Woman charged with first-degree murder in father's death

AFTER A DEER HUNTER found the body of an unidentified man last month rotting in a rolled-up carpet deep in the woods of Atlantic County, authorities said that "someone, somewhere" must be missing him.

Christina Rubin, 22, a graduate student in clinical psychology at Chestnut Hill College, might have been that someone - except that she wasn't missing her father, Marc David Rubin, 46, authorities say.

Yesterday, the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office charged the Abington Township woman with allegedly paying her boyfriend $1,000 to shoot her father while he slept on the couch in their Old York Road apartment on the day after Thanksgiving because he was always "yelling" at her.

The woman, a 2008 Penn State grad, then tried to dismember her dad with a chainsaw before helping to dump his body in the Pinelands, authorities said.

She spent the next month draining his bank account, living in his apartment, and checking the Internet to make sure he hadn't been identified, authorities said.

"Everything that was done, was done in a cold-blooded, deceptive manner," said Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman. "When you think about the chain of events, everything was calculated."

Rubin and her boyfriend, Jeffrey Leinheiser, 20, are charged with first-degree murder and related charges. An accomplice, Daniel Dougherty, 19, is charged with tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse.

According to the probable-cause affidavit, the plot to kill Marc Rubin began Nov. 17, when Leinheiser allegedly heard him yelling at Christina.

Her father was fired from his job at the Aviation Institute of Maintenance, at Northeast Philadelphia Airport, a week later.

Christina Rubin told authorities that she was crying after the Nov. 17 incident and that her boyfriend said, " 'That's not right, I wish I could kill him.' "

So she granted the wish, authorities said.

"There was no evidence that there was an abusive physical act that was the catalyst for this event," Ferman said. "It was basically that he yelled at her a lot."

On Nov. 28 about 11 p.m., Rubin let Leinheiser into her father's place in the Colonade Apartments and handed him a Smith & Wesson .357-caliber Magnum snub-nosed revolver she legally owned, the affidavit states.

Leinheiser shot Rubin once in the back of his head while he slept on the couch in his underwear and shorts. Leinheiser kicked the man before the couple left the house. They didn't return for a week, the affidavit states.

Rubin told authorities that she bought a chainsaw at a local Lowe's on Dec. 5, but had difficulty dismembering her father's body because his shorts had gotten caught in the chain's teeth.

Christina Rubin and Leinheiser later went to National Wholesale Liquidators, in Northeast Philadelphia, bought a carpet and dragged Rubin down nine flights of stairs before loading him into her Suzuki and heading to New Jersey.

When police interviewed Leinheiser, he told them that the couple also had purchased "cement in a bucket," an iron bar, tape and duct tape at a Home Depot. He also admitted to sawing off Marc Rubin's legs and heading toward the Jersey shore to rent a boat and dump the body into the Atlantic.

"He said they got up early and couldn't find anyone to rent them a boat," the affidavit states. "They then drove toward home, 'found a good spot' and dumped the body there."

But Rubin and Leinheiser hadn't found a good spot: It was opening day of shotgun season for white-tailed deer, and a hunter found Rubin's body wrapped in trash bags and rolled up in a rug about 1 1/2 miles off Black Horse Pike in Hamilton Township.

It would be one of many mistakes the couple made that would lead to their arrests, Ferman said.

"Everything they touched was botched," Ferman said.

The next day, police were called to the Days Inn on Easton Road in Horsham Township, Montgomery County, on a report of motel guests claiming that their mattress had a bullet hole.

The occupants of the room - Leinheiser and Rubin - denied firing a gun, but police seized the .357 Magnum, ammunition and a stun gun.

Atlantic County authorities tried to identify the body using fingerprinting and dental records, but the tests proved inconclusive. Seeking information to establish an identity, authorities held a news conference on Dec. 17. Christina Rubin learned of the news conference and regularly checked the Internet for updates, the affidavit said.

Five days later, Leinheiser contacted Philadelphia police and reported that he had been carjacked on C Street while trying to buy drugs. The car, a 1997 Oldsmobile Cutlass sedan, and its license plate, bearing the letters "MOBBUFF," were registered to Marc David Rubin and later recovered .

On Jan. 7, Leinheiser and Dougherty were arrested in Cheltenham Township on active warrants for theft and other charges, and their fingerprints were submitted.

The following day, the FBI contacted the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office to confirm a fingerprint match on the hands sent by the prosecutor's office to the FBI lab in Virginia, positively identifying Marc David Rubin.

Investigators learned of the carjacking, ascertained Leinheiser's fingerprints, and matched them to the trash bags into which Rubin had been stuffed, the affidavit said..

Last Saturday, when authorities entered the apartment where Rubin was killed, they said, they found ammo, a carpet knife, bloody gloves and a chainsaw with pieces of Marc Rubin's shorts still stuck in the teeth.