every night until we got married 10 weeks later. And I was with her every single day after that."
Later, Randy learned that when Renee got home the night they met, she told her mother: "I have met the man of my dreams."
"We were completely crazy about each other," Randy said. "Like flipped upside-down crazy."
'She always wanted to be somebody'
Eight years after the wedding, the Whites were living like they were still on their honeymoon. Renee loved to travel and would come up with last-minute plans that kept Randy's head spinning.
"We'd probably been dating not even three weeks, and we were out one night having fun ... It was 1:30 in the morning, and she comes up to me and says, 'Let's go to Jacksonville," Randy recalled. "'I said, 'It's 1:30 in the morning and Jacksonville is three hours away from here.' Well, you can guess where we ended up."
One time, a close friend living in Chicago called the couple to say he'd bought them Led Zeppelin tickets if they could make the trip up.
"She's like, you can go with me or I can go without you," Randy said. "I was like, 'I'm going.' I told my boss, and he asked how long I was going to need and I said, 'Maybe five days.' Twelve days later, we're still in Chicago."
Randy didn't mind the unpredictability.
"She did stuff like that all the time," he said. "I never had any idea where I'd wind up with her."
At the time, Randy worked as a salesman on the business supply side of Maxwell House Coffee, while Renee was an office manager at State Farm Insurance in Lynn Haven, Florida. She was taking night classes in hopes of one day opening her own insurance office.
"She always wanted to be somebody," Randy said.
The couple had talked about kids for years, but being so young, Randy was in no hurry. In 1982, when he was 27 and she was 24, they decided it was time, he said. "She wanted children really, really bad."
A shocking attack: 'Renee fought back'
On Monday, June 14, 1982, everything changed for the Whites. The couple had just spent a romantic weekend at Cape San Blas and Shell Island along theFlorida Panhandle coastline and were back at work.
At lunchtime, they met at their home in Lynn Haven. She watched her favorite show, "Days of Our Lives," while he made her a sandwich. When it was time to return to work, Randy wanted to make sure Renee got back safely because her boss was out looking for new business, and she was the only one in the office.
What the couple didn't know when Renee waved goodbye to Randy is that a man had broken into the back of the office and was waiting for her.
As Renee walked in, the phone was ringing. She answered and was about to say "Hello" when Kyle Barrington Bates popped out, according to court records. Renee let out a "bone-chilling scream," and Bates cut the phone cord, court records say.
The woman who had been calling the office immediately called local police. It was too late.
"Bates attacked her, but Renee fought back," according to court records. "Despite her best efforts, Bates overpowered Renee and forced her into the woods behind the office."
Bates "brutally beat" Renee, strangled her, stabbed her twice in the chest, and "attempted to rape her," according to court records, though Randy disagrees with the terminology regarding the sexual assault. Bates admitted to "engaging in one-sided sexual conduct" with Renee and "both his and Renee's underwear contained evidence of semen," court records say.
Within about 15 minutes of waving goodbye to Renee, Randy got a call that there was an emergency at her office. Worried sick, he rushed to the scene, where a sheriff's chaplain broke the news.
"He looked at me and said, 'Mr. White, I don't know any easy way to say this, and I don't know any other way to tell you this, but your wife's been murdered,'" Randy remembered. "I completely lost it."
Police arrived within minutes of the attack. Bates attempted to make a getaway but got turned around and ended up walking through a clearing right in front of an armed officer.
Though he was covered in blood, had Renee's wedding ring in his pocket, and admitted to taking her to the woods, Bates has always denied killing her. He was convicted of murder and other charges and sentenced to death.
His attorney did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment.
'Your wife's been murdered'
Wracked with grief after the murder, Randy became a loner and got addicted to cocaine, which helped "block out the demons chasing me." The following years were filled with pain and darkness, and he abandoned his dream of having children.
"After she was killed, that part of me went away," he said. "It destroyed me. I thought, 'I'm done, I'm not going to bring a child into the world.'"
Then, seven years after the murder, he met someone. Randy was walking into the salon where he got his haircut when he met the new receptionist. For the second time in his life, he recalled: "I went, 'Who the heck is that girl?'"
Now Randy and Jennifer White have been married for 29 years.
"It was a blessing," he said. "There's no doubt that she was sent to me because I was in a place that was darker than dark ... She pulled me out of the depths of hell."
Randy said he quit cocaine cold turkey in 1995, flushing his supply down the toilet. He hasn't touched it since.
"I'm better than I've ever been" since the murder, said Randy, now 70. "I still deal with a lot of people telling me, 'You're just depressed.' I don't look at it as depression. I look at it as loneliness. I'm always going to be lonely for her."
Now Randy is mentally preparing to witness Bates' execution, which he said is much too long in coming, so many years after Renee's murder.
"This has just been hanging out there for 43 years, so at least this part, I can put behind me and not think of it again. I can be done with it," he said. "But I'll never get past it. I will fight that until my last breath."
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at [e-mail] and follow her on X at @AmandaLeeUSAT
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Young Florida couple had a whirlwind romance. Then a killer struck.