A woman who helped her boyfriend plan a robbery that left her boss dead was sentenced to 17 years in prison Friday.
Prosecutors and the victim’s family had asked that Lupe Rubio, 45, be sentenced to the maximum 25 years in prison for the 2010 robbery and slaying of Lyndsay Pham. Rubio’s defense team asked for a 10-year sentence.
Police say Rubio helped her boyfriend, Javier Agurre, plot to rob Pham at the Desconso Apartments that Pham owned and where Rubio worked as an assistant manager. During the robbery, police say Agurre beat, stabbed and choked Pham before leaving her for dead. Police say Agurre fled to Mexico before police issued an arrest warrant for him and Rubio in fall 2010. Rubio has been in jail since her arrest.
After a jury couldn’t reach a verdict following her first trial last fall, Rubio took a plea deal with prosecutors on the eve of a second trial this spring. As part of the agreement, she pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and prosecutors agreed to a sentence of between 10 and 25 years.
Rubio, who appeared in court wearing a white and yellow Adams County Jail jumpsuit, showed no emotion during Friday’s hearing and didn’t address the court.
That lack of emotion irked Pham’s family, who said it showed Rubio wasn’t sorry for helping orchestrate the robbery that ultimately left Pham dead.
“She has no emotion, no remorse for anything that happened,” Pham’s daughter, Christina, told the court.
But public defender Emily Fleischmann, Rubio’s lawyer, said Rubio was sorry, she just isn’t good at showing emotion.
“It doesn’t mean she isn’t deeply remorseful,” she said.
