The two men went to Midtown gay bars and nightclubs in 2022, just as New York City’s nightlife was booming again after the pandemic. They became victims — fatally drugged and robbed by men “waiting in the wings to target them,” prosecutors said Wednesday in Manhattan Supreme Court.
In the opening statements of a murder trial, prosecutors described a “deadly conspiracy” to befriend men leaving gay bars and clubs, slip them intoxicants and steal from them. The two men who were killed, Julio Ramirez and John Umberger, were victims in a string of at least five robberies that rocked New York’s L.G.B.T.Q. community and spread terror throughout the city, as revelers worried about being drugged, perhaps fatally, by just a few sips of a drink.
The defendants include Jayqwan Hamilton, 37, described by police at the time of his arrest in 2023 as the leader of the group, and Robert DeMaio, 36. Mr. Hamilton and Mr. DeMaio are charged in the killings of Mr. Ramirez and Mr. Umberger.
A third man, Jacob Barroso, 32, is accused of playing a role only in Mr. Ramirez’s murder.
The motive was money, Emily Ching, one of the prosecutors, said. “All they wanted was to come up on a jackpot,” she said.
David B. Krauss, a lawyer for Mr. Barroso, said Ms. Ching’s statements were just a “theory.”
“It’s not evidence, it’s not anything but accusations,” Mr. Krauss said.
Prosecutors for the Manhattan district attorney’s office said they used an array of evidence, including video surveillance and financial and cellphone records, to piece together the group’s strategy: Acquire targets, befriend them and ply them with drugs to incapacitate them. The victims would eventually be abandoned, often unconscious, while their attackers embarked on a spending spree with the stolen money, prosecutors said.
In April 2022, Mr. Ramirez, a 25-year-old social worker, was drugged and then abandoned in the back of a taxi. He was declared dead roughly 90 minutes after leaving the Ritz Bar and Lounge in Hell’s Kitchen and getting into the cab with three men, two of whom prosecutors identified as Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Barroso.
As Ms. Ching walked the jury through the last moments of Mr. Ramirez’s life, ending with his death at a hospital, a juror — an older man gripping a wooden cane — closed his eyes and hung his head.
In the gallery, relatives of Mr. Ramirez passed a tissue box down the row, as one woman attempted to stifle her sobs.
A month after Mr. Ramirez’s death, Mr. Umberger, a 33-year-old political consultant from Washington, D.C., left a gay bar with two men, who authorities say were Mr. Hamilton and Mr. DeMaio, just three blocks from the Ritz. His body was found in an Upper East Side townhouse less than a week later.
At first, the two deaths were treated as isolated overdoses, but relatives grew suspicious when they found that money had been taken from the victims’ accounts. At least $3,200 had been funneled from Mr. Ramirez’s accounts via Zelle transactions, and Mr. Umberger’s mother said at the time that $20,000 had been withdrawn from her son’s accounts after he had already been declared dead.
A medical examiner later determined that both men had been killed by a cocktail of drugs that included fentanyl.
After the victims’ families pushed for further investigation, authorities said they uncovered a criminal operation in which the perpetrators used text messages and social media to hone their plans of attack and decide how to use the stolen funds.
On Wednesday, a lawyer for Mr. DeMaio, Dean J. Vigliano, argued that the jurors had heard only a fraction of the story. Echoing Mr. Krauss, he implored them to “keep an open mind.”
Two other men — Shane Hoskins and Andre Butts — pleaded guilty to robbery charges and are expected to receive eight-year prison sentences in March.
The prosecution’s first witness on Wednesday described being drugged by two of the defendants.
The witness, whose name was redacted, said he woke up alone in his hotel room after a night out in 2022, which included a stop at the Q, a gay nightclub at the time in Hell’s Kitchen. He couldn’t remember how he had gotten back to his room, he said, and his phones and credit card were missing.
He said he noticed several financial transactions on his accounts that he could not explain, including dozens of bottles of alcohol purchased using Uber Eats. He also had bruises on his body, he told jurors.
Shortly after the arrests of Mr. Butts, Mr. DeMaio and Mr. Barroso were announced in 2023, Mr. Umberger’s mother, Linda Clary, said that she was relieved that her son’s assailants would face repercussions. On Wednesday, she described her late son as “my greatest cheerleader, my greatest challenger,” someone who “always made everything better, brighter.”
As she left the courtroom, she stared into the eyes of the men accused of killing her son, her face grim.
Ms. Clary said outside that she had been searching their faces for remorse. “I keep looking for that and I don’t see it,” she said.
Hurubie Meko contributed reporting.
