Juan Baron: Killer buried his lover, Gary Ruby, alive in a bathtub of concrete
WARNING: GRAPHIC DETAILS
A man has been sentenced to life imprisonment after he killed his lover and buried the body in a bathtub full of cement.
Juan Baron, 26, plead guilty to the murder of Gary Ruby, 73, after his decomposing body was found encased by concrete in his own Hawaii Loa Ridge home.
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The murderer then decided to conceal the body using bags of concrete stored in his garage, and then poured coffee grounds on top of the cement to cover the smell of the rotting corpse.
Police say Baron lived in Mr Ruby’s home after the murder and even drove the 73-year-old’s car, Hawaii News Now reported.
Baron fled from Hawaii with a friend after the killing and was later arrested in California when he was discovered hiding in the crawl space of a bus.
Mr Ruby’s family addressed the court at the sentencing.
His niece said because the medical examiner had found particles of cement in Mr Ruby’s lungs she has to “live knowing that he was still breathing when [Baron] poured cement on him”.
“You have to live with that too, Mr Baron,” she said. “What a horrific way to die.”
Mr Ruby’s brother, Lorne Ruby, told the court that Baron had “buried him alive”.
“It was not enough for you to murder him. You inflicted horrible, unnecessary suffering upon him. How cold, how cruel, how inhumane, how evil such an act.”
Baron will serve 20 years in prison, but after this he will be eligible for release.
This is because in 2024 he made a plea deal which required him to plead guilty to second-degree murder alongside first-degree theft and first-degree identity theft in exchange for eligibility for parole.
He later attempted to withdraw from the deal, but this request was denied.
After the sentencing, Mr Ruby’s brother spoke of his wish to restore the memory of his loved one.
“Nobody should die or have to die the way he did and be treated the way he was treated, buried alive, entombed in concrete, his reputation impugned,” he said.
“I hope that one of things accomplished by this is that his memory is restored having been a very loving, good, kind, man of integrity, not the trash that Mr Baron put out there.”
