Some people come into your life and love you in a way you never thought possible.
For Arlene Harbison, that person was her uncle, Juan Leon Laureles.
Less than three years apart and raised together in Brady, Texas, Arlene and Leon’s relationship was more like brother-sister than uncle-niece. They played instruments together in their high school band, danced the night away at local dance halls, and spent time in the kitchen cooking side by side. “Leon was the only person in my family that I felt loved me unconditionally,” she told Dateline. “He’s my best friend. He’s my person, not just my uncle.”
The youngest of nine children, Leon took on the caretaker role for his aging parents when his older siblings moved away. “He was the kind of person that if he saw anybody in need of anything, he would step right up and he wouldn’t ask questions,” Arlene said.
At 14 years old, Leon got a special driver’s license that allowed him to drive his parents to medical appointments as far away as Dallas. “He never complained. Not once did I ever see him upset that he had to take care of his parents,” Arlene remembered.
After his parents died, Leon, then a young adult, moved in with Arlene. “I had a year-and-a-half-old son, and I was getting away from an abusive relationship,” Arlene said. “And so Leon moved in with me, and he took care of my son while I worked during the day.”
By the spring of 1996, Leon was 30 years old, sharing a house with his brother George in Bangs, Texas, and working at the Kroger supermarket about 20 minutes away in Brownwood.
He still had his whole life ahead of him.
Then, in the middle of the night on May 10, 1996, Arlene’s phone rang. “My cousin’s just crying and crying and saying, ‘Leon’s dead, Leon’s dead,’” Arlene said. “I couldn’t comprehend that. And I just kept asking, ‘What? What? What are you talking about?’”
Leon had been due at his midnight shift at Kroger. He left early, as he always did. According to Arlene, Leon liked to get there ahead of time to catch up with co-workers before the shift began.
But that night Leon never clocked in.
At 12:15 a.m., one of Leon’s co-workers called George. Leon hadn’t shown up. “The only thing I could think of is, ‘Well, maybe he ran off the road or something,’ so I drove back to Brownwood to see,” George Laureles told Dateline. “I never did see anything.”
Fifteen minutes later, a 911 caller reported a car fire on FM 2126, a stretch of road just beyond the Brownwood city limits, and past the Kroger where Leon worked. When firefighters and sheriff’s deputies arrived, they found Leon dead, face down on the ground in front of a gun range. His car was burning beside him.
David Mercer — a detective with the Brown County Sheriff’s Department at the time, and now the chief of police in Early, Texas — arrived at the scene 30 to 40 minutes after the first responders. He no longer has access to the case files, but the details of that night have stayed with him. “We could see it was a homicide when we arrived,” Mercer wrote Dateline in an email. “The Justice of the Peace pronounced the victim deceased and ordered an autopsy.”
While law enforcement managed the crime scene, Arlene and her family drove to the sheriff’s office, desperate for information about Leon. “I remember standing out at the sheriff’s office with my mom, my aunt, my uncle, and I remember it was still dark and it was cold, and we were just left outside,” Arlene said. “Nobody was telling us anything.”
According to Mercer, law enforcement notified the family of Leon’s death and “kept them updated on what information we know about.”
At 9 a.m. on May 10, the Travis County Medical Examiner in Austin confirmed what investigators had observed at the crime scene: Leon had been shot in the back of the head.
Still waiting to learn what happened to Leon, Arlene says someone inside the sheriff’s office mentioned that the local paper had run a story, and if they wanted information, they could pick up the morning edition. Arlene got in her car and drove to the newspaper office.
It was there, Arlene says, that her family found out what happened to Leon. “I yelled at them for putting in the newspaper when we didn’t even know yet,” Arlene told Dateline. “And they just kind of just all sat there staring at me.”
Law enforcement faced challenges with the crime scene. “The car had been burned,” Mercer told Dateline. “All the evidence in the car was gone.” No murder weapon or DNA other than Leon’s was ever found. A few footprints found at the scene did not lead to any clues.
The Texas Rangers were called in to help with the investigation almost immediately. Texas Ranger Ricky “Bo” Brown was not a part of the original investigation, but spoke with Dateline about the role of the Texas Rangers. “We’re the investigative branch of the Texas Department of Public Safety,” Brown said. “We assist agencies that may not have the manpower or the resources to conduct an investigation that would normally take several days, weeks, months, or years.”
