Suspect in Grapevine woman's strangulation released on bond on his 80th birthday

Larry Dean Brown, arrested on a murder charge in the 1981 cold-case strangulation death of Beverly Bruneau in Grapevine, was released Monday after posting a bond, jail records show.

Monday also was Brown’s 80th birthday, according to court records.

Brown was released from the Tarrant County Jail on $100,000 bond, according to the records. His bond was initially set at $2 million, but a judge later reduced it while imposing conditions including that Brown be on house arrest and wear a GPS monitor.

More than 45 years after Bruneau was found dead in her apartment, a Grapevine detective worked with law enforcement in Colorado to obtain a covert DNA sample from soda bottles in the trash outside Brown’s home. According to an arrest warrant affidavit, testing found Brown could not be excluded as the source of male DNA on Bruneau’s blood-stained nightgown.

Brown was arrested on June 8, and a Tarrant County grand jury indicted him on June 29 on a murder charge after he was extradited from Colorado to Texas, according to court records.

Brown was recently diagnosed with a debilitating disease, his defense attorney Bryan Hoeller wrote in a motion filed to reduce his bond. His bond conditions include a GPS monitor and 24-hour house arrest with travel allowed to doctors’ appointments, according to court documents.

The document states that Brown cannot contact the victim’s family, cannot possess guns, and cannot consume alcohol or other controlled substances among other conditions.

Financial tension led to killing, affidavit says

Bruneau, 35, was found dead on Feb. 13, 1981, with an electrical cord around her neck. Investigators have said that financial tensions between Brown and the victim led to the killing.

During an interview on the day of Bruneau’s death, detectives noted that Brown had a fresh wound on his right thumb, and he gave an explanation for the injury that investigators believed didn’t add up, the affidavit states.

Brown’s wife and Bruneau, who were best friends, co-owned a Dallas home damaged by arson in November 1980. Both women worked as flight attendants for Braniff Airlines.

Brown, who was laid off as a pilot by Braniff Airlines, tried to force Bruneau into signing fraudulent insurance documents with inflated repair costs for the fire damage, according to detectives. The victim had told her mother she was afraid of Brown after a heated argument over insurance documents three days before her death.

The defense attorney argued in the motion to reduce bond that most of the evidence in the murder arrest warrant is circumstantial and relies on unknown sources or statements from witnesses who are now dead and “one stain which allegedly matches” Brown’s DNA.

The defense attorney questioned why an attempt was not made earlier to match the DNA to his client and argued that even if it does match, it could be explained by the defendant and victim spending time together.