AURORA | As her victim’s family pleaded for a stiff sentence, Lupe Rubio sat emotionless at the defense table.

And as Judge John E. Popovich sentenced Rubio to 17 years in prison for helping plan a 2010 robbery that left her boss, Lyndsay Pham, dead, Rubio appeared calm and unmoved.

The 45-year-old’s cold exterior irked Pham’s family since Rubio first appeared in court in fall 2010 and it frustrated them right until the end of Rubio’s sentencing last week.

“She has no emotion, no remorse for anything that happened,” Pham’s daughter, Christina, told the court.

Police say Rubio and her boyfriend, Javier Agurre, planned to rob Pham at the Descanso Apartments in March 2010. Pham owned the apartment complex near East 16th Avenue and Kingston Street where Rubio worked as an assistant manager.

Rubio’s lawyer said during sentencing last week that Rubio’s seemingly remorseless exterior wasn’t indicative of how she felt about Pham’s death.

“That’s how she is hard-wired,” public defender Emily Fleisch

mann said. “She doesn’t show her emotions, she doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve.”

Rubio’s lack of outward emotion “doesn’t mean she isn’t deeply remorseful,” she said.

Fleischmann asked for a 10-year sentence, the minimum allowed under a plea agreement Rubio reached with prosecutors last spring. That guilty plea to conspiracy to commit murder came on the eve of a second first-degree murder trial. In Rubio’s first trial, a jury failed to reach a verdict on the murder charge.

In asking for the lighter sentence, Fleischmann pointed out that it was Agurre, not Rubio, who killed Pham. And, she argued, Rubio thought Agurre would only rob her boss, not kill her.

“She didn’t believe that he was capable of what he did in this case,” she said.

But Chief Deputy District Attorney Timothy McCormack, who prosecuted Rubio, said Rubio was intricately involved in the crime, talking to Agurre that morning and telling him Pham was in the manager’s office.

“She knew exactly what was going on,” he said.

McCormack said Rubio planned the crime even though Pham and her husband gave her a job and a place to live when she needed it.

“It was all about the money,” he said. “Friendship went out the window, what the Phams did for her went out the window.”

Pham’s family and the prosecution also were unswayed by Fleisch

mann’s argument that Rubio was simply bad at showing emotion.

“It is not fair to say that she is remorseful when she has not apologized for what she has done,” Christina Pham said.

And McCormack called the assertion that Rubio felt remorse for the slaying “hollow and disingenuous.”

Had Rubio been remorseful, McCormack said, she could have told police what happened to Pham in the months before Agurre fled.

Instead, under several rounds of questioning by Aurora police, Rubio lied about her involvement over and over, he said.

“There was no cracking the defendant, Lupe Rubio,” McCormack said.

By the time detectives used cell phone evidence to catch Rubio in a lie, Agurre had already fled to his native Mexico where investigators believe he remains, he said.

If Agurre is arrested, Rubio is required to testify against him, her lawyer said.

Reach reporter Brandon Johansson at 720-449-9040 or bjohansson@aurorasentinel.com