an Aug., 2011, Google Maps image.
Coffee had become Josh Rubin’s obsession.
Born in Providence, Rhode Island, he attended Alperin Schechter Day School and Classical High School, then went on to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Soon he was back in Providence and working at Coffee Exchange, a small, sustainability-committed roaster and cafe in the Fox Point area.
In 2005 Rubin became a manager at Coffee Exchange, but six years later, at 30, he decided to open his own place. Rubin consulted extensively with his Coffee Exchange boss, Charlie Fishbein, who remembers him as passionate about his plans to find and serve the best possible coffee. Rubin moved to a Brooklyn, New York neighborhood that seemed like a good bet for his business: Ditmas Park’s proximity to Prospect Park, plus its stunning, stand-alone Victorian mansions were inspiring a new wave of gentrification, but rent was still cheap.
Rubin raised much of the money for his coffee shop online (at the time of his disappearance he’d been seeking another $5000 for an audiovisual system to host live performances and film screenings). Whisk Bakery Cafe opened in September 2011 at 1119 Newkirk Avenue, between Westminster Road and Coney Island Avenue, not far from Brooklyn College.
Whisk quickly became a bustling, popular neighborhood spot, and it seemed like Rubin had a chance of fulfilling his dream to have a coffee and performance place that would serve as a hub for a growing creative community. He hired a few employees, but put in long hours and did most of the baking himself, and always paid close attention to the coffee quality. Brooklyn customers would remember tall, bespectacled Rubin as a funny, intense young man.
His happiness didn’t last.
Josh Rubin was last seen on Halloween 2011, when he left his apartment on Lawrence Avenue, near the cafe he’d opened just six weeks before. One of his roommates, Justin De Carlo, was home that Monday evening, but Rubin didn’t mention where he was going.
He didn’t open Whisk the next morning. The doorman at the luxury condo next door, which held deliveries for the cafe off-hours, noticed that Rubin never came in to pick up that morning’s bagel delivery.
Whisk employees kept the cafe open through Wednesday morning, thinking Rubin might have been visiting family in Providence. They closed up shop only when they heard that his sister Hilarie Rubin had reported him missing.
Customers, neighbors and other friends put up flyers across Brooklyn and set up a Facebook site calling for information, and in mid-November his family offered a $5000 reward for information. The family hired a private investigator, former NYPD Detective Eric Lopez, even as police began their search. Lopez checked area hospitals and morgues, and interviewed people at more distant sites, including Occupy Wall Street’s Liberty Plaza encampment.
Hilarie Rubin told police that her brother was diabetic and did not have his insulin with him. Friends told police — and the press — that Rubin had recently been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and that he’d seemed to be under a great deal of stress in the weeks leading up to his disappearance. There were rumors that he was having trouble coming up with a rent payment on the cafe, due November 1. He’d already been talking about selling the cafe, people said. Neighbor Zach Boyce said that he had been in discussions to take over Rubin’s room in November, but Rubin’s roommates had no knowledge of any plans to move out. The Ditmas Park Blog reported that the president of the co-op where Whisk was located insisted that Rubin was not behind on rent.
Unnamed sources soon told the New York Post that Rubin was $14,000 in debt, and that he had tried to kill himself on September 13. People whispered that Rubin may have been dealing drugs. In December, Brooklyn police acknowledged that they’d been told that Rubin had been passing up to a pound of marijuana at a time off to friends.
A police source later told the Brooklyn Daily that the killer was likely someone Rubin knew, and that he may have been associating with dangerous people in an effort to secure the money that he needed to keep Whisk open. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly would not comment on the specifics of the case, but confirmed that they’d consider whether Rubin might be involved with loan sharks.
But everything in the investigation came too late.
Valley District Attorney’s office.
On November 1, 2011, workers across the Northeast were cleaning up after a freak snowstorm. That morning a South Whitehall Township road crew cleared fallen trees and branches from the rural roads near Allentown in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. The crew was on Applewood Drive, a quiet road running through a 70-acre apple orchard, when they spotted smoke. At first they figured it was another downed powerline.
The smoke came from a burning human body.
Lehigh County Coroner Scott Grim would rule that the victim had died of a single gunshot wound to the chest, then been set on fire. The man had been burned so badly that his fingerprints were gone, making identification difficult.
Cops described the unidentified victim as an 18-to-30-year-old white man, 6’1 to 6’3, 160-170 pounds, wearing glasses, a plaid shirt, and checked socks. A police sketch released in November didn’t yield any leads.
But on December 20, 2011 South Whitehall authorities finally checked the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System and discovered a DNA and dental match. The body left smoldering at the orchard’s edge was Josh Rubin.
So Rubin had turned up dead 100 miles away, about 12 hours after he’d last been seen in Brooklyn. It just took 50 days to figure that out.
used Rubin’s credit card after his death.
Woodbury Common Premium Outlets
in Orange County, NY.
Rubin’s family — mother Sandra Taube and stepfather Ben Zion Taube of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, father Leon Rubin and stepmother Phyllis Rubin of North Grafton, Massachusetts, sister Hilarie and brother Jonathan — held funeral services for him at the Temple Emanu-El in Providence without understanding how Joshua Rubin’s life had reached this brutal end.
Brooklyn cops are assisting with inquiries in their area, but Josh Rubin’s body was found in the jurisdiction of the South Whitehall police force (whose spokesperson announced in December that they believe Rubin was murdered elsewhere before being dumped on Applewood Drive and set alight). The 36-member South Whitehall department hasn’t responded to the FBI’s offer to help with the investigation.
In March 2012, Pennsylvania investigators released the photos of two men who had — just hours after his body was found — used Rubin’s credit card at Woodbury Common Premium Outlets, a collection of upscale discount shops in Orange County, NY. The mall is about two hours northeast of South Whitehall, or an hour-and-a-half drive from Ditmas Park. The two men, in their late teens or early 20s, are clearly visible in the photos. But these images, and Josh Rubin’s secrets, haven’t yet led police to the killers.