It has been nine months since Linda Clary received the devastating news that her 33-year-old son had been found dead during a work trip to New York City.

After several agonizing months, Clary says she was relieved to receive a phone call Thursday from the city’s medical examiner to confirm that the death of her son, John Umberger, had been ruled a homicide.

“It’s very bittersweet,” Clary said. “But it is a huge accomplishment to helping others be protected and holding those accountable who did this to John.”

What You Need To Know

  • The city’s medical examiner has deemed the drug-related deaths of two men last seen leaving LGBTQ bars last year as homicides

  • The NYPD said they have not connected the homicides with the arrest of a Bronx man in December in connection with the drug-related deaths of two other men on the Lower East Side

  • One of the victim’s mothers told NY1 it is bittersweet to learn the medical examiner’s determination

In a major development Friday, the city’s medical examiner announced that the deaths of Umberger and 25-year-old Julio Ramirez, who was found dead in April, had been ruled homicides.

The medical examiner blamed acute intoxication from the combined effects of several drugs, including fentanyl, cocaine and lidocaine.

Angelique Corthals, an associate professor at John Jay College who specializes in pathology, said while combining drugs, like cocaine and lidocaine, in order to roofie someone has been going on for decades, she explained just how powerful, harmful and potentially deadly that mix can be.

“It’s a deliriant that actually increases the effect of both drugs,” Corthals said. “And so therefore it increases the side effects of both drugs and can actually lead somebody to go into respiratory failure.”

Investigators say Ramirez, who was a social worker, had been drugged prior to leaving the Ritz, a bar and club on Restaurant Row that caters to the LGBTQ community.

Six weeks after the body of Ramirez was found, police say Umberger was last seen alive leaving the Q, an LGBTQ bar and nightclub that is also in Hell’s Kitchen.

It was later discovered that the bank accounts of both men had been drained.

At this time, police say they have not connected the deaths of Umberger and Ramirez to the arrest of a Bronx man in December in connection with the deaths of two men who had allegedly been drugged with fentanyl.

Police say the drug-related deaths of those two men took place in separate incidents that occurred on the Lower East Side last year.