Ditmas Park Coffee Shop Owner Found Dead

File photo Dan MacLeod/ Brooklyn Paper

Here's some seriously shitty news to cap off this holiday week: Josh Rubin, the Brooklyn cafe owner who went missing at the end of October, has been found dead. Murdered, actually: 

"Rubin's death has been ruled a homicide, and the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the body, according to a release from the South Whitehall, PA District Attorney. His body is believed to have then ben set on fire, and was found, "still smoldering," at about 8:30 a.m. in a remote area of Applewood Drive in South Whitehall Township. His body was so badly charred that "even fingerprints weren’t a viable source of identification," so it took investigators six weeks of DNA testing and searching through dental records to match the remains."

Investigators are still trying to piece together exactly what happened, and claim that Rubin has no known connection to the area his body was dumped in Pennsylvania. His credit card was used two days after his murder at the Woodbury Commons outlet mall. There have also been reports that he was allegedly diabetic and bipolar, and potentially owed some back payments in connection with his cafe. However, none of this has yet to produce an explanation about exactly what went down. 

Holy shit, this sucks. 

Our thoughts go out to Josh Rubin's friends and family.

(via Gothamist and the NY Post)