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 Criminal 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.