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Betty Woodard was so worried about her son-in-law’s increasingly disturbing behavior, she called police to see about obtaining a restraining order for her daughter.

William Frances Silvia Jr. had been stalking and harassing Woodward’s daughter, 39-year-old Patricia Ann Wyatt, for months. Silvia was pressuring Wyatt to get back together with him, calling at all hours of the night and sitting outside her workplace.

Wyatt had left Silvia in July 2006 and moved back in with her mom in the Orlando suburb of Winter Park, but he couldn’t let her go.

“Mom finally called the sheriff’s department and said, ‘My son-in-law will not leave my daughter alone. He’s harassing her, he’s threatening her, can I get a restraining order?'” recalled Pam Wyatt, Patricia’s sister and Woodard’s oldest daughter. “Of course you know what they said: ‘He has has to do something first.’ My mom’s words were, ‘Does he have to kill her first?'”

Within weeks, Silvia did just that. He went to Woodard’s home and shot Woodard in the face and Patricia in the back of the head on Sept. 22, 2006. Patricia died and Woodward survived, though she lost an eye, part of her nose, her sense of smell and hearing in one ear.

Now 20 years later, Florida executed Silvia, 61, by lethal injection on Monday, Aug. 18, for Patricia’s murder. It’s the first of three executions in as many weeks as the state continues to aggressively enforce the death penalty.

When Silvia took his last breath, Woodward was sitting front and center in the witness room. He was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. ET.

“No execution can return Patricia to her children or give her the grandchildren she dreamed of knowing,” her family said in a statement to USA TODAY. “But today can be an opportunity to remember that Patricia’s life was bigger than the terrible act that ended it.”

In his last words alive, Silvia said that he was sorry that “all this happened,” according to the Associated Press, a media witness.

“It was an accident,” he said. “I never meant to hurt her.”

Here’s what you need to know about Silvia’s crime and more about who Patricia Ann Wyatt was.

What was William Frances Silvia Jr. convicted of?

After four years of marriage, Patricia Wyatt left William Silvia in July 2006 when he became increasingly erratic, paranoid and controlling, court records say. She took her 16-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son and moved into her mother and stepfather’s house to get away from Silvia.

Meanwhile Silvia’s life began to fall apart. He was living out of his truck and lost his job. He repeatedly tried to reconcile his marriage with Wyatt, but she kept turning him down, court records say.

On Sept. 22, 2006, Silvia bought a 12-gauge Mossberg Persuader shotgun and went to Woodard’s home. The family was having a cookout.

Silvia apparently had decided to give Wyatt one last chance to take him back. When she didn’t, he told her, “You’ll be sorry,” before he retrieved the shotgun he had stashed nearby, court records say.

When he returned, he shot Woodward in the face before shooting Wyatt in the head. He fired five more shots but no one else was hurt.

At trial, jurors found Silvia guilty of Patricia Wyatt’s murder and the attempted murder of her mother. Silvia had admitted to police that he killed Wyatt, saying that she had spent all his money, court records say.

Who was Patricia Ann Wyatt?

Patricia “Trish” Ann Wyatt married her high school sweetheart and the couple had four children, her sister, Pam Wyatt, told USA TODAY in an interview ahead of Silvia’s execution.

The marriage later ended and Wyatt met Silvia. At the time of her murder, Wyatt’s children were all teenagers and she was loving her job teaching pre-schoolers.

Had she lived, she would have been a grandmother of nine.

“She was a person with hopes, dreams, love, and a future that should have been hers to live,” Pam Wyatt said in a statement after the execution. “She loved her children and she deserved the opportunity to watch them grow, to be there for their milestones, and to experience the joy of becoming a grandmother. She should have had the privilege of holding her grandchildren, loving them, guiding them, and creating the memories that generations of families take for granted.”

She continued: “That future was stolen from her.”

Pam Wyatt said that her mother may have survived the gunshot blast to the face in 2006, “but she has also carried profound emotional trauma from losing her daughter and from being attacked herself.” Yet, Woodard “refused to allow what happened to her define the rest of our life.”

Instead, Woodard became a pillar of strength.

“She showed us that even after unimaginable pain and suffering, a person can choose to keep going,” Pam Wyatt said. “She has carried Patricia’s memory with dignity and made sure that Patricia would never be reduced to the way she died.”

She said that’s what she wants people to remember.

“Patricia lived. Patricia loved. Patricia dreamed. Patricia was a loving mother. Patricia deserved to become a grandmother,” she said. “Patricia deserved to grow old surrounded by the people she loved.”

Florida’s execution spree continues

Silvia became the 23rd inmate executed in the U.S. this year and the 13th in Florida, which has been executing an unusually high number of death row inmates for the past two years under Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has said he wants to give families closure in decades-old cases.

Of the 70 executions since last year, 32 have been in Florida. That’s 45%. Of this year’s executions alone, Florida’s make up 57%.

After the state held its first double execution in 16 years last month, Gov. Ron DeSantis said he took no joy in it. He has been facing increasing criticism from death penalty opponents and observers who say the governor is being motivated by political ambition ahead of the 2028 presidential election.

“Some of the victims’ families have been waiting a long time,” DeSantis said last month. “And some of them are just like, ‘When are we going to get justice?'”

The next two executions in the U.S. also will be in Florida.

On Sept. 1, the state is scheduled to put Harold Gene Lucas to death for the 1976 murder of his 16-year-old girlfriend, Jill Piper, and the attempted murder of her two friends. Lucas was 24 when committed the crime and is now 74.

On Sept. 10, Florida is set to execute Daniel Owen Conahan, Jr. for the 1996 strangling death of 21-year-old Richard Alan Montgomery. Though Conahan was convicted of one murder, he was known as the Hog Trail Killer and is believed responsible for the murders of up to a dozen men who were tied up, mutilated and killed in rural areas between Sarasota and Fort Myers in the 1990s.

Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter who covers cold case investigations and the death penalty for USA TODAY. Follow her on X at @amandaleeusat