Arrest Made in Robberies and Murders of Gay Men Who Were Drugged
The New York Police Department said on Sunday that a man had been arrested and charged with murder in connection with a series of killings and robberies at Manhattan gay bars that has terrorized the city’s L.G.B.T.Q.
community and drawn attention to the use of drugs to incapacitate, rob and kill. The man, Jacob Barroso, 30, of New Britain, Conn., was arrested on Saturday and charged with the murder of Julio Ramirez, a 25-year-old social worker who died of a drug overdose last April in what the medical examiner described as a “drug-facilitated theft.” Mr.
Barroso was also charged with robbery, grand larceny and identity theft, but he had not been arraigned as of Sunday night, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said.
The death of Mr. Ramirez and a second man, John Umberger, a 33-year-old political consultant who was fatally drugged and robbed in May, spread fear through the city’s L.G.B.T.Q.
