No this is not the current AHS: NYC but what is going on right now in the gay community according to reports. At first, the men’s deaths were treated as overdoses, until tens of thousands of dollars were found drained from their bank accounts.
Julio Ramirez died in the back seat of a taxi in April after he left a popular gay bar in Manhattan NYC with a group of men. They stole his wallet, phone and ID before they abandoned his body in the car with a cab driver.
A month later, John Umberger was found dead in an Upper East Side townhouse after he and a group of men left another popular gay bar just three blocks from the last place Mr. Ramirez was seen alive. Surveillance footage showed him sandwiched between the men as they guided him into a car.
Read more here about the ongoing threats to the LGBTQ scene and prides.
The Police Department and many in the LGBTQ community at first regarded the deaths as isolated drug overdoses: men who partied too hard, quotidian tragedies in a gay nightlife scene that has roared back to life as the coronavirus pandemic has waned.
But the men’s families soon discovered something more sinister: Credit cards in the men’s names were maxed out and their bank accounts drained of tens of thousands of dollars. Now, their deaths are being investigated by the Police Department’s homicide unit.
The deaths of Mr. Ramirez and Mr. Umberger came at a fraught time for the city’s LGBTQ community, which emerged from the pandemic into the jaws of a monkeypox outbreak, a landscape of struggling and sometimes shuttered bars and an increasingly hostile national political climate.
They have also spread fear and rumor, while starting a broader conversation about similar attacks that have quietly plagued the city’s gay nightlife for years.
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Oscar Alarcon said he was drugged at the Ritz Bar and Lounge in Hell’s Kitchen. He awoke to discover that $2,000 had been transferred from his bank account.
“Nobody thought it was a crime initially, they had just thought he had taken something” commented the brother of Julio, 25, a social worker last seen leaving the Ritz Bar and Lounge in Hell’s Kitchen in April. Mr. Ramirez said that when he heard about his brother’s death, “I knew somebody had given him something and he did not know they had.”
A spokesman for the Police Department said it was investigating a number of robberies in Hell’s Kitchen, where many of the attacks have been clustered. The police said they did not know if Ramirez and Umberger were targeted because they were gay, and they have not said if they believe the men’s deaths and other nonfatal attacks are related.
Some men who said they were drugged have struggled to convince the police they were the victims of a crime and not just irresponsible partygoers who took someone home and blacked out.
Oscar Alarcon, 33, said he was drugged at the Ritz. He awoke on the floor of a Midtown hotel, he said, and found that $2,000 had been transferred from his bank account using the PayPal and Zelle apps on his phone.
I don’t remember how I left. Then I just woke up in a strange hotel lobby.
He filed a police report, but said he never heard back from the police.
There have been arrests connected to a series of similar robberies in Manhattan, but none of the charges in those cases involve the drugging of victims. In one, a patron left the Ritz on May 14, about three weeks after Ramirez’s death, and later reported that his phone and wallet were missing and $2,000 had been transferred out of his bank account.
John Umberger was allegedly drugged at the Q, a bar just three blocks from the Ritz. He was later found dead.
The Police Department did not respond to the newspaper for questions about whether the defendants in those cases were linked to the deaths of Mr. Ramirez or Mr. Umberger, who was drugged at the Q, a bar three blocks from the Ritz. Umberger’s family said the arrests were not related to his death, and Carlos Ramirez and other victims who spoke to The New York Times said they had received no updates from the police.
In addition to the families of Mr. Ramirez and Mr. Umberger, The Times has spoken to five men who said they were drugged at gay bars in the city — including the Eagle, the Boiler Room and the 9th Avenue Saloon — and then robbed. They have also spoken to a man who said he was robbed and held captive inside his apartment for several hours by someone he met on Grindr.
They were drugged by people they did not remember meeting in all the attacks. When woke up they discovered that someone had gained access to their phone using its facial recognition technology while they were unconscious. The thieves then used apps to empty their victims’ bank accounts and max out credit cards, stole cash and valuables.
Many substances used as so-called date rape drugs remain in a person’s system for only a short time, making them difficult to detect on drug tests. GHB and Ketamine are not included on most routine drug and toxicology tests at all, according to the Justice Department. It is also used recreationally by some in the gay community.
Jeffrey Dahmer for example did not use GHB that gets all the blame for anything in mainstream media but would drug his victim with triazolam or temazepam before or shortly after engaging in sexual activity with them. Once he had rendered his victim unconscious with sleeping pills, he killed them by strangulation. Fentanyl has also become a huge toxin being thrown into the street drug formulas the past few years and seems to be what dealers want to use to get people addicted and more likely to blackout. You also can’t forget that ALCOHOL is toxic and people out doing jager shots or early morning drinking and day drinking for hours on end can also black out.