Brown joined the Texas Ranger Unsolved Crimes Investigation Program in 2023. Assigned to the region where Leon’s homicide occurred, Brown is currently reviewing Leon’s case. Brown says he has access to Leon’s case files but would not provide information regarding the time between Leon’s last sighting and being found on FM 2126 to protect the integrity of the case.
Law enforcement also questioned people and developed persons of interest, but according to David Mercer, “We never actually produced evidence to go any further with that.”
At Leon’s funeral, the family prepared to say goodbye to him for the last time. Arlene remembers holding onto his casket. “Everybody kept trying to pry me away, but I didn’t want to leave him alone,” she said.
About a week and a half later, and feeling frustrated with how the investigation was being handled, George came to Arlene with a proposal: They should hire a private investigator. Arlene agreed, and together, they split the cost of hiring William Dear out of Dallas.
Dear arrived in town and spent a week investigating. According to Arlene, Dear told her he was being threatened by police, and that Leon had likely witnessed something he shouldn’t have. Before leaving town, Dear left the family with large white poster boards with crime scene photographs, a comprehensive list of suspects, and what she says is a detailed timeline of events. Dear has since died.
According to Ranger Brown, the private investigator reviewed his findings with law enforcement and helped organize follow-up work. Brown told Dateline in a follow-up email that the records don’t show any documented contact between Dear and investigators beyond that single meeting.
Shortly before his death, Leon came out as gay to a small circle of close friends. Arlene remembers him being different in those final months: happier. “He was just starting to date,” she said. For Leon, a Catholic Hispanic man in a small Texas town in the mid-‘90s, that kind of openness hadn’t come without risk. “It was one of those things you did not talk about,” Arlene said.
She was happy for him. And then he was gone. “The most heartbreaking part,” she said, “is that he was finally comfortable about being who he was. And it was all taken away from him.”
Arlene believes Leon’s sexuality was connected to his murder. That belief deepened when rumors began to circulate that Leon had been romantically involved with the son of the town’s sheriff at the time. Both the former sheriff and his son are deceased.
In a follow-up email, Dateline asked Mercer about those rumors. “I never heard anything about the sheriff’s son being involved,” Mercer wrote. “He was never considered a suspect.”
The Brown County Sheriff’s Department did not respond to a request for comment on the initial investigation, their communication with the family, or where Leon’s case stands today.
Texas Ranger Bo Brown’s recent participation in the Unsolved Crimes Investigation Program has given Leon’s case a fresh set of eyes. “We want to put this case in a better place than when we found it,” he told Dateline. “Sometimes that, you know, comes by way of the case being solved, and sometimes that’s just being able to answer some reasonable questions for the family.”
When Dateline asked Brown about the possible relationship between Leon and the previous sheriff’s son, Brown said he is careful about how much weight to give the rumors that have surrounded the case. “You still have to follow up on it and do your due diligence,” Brown said. “However, a lot of that just is kind of a dead-end road for information.”
Looking ahead, Brown stresses the importance of receiving tips from the public. “Tips are great. It gives us something to go off of. We take them very seriously,” he said. “A lot of people think that we get a tip, wad it up, and throw it in the trash can. That’s simply not the case.”
Arlene says getting justice is one of her main goals. “My other goal is to just not let Leon be forgotten,” Arlene told Dateline. Every holiday season, she makes his recipe — roll-ups with cream cheese, crab, and chives, just as he taught her. A framed copy of Leon’s favorite Madonna album hangs on her wall. “It seems like it would be easier after so much time, but for me, it’s the opposite. It’s gotten harder,” Arlene said.
George has also felt the impact of Leon’s absence. “It just hurts a lot,” he said. “I can’t even pass by that area.”
As of August 7, 2026, the Texas Department of Public Safety’s website states that “The reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible for his death is now increased to $6,000 if the tip is received before the next featured Texas Rangers cold case is announced.” The next case will be featured in October 2026.
If you have information about the death of Leon Laureles, contact the Brown County Sheriff’s Department at 325-646-5510.
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to include a limited time increase in the reward being offered.
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