NYPD announces two arrests in gay bar robberies and drugging deaths
The New York City Police Department announced that detectives have made arrests in a string of drug-facilitated robberies of men who visited LGBTQ bars in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood that resulted in two deaths.
Robert Demaio, 34, was charged with murder, robbery, grand larceny, identity theft and conspiracy in connection with the death of a 33-year-old D.C.
resident and political consultant, John Umberger, and in a separate incident in which an unidentified victim did not die, the NYPD told NBC News.
Last month the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Umberger’s death and the death of another man, Julio Ramirez, a gay 25-year-old social worker who died in the back of a taxi cab a year ago also after visiting a popular, multilevel gay venue in the heart of the Hell’s Kitchen, homicides caused by a “drug-facilitated theft.” Multiple drugs were found in both men’s systems, including fentanyl, lidocaine and cocaine.
