Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This Gold Digger is in Prison Now // The Juan Baron Murder Story

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

In 2022, 23-year-old Juan Baron strangled his 73-year-old lover, Gary Ruby, inside Ruby's multimillion-dollar mansion in Honolulu's exclusive Hawaii Loa Ridge neighborhood.

So why would this 23-year-old date a 73-year-old man? Now the story starts with this guy, Juan. And Juan is 23 during this time, living in Houston, Texas. Here's the thing about him. Nothing about him is real. He's got no real job, no place of his own, but what he does have is a rotating set of lies that he tells people about himself. He's a bullshitter. He tells one guy he's a financial advisor, and he'll tell another guy he owns a car company. It seems like he wants people to think that he's someone successful and someone who has money.

But then one day in 2021, he gets online and he meets this guy, Gary. Gary is 73 and he lives in Hawaii and he's 50 years older than one. And Gary's been working his whole life and he's invested well, so he's got quite a bit of money saved up. In fact, he's got a really nice house. He lives in one of the most expensive areas around Honolulu and his house overlooks the ocean. Now, despite all this money he's been able to save, Gary is looking for companionship. You might even say he's a bit lonely. So he meets Juan online, and he thinks Juan kind of fine. And Juan thinks Gary is, you know, a potential target. So Juan flies out to Hawaii to see Gary. And they start hooking up and eventually they start dating.

And by 2022, Juan is staying in Hawaii at Gary's house. You know, the nice one that overlooks the ocean. And of course, he's always wanted a nice place. So he's enjoying getting a taste of this lifestyle that he's always dreamed of. And here is where he decides that he not only wants this lifestyle, but he's going to seize it for himself. So he starts plotting to kill Gary and take ownership of all his things. So one day, they're at Gary's place, and suddenly, boom, Juan attacks him, and he strangles him with a belt.

Then he drags Gary's body to the bathtub, and he stages the scene to make it look like a suicide. He slits Gary's wrists with a kitchen knife. Then he just leaves him there. And later, for some reason, he changes his mind, and he decides that this fake suicide thing just isn't going to work, and he needs to cover up the body. So he goes out to Gary's garage, and he finds some bags of cement, and he pours them all over Gary. Then he runs out, and he realizes he needs more,

and he runs to Lowe's, and he buys four more bags using Gary's credit card, and then he comes back, and he pours them all over Gary. Then, to mask the smell, he pours a bunch of coffee grounds over the top layer of the cement mix. Now, here's the worst part about all of this. Gary doesn't actually die from being strangled. So he's alive when Juan buries him in this bathtub full of cement. Of course, he then, unfortunately, suffocates in that cement. After that, Juan just leaves him there in the cement mix, in the bathtub, and he locks the bathroom up.

And after a while, the concrete dries up and it hardens. So now that his plan worked, Juan starts his new life. Like, he starts with Gary's car, an Audi A6. First he goes to the DMV with forged papers, and he transfers the title of the Audi into his name. Then he goes to the local BMW dealership, and he tries to trade it in. Then he tries to do a similar thing with Gary's house. He gets some fake paperwork for it, too. And he continues living in Gary's house like he owns it.

He starts driving around in Gary's car like he owns it too. He also keeps up his social life, going out to bars and clubs or whatever. And he'll make new friends and he'll bring them back to the house. He'll also meet guys on Tinder and he'll bring them back to Gary's place. And he'll lead them to believe that the house is his. And he'll host parties there and he'll invite lots of people while there's a body locked in the bathroom down the hall. And when any of his new friends ask him how he's able to afford this great place in this expensive neighborhood, he tells them that he works as a financial advisor and that he's made millions of dollars.

And I guess they believe him. And about a month passes, and Juan continues partying and enjoying his new life. But then things start to go wrong. See, while Gary was still alive and hanging out with Juan, one day he had sent his brother an email, just, you know, kind of updating him about what was going on in his life. And he had told him that he had just met a much younger guy named Juan and that they were dating. And so Gary and his brother, they were corresponding about this.

But then, kind of abruptly, Gary just stopped responding. And three weeks passed. And so now Gary's brother hasn't heard from him. So he starts getting worried. And eventually he calls the police and reports Gary missing, and he requests that they go and do a welfare check. And so police go over to Gary's house to do a welfare check. Now, at the house, they find one. And he's there with a new boyfriend.

And they ask him a bunch of questions about where Gary might be, and I assume he just lies to them and says that he doesn't know. But he does tell them that he owns the house. He says that he bought it from Gary five years ago. Now, this house that they're in is actually in a nice gated community. And this community has a security guard. And this security guard is at the house with police while they're doing this welfare check. So the security guard says, wait a minute. I remember Gary buying this house just two years ago.

And then, of course, Juan's lying ass has to change his story. And he quickly says, oh, I just remembered, I actually bought the house two years ago, not five. And so now the police are starting to get suspicious. And so the security guard tells Juan that if he really owns the house, he needs to register with the community's main office to prove that the place actually belongs to him. And so later, Juan and his boyfriend go to the main office register and they submit the forged documents that Juan had used before. That same day, the community operations officer who received the documents from Juan

realizes that Gary's signature isn't on them at all and that they're likely forged. So this community operations officer calls the number one left on the documents, and it ends up being the number of a random fitness center in the area. And so the operations officer knows something is up, and they call the police. So now police realize that something is very wrong with all this. Then the next day, they decide to go back to Gary's house. But by this point, I guess Juan realizes that the police are onto him, so he and his boyfriend flee the state and go from Hawaii all the way to Los Angeles, California.

Meanwhile, police search Gary's place and they find his body buried deep inside the concrete in the bathtub. So now they're sure Juan had something to do with Gary's death. But Juan has already decided to flee again. this time to Mexico. So he boards a Greyhound bus. And as it's traveling toward the border, he manages to pull off one of the seat covers in the very back and hide underneath it, in the seat.

But then, US Marshals track this bus down and they pull it over and they search it and they find Juan's trifling ass they're hiding in the seat. And so, bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. That same day, bam, they arrest his boyfriend too.

And so ultimately, the charges against the boyfriend are dropped because he only met Juan after the crime, so he gets no punishment, while Juan takes a plea deal and he gets sentenced to life in prison. Good.