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Last updated on Thursday, September 18, 2014
(SCOTT CO.) - An Austin man has been sentenced to 50 years in prison in the death of his former co-worker.
40-tear-old Robert Riley Jr. plead guilty last month to murdering Paul Graupe and hiding his body. He admitted to stabbing Graupe to death on Nov. 27, 2009 and burying the body in a duplex behind his Austin home.
Police say Riley stabbed Graupe then stole about $600 from him.
Riley also was sentenced to three years for altering the scene of a death.
Also charged in the death is Lisa Pace, Robert Riley's girlfriend. Police say she knew about the murder of Paul Graupe, but never called authorities. Pace faces two counts of assisting a criminal, obstruction of justice, theft, and failure to report a dead body.
Paul Graupe disappeared a few days before Thanksgiving in 2009 after telling relatives he was going to go visit a man who owed him money.
The 50-year-old was never seen alive again.
Officers with the Sheriff's Department had talked with Pace several times in the course of the investigation.
On November 20, 2012, Pace was again interviewed. This time she reportedly admitted having seen Robert Lee Riley Jr. grab Graupe and appear to choke him from behind on November 24, 2009.
She said the incident took place in a small duplex apartment in back of Riley's parents' home on West Main Street in Austin.
She claimed to have seen Graupe bleeding from his eyes and nose and that she believed he was killed in the attack.
She reportedly told officers that she saw Riley initially move Graupe into a bathroom. The body was then later moved into a hole in the duplex's kitchen floor. She then helped Riley clean up blood from the floor and helped to dispose of the bloody rag and Graupe's keys.
Later, Riley showed her some $600 in cash that he had allegedly taken from Graupe's body.
Pace said they used the money to buy drugs. She went on to tell police she had fabricated a story about Graupe's body being placed in a well. That well was searched in June, 2011, without result.
Using her new information about where Graupe's body was located, sheriff's deputies found Graupe's nearly mummified remains in the duplex.
An autopsy on the body indicated Graupe had died of "sharp force injuries" to the back of his torso.
Pace is being held on a $50,000 bond. Pace was already in jail for attempting to escape from her home incarceration which was a probation sentence for a forgery charge.
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