what to know
- Two men, a social worker and a political consultant from Washington, DC, were found dead in separate incidents after leaving gay bars in Hell’s Kitchen in 2022, both having thousands of dollars stolen from their accounts.
- They died from a combination of toxic drugs, their autopsies found; In July, an acclaimed fashion designer was found dead in her Manhattan apartment from another combination of toxic narcotics; Those three deaths may be related to two ongoing patterns of overdose robbery, law enforcement officials say.
- Six suspects have been charged in the first pattern; Law enforcement officials say the crew is believed to be behind 17 robberies and the deaths of Julio Ramirez and John Umberger; the second is believed to be responsible for 26, including the death of Kathryn Gallagher.
NEW YORK — The New York police and the Manhattan district attorney’s office continue to investigate what they believe are two separate robbery patterns in which suspects use drugs to temporarily incapacitate or overwhelm more than 40 victims to steal money. and belongings, and people have died in connection with both investigations. say two law enforcement officials.
Six suspects have been charged, some with murder, others with robbery, in connection with one of the patterns, known as Robbery Pattern 188, officials said Wednesday. This team is believed to be behind at least 17 robberies in Manhattan, primarily in the Village and Hell’s Kitchen, and is believed to be responsible for the killings of two men, Julio Ramírez and John Umberger, last seen leaving gay bars in this last neighborhood. .
The leading theory is that the victims were targeted for money, not their sexual orientation, but the New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force continues to investigate the potential bias factor as a precaution, officials said.
Two police sources said there have been at least four suspects arrested in connection with the robberies, but no arrests have been made so far in connection with the killings.
A second investigation, known as Robbery Pattern 90, is believed to involve a different team that robbed 26 people. There are multiple suspects in that case, which is going before a Manhattan grand jury, law enforcement officials said. A spokesman for the district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
An NYPD spokesman declined to immediately comment, citing an ongoing investigation.
The two law enforcement officials said the slaying of acclaimed New York City fashion designer Kathryn Marie Gallagher, which resulted from drug-facilitated death, may be part of Pattern 90. The office of the The medical examiner said last week that Gallagher died of acute poisoning from the combined effects. of alcohol, fentanyl, ethanol and p-fluorofentanyl.
The 35-year-old internationally recognized designer, who had more than two dozen collections under her own Katie Gallagher label and appeared at Fashion Week in New York and Paris, died in July 2022. She had been working on a collection for Fall of 2022 at the time she was found dead in her Eldridge Street apartment.
The medical examiner’s office said in early March that both Ramirez, a 25-year-old social worker, and Umberger, a 33-year-old consultant, died from lethal combinations of fentanyl, cocaine, lidocaine and ethanol found in their blood. The New York police have said that it was the lidocaine that would have ultimately incapacitated them.
Ramirez also had heroin in his blood, the medical examiner’s office found. He determined that both men died from drug-facilitated robbery, suggesting that they were drugged for that purpose. Both had their bank accounts emptied.
Ramírez was found in a taxi in the early morning hours of April 21, 2022. He had last been seen leaving the Ritz Bar and Lounge on West 46th Street with a group of men and they all got into a taxi, although Ramírez was alone in the cab. back seat when the driver realized she was unconscious. The taxi driver found a police officer to report to the passenger that he was unresponsive, and Ramírez was pronounced dead at a hospital. Neither his wallet nor his phone were on him.
Later, relatives say they discovered $20,000 was missing from their accounts.
Umberger was found dead in late May of an apparent drug overdose at his employer’s Upper East Side rowhouse where he was staying. Surveillance video showed him leaving the Q NYC club on Eighth Avenue, with several men supporting him. They also stole money from his bank account. Further details about that timeline are unclear.
However, his mother alerted the police to his disappearance and Umberger was found on June 1. She said her phone and her credit cards were missing, along with $25,000 from her bank account.
NYC robbery crews linked to mystery drugs and deaths
Authorities have said the deaths appear to be part of a series of people fatally poisoned with narcotics in what investigators say were plots by criminal gangs to incapacitate and rob people in New York bars and nightclubs.
The killings, at least five in all, according to police, date back months and appear to be the work of different teams, operating independently but using similar tactics, police and prosecutors said in a December update.
The men surreptitiously slip revelers dangerous levels of drugs to knock them out, then take their wallets and phones, sometimes using their digital banking information to empty their accounts, authorities said. In an earlier incident, Nurbu Sherpa, a 29-year-old chef, was found dead on the sidewalk after leaving a bar where he had been celebrating St. Patrick’s Day.
Other men have come forward with stories about how they were drugged by strangers and woke up to find they had no money.
Many of the crimes remain unsolved, but the Manhattan district attorney previously announced that a suspect, Allen Kenwood of the Bronx, had been charged with murder in the death of Sherpa and in the murder of 26-year-old Ardijan Berisha.
Berisha, of South Salem, New York, and a friend passed out on the sidewalk in July 2022 after drinking at a bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Kenwood drugged his two victims with fentanyl, prosecutors said, and then robbed them. He is charged in three other cases in which the victims survived. The status of his case was unclear Wednesday.
Anyone with information about the theft patterns is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS.