Tyler Burt, 27, was robbed of more than $25,000 after he was drugged at the Boiler Room in the East Village last December. A drug test came back positive for cocaine, which he had no memory of taking, and his doctor suggested he had been drugged with GHB (which is normally a huge misconception).
At the police station, he said, the officers treated him skeptically.
They asked him if I he had been assaulted, and he said, ‘Getting drugged is assault,’” he said. “It seemed like they thought being drugged wasn’t even a possibility. They said, ‘Maybe you were but that isn’t really relevant to the robbery.’”
Mr. Burt said he received no updates from the police until last week, when they told him there were no developments in his case. The Police Department did not immediately respond to questions about its initial treatment of Mr. Burt and Mr. Alarcon.
Councilman Erik Bottcher represents much of the city’s gay heartland in Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea and the West Village.
Gay bars hold a special place in LGBTQ Gay culture. They act as community hubs in a way that bars with primarily heterosexual and cisgender clienteles do not.
Now that the pandemic has eased, many new bars have opened. Councilman Erik Bottcher — who represents much of the city’s gay heartland in Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea and the West Village — called it “a golden age of nightlife.”
The entire Gay Community is dealing with shootings, anti-trans/drag rhetoric
In the last two years, state legislatures nationwide have introduced hundreds of bills targeting transgender people and drag performances, according to LGBTQ advocacy groups.
Conservative political and media figures have accused LGBTQ people of “grooming” children, a homophobic trope that conflates homosexuality with pedophilia. And last month, an assailant killed five people and injured 18 at an LGBTQ bar in Colorado Springs. Just watch Tucker Carlson’s show any given night and you will see him or Laura Ingraham doing a bit against the trans or drag community or going as far to say gays are coming up with furries to molest their kids.
In addition, many gay bars are in or near Midtown Manhattan, which has been transformed by pandemic-era economic collapse and acts of high-profile street crime. VERS, a bar in Hell’s Kitchen, had a brick thrown at its window four times in October and November.
Ramirez went to the Ritz, on West 46th Street, on April 20 and left in a taxi with three men at around 3:15 a.m., said his brother, Carlos. The men left him in the cab a short time later and the driver soon realized he was unresponsive. He was pronounced dead roughly 90 minutes after he left the bar. By the time his body was identified, someone had taken money out of his accounts, his brother said.
The next month, Mr. Umberger, a political consultant visiting from Washington, D.C., went to the Q, on West 48th Street, his mother, Linda Clary, said. His body was found five days later on the Upper East Side.
When the police first contacted her, Ms. Clary said, they told her that her son was robbed on the street, then did drugs at home and overdosed. But when she saw that more than $20,000 had been withdrawn from his accounts, she traveled to New York from her home in Georgia.
After she showed detectives the suspicious withdrawals, a homicide investigation was opened. Later, a detective described to her surveillance footage that showed her son being led by two men into a car outside the Q bar.
An initial toxicology report provided to her by the medical examiner showed cocaine, lidocaine and fentanyl in his system,
Tyler Burt was robbed of more than $25,000 after he was drugged at the Boiler Room in the East Village.
More reports of attacks have surfaced. A man said he was drugged in July at the 9th Avenue Saloon, a bar just around the corner from the Ritz. He spoke to The Times on condition of anonymity because he was afraid his attackers could return to his apartment.
The last thing he said he remembered was hugging a friend goodbye and turning back to his half-finished drink. He awoke the next morning face down on the floor of his apartment.
Both he and the floor were covered in vomit, his eyes were uncontrollably spasming, and his phone and wallet were gone, he said. He later discovered that $11,000 had been stolen. Surveillance camera images show a man he did not recognize leading him into his apartment building, past his superintendent and up the stairs.
All of us have a friend who says they were drugged nearly nightly and we all know they drugged themselves with alcohol. Having a ring doorbell or some type of home security stored in the cloud is also a good idea to find out if someone did drug you or steal from you whether you were “drugged” or not.
We need to be taught more about how to look out for someone drugging us such as how they are acting or the drink being left alone or it tasting differently than it normally does. We also need to be more alert to our surroundings such as knowing where the entrances are and emergency exits and back rooms. Be able to grab a bottle of Vodka or something as a weapon if you need to use it from at attack. Also… don’t drink to the point you will blackout.
Attacks won’t stop after Club Q and Pulse
These are the people who showed up outside of a drag show in Columbus, Ohio and caused it to be canceled. This is terrorism. Where is the DOJ? This is a clear violation of civil rights by neo-nazi orgs.
LGBTQ people need to start arming themselves if they aren’t already and be more aware of their surroundings especially when going out by themselves or they get left by their friends. Club Q was just the beginning. We need to protect ourselves from these fascists. This time they didn’t murder anyone, but that might not be the case next time.
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