A 79-year-old man has been arrested and accused of murder in the nearly 50-year-old unsolved strangulation of a Braniff flight attendant following a financial dispute.

Officials with the Grapevine Police Department announced Thursday that detectives arrested a suspect in a 1981 homicide investigation. Police said that no further details were available, citing the ongoing investigation and additional pending forensic DNA testing.

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According to an arrest warrant affidavit obtained by NBC 5, 79-year-old Larry Dean Brown was arrested on a murder warrant in Larimer County, Colorado, for the 1981 murder of 35-year-old Beverly Bruneau.

Bruneau, according to the document, was strangled to death with an electrical cord in her Grapevine apartment on Feb. 10, 1981. Her body was found in the living room by her boyfriend when he returned home from work at Braniff Airlines.


Bruneau told police he thought his girlfriend had been raped and murdered, but a subsequent report from the medical examiner determined the woman had not been sexually assaulted. Detectives investigating the murder said there were obvious signs of a struggle in the residence and that blood was found on the woman's clothing and near the kitchen sink.

Investigators went to talk with the victim's best friend, Thelma Brown, who also worked at Braniff and lived in Grapevine, but she was away on an international trip. Detectives spoke with Brown's husband, Larry, who told police that Thelma and Beverly co-owned a residence where they had previously lived and that the residence had recently been damaged by a fire. Detectives noted a fresh wound on Larry's right thumb.

Tarrant County Sheriff's Office Tarrant County Sheriff's Office

It's unclear when the case went cold, but it was reopened in 2025. Investigators learned there was a financial motive related to the residence co-owned by the women, related to an agreement where if either married or left the residence, they would make alternative arrangemen

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