Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s (D) office is impeding an investigation into a gang that has killed at least two gay men and possibly targeted more, according to Miranda Devine of the New York Post, citing law enforcement sources.
Despite the two men being murdered in nearly identical circumstances after leaving gay clubs in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, officials have not adequately warned residents that the serial killers are still at large.
On April 21 at approximately 3:20 a.m., Julio Ramirez, 25, of Brooklyn, walked out of the Ritz Bar and Lounge, a gay club on West 46th Street, with three unidentified men. One hour later, Ramirez was found dead inside a taxi on the Lower Eastside, with his phone and wallet missing.
Around $20,000 was taken from his bank account, his credit cards were maxed out, and payment apps such as Venmo and Zelle were also emptied.
Five weeks later, John Umberger, 33, a political consultant from Washington, DC visiting the city, disappeared on May 28 after leaving at The Q NYC, a gay club at 795 Eighth Avenue — two blocks away from the Ritz — at around 3:15 a.m.
Umberger was also seen on surveillance footage leaving the club with three unidentified men.
Four days later, his body was found in a fifth-floor townhouse unit on 34 E. 61st Street. His phone was missing, along with the credit card from his wallet. Around $25,000 had been stolen from his Venmo and PayPal accounts, and a botched attempt was made to steal from his Charles Schwab account.
According to law enforcement sources, preliminary toxicology reports showed that both men died of drug overdoses, with evidence indicating that their drinks were spiked with date-rape drugs.
The investigation into the deaths of Ramirez and Umberger is still ongoing. Umberger’s mother, Linda Clary, believes that these killers have targeted more gay men and is angry that they are still on the loose.
“Word needs to get out, especially in the gay community, that they are targeting gay men,” Clary told the Post. “This same group of killers have drugged, robbed and murdered countless young gay men in New York.”
Clary is blaming the George Soros-funded Bragg for his office’s slow movement in investigating her son’s death, saying they are “refusing to prosecute my son’s killers.”
As Breitbart News reported earlier, prosecutors have been resigning from Bragg’s Manhattan offices in droves due to his “soft-on-crime” agenda and other policies that impede prosecutors from effectively doing their job.
Nine prosecutors resigned within weeks after Bragg released a memo as he took office in January, telling staffers “not [to] seek pre-trial detention or prison sentences for crimes other than homicide, public corruption, and a few other exceptional cases.”
Clary, a Georgia resident, is urging New Yorkers to vote for Republican gubernatorial candidate Rep. Lee Zeldin on Tuesday and recorded a video message for the Save Our State group telling New Yorkers, “This election may be the last opportunity to hold my son’s killers accountable.”
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Umberger’s mother noted in the video that Zeldin has promised to fire Bragg on his first day in office and to suspend New York’s no cash-bail law.
“I will FIRE Alvin Bragg immediately upon taking office as New York’s next Governor in January,” Zeldin tweeted on August 29.
However, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) has not committed to firing Bragg, stating on Friday that firing “one district attorney in one borough in New York” would not fix the nationwide crime crisis.
Hochul has also championed the Empire State’s unpopular no-cash bail law, which has led to four in ten suspects who were freed under the law being rearrested for other crimes, according to data from January 2020 to January 2021.
You can follow Ethan Letkeman on Twitter at @EthanLetkeman.
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