Suspect in 1981 Grapevine cold case murder released on bond

GRAPEVINE, Texas - After being arrested last month in connection to a cold case murder in Grapevine, the 80-year-old suspect has bonded out of jail.

Grapevine murder suspect bonds out of jail

What we know:

80-year-old Larry Brown, who was arrested last month and has been charged with murder, has been released from the Tarrant County Jail on a $100,000 bond.

Brown's bond was initially set at $2 million but was lowered by a Tarrant County judge.

Per the conditions of Brown's bond, he must wear a GPS ankle monitor at all times and remain under house arrest.

1981 murder of Beverly Bruneau

The backstory:

Brown was arrested on July 16 in Colorado and charged with murder in connection to the Feb. 1981 killing of 35-year-old Beverly Bruneau.

Bruneau, a Braniff Airlines flight attendant, was found dead in an apartment on Feb. 13, 1981. An arrest affidavit states Bruneau had been strangled to death after a struggle.

The affidavit states that in 2025, investigators began looking into the case and found Bruneau and Thelma Brown, Larry Brown's wife, owned a Dallas residence that both would make payments for, even after one married or left the residence.

Brown pressured Bruneau to find a different roommate to pay Thelma's rent after the two married, as the Browns were struggling financially after purchasing a house in Grapevine. Bruneau refused the requests.

The affidavit states that after two fires broke out at the residence, Larry Brown attempted to coerce Bruneau into insurance fraud; Brown proposed inflating insurance costs, then having a company he co-owned repair the house and splitting the remaining funds as profit.

Bruneau told her mother three days before her murder that she and Brown got into a heated argument over the insurance claim, and was scared of Brown based on how he was acting.

In Feb. 2026, the Larimer County Sheriff's Office in Colorado, where Brown was then living, obtained a covert DNA sample from Brown's trash. A DNA test from Brown's trash matched the DNA from Bruneau's nightgown from the night of her murder, which initially did not turn up in a 2010 DNA sample.