A 23-year-old man has confessed to murdering a lover five decades his senior after learning he was HIV positive—before embarking on a twisted cover-up scheme that included pouring cement and coffee grounds over the victim’s body in a bathtub and seizing his car and multi-mullion dollar Hawaii home, police said.
Juan Tejedor Baron is charged with murder, theft, and identify theft for the February killing of 73-year-old Gary Ruby, who police say was found encased in cement and coffee-grounds in a standalone soaking tub inside his Hawaii Loa Ridge home. Baron was arrested on Wednesday after authorities found him “hiding in a crawl space under an enclosed bench” in the back of a Mexico-bound Greyhound bus.
He is now being held without bail pending extradition to Honolulu after allegedly admitting to murdering Ruby, with whom he had been in a romantic relationship. It is not immediately clear if he has retained a lawyer.
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An affidavit obtained by The Daily Beast notes that neighbors and Ruby’s own brother knew about the couple’s relationship—noting that Baron was seen at the elder man’s house inside the gated community.
According to property records, Ruby purchased the house in 2020 for nearly $2.2 million.
“He’s a man who worked hard all his life, every day, being frugal to afford the home he wanted as his forever home. He worked so hard, to have your golden years, and two years later, all that be gone,” Lore Woodley, the real-estate agent who helped Ruby with the property, told KITV.
On the day of the murder, authorities said “Baron stated that he had sex with Gary but became angry after Gary informed Baron that Gary was HIV-positive.
“Baron stated that soon after, he noticed Gary choked on food, and Baron reacted by placing a belt around Gary’s neck and tightening the belt until Gary lost consciousness,” the affidavit added.
Baron said he then dragged the elderly man he had been dating into the bathtub, before using a “kitchen knife to slit Gary’s wrists in an effort to stage a suicide.” Desperate to cover-up his crime, Baron said he then decided to kill the bathtub with bags of concrete he found inside the garage—but only had enough to partially cover him.
“Baron then drove to Lowe’s to purchase four additional bags of concrete and further filled the bathtub, covering Gary. Baron stated he used coffee grounds to cover the cement in an effort to conceal the smell of decomposition,” the affidavit states.
After the murder, Baron admitted to taking over ownership papers of Ruby’s gold 2020 Audi A6 and had plans to even try to acquire the home.
Authorities said they first became aware of the incident on Monday, when Ruby’s brother asked for a wellness check after not hearing from the 73-year-old for three weeks. Ruby’s brother told police his brother mentioned in an email that he had “met a new love interest named Juan” who was “significantly younger.”
When a Honolulu Police Department officer arrived at Ruby's home, Baron said he had bought the house about five years ago. But when the officer relayed that property records indicated that Ruby had purchased the home in 2020, Baron “changed his story, saying he bought the residence two years ago and had the deed for it.”
The inconsistency prompted officers to enter the home on Tuesday, where Ruby was found inside the master bedroom tub. A medical examiner concluded that Ruby’s blood was on the bottom of the tub and ruled his death a homicide.
The Los Angeles Police Department and U.S. Marshals captured Baron on Wednesday, shortly before also arresting a 34-year-old man whom local police say was also seen leaving Ruby’s house. The 34-year-old man was later released after evidence suggested he had nothing to do with the murder.
While details of how Baron and Ruby met are still unclear, one Hawaiian man told a local news outlet that he met the 23-year-old on a dating app just a few weeks before the murder.
“A few weeks ago we started messaging on Tinder and then we set up a date to go out, and then we met up at a bar,” Kai Jonhson told Hawaii NewsNow on Friday, adding that he even introduced Baron to his friends. Johnson said Baron told the group that he and his parents were wealthy and that he worked as a creative financial advisor—in part to explain why he was using Ruby’s money and paying for bar tabs.
“We always thought that he just had a good job, good money,” he added. “He was driving some Audi, like an A6 or A8 or whatever, living in a nice house and so forth. We didn’t think anything of it.”
Johnson said that Baron even invited him and his friends to the Loa Ridge home—but that when they went to visit one room was always off-limits. The last time Johnson saw Baron was last Friday, just three days before Baron was deemed a suspect in Ruby’s murder.
While Johnson admitted to the local outlet that he did not see any indication of Baron’s misdeeds, he and his friends were freaked out about the news of the murder.
“That could’ve been me,” he said
