In a courthouse in central Manhattan on Wednesday, the trial of three men who authorities claim enabled a drugging and robbery scheme that terrorized gay bars in New York City and resulted in two fatalities got underway.
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.
It wasn’t until May 2022, more than a year after the plot started, that the crimes were made widely known.
Hamilton, Demaio, and Barroso entered not guilty pleas to charges related to the plot, which included grand larceny, conspiracy, and murder.
The three men, along with three others who had previously entered guilty pleas to lesser charges, lurked outside 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 Assistant District Attorney Emily Ching’s opening statement.
Ching stated, “The evidence will make it very clear that it does not matter who handed the drugs to the victims.
The evidence will establish that each defendant intended to commit the robberies, succeeded together in committing the robberies and, as a result, the victims died.”
Attorneys for the three defendants described the deaths as “tragic” in their opening statements, but they urged jurors to be open-minded until the case was over.
Dean J. Vigliano, a lawyer for Demaio, begged, “We ask you to put that aside and decide this case on the evidence.”
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.
The defendants would then use facial recognition technology to access the victims’ payment applications and bank accounts by utilizing their unconscious faces, she added.
Ching claims that after stealing thousands of dollars, they would use the victims’ payment apps to purchase food, shoes, alcohol, and other necessities.
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.
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.
“They can’t prove which drugs killed these two individuals,” Vigliano stated. “You’ll find if you look at the toxicology reports, any number of these drugs could have killed these individuals.”
Ramirez and Umberger were killed in what the New York City medical examiner’s office determined to be homicides brought on by “drug-facilitated theft.”
According to the medical examiner’s report, fentanyl, lidocaine, and cocaine were among the drugs discovered in their systems.
During his testimony on Wednesday, one of the surviving victims acknowledged occasionally using cocaine and marijuana for recreational purposes. But he didn’t do so to the point of being incapacitated, he claimed.
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Video footage from the night of the witness’ interaction, according to Ching, shows him losing his mobility soon after meeting two of the defendants outside his hotel in Union Square, Manhattan.
According to her, the two men then used a luggage cart to bring the witness’s lifeless body into his hotel room, where they robbed him.
It is anticipated that Umberger’s mother, Linda Clary, and other surviving victims would speak.
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