The man who arranged the killing of a Brooklyn cafe owner was sentenced to 28 years in prison Thursday during an emotional proceeding that revealed the victim’s sister had asked him for help in the aftermath of the gruesome 2011 slaying.
Kevin Taylor is the last of three men sentenced in connection with the killing of Joshua Rubin on Oct. 31, 2011 in a pot deal gone bad. He lured Rubin to an apartment for a drug deal that ended with Rubin being fatally shot. Taylor and two accomplices dumped Rubin’s body in rural Pennsylvania and set it on fire.
It took a month for authorities to identify the body. During that time, Rubin’s sister, Hilarie Rubin, asked Taylor for help.
“Do you remember me?,” Hilarie Rubin said to Taylor in Manhattan Federal Court before he was sentenced.
“As the last person on Joshua’s cell phone records, both calls and text messages, I came to see you for help a few days after he disappeared. Do you remember me? Do you recall the panic and desperation I expressed to you? Do you remember the lies you told me? Do you remember the missing posters I printed, and, along with friends and family, hung them up all over Brooklyn? Did you tear them down?”
The shooter, Gary Robles, was previously sentenced to 28 years. Michael Mazur, the lookout, was already sentenced to 18 years.
Rubin ran Whisk Bakery Cafe, a popular hangout in Ditmas Park and sold weed to supplement his income. Taylor lured Rubin, 30, to a Kensington apartment under the pretense of buying pot, though the plan all along was to rob him.
When Rubin refused to surrender a pound of pot, Robles shot him in the chest. Authorities say Rubin was still alive as Taylor and Mazur stayed with his body and Robles disposed of the gun. When Rubin’s heart stopped beating, they bought plastic bags, latex gloves, and a trash can from Home Depot to dispose of his body, which they torched in a remote field in Lehigh County.
Taylor, 29, took Rubin’s wallet and credit cards before burning the body. He gave the cards to accomplices to go shopping at a mall in an apparent attempt to cover his tracks.
In 2019 and 2020, Taylor tried to buy the silence of those accomplices, offering them as much as $150,000 not to speak to law enforcement.
Judge Jed Rakoff described Taylor’s witness tampering as “a devastating crime” and said it factored heavily in his sentence.
“It goes a long way to erasing a lot of the sympathy I would otherwise feel for Mr. Taylor,” the judge said. “He wasn’t feeling the slightest remorse at that moment.”
In somber remarks, Taylor, who was 18 when he aided in Rubin’s murder, apologized to his victim’s family and said he wished he had made better decisions and that they could someday forgive him. He previously pleaded guilty to robbery, conspiracy and witness tampering.
In letters to the court, Taylor’s mother and friends wrote that he grew up in an abusive home where addiction was rampant. Taylor’s lawyer told the court that all of the male figures in his life were incarcerated when he was growing up.
Hilarie Rubin described her brother as a gentle and loving human who moved through life with kindness and grace.
“Joshua saw the world through a different lens than I. He saw beauty everywhere in everything — music, literature, food, culture, art, nature. And most of all, people, family, friends, communities,” she said.
“He made this world a better place. I miss Josh so very much every day. I think my greatest sadness is that there are little boys and girls in our family and that are close to use who will never know him.”
