Both Julio Ramirez and John Umberger were found dead in separate incidents after leaving gay bars in Hell’s Kitchen in 2022, both with their bank accounts drained
The cause and manner of deaths of a beloved social worker and a political consultant visiting from Washington D.C. in separate incidents last year have been revealed.
The New York City Medical Examiner’s Office determined the manner of death for both 25-year-old Julio Ramirez and 33-year-old John Umberger to be homicides, calling them “drug facilitated thefts.” Both men died from drug overdoses, with fentanyl, cocaine, lidocaine and ethanol found in their blood. Ramirez was also found to have heroin in his blood, the medical examiner said.
The NYPD previously said that it was the lidocaine that would have ultimately incapacitated them.
Both Ramirez and Umberger were found dead after leaving gay bars in Hell’s Kitchen in 2022, both with their bank accounts drained. In April, Ramirez was found dead in a taxi after leaving with a group of men. Later, relatives discovered some of his savings had been stolen.
Ramirez was last seen aive outside the Ritz Bar and Lounge on West 46th Street in Hell’s Kitchen back in the early hours of April 21 after meeting up with a friend. Following night of bar hopping, their last stop was the Ritz, a popular, multilevel gay venue in the heart of the neighborhood’s Restaurant Row.
The two eventually went their separate ways. Surveillance footage from a nearby security camera showed Ramirez walking away from the venue with three unidentified men at 3:17 a.m., according to his brother, Carlos.
The four men then entered a nearby taxi, a police source said, but Ramirez was alone in the backseat at 4:10 a.m. when the taxi driver approached a police officer three miles away in the Lower East Side to say his passenger was unresponsive. Less than an hour later, Ramirez was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. Neither his wallet nor phone was with him when he died.
At the time, the medical examiner’s office said a preliminary toxicology screening found nothing of immediate significance but noted more testing was required. Those further tests revealed what drugs had been in his system.
The family told NBC New York that the unknown men from the cab took Ramirez’s phone, changed his password and then stole $20,000 from his bank account.
In May, Umberger was found dead of an apparent drug overdose in the townhouse where he was staying. Surveillance video showed him leaving a popular club being propped up by a group of men. Money was also taken from his bank account.
He had been out with friends on May 28, according to his mother, when the group ended up at the Q NYC on 8th Avenue. But after that, details become hazy. Umberger was last seen leaving the club with two unidentified men later that night.
As days went by, his mother found it odd her son wasn’t returning her messages. She alerted police her son was missing. On June 1, they found Umberger dead inside his employer’s townhouse on the Upper East Side.
The grieving mother says Umberger’s cell phone and credit cards were stolen, with more than $25,000 wiped from his bank account.
The pair of deaths were part of a string of people who had been fatally poisoned with narcotics in what investigators say were schemes by criminal crews to incapacitate and rob people at NYC bars and nightclubs. The killings — at least five in all, according to police — stretch back months and appear to be the work of different crews, operating independently from each other but using similar tactics, police and prosecutors said in December.
Men surreptitiously slip revelers dangerous levels of drugs to knock them out, then take their wallets and phones, sometimes using their digital banking info to drain their accounts. In an incident earlier in 2022, Nurbu Sherpa, a 29-year-old chef, was found dead on the sidewalk in March after leaving a bar where he had been celebrating St. Patrick’s Day.
Other men have come forward with stories about being drugged by strangers and waking up to find money gone.
Many of the crimes remain unsolved, but the Manhattan district attorney announced in December that one suspect, Kenwood Allen, of the Bronx, had been charged with murder in Sherpa’s death and in the killing of Ardijan Berisha, 26.
Berisha, of South Salem, New York, and a friend passed out on the sidewalk in July after drinking at a bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Allen drugged both of his victims with fentanyl, prosecutors said, then robbed them. He is accused in three other instances where victims survived.
There are more than a dozen cases overall the NYPD is investigating where people have been targeted at bars before being drugged and robbed.
Police said that the motivation for the incidents is believed to be money, and that while some victims were gay, that does not appear to have been a motivating factor. The investigation into the deaths of Ramirez and Umberger are still under investigation, according to police.
Anyone with information about either incident is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782).
Source: nbcnewyork.com
