In a courthouse in central Manhattan, the trial of three men who prosecutors claim enabled a robbery and drugging conspiracy that terrorized gay bars in New York City and resulted in two fatalities got underway Wednesday.
Between March 2021 and June 2022, Jayqwan Hamilton, 36; Robert Demaio, 35; and Jacob Barroso, 30 are charged with conspiring to drug and rob five men after they met them outside of gay bars and nightclubs in Manhattan. In the spring of 2022, prosecutors claimed that the offenses resulted in the deaths of political strategist John Umberger, 33, and social worker Julio Ramirez, 25. The crimes were not made widely known until May 2022, over a year after the plan started, when Ramirez’s unexplained death was covered by NBC News.
Hamilton, Demaio, and Barroso entered not guilty pleas to charges related to the plot, which included grand larceny, conspiracy, and murder. Hamilton and Demaio’s lawyers chose not to respond. A request for comment from Barroso’s lawyer was not immediately answered.
Assistant District Attorney Emily Ching stated in her opening statement that the three men, along with three others who had previously entered guilty pleas to lesser charges, prowled around a number of gay bars in Manhattan, made friends with men who appeared to be intoxicated, and then proposed that the victims spend the rest of the evening with them at other locations.
According to Ching, the defendants conspired to use a mixture that contained fentanyl to drug the victims until they were incapacitated while they were in private. According to her, the defendants would then utilize facial recognition technology to gain access to the victims’ bank accounts and payment apps by utilizing their unconscious faces. Ching claims that after stealing thousands of dollars, they would use the victims’ payment applications to purchase food, shoes, wine, and other goods.
The assistant district attorney also described how Ramirez and Umberger were allegedly targeted and robbed using the same techniques, which ultimately resulted in their deaths.
According to Ching, the evidence will make it abundantly evident that it makes no difference who gave the victims the medications. The evidence will prove that each defendant planned to carry out the robberies, that they were carried out successfully, and that the victims perished as a result.
The three defendants’ lawyers described the deaths as tragic in their opening statements, but they urged jurors to be open-minded until the matter was resolved.
Demaio’s lawyer, Dean J. Vigliano, urged, “We ask you to set that aside and decide this case on the evidence.”
Additionally, the lawyers stated that it was impossible to determine which medications caused Ramirez and Umberger’s deaths. Ching admitted that Ramirez and Umberger were among the victims who occasionally engaged in recreational drug usage.
Vigliano stated that they are unable to determine which medicines killed these two people. According to the toxicology findings, these people might have died from any number of these medicines.
The deaths of Ramirez and Umberger were determined to be homicides brought on by a drug-facilitated theft by the New York City medical examiner’s office. According to the medical examiner’s report, fentanyl, lidocaine, and cocaine were among the drugs discovered in their systems.
Known only by his first name, Alex, one of the surviving victims who testified on Wednesday acknowledged occasionally using recreational drugs like cocaine and marijuana. But he didn’t do so to the point of being incapacitated, he claimed.
Video footage from the night of Alex’s encounter, according to Ching, shows him losing his mobility soon after he meets two of the defendants outside his hotel in Union Square, Manhattan. She claimed that the two men then used a baggage cart to transport Alex’s lifeless corpse into his hotel room, where they looted him.
It is anticipated that Umberger’s mother, Linda Clary, and other surviving victims will testify.