Veteran faces extradition to Philippines over unfounded allegations, lawyer says

Editor’s Note: News4 updated this article with comments from Hans Brunner after his U.K.-based attorney reached out with his statement.

A 66-year-old American citizen has been in the DC jail for almost 10 months awaiting extradition to the Philippines for a crime her attorneys say there’s no evidence she committed.

Air Force veteran Grace Lourenco earned commendations for her service. In 1981, she was part of the flight crew aboard the Air Force plane that returned 53 U.S. diplomats and citizens who had been held hostage in Iran, her family said – a moment seen around the world.

She went on to earn a business degree, get married and have a daughter.

Court filings from a 2023 divorce proceeding between Lourenco and her husband, Hans Brunner, show a D.C. judge believed her statements that she had suffered physical abuse in the marriage.

The decree of divorce also contains the judge’s assessment of the alleged crime for which Lourenco was arrested at her Georgetown home earlier this year. It describes an incident in October 2018 at a home the couple owned in the Philippines, where Brunner worked.

“After lunch, on the ride back to their Manila home, Mr. Brunner told Ms. Lourenco he wanted to have an open relationship with [a German woman he’d met] and that he wanted to open a trust fund for her.”

In an interview with News4, Ms. Lourenco’s attorney, William Zapf, described what Ms. Lourenco says happened next.

“She remembers waking up in a hospital a couple days later,” said Zapf. “She had been unconscious, and it is believed that she had taken some medication that made her unconscious.”

Brunner issued a statement to News4 via his attorney Lee Marler in London, United Kingdom, refuting any claims he abused his wife.

“She claims that my attempted murder was somehow justified because I abused her, which I did not,” Brunner said in the statement.

The judge’s conclusions in the court filings from the 2023 divorce proceeding then details the alleged attempted murder from October 2018 at the home in the Philippines.

The judge wrote:“Later … while standing on the balcony, Mr. Brunner was attacked from behind. The perpetrator hit Mr. Brunner on the back of the head with a sharp, hard weapon. He did not see who attacked him.

“He was in a coma for two days.

“He asserts Ms. Lourenco was the perpetrator. Not only did Mr. Brunner fail to present evidence that Ms. Lourenco was the perpetrator, but he also failed to present evidence that (she) had wanted to kill him to get his pension.”

The judge concluded: “Both parties have committed intrafamily offenses against the other, but Mr. Brunner committed more offenses against Ms. Lourenco, and the Court finds (him) to have been the primary aggressor.”

Brunner, in his statement, said his ex-wife attempted to murder him for his money.

“Her attack upon me was premeditated and unprovoked and having failed to kill me she then fled the jurisdiction rather than facing up to what she had done,” he said.

“I have been left with lifelong injuries as a result of her brutal attack upon me. I am the victim here not my ex-wife. My ex-wife, who is a flight risk, is rightly remanded in custody in the U.S. pending the outcome of the extradition decision and her period of detention has been unnecessarily prolonged because of the actions of her legal team…”

“If my ex-wife is innocent, as she claims to be, then she should have no fear at facing justice in the Philippines,” Brunner concluded.

In an email to News4, Marler, Brunner's attorney, cites Lourenco’s extradition ruling by Judge Zia M. Faruqui in October 2024, in which the judge found probable cause that Lourenco attempted to kill her husband and certified her extradition to the Philippines.

In that ruling, the judge states: “The evidence before this Court is sufficient to justify [Ms. Lourenco’s] arrest and committal for trial on a felony charge if the offense had been committed in the United States.”

But in the same proceeding, Faruqui also told Lourenco that he has “hesitations about what could happen” to her once extradited.

“What has happened to you, what again, is very laid out in chapter and verse in the divorce proceedings that are very concerning and very upsetting,” Faruqui said. “Those are the places where an arbiter can consider those things and decide a U.S. citizen, who is a veteran, who may have suffered greatly, it is appropriate in the United States’ discretion to extradite[?]”

Lourenco’s attorneys say her future is in the hands of the U.S. State Department.

“In cases like this where there are very serious humanitarian concerns about our client, Grace, this is the type of case where the Secretary of State can say no and should say no,” Zapf said.

Several people she served with in the Air Force have written letters supporting Lourenco.

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