Betty H. Brunton, a 52-year-old white woman, was murdered on August 23, 1976, in St. Petersburg, Florida. She was an employee at the Memorial Park Cemetery and had returned home to get her lunch when she was attacked. The perpetrator, later identified as Anthony Joe LaRette Jr., stalked her to her house, entered, and stabbed her to death, leaving the weapon lodged in her stomach. Her body was discovered by concerned co-workers who had initially believed she had fallen ill.
Emergency responders pronounced her dead at the scene, noting no apparent signs of a break-in or struggle.
LaRette, a serial killer and rapist, was active between 1976 and 1980, committing numerous murders across multiple states. He was apprehended on August 7, 1980, and later confessed to thirty-one murders in eleven states, fifteen of which were closed based on his information. Despite speculation in 1979 that Betty Brunton's murder might have been committed by John Benjamin Kennedy, an inmate serving a life sentence for an unrelated murder in Oklahoma, no definitive connection was established.
LaRette was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. He was executed by lethal injection on November 29, 1995, at the Potosi Correctional Center in Missouri.
